Most organizations have a requirement that (for legal reasons) correspondence from the organization must be reproducible in the original format with the original content intact.

If the XML document used to create the correspondence were always created on-the-fly, then any changes to the client data on the database would prevent the original correspondence from being reproduced at a later time. To prevent this, a row is created on this table to hold the XML document containing the data as it existed at the time the correspondence was created. This row can be retrieved at a later time to recreate the exact contents of the document.

A row on this table only contains the data that is inserted into a template. The XSL stylesheet/template converts this into a proper document by inserting the data into the correct location within a template that contains boilerplate text. The document can then be re-printed.

Example

You implement some new functionality that requires a new XSL template for printing correspondence to a Person. User Ronan Rooney creates a new XSL template for this type of correspondence and uploads it.

User Ronan Rooney then uses your new functionality to format and print a letter to Person John Smith. The Cúram Server retrieves data about John Smith (including his name, address and date of birth) and passes it to the XML infrastructure.

The XML infrastructure formats John Smith's data into a printable document using the appropriate XSL template. The XML infrastructure then creates a row on this table to store John Smith's data and a reference to the version of the XSL template which was used to format it. The XML infrastructure then prints this document and User Ronan Rooney puts the printed document into an envelope and mails it to John Smith.

User Ronan Rooney then notices a typographical error in the XSL template. He fixes this error, creating a new XSL Template Instance with the version number 2.

Person John Smith receives the letter and notifies the organization that his date of birth (as held by the organization) is incorrect. He subsequently moves house and takes legal action against the organization. To support the organization's defense, User Ronan Rooney re-prints the letter that was sent to John Smith. The XML infrastructure retrieves the data for the letter from this table and from it identifies the version of the template which was originally used to print the letter (version 1, containing the typographical error). The XML infrastructure retrieves version 1 of the template from this table and formats the letter exactly as it was sent to John Smith (including his original address before he moved house and the incorrect date of birth).

Technical Notes

The archiving of the data used to create a document is implementation-specific - archiving does not occur automatically.

For more information see the Cúram XML Infrastructure Guide.