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Document Structure Diagram

Purpose

A Document Structure Diagram (DCD) is used to design the document structure and content in terms of existing page templates. The structure is represented in a diagram that shows the order in which sections of a document apear. The order of the document is expressed as a series of sections that are linked by flows.

Example

Here is an example Document Structure Diagram.

Description

A document structure can be defined by a hierarchy of Document Diagrams (DCDs). Cradle does not impose any restrictions on how you choose to draw your diagram.

The following guidelines may be useful in deciding how to represent the structure of your document:

  1. The first diagram you create will represent the whole document: child diagrams can be created to subdivide sections of the document, but this first diagram cannot have a parent. The sections on this diagram usually correspond to the broad outline of the document, for example INTRODUCTION , BODY , APPENDIX .
  2. Sections of a document can be printed only if they appear on a separate DCD. Document generation printing is based on printing the parts of a document represented by the contents of a diagram and its child diagrams. For example, if your document had an introduction and three body chapters, and you represented them all on a single diagram, you would only ever be able to print the entire document at once. Alternatively you could draw only two sections on the main DCD: INTRODUCTION , and BODY , where BODY expanded into a child diagram that contained three sections, one for each of the body chapters. You could then print the body chapters separately by specifying the DCD that contains them to the Document Printer tool (DPRT).
  3. Each document section can be assigned a different template, therefore you will need to define a section for each different page layout that you require.
  4. Each document section can only contain a single set of data. It is therefore necessary to use a different section to print (for example) a user-defined title page, and a section containing the data that goes with it.

When designing documents it is recommended that a top-down approach is adopted:

  • Create the DCD and add sections to represent the broad areas of the document
  • Expand any section that you may need to print separately into a child diagram
  • Expand any section that is composed of subsections until you have all sections of the document represented in the hierarchy of DCDs

Add sections to the diagrams for changes in data, and changes in format

Characteristics

APPEARS IN MODELS

N/A

NUMBERING

Cradle documents are identified by a unique name, for example FRED . Sections of the first level of a document are identified by the name of the document of which it is a part, followed by a number, with the components being separated by a period (.), for example:

FRED.1 . Sections from subsequent levels in the hierarchy are numbered in a corresponding way, for example, FRED.1.1 , FRED.1.1.1 , etc.

HIERARCHICAL

Yes

Symbols

Symbol

Name

Description

Definition

Expansion

DCD Unnumbered Document Section  

Unnumbered document section

A section of a document that has no number. If used before a numbered section, then the number in the document is left blank. If used after a numbered section, then the number is inherited from that numbered section.

Template

None

DCD Numbered Document Section  

Numbered document section

A section of a document which has a section number.

Template

DCD

DCD Section Connection  

Section connection

A line to show the interconnections between the sections and subsections in the document.

None

None

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