Bellevue, WA--February 10, 1998-- DataChannel, the leader in XML application development for the corporate enterprise, today announced a new member of the DataChannel product family with the immediate availability of the DataChannel XML Parser (DXP) 1.0 beta. This announcement is in conjunction with the W3C recommendation of the XML 1.0 specifications and delivers on the promise of XML. The XML 1.0 specification delivers to developers the next-generation interchange of information on the Web.

The DataChannel XML Parser is a Java-based XML parser designed for server side-based XML parsing and integration. It is a redesigned version of NXP (Norbert Mikula’s XML Parser), one of the first XML parsers. DXP allows application developers to make their applications XML-aware by providing them with the ability to import XML data into their own data structure. Data can come from a database, the Web, a file, or from a local application -- whatever a URL can address.

XML promises the standard for information exchange on the Internet. The DXP allows developers to make use of the XML data. Now developers have a tool that supports catalogs and provides interfaces such as simple API for XML such as (SAX) and, soon, the document object model (DOM).

"XML promises to bring structure to Web-based data," said Thomas Powell, President, Powell Internet Consulting, LLC. "DataChannel is allowing developers to utilize XML today through their product offerings such as the XML Parser."

The DataChannel XML Parser is part of the DataChannel XML Developer Toolkit (DXDE), which will be available Q1Y98.

Features of the DataChannel XML Developer Toolkit (DXDE) will include:

• DataChannel XML Parser (DXP) - based on Mikula’s validating NXP parser, one of the most widely adopted in the industry. Enhancements over NXP include performance improvements as well as expansion of the API support.
• Pax Syntactica - a lightweight, well-formed XML parser authored by John Tigue.
• DataChannel XML Viewer - an applet that uses the Pax Syntactica parser and includes a tree-walker and viewer for XML documents.
• XML Server - a platform-independent server that supports a database schema for managing and distributing metadata.
• CDF Viewer demo - a demo of the upcoming DataChannel CDF Viewer client, an example of XML in action. The CDF Viewer client will be fully supported in ChannelManager 2.0 available Q1Y98.