Building ITSM glossaries with DITA

This is an area that is well supported by DITA, with the glossgroup and the glossterm topic types and their various content elements. Glossary groups can be combined into different sets and can be included in different maps to suit the desired variety of reference material readership. Granularity of re-use may range from a single term to hundreds of terms to hundreds of groups of terms. A DITA glossary is likely to form an appendix at the end of a document. However, same can be arranged in a DITA bookmap to produce technical and regulatory service management dictionaries and encyclopedia.

For illustration, the source markup of the following sample glossary is included here below
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE glossgroup PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA 1.2 Glossgroup//EN" "glossgroup.dtd">
<glossgroup id="glossgroup.ITIL_common">
    <title>Glossary of common ITIL terminology</title>
    <glossentry id="glossentry.service">
        <glossterm>Service</glossterm>
        <glossdef>A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes the customers
            want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.</glossdef>
    </glossentry>
    <glossentry id="glossentry.value">
        <glossterm>Value</glossterm>
        <glossdef>Consists of two core components: utility and warranty.</glossdef>
    </glossentry>
. . . 
. . .
</glossgroup>