the current version of DITA data model supports several complementary implementation of reusing data.
reuse of topic as complete information object
conref to reuse within fine structure of an information object (useful for common used structures like warnings)
and profiling of information objects.

all of these methods are static, means the reused content cannot be adopted even if life cycle of information requires this (thats what ann rockley called a locked reuse).

if you talk about the life cycle of information this kind of reuse has strong limitation. if you want to "reuse" a use case provided by a analyst / software developer into a task (which would be very common) you have to force the analyst to specify in a way further usage of this use case (information object) can be provided as is.

thats has one major drawback. the analyst must focus on the specification and must provide information in a way the engineering team can work with. if he spend to much time in generalize the information object his skills are "wasted" and overall ROI will not be positive.

on the other hand the information created by the analyst must be adopted for service documentation, training documentation, user documentation.....means the use-case and corresponding topic in user documentation are the "same" information object from an information architectural point of view.

each time the use case changed the associated user documentation task must be adopted or at least approved.

this kind of approach can be perfect supported by a "dynamic reuse" or ann rockley would call it 

"derivative reuse". this means that the content of the information object is copied into the derived information object but there is still a connection to the information provider available. thus connection can be used to provide processing support for "dynamic reuse" e.g. an change notification each time the information provider changed, .....

what needs to be done to introduce dynamic reuse in DITA. a special kind of attribute is required which maintain the link to the information provider. this attribute must be specified (e.g. dynref) as well as the associated elements the attribute is required. similar to conref. the semantic of this reference must be specified as well.

thats simple for a standardization point of view, but provides many advantages. if this is standardized all people working on the processing chain (incl. DITA OT) can provide / improve support for this and somehow in the future most tool vendors implemented support for this.

in my personal point of view this is the missing gap in most information architectures that everything is based on static reuse. thus the life cycle of information objects are limited and therefore the usage of information objects are as well limited.

feedback welcome,

Alex

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Just an update on my activities:

• Presenting at the STC conference May 7th-10th, giving an intro to DITA presentation, co-presenting on task-oriented information architecture with DITA, and also participating in the standards forum to represent DITA and OASIS. For more info: http://stc.org/53rdConf/
• Presenting at X-Pubs in England June 20th-21st, giving an intro to DITA presentation, specialization demo, and DITA integration presentation. For more info: http://www.x-pubs.com/
• Ordered some DITA OASIS gear at http://www.cafepress.com/oasis_open, hoping to show it off at the aforementioned events.

On the DITA TC front, working hard on the conditional processing feature right now, trying to get to a design we can all agree on for managing the creation of new conditional processing attributes via specialization.

Monday 17 April -- Leaving for Shanghai

In 2005, I conducted a benchmark study of the state of technical writing in China. The white paper of this study and our updated India benchmark study is now available on the CIDM website at www.infomanagementcenter.com/publications.htm. Also notice the new website that we launched last week.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Shanghai for a few days, in part to speak at the LISA Shanghai conference (Localization Industry Standards Association). Dave Schell and I are introducing DITA. I'm also meeting with a Chinese company that will be implementing DITA. I expect many of the discussions at the conference and at the company will focus on the challenge of topic-based authoring. Localization service providers are concerned that handling multiple topics will increase the difficulty of administering the translation workflow.

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