Christine Tomlinson (iPlanet Directory Engineering) announced the availability of the iPlanet XMLDAP Gateway Version 1.0 beta among the current Netscape Directory Tools: "our iPlanet XMLDAP Gateway provides some ideas that may well useful to DSML 2.0. We are currently working on a version that will supercede this one and expect to have a draft specification within the next three weeks." According to the published description, The XMLDAP Gateway is "a flexible, standards based solution that is targeted toward web developers that need to present LDAP Directory data in mulitple formats such as XML, HTML, WML, DSML, VXML etc. The XMLDAP Gateway enables developers to use the included XML Tag Library to retrieve data from the directory. Depending on the template, the format of the rendered data from the XSLT translation engine can take the form of HTML, WML, DSML, XML etc. The templates are presented to the application using JAVA." Java 1.1 or above is required.

The most recent implementations of DSML include tools from IBM, infoShark, Intalio, Ingine, iPlanet (LDAP SDK), Novell, Mercator, RadiantLogic, and SUN Microsystems (JNDI for DSML).

From the DSML web site: "Directory services provide an optimal way of naming, describing and finding information and resources while managing the relationship between the resources. Typically, directory services software stores and manages access to detailed information about a company's IT assets, including people and business processes and resources - for internal use. But analysts believe that directory services software is also the best way to store this type of information for expanding eBusiness or eCommerce purposes. Since directory services software offers high levels of security, location independence, granular access and easy replication, and combined with the advantages of XML, it can become a powerful enabler of eCommerce and eBusiness...DSML is a markup language for representing directory services in XML. The intention of the working group is to establish it as an open standard, so that developers and vendors will be able to adopt it into their systems. DSML helps XML-based applications make better use of directories. With a recognized standard, applications can be written to make use of DSML and capture the scalability, replication, security and management strengths of directory services."