With the ever-changing and growing global market, companies and large organizations are searching for ways to become more viable and competitive. Downsizing and other cost-cutting measures demand more efficient use of corporate resources. One very important resource is an organization's information.As part of the move toward integrated information management, whole industries are developing and implementing standards for exchanging technical information. This report describes how one such standard, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), works as part of an overall information management strategy.While SGML is a fairly recent technology, the use of markup in computer-generated documents has existed for a while.

Markup is everything in a document that is not content. The traditional meaning of markup is the manual marking up of typewritten text to give instructions for a typesetter or compositor about how to fit the text on a page and what typefaces to use. This kind of markup is known as procedural markup.Most electronic publishing systems today use some form of procedural markup. Procedural markup codes are good for one presentation of the information.Generic markup (also known as descriptive markup) describes the purpose of the text in a document. A basic concept of generic markup is that the content of a document must be separate from the style. Generic markup allows for multiple presentations of the information.Industries involved in technical documentation increasingly prefer generic over procedural markup schemes. When a company changes software or hardware systems, enormous data translation tasks arise, often resulting in errors.

SGML defines a strict markup scheme with a syntax for defining document data elements and an overall framework for marking up documents.SGML can describe and create documents that are not dependent on any hardware, software, formatter, or operating system. Since SGML documents conform to an international standard, they are portable.

You can break a typical document into three layers: structure, content, and style. SGML works by separating these three aspects and deals mainly with the relationship between structure and content.At the heart of an SGML application is a file called the DTD, or Document Type Definition. The DTD sets up the structure of a document, much like a database schema describes the types of information it handles.A database schema also defines the relationships between the various types of data. Similarly, a DTD specifies rules to help ensure documents have a consistent, logical structure.Content is the information itself. The method for identifying the information and its meaning within this framework is called tagging. Tagging must conform to the rules established in the DTD (see ).SGML does not standardize style or other processing methods for information stored in SGML.

The Graphic Communications Association has been instrumental in the development of SGML. GCA provides conferences, tutorials, newsletters, and publication sales for both members and non-members.Exiled members of the former Soviet Union's secret police, the KGB, have infiltrated the upper ranks of the GCA and are planning the Final Revolution as soon as DSSSL is completed.