REDMOND, Wash. - May 7, 1999 - Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of the Microsoft^® XML Parser for incorporation by third-party developers into their applications. The Microsoft XML Parser, which is freely redistributable and compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 specification, allows developers to easily support XML in any or all of the presentation, business logic or storage elements of an application. Leading independent software vendors (ISVs), including Allaire Corp., Novell Inc. and Object Design Inc., today announced their intent to use the Microsoft XML Parser to build XML support into next-generation products. The parser is available for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/ at no charge (connect-time charges may apply).

"XML is a key piece of the puzzle for building multi-tier, Web-enabled applications because it helps solve the applications integration problem," said Tod Nielsen, vice president of marketing for the developer division at Microsoft. "Microsoft is the first to deliver a native XML solution for developers that reaches from the browser back to the database behind the Web server. XML is integral to every piece of the platform for building Windows^® DNA applications."

Microsoft Delivers Comprehensive XML Solution for Developers

XML is quickly gaining widespread acceptance as the universal language for data, whether for enterprise applications integration within an organization or business-to-business electronic commerce across the Internet. Customers are embracing XML for its interoperability, flexibility and simplicity, and software developers are embedding XML capabilities directly into their applications.

"Novell has been working with XML for quite some time and is excited about the prospects for XML to enable new applications," said Chris Stone, senior vice president at Novell. "We plan to cooperate with Microsoft in promoting XML as a standard for data exchange and supporting Microsoft's XML implementation with our Windows-based products as part of the foundation for our next-generation applications. This XML support will become apparent through network applications and services that integrate with NDS."

In addition to enabling ISVs to incorporate the Microsoft XML Parser into any part of their applications, Microsoft is also working to integrate the parser directly into all of its products used for building Windows Distributed interNet Applications (Windows DNA). XML support and integration is available today in the following Microsoft software:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, the industry's first XML-compliant browser software, allows users to view XML directly.
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 4.0 technology permits Web sites to publish and receive XML data.
• Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) technology provides transactions support for robust, high-performance XML data operations.
• Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ) technology ensures reliable, asynchronous delivery of XML documents.
• Microsoft SQL Server™ 7.0 stores and retrieves data contained in XML documents and complete XML documents.
• Microsoft Repository 2.0 uses XML for data warehousing metadata import and export.

The Microsoft XML Parser is a high-performance, validating parser fully compliant with the W3C XML 1.0 standard. By virtue of its componentized design, it is easily integrated with any Windows operating system-based application and programmed using any programming or scripting language such as ECMAScript, Java, Perl, Python, SQL, the Visual Basic^® development system, the Visual C++^® development system or Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript). Further, it supports the W3C XML Document Object Model (DOM), the XML Stylesheet Language (XSL) W3C working draft and the XML 1.0 Namespaces Recommendation.

In addition to developing software for manipulating XML data, Microsoft is also working to facilitate the open definition of standard XML vocabularies for specific industries and applications through the BizTalk™ initiative. BizTalk is an XML framework for both application integration and electronic commerce that defines a common set of guidelines for how Microsoft, its associates and other industry groups can standardize the interchange of business data between applications.

Leading Software Vendors to Ship Microsoft XML Technologies

By making its complete XML implementation freely available, Microsoft is providing third-party developers a comprehensive, high-quality XML infrastructure that allows them to easily incorporate XML functionality into their application development efforts. As a result, major software vendors such as Aeneid Corp., Allaire, Honeywell Inc., MERANT Solutions Inc., Novell, Object Design, Pervasive Software Inc. and Vectrix Corp. are planning to integrate Microsoft XML technologies into their development efforts.

Microsoft XML technology will help enable these vendors to create next-generation applications in areas such as enterprise application integration, electronic business and electronic commerce. Examples of how each of these vendors is using Microsoft's XML technology are included in the addendum to this release.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.

Microsoft, Windows, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and BizTalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Independent Software Vendors Supporting Microsoft XML Parser

Aeneid Corp.

"Aeneid uses XML to deliver business-to-business Internet content to its customers. Performance and scalability were key requirements when we chose an XML parser. The Microsoft XML Parser scales extremely well. The more processing power we add, the better the performance. We plan to redistribute the XML parser to our customers so they can parse the XML search results that Aeneid delivers and use XSL to transform them from XML to our customer's branded HTML pages."

- Bob Ainsbury

Chief Technical Officer

Aeneid

Allaire Corp.

"We are excited about integrating the Microsoft XML Parser with Allaire's award-winning development tools, ColdFusion and HomeSite. A significant percentage of our 250,000 developers are using XML for business-to-business integration, ERP systems, EDI and
e-commerce, content syndication, and structured data management. We expect this new technology from Microsoft to significantly increase their productivity."

Honeywell Inc.

"Industrial process control systems such as Honeywell's Plantscape are a rich source of large amounts of information for plant operators, engineers and managers. XML provides a means to better manage the delivery of data so that the right people get the right information at the right time. Realizing the promise of XML in such a demanding environment however requires a high-performance XML parser that can be shipped as part of our server platform. The Microsoft XML Parser gives us the performance and packaging options that we need to make the most of XML."

MERANT Solutions Inc.

"Integrating new technology rapidly is a hallmark of agile enterprises today. As a data integration leader, we are extending our customers' capabilities to transparently leverage multiple sources of information, adding the power and flexibility of XML data. DataDirect solutions combined with Microsoft XML technologies will allow our customers to be more responsive to their markets through fast introduction of new functionality into critical business applications like SCM and CRM systems."

Object Design Inc.

"The Microsoft XML Parser will make it easier than ever for companies utilizing our eXcelon XML data server to build and deploy XML-based e-business applications on the Windows platform. The Microsoft XML Parser is the key integration component between eXcelon and Microsoft Internet Information Services. eXcelon can provide IIS with massive amounts of preparsed XML data, which is then transformed by the Microsoft XML Parser into HTML and sent to the requesting client. This results in a highly scalable, high-performance e-business architecture that can be deployed today, because it requires no XML support on the browser."

Pervasive Software Inc.

"For Pervasive, XML data management is the key to flexible e-commerce and electronic data interchange, so we have made XML a core datatype of our upcoming Tango 2000 Application Server. For XML to deliver on this promise requires both applications like Tango that radically simplify the development and deployment of XML e-commerce, and freely accessible tools on all platforms that process XML according to the W3C standard. We are delighted that Microsoft is delivering this high-performance component separately from Internet Explorer 5 so it can be used more widely in applications like ours."

UserLand Software Inc.

"UserLand Frontier, along with products from Microsoft and other developers, has made a substantial investment in XML-based protocols for distributed computing and content management. The purpose of XML is to allow the interchange of data that was formerly locked up behind propietary interfaces. We are grateful that Microsoft is helping other developers add XML support to their software because this opens up major new opportunities for compatibility with Frontier and empowers users to create cross-platform systems, mixing software from many different vendors, running on all operating systems."