Draft:Intelligent information request and delivery standard

iiRDS stands for intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard. iiRDS is a technical standard for the delivery of digital information for use or technical documentation, for example, electronic operating instructions and user manuals. iiRDS can be used free of charge and is published under a Creative Commons license.

The iiRDS development was started in 2016 by a group of experts at tekom, the German professional association for Technical Communication. Since 2018, the standard has been maintained and extended by the iiRDS Consortium.

iiRDS wants to enable manufacturer-independent delivery, exchange, and aggregation of information for use. This is particularly necessary in the context of Industry 4.0 and IIoT solutions where technical documentation from different manufacturers in plants and smart factories is combined. iiRDS is not concerned with standardizing the way content is created and maintained but solely with standardizing the exchange format. This focus on the delivery format for smart content enables iiRDS users to author the content in different systems, for example, content management systems.

Content that is enriched with iiRDS metadata supports functions for searching and filtering information and other content functionalities. Smart content can be found faster and more precisely in self-service portals, documentation portals or apps.

Components of iiRDS
iiRDS consists of two components:
 * A package format that defines the file and folder structure of the package that contains intelligent information
 * A metadata model for the domain of technical communication, defined as an ontology. This model is the foundation for the enrichment of documentation content with metadata.

The iiRDS metadata model
iiRDS uses RDF Schema as the technical format for the metadata model. After registration, these RDF files can be downloaded free of charge from the iiRDS Consortium website.

iiRDS metadata can be assigned to text fragments, topics, or documents. The iiRDS metadata model is based on the PI classification and defines the following categories of metadata (extract):



Information types

 * Topic types, for example, task, concept, and reference, similar to the topic types provided by DITA
 * Document types, for example, maintenance instructions and operating instructions
 * Information subjects, for example, “Safety” and “Technical data”

Product metadata

 * Component
 * Product variant
 * Product feature
 * Phase of product lifecycle

Functional metadata

 * Events, such as error messages
 * Frequent user actions, such as mounting or welding
 * Planning time, for example, maintenance intervals and duration of work
 * Qualification, i.e. required skill level or role of a target group
 * Supply, such as tools, spare parts, or consumable supplies

Administrative metadata

 * Identification, status and origin of content, product, and component
 * Responsible organization and its role regarding content, product, and component
 * Navigation metadata for building navigation sequences and hierarchies

Organizations that use iiRDS can extend the metadata model by adding new subclasses or objects to existing iiRDS classes. iiRDS explicitly supports extension of the metadata model and provides what are called “docking points” for linking external metadata, for example, product metadata or role and qualification definitions.

The iiRDS package format
From a technical point of view, the iiRDS package is a ZIP container. It contains the content to be delivered and the associated metadata as RDF. iiRDS comes in two variants regarding the format of the content:
 * Unrestricted packages can contain any kind of format, for example PDF, HTML, XML, MP4, SVG or Office files.
 * Restricted packages in the iiRDS/A format contain content only in predefined formats and are self-contained. The predefined formats are PDF/A, a restricted selection of media formats, and XHTML5 with element and attribute restrictions. iiRDS packages are self-contained when the content files only point to files within these packages. The restrictions of the iiRDS/A format aim to ensure that all iiRDS-capable applications process and present the content in similar ways without any additional implementation or customization effort.

iiRDS and VDI 2770
Since 2020, it has been possible to generate hybrid iiRDS and VDI 2770 packages that are compatible with both standards for delivering technical documentation content. The definition of hybrid packages was achieved by aligning activities between the iiRDS Consortium and the VDI 2770 working group.

iiRDS Consortium
Members of the iiRDS Consortium include industrial companies, vendors of content management systems and content delivery platforms, and consulting companies and service providers. The Consortium manages the further development of the standard, provides training in iiRDS, and publishes papers on and guidelines for the standard.

The iiRDS Consortium is organized as follows:
 * The working groups “Development”, “Validation and Tools” and “Standardization” drive further development and the international standardization of iiRDS.
 * The Steering Committee develops the roadmap, defines the strategic goals for iiRDS, and manages coordination with other standardization initiatives and organizations, such as VDI, DKE or Plattform Industrie 4.0.
 * Each year, the results of the Consortium’s work are presented at the Annual Meeting.

Applications of iiRDS
The iiRDS specification defines two categories of tools within the iiRDS tool chain: iiRDS does not define the way iiRDS packages are generated or processed; it defines a standardized format for delivering smart content from an iiRDS Generator to an iiRDS Consumer. To support the application, the iiRDS Consortium provides an Open Toolkit as a free web service. The toolkit can be used to enrich content, for example, PDF files, with metadata. It then generates a valid iiRDS package from content and metadata. Therefore, the iiRDS Open Toolkit is an iiRDS Generator.
 * iiRDS Generator: Application that creates iiRDS packages from content. This can be component content management systems, authoring systems, or converter tools and services.
 * iiRDS Consumer: Application that receives and processes iiRDS packages. This can be content delivery portals or self-service portals.