A series of InDesign plug-ins to help make data design easier has been launched by Xchange International.

The products are InData, InCatalog and InCatalog Pro, which work with Adobe InDesign3. They can be purchased either as full versions or as upgrades for earlier versions created for InDesign CS and CS2.

InData allows designers to use the layout, typographic and picture publishing features of Adobe InDesign on data-driven repetitive tasks. It has been described by Xchange as "mail merge on steroids", and can be used for product catalogues, financial or legal reports, directories and real estate guides, among other tasks.

InCatalog is a tool to create links between Adobe InDesign documents and external data, which means that users can update data in two places at one time. It works on databases such as Oracle, SQL, Sybase and more.