Program Management Tool (PMT)

NETMARK forms the foundation of PMT and plays a key role in maintaining high levels of data integrity. This patent-pending technology provides the 'schema-less' XML database and round-trip data translation services which allow PMT to utilize standard business documents as a key user interface to support both an online and offline workflow.

A recent case study by NASA found a 40% discrepency rate within Program reporting documents.

NETMARK's data-translation pipeline provides numerous capabilities to PMT. Through this conduit, data from databases, text documents, pdf files, spreadsheets, and presentations are converted into a single, universal data type and stored in NETMARK's object-relational XML database.

This provides several practical benefits, the first of which is PMT's ability to use standard business documents as a key user interface to the system.

From the users perspective, this works in a very simple three step process. First, the user generates a document template from within PMT. This document can be in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, Word document, PowerPoint presentation or PDF file, among other formats.

Next, the user works either online or offline to gather the data needed to fill out the form. Once the data is entered into the document, the final step can be completed: submitting the document back into PMT either via email, web upload, or by dragging the file onto a WebDAV share. Once submitted to PMT, the document is de-constructed, and the data is stored in the XML database within PMT for rapid search and re-use.

By allowing input using standard business documents, no data re-entry is required. Errors from trying to move data between documents and systems is eliminated, yielding extremely high data integrity. This also allows for the rapid generation of reports, charts and presentations, since business documents can be create from the output of search queries.

In addition to using standard business documents as input and output from the system, NETMARK's data-transformation pipeline facilitates another important service: the ability to integrate and synchronize data from external databases and information systems.

A significant challenge that organizations face is searching for data across a wide variety of non-interconnected legacy databases as well as more modern information systems. As a result, people within organizations are required to query several different systems in order to get the information they need to make business decisions.

NETMARK works to address this issue by bringing data from these external databases into a "schema-less" XML database, creating a universal system for data search and retrieval while still maintaining the ability to send data back to the original system. Users can then query information across a broad range of datasets, dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to locate and assemble valuable organizational information.

While the data-transformation pipeline provides the ability to connect to external databases, the 'schema-less' XML database at the heart of NETMARK provides PMT with another key benefits: a storage system which requires virtually no administration.

For many organizations, database development and maintenance is very costly, particularly from the standpoint of schema development and systems integration. In most systems today, schema structures have grown very large and difficult to expand without considerable development work. NETMARK eliminates much of this cost by using a "schema-less" structure for storing data and managing data access using powerful search capabilities.

With its ability to using standard business documents for data input and output to facilitate both online and offline workflow and provide a unified middleware platform for connecting structure and unstructured data, NETMARK is transforming the landscape for enterprise-level information management.