March 2000

FIRST LOOKS:

Sharable Archives Grow on 'NavTrees'

By Doug Henschen

Sometimes less is more. That's the idea behind kWise, a low-cost alternative for organizing and viewing a variety of file types within easy-to-navigate "NavTrees." Offering the look and feel of Windows Explorer, NavTree databases can be shared on a network, published to CD/DVD and/or viewed on the Internet or intranets.

Developed by Kruse (www.kwise.com/ids), kWise is for departments and workgroups, particularly those involving manufacturing, engineering, construction, architecture and field services (e.g., gas, utility, etc.). kWise Pro ($7,500) includes an Author seat and five clients, and it supports more than 200 file formats including CAD files. If you're not dealing with CAD, kWise Lite ($5,500) saves money on vector graphics support, but you'll still be able to handle DOCs, JPEGs, TIFs, PDFs, BMPs and most other popular file formats.

At a Glance Product: kWise 3.0 Vendor: Kruse, Downingtown, PA, 610-269-8769 Description: Workgroup/departmental system for organizing and viewing a variety of file types in tree-like databases. Distributes via the Internet/intranets or stand-alone archives on CD, DVD or other removable storage. Targets manufacturing, engineering, architecture, field service. Support: Windows 9X/NT 4.0+/2000; Web Module requires NT Server and MS IIS. Strengths: Easy database building, simple navigation and broad file support. Hyperlinking option. Moderate pricing. Weaknesses: Tree navigation limits practical volume sizes. Proprietary database format. Internet client requires download. Price: One Author seat plus five view clients $7,500 ($5,500 without CAD). CD/DVD Publisher $2,000. kWise Online $10,000. ProductInfo 201

The kWise NavTree approach is intended for database neophytes who want to keep things simple. You start by dragging and dropping files from Windows Explorer to a Data View window in the Author client. Alternatively, you can import files from local volumes or ODBC databases. Next, you create a tree structure and hierarchy with drag-and-drop "leaves" that you label with common-sense names. Finally, you pick off files or groups of files and associate them with the appropriate leaves.

The approach isn't quite the same as Windows Explorer, but you get the hang of it quickly. As you grow NavTrees you can easily reorganize and rename leaves and reassociate files with different branches and folders. The tree is simply a collection of pointers, so you can associate the same file with several different locations on the tree without duplication. A pump diagram, for example, might be referred to within an electrical folder or a plumbing folder.

NavTrees support unlimited levels of hierarchy, but there is a practical limit to what you can easily navigate. As anyone with a loaded hard drive can attest, scrolling up and down and collapsing trees can get cumbersome. To keep navigation simple, you'll need good organization and less than a few thousand files (though you'd likely break out separate NavTrees anyway).

You view files by searching the tree, viewing index fields in the Data View or by querying for specific terms or values. kWise supports up to 50 index fields. These can be mapped from other databases or entered as you import or drag files to the Data View. This system does not support OCR, so there's no full-text searching.

Once you're done authoring a tree, you can share it on the network (five seats included; additional seats $500 to $200 depending on volume). The Publisher Pro module ($2,000) lets you store NavTrees, related files and a stand-alone viewing client to CD, DVD or other removable media. The kWise Online module ($10,000) operates on NT Servers running Microsoft IIS, and it requires a downloadable client (rather than browser-based viewing).

kWise security is based on permissions, user IDs and passwords. If you need to edit a file, rather than just view it, you can extract originals from network, CD/DVD or online databases and store them locally, though only one file at a time. The NavTrees themselves are proprietary.

Kruse offers an optional kWiseLink hyperlinking module ($4,000) that lets you drag-and-drop hot zones to images and then link them to related files. This is useful for maps, diagrams, photographs and textual files because you can link to close-up maps, diagrams, parts lists, photographs, tables of contents, etc.

kWise competes with products like Alchemy from IMR (www.imrgold.com), ZyImage from ZyLab (www.zylab.com) and more robust engineering document management systems, including Kruse's own Kruse Control. For small archives with an emphasis on big docs, kWise keeps things simple.