That's starting to change. Ubiquitous vendors, including Apple Computer Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc., also will simplify integration with third-party DAM systems, he adds. As managers strove to merge the imagesetting functions of editorial, photo and advertising departments, they selected Cascade to provide a unified open pre-press interface. Times officials would like to add editorial text, according to Rukkoso. When an ad order enters the Times' order-entry system, insertion information is fed to the megaserver and linked to related ad materials.
Information passes to an ad-planning system, which dummies pages and passes layouts back.
The megaserver then marries ads to layouts and, through its OPI, produces dummied pages. After doing so, it lets the billing system know that the ads ran. But when limited in scope, DAM can be blessedly simple. Nor do such systems exist only at large papers. Salespeople equipped with laptops use the database to pull up and update ads while visiting clients.