8.5

your documents beforehand.
Metadata structure
Metadata in PlanetPress Workflow introduces the following concepts for adding information to a
job:
l
Page: 1 side of a physical paper sheet.
l
Datapage: 1 atomic unit of content that produces zero, one or more pages.
l
Document: group of 1 or more ordered datapages intended to the same recipient from the
same source (ex: invoice).
l
Group: a logical and ordered group of documents (ex: all invoices for a specific customer
number; all documents going to the same address, etc.)
l
Job: file that contains 1 or more groups.
When Metadata is produced for a given job, a hierarchical (i.e. tree-like) structure is created,
composed of the above elements in the following order: Job->Group(s)->Document(s)-
>Datapage(s)->Page(s). Any operation that modifies the data with regards to this structure (ex:
remove pages, alter the data, etc.) makes the metadata obsolete and so it must be recreated or
refreshed.
As an example, consider the typical case of a PlanetPress Design document which uses a Line
Printer datafile of transactional data in order to generate PDF invoices for a series of clients. By
using the Metadata tools available in PlanetPress Workflow, we can add the following
information to the datafile:
l The job contains only invoices for clients located in Montreal.
l Since more than one invoice can go to the same recipient, invoices are grouped by
customer.
l Each invoice is a document resulting from the execution of a PlanetPress Design
document over one or more datapages, which results in zero or more physical pages
being output.
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