Microsoft KB Archive/68591

Description of Office Document Architecture (ODA) PSS ID Number: Q68591 Article last modified on 08-10-1993 PSS database name: APpsConV

5.50

MS-DOS

Summary:

Office Document Architecture (ODA) is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard intended to facilitate the passing of compound documents (those with text, graphics, and video) between dissimilar document-processing systems.

More Information:

A compound document is a structured, electronic analogue to its paper document. A compound document can be composed of text, images, and graphics, with these portions ordered in groups of objects for editing and presentation purposes. Essentially, a compound document represents any complex document created on any system.

Many independent software vendors (ISVs) have developed systems for processing documents, and each of these document-processing products has an underlying architecture for representing the structure of compound documents. Moving documents between such heterogeneous systems poses a problem.

Currently, the document interchange problem is addressed by creation of conversion utilities for converting from the format of one package to another. As new packages are introduced, schemes to convert files to and from existing packages are required. This scheme has two weaknesses: a large number of converters must be maintained to cover the range of systems, and loss of some formatting inevitably occurs during conversion.

This problem can eventually be resolved if all vendors agree to support a standardized document interchange format. In the past, the IBM Revisable-Form Text Document Content Architecture (RFT-DCA) served as an interchange standard for early word processors and compound document editors. The new international standard ISO 8613, Office Document Architecture (ODA) and Interchange Format (ODIF), is intended to provide a more complete solution for passing compound documents between dissimilar document-processing systems.

The ODA standards community is in the process of defining legal subsets of the whole standard that can be applied to classes of documents. These subsets are called DAPs (Document Application Profiles). The level 2 DAP is the subset that covers word processing documents.

Additional reference words: noupd textconv

Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1993.