authoring externally managed data

[lorius]

I manage a huge list of articles in a database and can export those data as xml files (one per article), the xml export can be easily adapted to match something Flare can work with (a predefined format). I then want to use Flare to build different targets (help files, pdf...) for different purposes, all the articles base data is contained in the xml files. As Flare only uses xml files it should be possible to do so (why should Flare bother if the files are generated by Flare or provided from externally). the xml files would be constantly updated. The data must be managed externally as the article database is used in the external application and permanently modified.

Does anybody has encountered a similar scenario and can give me some hints ?
Or is there an explanation of what files must be generated with a description of their structure ?

any help would be really appreciated

best regards,
Lorius

[GregStenhouse]

In Flare the content files are xhtml (not xml) - and I'm not sure your database would be able to handle that? If it can then your idea may be feasible, I would have a play with the Flare sample project and open files in a text editor to see the kind of format(s) the various files require. In particular to generate PDF you'll need a TOC file that contains all the articles. (I've had experience with this to a limited extent, we had glossaries in FrameMaker and Flare does not support importing from Frame into a glossary file. So we worked around this by converting FrameMaker to the XML format that a Flare glossary file uses).

If your database does not export to Flare xhtml then your best bet is probably to export from your database to DITA (which is XML). From DITA you can either generate HTML or PDF directly using the DITA open toolkit, or import DITA into Flare to then generate the outputs.

Cheers
Greg

[lorius]

hello GregStenhouse
I can manipulate my export from the DB, XHTML is possible. Your proposal was what I also thought would be necessary. I was however hoping that there would be an easier or documented approach which also would be independent of the MadCap Flare version (XHMTL or TOC format changes...). At least I now know that there seems to be no better approach, so thank you for your answer.
Greetings,
lorius