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Last modified: March 28, 2003
XML Industry News: 2003 Q1

XML News

This XML Industry News section consists mainly of links to company press releases announcing support for XML/XSL/XLink/XQuery etc. Other documents with reference collections:

Major articles on XML in the trade magazines, as well as the more substantive refereed articles on XML in technical publications, are listed in the dedicated database sections: Current XML Surveys and Overview Articles

Search: [Indexed Search]

  • [March 28, 2003] "Web Leaders Agree to Add Native XML to ECMAScript. New ECMA International Standard, ECMAScript for XML (E4X), to Unlock the Power of XML for Web Developers." - "ECMA International (ECMA) is completing extensions to the widely used ECMAScript standard, currently being updated to its 4th Edition. The enhancements known as E4X (ECMAScript for XML) standardize the syntax and semantics of a general-purpose, cross-platform, vendor-neutral set of programming language extensions adding native XML support in ECMAScript. E4X will make it easier for Web developers to use the power of XML structured data, allowing them to leverage their existing skills and knowledge, and reuse familiar concepts, operators and syntax. E4X will also reduce code complexity, time to market and revision cycles, decrease current XML footprint requirements and enable looser coupling between code and external data. Given the rising popularity of XML and the near universal usage of ECMAScript on the World Wide Web, the Web development community will welcome a simple, familiar, general purpose programming model for XML allowing them to harness the power and flexibility of XML immediately with little or no additional training. In July 2002, recognizing the need for Native XML support in ECMAScript, a group of companies led by ECMA member, BEA Systems, Inc., lobbied the ECMA Technical Committee (TC39) responsible for ECMAScript. Consensus was reached in the Programming Languages Technical Committee of ECMA (TC39) and ECMA formed a specialist group to draft the specification. Jan van den Beld, Secretary General of ECMA International said: 'The network effects of an open standard are more valuable than a proprietary approach. We congratulate BEA systems and its cosponsors for starting this activity and commend the collaborative work of our members who are making this high-quality, high-value standard possible in so short a time.' 'It's fantastic to see leading application server, browser and mobile device vendors collaborating to make E4X a reality,' said Adam Bosworth, chief architect and senior vice president of Advanced Development at BEA Systems. 'We want developers to be able to leverage E4X everywhere they find XML.' As part of the standardization process, BEA plans a publicly available implementation of E4X, to provide an opportunity to solicit feedback from the development community and assist the standardization process. Brendan Eich of Mozilla.org, creator of JavaScript, said: 'We welcome E4X as a timely, simple, and powerful extension to ECMAScript. As more script authors encounter XML data, they will want exactly what E4X provides. This is a useful and innovative extension for developers across the Web.' Since its inception in 1961, ECMA International (ECMA) has developed standards for information and communication technology (ICT). ECMA is a not-for-profit industry association of technology developers, vendors and users. Industry and other experts work together in ECMA to complete standards. ECMA then submits the approved work for approval as ISO, ISO/IEC and ETSI standards. ECMA offers industry a 'fast track' into these organizations' standardization procedures, through which high quality standards are rapidly made available for implementation..."

  • [March 27, 2003] "Industry Visionaries to Headline XML Europe 2003 Conference and Exposition. Experts from Sun Microsystems, Red Hat and OASIS to Be Featured in This Year's Keynote Lineup." - "IDEAlliance is pleased to announce keynote presenters for this year's weeklong XML event. These industry experts will share their ideas and visions for the future at the annual XML Europe 2003 Conference and Exposition, being held 5-8 May 2003, at the Hilton London Metropole, in London, England. This comprehensive conference, now in its 20th year, is known for the quality of its program, which draws information technology experts from around the globe every year. 'This year's keynote presenters provide attendees with an exceptional opportunity to learn how technology visionaries are using XML effectively in their organizations today,' said Edd Dumbill, Editor of XML.com and Conference Chair of this year's XML Europe event. 'This year's theme is 'Powering the Information Society' and presentations will focus on how XML and related technologies are being used to drive today's businesses.' Keynote speakers for XML Europe 2003 include the following renowned experts: (1) Jon Bosak is Sun Microsystems' XML architect. He organized and led the working group that created XML and served for two years as chair of the W3C XML Coordination Group. He is a founding member of OASIS and of its predecessor, SGML Open. Prior to his work with XML, Mr. Bosak originated the Web strategy used by Sun for the distribution of Solaris documentation. Before joining Sun, he was responsible for the SGML-based delivery system that put Novell's NetWare documentation online and was a primary force behind the development of the DocBook standard for Unix and Linux documentation. Mr. Bosak will be speaking to attendees about The Universal Business Language (UBL). (2) Patrick Gannon is President and CEO of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). In addition to serving on the OASIS Board of Directors, Mr. Gannon has served since 2000 with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), as Chairman of the Team of Specialists for Internet Enterprise Development, which advises governments in transitional economies on best practices for electronic business. He also serves on the ebXML (electronic business using eXtensible Markup Language) Joint Coordinating Committee together with management from UN/CEFACT. Mr. Gannon has also provided guidance to governmental leaders (ministers and heads of state) on adoption of electronic business (Information & Communication Technology) strategies to facilitate economic growth; which has included Lee Teng-hui, President of the Republic of China, and Askar Akayev, President of the Kyrgyz Republic. Mr. Gannon's closing keynote presentation will be 'Achieving Sustainable Business Benefits with XML and Web Services Standards.' (3) Daniel Veillard is a software engineer with Red Hat. Formerly, he was the co-chair of the W3C XML Linking WG and member of the XML Core WG where he was implementer of the libxml and libxslt C and Python libraries wrappers. He is also implementer and maintainer of the rpmfind services. Mr. Veillard is a Member of the Board of the Gnome Project. He holds Ph.D in distributed operating system from Grenoble. Mr. Veillard's presentation is entitled 'XML Usage Within the Open Source Community..." See also the Events Calendar entry.

  • [March 27, 2003] "OASIS and UN/CEFACT to Host ebXML Showcase at XML Europe 2003 in London. Conference Will Highlight ebXML Implementations Around the World." - "International standards bodies, OASIS and UN/CEFACT, will host the ebXML Showcase in London, 5-6 May 2003. Highlighting the growing use of Electronic Business XML (ebXML) in a range of industries as well as ebXML's role in Web services, the two-day event will be held in conjunction with IDEAlliance's XML Europe 2003 conference. The ebXML Showcase is designed for developers and business managers worldwide with an interest in ebXML's modular suite of specifications for conducting business over the Internet. The event will feature answers to real-life questions of adopting the UN/CEFACT and OASIS ebXML standards for exchanging business messages, establishing trading relationships, communicating data in common terms and defining and registering business processes. Attendees will also hear about the business benefits of managing electronic commerce through ebXML from existing ebXML end users and software suppliers. Keynote presentations from Paul Murphy of the European Commission, Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, and Ray Walker, chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group, will be featured at the ebXML Showcase. The program will also include updates from ebXML users in the telecommunications, shipping, publishing, manufacturing, and e-commerce industries. Representatives of the United Nations, Fujitsu, NIST, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, and others will present. 'ebXML adoption around the world has been steadily building, and some of the most pervasive and exciting applications are being implemented in Europe,' said Patrick Gannon. 'The London Showcase will offer industry organizations and business users the chance to learn more about planning, integrating, and implementing various combinations of the ebXML specifications in practical business scenarios. The program will explore how ebXML is being used to facilitate Web services with the support of global product vendors and the backing of major standards-setting bodies.' Ray Walker added, 'We are very pleased that the ebXML specifications will be submitted to the UN/CEFACT plenary immediately following the ebXML Showcase. This should pave the way for a UN recommendation to industry, commerce and governments on the use of ebXML.' The ebXML Showcase will feature a presentation by the European ebXML interoperability pilot project (CEN/ISSS eBES Vendor Forum), demonstrating interoperable implementations of the ebXML Messaging OASIS Open Standard in a real-life use case scenario. The demo will employ e-business integration scenarios from an ebXML application currently being used within the steel industry..." General references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [March 26, 2003] "Announcing OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta." - "We are glad to announce that the next OpenOffice.org version (OpenOffice.org 1.1) has reached an important milestone and is now available for download as OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta. It represents a significant advance in the application and incorporates the features and changes introduced in the developer builds over the past year. The release includes a massive amount of new and exciting functionality, features and bugfixes, the highlights are: (1) Many new import/export formats like PDF, Macromedia Flash, DocBook, several PDA Office file formats, flat XML and XHTML; (2) Support for Complex Text Layout (CTL) and vertical writing languages, such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew; (3) Enhanced integration with Java, with up to 10 times better performance; (4) Support for Accessibility throughout the entire suite; (5) Support for add-on components; (6) Initial support for recovering damaged OOo files; (7) Support for a new data source type -- MySQL; (8) Improved online help..." See other references in the news story "OpenOffice.org Releases Version 1.1 Beta for Open Source Office Productivity Suite." General references in "OpenOffice.org XML File Format."

  • [March 25, 2003] "Phaos Releases Toolkit to Meet Liberty Alliance 1.1 Specifications, Increases Liberty Alliance Involvement as Sponsor Member. Phaos Technology Enables Java Developers to Adhere to Updated Sign-on Authentication and Authorization Specifications." - "Phaos Technology Corp., a leading global provider of cross-platform e-Security services and software tools to empower Internet applications, today announced the release of the Phaos Liberty Toolkit to enable developers to build applications that meet the newly established Liberty Alliance 1.1 specifications as well as the Company's membership as a sponsor member in the project. As a sponsor member, Phaos will participate in the policy, marketing and technology committees of the program. The Liberty Alliance strives to support the development, deployment and evolution of an open, interoperable standard for federated network identity. The Liberty Alliance 1.1 specifications are an important element for the upcoming Liberty Alliance Phase 2 specifications, which introduce the Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF). ID-WSF outlines the technical components necessary to build interoperable identity-based Web services that meet specific business needs and also protect the privacy and security of users' shared information. By keeping in-step with the specifications as they are ratified, Phaos enables Java developers to immediately begin building applications that adhere to the sign-on authentication and authorization specifications set by the Liberty Alliance. With the Phaos Liberty Toolkit, Java developers can rapidly build applications that enable single sign-on capabilities, support the consolidation of enterprise authentication schemes and allow the migration from legacy infrastructure to XML-based Web services. The Phaos Liberty Toolkit provides integrated message security (XML digital signatures and XML encryption) and channel security (SSL/TLS), and provides stronger privacy and identity protection mechanisms by seamlessly integrating with smart cards and hardware security modules. Dynamic and scalable performance acceleration using cryptographic/SSL accelerators is also supported..." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

  • [March 25, 2003] "Commerce's NIST Reports Significant Advances Made in Facial Recognition Technology." - "Computers have become much more adept at "recognizing" human faces during the past two years, states a report released today by the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Scientists from NIST, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and DoD Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office have completed the most comprehensive evaluation to date of commercially available face recognition systems, and concluded that the technology has made significant advances. The study, Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002 (FRVT 2002), was performed in response to the USA PATRIOT Act and the Enhanced Border Security Act. The primary objective of FRVT 2002 was to provide performance measures for assessing the capability of automatic face recognition systems to meet real-world scenarios -- verification of identity, identification of an unknown individual and detection of an individual on a watch list. Key findings of the study include new data about verification, demographics, and indoor and outdoor matching abilities..." See details in "NIST HumanID Evaluation Framework Uses XML for Biometrics."

  • [March 21, 2003] "VeriSign Expands Lawful Intercept Service to Wireless Packet Data. VeriSign Demonstrates Benefits of NetDiscovery Service for Carriers with GPRS, CDMA 1x Packet Data Networks at CTIA Wireless 2003." - "VeriSign, the leading provider of digital trust services, today unveiled its NetDiscovery service bureau solution for accomplishing lawful intercepts of packet data on GPRS and CDMA 1x wireless network technologies. VeriSign introduced NetDiscovery services for voice networks last year, offering a cost-efficient, turnkey solution for landline, wireless, and packet cable operators to meet federally-mandated obligations to provide lawfully authorized electronic surveillance of call content and call data to law enforcement agencies. VeriSign now provides a fully integrated service bureau solution to wireless data network operators, enabling them to minimize performance impact to their network infrastructure created by the demands of isolating and monitoring target packet traffic for single or multiple law enforcement agencies. In addition, VeriSign operates a full security administration bureau to ensure appropriate handling and records management of the requisite legal orders involved in lawfully-authorized surveillance... Raj Puri, VP of NetDiscovery Services for VeriSign Telecommunication Services Puri said that as advanced multi-media messaging services become popular with mobile subscribers, the law enforcement community's need to access wireless packet data is expected to become more crucial. VeriSign NetDiscovery Service offers an innovative solution to this challenge. In today's wireless data networks, all packet data service nodes do not have the same capabilities as voice network switches for handling intercepts. To avoid negative performance impact, carriers may be required to invest in additional network capacity, essentially building a separate infrastructure. VeriSign offers a cost-saving alternative at a fraction of a carrier's self-deployment expense by leveraging its secure mediation infrastructure and providing seamless intercept capabilities for voice and data networks. In addition, VeriSign's NetDiscovery Service can customize delivery of the requested data to law enforcement agencies based on the specific requirements of the court order, further ensuring accurate compliance. 'As the need for lawful intercept solutions continues to expand globally, VeriSign intends to remain in the forefront of development of innovative, trusted solutions that balance the needs of homeland security with the needs of communications service providers and their customers in the U.S. and abroad,' said Puri. VeriSign is a founding member of the Global Lawful Intercept Industry Forum (GLIIF), a not-for-profit group dedicated to promoting the development and adoption of a technology standard for lawful interceptions based on XML (http://www.gliif.org). Anthony M. Rutkowski, VP NetDiscovery Services Strategy for VeriSign, is the current President of GLIIF. Rutkowski also was recently named chair of the LI-XML technical committee of OASIS..." Related references: (1) The LI-XML Initiative; (2) OASIS LegalXML Lawful Intercept TC website.

  • [March 19, 2003] "World Wide Web Consortium Issues Draft of Patent Policy. Final Public and Member Reviews of Royalty-Free Draft to Start Today." - "Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) began what it expects to be the final review of the proposed Royalty-Free Patent Policy. The W3C Patent Policy aims to solve a specific problem -- to reduce the threat of blocking patents on key components of Web infrastructure. Both W3C Members and the general public are encouraged to participate in the review, which is scheduled to last for six weeks, ending on 30 April. The W3C Director's decision on the final policy, which takes into account the full range of feedback, is expected in May 2003. "This policy, put together by a diverse and knowledgeable group, furthers the spirit of innovation on which the Web has thrived," explained Daniel J. Weitzner, Patent Policy Working Group Chair and Leader of the W3C's Technology and Society Domain. "Thousands of hours have gone into the development of this policy, including participation of W3C Members and invited experts from the Open Source/Free Software community. Our work has also benefitted greatly from the voluntary efforts of members of the public who read and responded to the various drafts'... The primary goal of the W3C Patent Policy Working Draft is to enable W3C Recommendations to be implemented on a royalty-free basis. The policy also requires patent disclosure by W3C Members when they are aware of patents -- their own or others -- that may be essential to the implementation of W3C Recommendations. In simple terms, the Patent Policy provides that: (1) All who participate in the development of a W3C Recommendation must agree to license essential claims (that is, patents that block interoperability) on a royalty-free (RF) basis. (2) Under certain circumstances, working group participants may exclude specifically identified patent claims from the Royalty-Free commitment. These exclusions are required shortly after publication of the first public Working Draft, reducing the likelihood that surprise patents will jeopardize collective Working Group efforts. (3) Patent disclosures are required from W3C Members and requested of anyone else who sees the technical drafts and has actual knowledge of patents that may be essential. Patent claims not available with terms consistent with the W3C Patent Policy will be handled by a dispute resolution process..." See also "Patents and Open Standards."

  • [March 19, 2003] "Veridocs Announces Availability of XMLdocs Version 1 with New 'Template Designer' Feature. Hosted System Provides Affordable, Easy-to-Use XML Document Authoring and Management. New Template Capabilities Add Even More Flexibility, Customization Options." - "Veridocs, a provider of XML software, consulting and development services, today announced the availability XMLdocs Version 1, a hosted XML document authoring and management system. For the release, Veridocs has added a flexible new 'Template Designer' feature not available on the product's Beta Version... Response to the Beta Version of XMLdocs has been overwhelmingly positive, with more than 1500 organizations registering to test the system in ten weeks. Veridocs CEO Nat Dunn says Version 1's enhanced capabilities and affordable, predictable pricing is already attracting many of these organizations and new customers as well. 'We listened very carefully to feedback from our Beta users, many of whom asked us for a way to create document templates from existing XML schemas,' says Dunn. 'We've addressed these requests and believe that, feature for feature, XMLdocs Version 1 offers the best value in an XML content system.' Template Designer makes it simple for organizations to create templates from schemas (or use an existing template from XMLdocs as a starting point for a new template) for everything from press releases and product descriptions to knowledge-based articles and help documents. Using these templates, non-technical users write XML documents via the XMLdocs Editor's intuitive, word-processor-like interface. Documents can then be exported for publication on a Web site or elsewhere through a simple Web Service... Founded in January 2002, Veridocs provides the software and services organizations need to build and maintain XML-based Web sites and applications. The company's flagship product, XMLdocs, is a software service that allows content contributors to collaboratively author XML documents. In addition, Veridocs provides XML consulting and development services, and customized training workshops. Veridocs is a wholly owned subsidiary of Summit Software..."

  • [March 18, 2003] "IFX Forum to Review Web Services Opportunities." - "The Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum today announced the formation of a new working group to investigate opportunities in the exploding business-to-business technologies known as Web Services. Web Services are self-contained business functions that operate over the Internet, written to strict specifications to work together and with other similar kinds of components. The more established Web Services provide messaging, security, directories of business capabilities, and descriptions of technical functions. The IFX Forum Web Services Working Group will determine the feasibility of supporting Web Services in its current specifications, now in version 1.4, or the extent to which the IFX Forum needs to make changes in its specifications to adopt Web Services. The group will focus on those standards and specifications now approved or in their final stages by other standards bodies, including SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WS-Security, BPEL4WS, ebXML, and SAML among others. Mark Tiggas of Wells Fargo and IFX Forum chair said, 'The Financial Services industry is looking to Web Services as the means to provide the next generation of integrated business processes, leveraging Internet technologies, to provide more services to customers and higher productivity in the industry overall.' Tiggas added, 'IFX Forum has a chance to provide leadership to the industry as it begins to use Web Services, as well as offer real-world business feedback to the technology standards bodies writing the Web Services specifications.' Josh Lee of Microsoft and chair of the Web Services Working Group said, 'The work group will demonstrate that IFX is ahead of the Web Services momentum by showing how IFX's schemas and messages fit into the Web services infrastructure.' Lee added, 'Without this work, we risk the development of Web Services implementations that are inconsistent or incompatible with other implementations'... The IFX Forum is made up of leading financial institutions, service providers and software vendors. Membership to the IFX Forum is open to anyone interested in contributing to the development of open financial standards that harness the power of XML. The IFX Forum is currently organized into the following working groups: ATM/POS; Business Banking; Credit Application Processing; and Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment. IFX Forum working groups, in concert with an Architecture Committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages for all sectors of the financial services industry..." General references in "Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX)."

  • [March 18, 2003] "XyEnterprise Announces Web Services Development Kit for XML Publishing." - "XyEnterprise, leading developer of XML content management and enterprise publishing software, announced today a new Web Services Development Kit for its XML Professional Publisher (XPP) software line. This new Web Services interface makes available the rich XML publishing capabilities of XPP to Web interfaces, portals, and application integrations, providing rapid deployment of automated XML publishing solutions in environments as diverse as corporate IT services to consumer 'publish on demand' applications. The new Web Services offering exposes the proven standards-based composition, transformation and rendering capabilities of the XPP software through a SOAP/XML interface. This API provides easy access for customers and developers, enabling them to build customized end-user interfaces in support of distributed XML publishing services. Web Services also supports the growing deployment of XPP as an embedded batch processing engine able to transform XML content to PDF, print, and Web output on demand. XPP Web Services extends the 'autoprocessing' model which XyEnterprise customers have relied on for over 10 years to deliver millions of electronic and print publications and provides unique capabilities not found in other applications. End users and their customers will benefit from the ability to connect remotely to trigger and monitor complex publishing events. Partners, integrators, and service providers will benefit from the ease of application development and support, while leveraging proven standards. The XPP Web Services interface has been delivered to early adopters who have created unique XML publishing environments in rapid fashion. Said Bart Terryn, technologist for XP2: 'The ability to use standard Internet connectivity to access and leverage the proven automated publishing capabilities of XPP has a significant business impact. Not only can customers and developers deploy a solution quickly, they can deploy the same solution either remotely or locally in a platform-independent way. They also know that underneath, the solution uses the long-standing strengths of XPP in XML publishing environments - autoprocessing, standards support, complex typography, and robust PDF output'... Examples of the potential application of XPP Web Services include dynamic content assembly and publishing from a Web Content Management system, remote creation and publishing of customized and localized product documentation, commercial publishing interaction through Web interfaces, catalog production with dynamic database integration, and IT server-based processing of XML to PDF in applications similar to solutions already implemented by XyEnterprise customers such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc., LexisNexis, i2 Technologies, Inc., and The Boeing Company..."

  • [March 18, 2003] "Distributed Management Task Force Releases Final Status of WBEM Specifications. Standard Enables Industry Organizations to Make Significant Progress on 2003 Initiatives." - "Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) today announced the final release of three Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) Specifications. The status, 'final release,' indicates that the Specifications are stable and have been successfully used in multiple, independent implementations. Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise and Internet computing environments. This release provides the ability for the industry to deliver a well-integrated set of standard-based management tools leveraging Web technologies. WBEM relies on HTTP and XML to offer a Web-based approach for exchanging Common Information Model (CIM) data across otherwise disparate technologies and platforms. In this way, WBEM is a forefather of today's Web services, as it anticipated the use of Internet standards and protocols to facilitate a more consistent approach to sharing information. 'WBEM is now a mature standard that enables the IT community to better provision and manage computing and networking environments. Both open-source and vendor implementations have validated the specifications and demonstrate the interest in using web technologies for management,' said Andrea Westerinen, DMTF vice president of technology. 'In addition, the finalization of the WBEM Specifications enables other industry organizations to build on this progress in areas such as storage, applications, security and grid computing.' The DMTF has developed a core set of standards defining the WBEM infrastructure. These standards describe the encoding of the Common Information Model (CIM) using XML (xmlCIM), and define operations and the transport mechanism for the encoded data (CIM Operations over HTTP). CIM is defined by a Specification, which describes its basic modeling concepts and meta-schema design, as well as the Managed Object Format (MOF) language in which it is rendered; and a Schema, which defines the semantics for a wide range of managed objects and relationships between them. CIM serves as the data model for the WBEM Specifications, and enables applications to manage a networked environment end-to-end..." See details in the news story "DMTF Publishes Three Final XML Specifications for Web-Based Enterprise Management."

  • [March 18, 2003] "Seybold Seminars, Publications and Consulting Announces New Mega-Event in San Francisco. Seybold San Francisco is Reborn at Moscone West. Nine Focused Channels Cover the Breadth of Publishing Today." - "Seybold Seminars, Publications and Consulting today announced a worldwide event program including the largest Seybold Seminars Conference Program ever! The San Francisco event has been completely transformed, the dates have changed, the building has changed and the tradeshow model has been completely redesigned. For the first time, the program will include nine in-depth, hands-on focus areas, covering a wide variety of topics critical to all aspects of the publishing industry. The new Seybold San Francisco will make its debut September 8-12, 2003 at the Moscone Center West. 'At some point in every brand's life cycle there needs to be evolution, reinvention and change. Today is a new day for Seybold and change abounds,' said James Smith, vice president and general manager of Seybold Seminars, Publications and Consulting. 'For 32 years, the Seybold brand has represented quality, reliability and vision. As publishing technology has changed over the years, Seybold Seminars and Seybold Publications have served as 'pathfinders' which have helped many survive and prosper through some very tough times. We've spent the last 4 months reaching out to our community and understanding their strategy and challenges during these difficult times. We've aggregated this feedback, repositioned the brand and completely rebuilt the mega-event in San Francisco. The result is the most complete publishing technology information solution in the industry today.' The mission for this new event is to equip industry professionals with complete, unbiased information and face-to-face experiences that will allow them to make important business decisions with confidence. Seybold San Francisco 2003 will introduce nine new channels to provide the Seybold community with a forum to network and be inspired. Each key publishing industry segment will be developed individually for maximum impact, yet feed into the overall Seybold mission. These channels include: (1) Print/JDF - Virtually every area of print publishing is being revolutionized by new technologies and marketplace changes. Learn what you need to know to be competitive in print workflow. (2) Web Design & Development - Compete successfully with businesses that are developing cutting-edge online strategies by mastering the skills and latest technologies required to stay ahead. (3) Content Management - Providing up-to-date understanding of technologies, trends and market dynamics for storing and transforming words and images in context. (4) PDF - Addressing the entire range of applications, technology developments and best practices; Acrobat 6, dynamic document generation, print-production intents, and collaboration. (5) Creative Pro - Learn the essentials of implementing and maintaining technologies and infrastructure to support the creation of digital content, publishing workflows, and e-business initiatives. (6) Digital Imaging - Covers the technologies for the creation, manipulation, editing, managing and outputting of digital images for the professional user. Learn how to integrate them into a workflow that can enhance your services and save time and money. (7) XML for Publishing - Focusing on how XML and related TLAs (three-letter acronyms) are changing the landscape of publishing (8) Digital Media - Learn the latest in digital video and imaging, streaming technologies, animation, syndication, content delivery and how it fits into other publishing workflows. (9) Tech Doc - Hear about the advances made in technologies and techniques for the production of technical documentation and illustrations..."

  • [March 17, 2003] "MatML Version 3.0: NIST, International Team Develop Materials Data Exchange Language." - "Scientists and engineers trying to share materials property data over the Internet will have an easier time now thanks to a new computer language called MatML -- Materials Markup Language -- developed by an international group of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), industry, government laboratories, universities, standards organizations and professional societies. MatML provides a standard format for managing and exchanging materials property data on the World Wide Web, eliminating interoperability and interpretation problems. Based on the Extensible Markup Language (known as XML), MatML is a non-proprietary, generic language that makes it possible to parse and process data without the need for human intervention. The MatML format makes it easily readable and understandable by scientists and engineers. At the same time, MatML provides software developers with a protocol that is both structured and ordered, facilitating the transmission, validation, and interpretation of materials property data between different applications and across different platforms. Currently, the MatML Steering Committee is coordinating acceptance testing as well as prototype software development. More information, including the MatML Version 3.0 Schema, which contains the formal specification for the materials markup language, is available [for download] at www.matml.org..." See general references in "Materials Property Data Markup Language (MatML)."

  • [March 11, 2003] "Liberty Alliance Project Completes Federated Network Identity Architecture." - "The Liberty Alliance, a consortium formed to develop open standards for federated network identity, today released details outlining the Liberty Alliance Federated Network Identity Architecture, a complete infrastructure that the Alliance expects will resolve many of the technology issues currently hindering deployment of identity-based web services. This new identity architecture outlines the direction the Liberty Alliance will follow to accomplish its vision of enabling a networked world in which individuals and businesses can more easily interact with one another while respecting the privacy and security of shared identity information. The architecture and features of current and upcoming Liberty specifications are detailed in the white paper titled Introduction to the Liberty Alliance Identity Architecture, now available on www.projectliberty.org... The complete Liberty Alliance federated network identity architecture provides an open, standards-based foundation for building and supporting identity-based web services. The architecture enables companies to increase the security of their information systems, lower infrastructure maintenance costs, and more easily adapt to new business models and new technology. Consumers and employees will also benefit by having more choice and convenience in how they share and manage personal information over the web... The specifications released in Phase 1 in July 2002, and updated in January 2003, provide the plumbing for federated identity management. These specifications, called the Liberty Alliance Identity Federation Framework (ID-FF), provide standards for simplified sign-on and federation or "linking" among disparate accounts within a group of businesses that have already established relationships. Businesses, governments and other organizations can use this commonly accepted architecture to build their own interoperable products and services... Phase 2 of the Liberty Alliance specifications, which are expected in mid-2003, will enhance Liberty's Identity Federation Framework and introduce the Liberty Alliance's Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF). This Web Services Framework outlines the technical components necessary to build interoperable identity-based web services that meet specific business needs and also protect the privacy and security of users' shared information. Phase 2 also includes the introduction of Liberty Alliance Identity Services Interface Specifications (ID-SIS), a collection of specifications built on the Liberty Identity Web Services Framework. These specifications will provide a standard way for companies to build interoperable services like registration profiles, contact books, or calendar, geo-location or alert services. The first service interface specification to be introduced is the ID-Personal Profile, which will define a basic profile template that can be used to build a registration service. The Liberty Alliance is not a service-provider, so these specifications will offer a method to standardize the interface for exchanging data between different systems, not to standardize the service itself..." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

  • [March 10, 2003] "OASIS Members Collaborate to Define Web Services Management." - "The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced plans to define a standard way of using Web services architecture and technology to manage distributed resources. The new OASIS Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Technical Committee will closely align its work with related activities at other standards groups, including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Architecture Working Group and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), and with other OASIS security and Web services efforts. 'As the number of Web services deployed across the extended enterprise increases, the ability to effectively manage those services will become critical to building out a comprehensive services-oriented architecture,' said Winston Bumpus of Novell, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. 'By collaborating with other ongoing industry standards activities in this area, this new technical committee will play a important role in defining how services should be managed.' Heather Kreger of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, added, 'This work is immediately relevant for business integrators who use Web services, management system vendors, and Web service platform vendors. It also applies to ongoing work being done by business, government, and university sectors on provisioning, management, grid, and on-demand computing.' Initial members of the OASIS Web Services Distributed Management Technical Committee include Actional, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Confluent Software, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, OpenNetwork, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, Waveset, webMethods, and others..." Details in the news story of 2003-02-25: "OASIS Technical Committee Addresses Management of Web Services."

  • [March 10, 2003] "IONA Unveils Mobile Orchestrator, the First Component of Its Next-Generation Rapid Integration Solutions. New Mobile Orchestrator Delivers Simple, Fast, and Secure Process Integration to Enhance Mobile Workforce Productivity. Extends Intel Centrino Mobile Technology with Occasionally Connected Computing Applications." - "IONA, the leading provider of Rapid Integration software, today announced Mobile Orchestrator -- a Web services-based process integration broker optimized for applications that serve occasionally connected users. Mobile Orchestrator - the first member of IONA's new Orchestrator product family -- increases the productivity of mobile workers by allowing them to work equally well with or without a network connection. IONA's new Mobile Orchestrator facilitates un-interrupted mobile user involvement in multi-step business processes regardless of network connectivity. Mobile Orchestrator enables clients to work with the enterprise applications and data they need while disconnected. It automatically saves all of a user's work and interactions with those applications and data, and upon detection of a wired or Wi-Fi network, quickly and securely synchronizes data and documents between the mobile user's PC and enterprise applications in a series of rapid steps transparent to the user. This solution is referred to as 'Occasionally Connected Computing' (OCC). The IONA Mobile Orchestrator is the first product to provide an 'Occasionally Connected Computing' solution and was developed in alliance with Intel to support Centrino Mobile Technology. 'It's exciting to experience the productivity advancements of Occasionally Connected solutions,' said Chris S. Thomas, Chief Strategist at Intel. 'IONA's Mobile Orchestrator is providing an infrastructure that enables solutions to be productive offline, while optimizing network latency and enabling the user to utilize the applications of their choosing. Once users experience these new levels of productivity, efficiency and choice they'll accept nothing less.' IONA Mobile Orchestrator can: (1) improve the productivity of sales people and field support representatives, by ensuring that they have access to the latest customer information and sales tools, even when they are out of the office and disconnected from the network; (2) forge stronger relationships, by providing the latest product catalogs and promotions to partners, even when they are offline and lack access to the partner portal; (3) strengthen customer relationships, by providing better customer service and improving access to customer loyalty programs..."

  • [March 07, 2003] "ISDA Releases FpML Version 2.0 Recommendation." - "The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) today released the Recommendation for Financial products Markup Language (FpML) Version 2.0. FpML is the XML-based, freely licensed, e-commerce standard supporting OTC trading of financial derivatives. 'Work on the FpML standard is advancing rapidly,' said Robert Pickel, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of ISDA. 'While the Recommendation for version 2.0 thoroughly covers interest rate derivatives, upcoming versions will focus on equity and credit derivatives, as well as messaging.' FpML Version 2.0 extends interest rate product coverage to include interest rate options including swaptions, caps and floors, and extends the swap definition to include FX resetables, cancelables and early termination provisions. The Recommendation reflects consensus within FpML as represented by approval from the Standards Committee. The Standards Committee considers that the ideas and technology specified by a Recommendation are appropriate for widespread deployment and promote the mission of FpML..." See details and references in the 2003-03-07 news story "ISDA Publishes Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) Version 2.0." General references in "Financial Products Markup Language (FpML)."

  • [March 07, 2003] "ASC X12 Defines 2003 Strategic Direction, Develops New EDI Messages in X12 and XML Formats." - "The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 approved a strategic direction that embraces collaboration with domestic and international organizations while continuing to forge ahead to ensure ASC X12 member companies' electronic data interchange (EDI) requirements are met. ASC X12 committed in its new strategy to continue to clarify its message design architecture, XML schema syntax and XML design rules and guidelines. ASC X12 also intends to harmonize X12 XML business messages with UN/CEFACT's approach. The Committee will engage other organizations that are developing XML based business messages to incorporate the broadest possible representation of business needs and technical considerations. This strategy was finalized at the most recent ASC X12 meeting, Feb. 2-7, [2003] in Denver. As ASC X12 expands its reach to industries using EDI in a variety of formats, the Utility Industry Group and representatives from leading energy and utility companies are creating a charter and work plan for a new Subcommittee within ASC X12. Subject to approval by the ASC X12 membership, it is anticipated that this new Subcommittee will be formed officially this June at the next ASC X12 meeting in Nashville. A new Subcommittee will enable energy and utility companies from around the world to standardize their EDI transaction sets in X12 and XML formats. ASC X12 also continued to refine its draft X12 XML Design Rules, which will likely be approved this summer once the ASC X12 technical group deems them stable. Currently, ASC X12 members are using the draft XML Design Rules in their XML business message development initiatives to ensure the rules fulfill their organization's business message requirements... Two new EDI transaction sets were approved at the ASC X12 meeting in Denver: They include Equipment Inspection Report Transaction Set 228 and Implementation Acknowledgement Transaction Set 999. Developed by the ASC X12 Transportation Subcommittee, TS 228 can be used by transportation carriers to provide equipment owners with equipment inspection activity results. In addition, it can convey information regarding any damage to and repair of the equipment. Developed by the ASC X12 Communications & Controls Subcommittee, TS 999 is based upon a full or implemented subset of X12 transaction sets. The next ASC X12 publication - Version 4, Release 6, Subrelease 1 - includes 318 EDI transaction sets and will be available in March 2003..." General references in "ANSI ASC X12/XML and DISA."

  • [March 06, 2003] "GSA and the Department of Defense Join the Liberty Alliance Project. Government Groups Look to the Open Liberty Alliance Project to Address Digital Identity Challenges." - "The Liberty Alliance Project announced today that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have joined the Liberty Alliance in its pursuit to develop open and interoperable standards for electronically managing identity information. The GSA and DoD join other Liberty Alliance members from both the private and public sectors, representing various countries around the world. The global collaboration of government organizations, corporations and consumer interest groups will prove invaluable to helping solve the complex technical and business issues associated with network identity that the Liberty Alliance is currently working to address. 'Governments and companies are looking at how to use the Web to improve business processes and provide consumers and constituents with better access to information,' said Michael Barrett, president of the Liberty Alliance Management Board and vice president of Internet Strategy for American Express. 'Identity management is central to each of these things, and identity management is becoming even more relevant as an increasing number of transactions and relationships move online.' For example, eAuthentication is one of the Bush Administration's 24 eGovernment initiatives. The initiative was designed to verify (authenticate) the identity of citizens and businesses doing business with the government over the Internet. eAuthentication will enable the mutual trust needed to support widespread use of electronic interactions between the public and government and across governments. GSA, the managing partner for this initiative, is responsible for the development and implementation of infrastructure for common authentication services across the Federal Government. GSA's participation in the Liberty Alliance is an important step toward the development of a common infrastructure to advance the President's eGovernment agenda. Other government groups, on the federal as well as state and local level, are looking at how digital identity affects their own systems and processes. Some, like the Department of Defense, are joining the Liberty Alliance as a way to participate in the discussion and solve their identity issues. The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) is responsible for collecting and maintaining important information for the Department of Defense, including automated power, personnel, training and financial databases. 'We are involved in a number of projects where there is a need for secure digital identity,' said Bill Boggess, Chief of Access and Authentication Division for the DMDC. 'We are pleased to be a part of the Liberty Alliance's efforts to create an open, federated network identity standard that can be used across industries which will help us enhance our relationships with government entities'..." See: (1) the news item "Government Agencies Join Liberty Alliance to Support Digital Identity Standards"; (2) general references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization"

  • [March 06, 2003] "Software AG's Tamino XML Server Validates Digital Signatures for Secure Electronic Communication. Security Extensions for Tamino XML Server 4.1 Enables Organizations to Securely and Conveniently Exchange Sensitive or Legally Binding Documents over the Internet." - "Software AG, Inc., a pioneer in XML solutions, today announced the availability of a new software component for its Tamino XML Server 4.1 that allows the native XML server to validate digital signatures in support of secure electronic communications. Tamino XML Security Extensions makes the completion of legally binding contracts and other sensitive transactions over the Internet more secure and convenient. Digital signature technology allows the author of an electronic document to digitally 'sign' the document and check later to see if the document has been modified without permission. Tamino XML Security Extensions automatically checks whether an electronic document has been given a digital signature, and verifies the validity of the signature during the database storage transaction for the signed document. In this manner, Tamino XML Server allows users to verify a document's authenticity... 'Tamino XML Security Extensions makes electronic communication between business partners much more convenient,' says Dr. Peter Mossack, Deputy Member of the Executive Board responsible for Research and Development at Software AG. 'E-commerce, e-government and e-contracting transactions can now be carried out securely thanks to Tamino XML Security Extensions, which not only verifies a document's authenticity, but also meets non-repudiation requirements'..."

  • [March 06, 2003] "Sybase PowerBuilder 9.0 Available. Open IDE Powers Rapid Application Development Across Leading Technologies, with Support for XML, JSP, EJB, .NET and Web Services." - "Sybase, Inc. announces general availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 9.0, the company's market-leading, rapid application development (RAD) tool. PowerBuilder 9.0 increases developer productivity with support for J2EE and Microsoft .NET, and integration with existing technology investments and business logic. Enhancements include the XML DataWindow, Web Services, RAD JavaServer Pages and third-party application server support. PowerBuilder 9.0 lays the groundwork for 4GLplus, the next generation of RAD environment from Sybase. Sybase, Inc., a leading enterprise infrastructure and integration company, today announced that Sybase PowerBuilder 9.0 is currently scheduled for general availability the week of March 24, 2003. This version of Sybase's industry-leading rapid application development (RAD) tool enables developers to continue building rich-client applications for their mission-critical business requirements, and at the same time propel them further into Web and N-tier development with significant new capabilities. PowerBuilder 9.0 also lays the foundation for "4GLplus", the next RAD environment from Sybase that will bring an even higher level of developer productivity through tight integration of design, modeling, development, deployment, and management... New capabilities in PowerBuilder 9.0 include: (1) RAD JavaServer Page (JSP) Targets, which allows developers to quickly develop and deploy a JSP Web application through wizards and other RAD tools; (2) Web Services, enabling developers to build, publish and consume Web services for Microsoft .NET and other frameworks without extensive knowledge of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL); (3) XML DataWindow: Imports data directly from an XML document and saves data that was retrieved from any data source as a fully customized XML document, or as a document or string using XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) or PDF; (4) PowerBuilder Native Interface: Greatly extends the capabilities of PowerBuilder applications by wrapping a C++ class as a PowerBuilder extension, and then calling its methods in the application. Through JNI, Java applications also can communicate with the PBVM; (5) Third-Party Application Servers - In addition to existing support of Sybase EAServer, PowerBuilder now supports BEA WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere and other J2EE Application Servers through wizards that generate proxies for enterprise Java beans (EJBs), and call the EJBs in J2EE servers from PowerBuilder through the proxies; (6) The PowerBuilder Document Object Model: The Sybase implementation of DOM, defines how XML documents can be accessed and manipulated. PBDOM is used to read, write, and manipulate standard-format XML from within PowerScript code; (7) PDF Report Generation: Provides two ways to save a DataWindow object so that it can directly generate reports in PDF format. The distill method is used by default and can save all types of DataWindow objects; (8) Source Control Enhancements: Helps developers manage large PowerBuilder projects more efficiently and achieve tighter integration with Rational ClearCase and Merant PVCS; (9) OrcaScript Utility: Invokes Orca application program interface commands with English-like scripting language. New source code control integration allows PowerBuilder targets to be rebuilt directly from source control..."

  • [March 04, 2003] "Sun Continues to Innovate as Project JXTA Speeds Past One Million Downloads. Only Peer-to-Peer Computing Technology that Enables Collaboration and Communication on Any Networked Device. Commercial Products Available from InView Software, Internet Access Methods, and Implemented by National Association of Realtors and National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS)." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced in a press teleconference that more than one million developers have downloaded Project JXTA from the Sun Web site. JXTA is the only open source, standards-based, peer-to-peer technology that supports collaboration and communication on any networked device anywhere, anytime. Sun also announced that the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Convenience Stores are implementing JXTA-based applications and that InView Software and Internet Access Methods have released commercial products based on JXTA. This major milestone highlights the mounting adoption of JXTA for peer-to-peer application and service deployment... 'Our JXTA based solution allows distributed property listing data sources to participate in a listing search without the need to have the listing data aggregated in a single database,' said Aubrey Jackson, strategic architect, National Association of Realtors. 'By allowing listing owners to maintain their data, updates are reflected immediately making the most current information always available'... InView Software and Internet Access Methods are part of a range of companies that are expected to release commercial products that leverage the collaborative strengths of the JXTA platform this year. InView Software developed its Momentum application using JXTA technology as its peer-to-peer communications infrastructure layer. Momentum enables file sharing and collaboration between users on the Solaris Operating Environment, Linux and Windows workstations. Users create workspaces containing files that they would like to share, and then invite other users to join that workspace. Momentum users can work collaboratively on documents such as drawings, charts, or timelines. Internet Access Methods built IAM-Developing, a collaborative Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE), using JXTA technology. IAM- Developing works across multiple plaforms. The product enables multiple developers to work securely on the same piece of source code, and see modifications made by others in real time across corporate firewalls... JXTA is an open, generalized peer-to-peer platform that allows any connected device on the network to communicate and collaborate. Sun Microsystems developed and released JXTA to the open source community in April 2001. JXTA can be applied across multiple platforms including the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME), C language, and others. Any device on the network including cell phones, two-way pagers, electronic sensors, PDAs, desktop computers and servers, can be connected using JXTA. Sun's technical consulting arm, Sun Professional Services, is at the forefront of helping organizations leverage JXTA to deliver services to the Web, and to engineer architectures to support pervasive -- any device, anywhere, any time -- access..."

  • [March 04, 2003] "Payroll Deduction Specification Approved by HR-XML. Data Interchange Standard Enables Requests to Payroll Processors for Payroll Deductions and Other Change Instructions." - "A new data interchange standard for transmitting payroll deduction requests and other payroll change instructions has been approved by the HR-XML Consortium. The purpose of HR-XML's Payroll Instructions specification is to streamline the setup of interfaces between organizations that need to exchange payroll deduction requests and similar pre-payroll instructions. When an employee changes benefit elections, enrolls in new benefit programs, or when work or life events otherwise change the employee's benefits coverage, corresponding changes to payroll deductions usually are necessary. HR-XML's Payroll Instructions specification provides the standard means for employers, benefits administrators, and payroll processors to structure the exchange of information about payroll deductions and adjustments. The specification is designed to be useful globally. The specification is extensible, so implementers can add lists of benefit deduction types based on remuneration practices in their country. The HR-XML Payroll Instructions specification will be useful in handling deductions related to medical insurance, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, short and long term disability insurance, accident insurance, savings accounts, and employee stock purchase plans. The Payroll Instructions specification also will be useful for voluntary or non-benefit deductions, such as those for charities, union dues, savings bonds, savings/credit union accounts, personal loans, child support, personal and business membership fees, tuition and book fees, transportation fees, and parking fees..." See: (1) the 2003-03-04 news story "HR-XML Consortium Approves Specifications for Background Checks and Payroll Deductions"; (2) general references in "HR-XML Consortium."

  • [March 03, 2003] "BEA First to Unify Application Development and Integration into a Single Software Environment. BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 Offers Breakthrough in Time to Value, Dramatically Increases Developer Productivity." - "BEA Systems, Inc., the world's leading application infrastructure software company, today redefines time-to-value with BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 -- the industry's first unified environment for the rapid development and integration of service-oriented applications. Leveraging its revolutionary approach to simplifying J2EE and Web services development, BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 now provides a fully integrated development environment that covers all aspects of enterprise-class application development and integration, across the entire BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform. With this release, IT organizations can achieve unprecedented productivity when using BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 to address enterprise software projects. By converging what has traditionally been two dramatically different methodologies around integration and application development into one unified model, BEA WebLogic Workshop is designed to provide one standard development approach across an entire IT organization. The Workshop development environment provides an easy-to-use tool that can enable customers to base all IT projects on one platform -- including development of Web applications, Web services, portal and integration projects -- thereby increasing productivity and reducing time to market and development costs... To best meet developer and IT needs, BEA is offering two editions of BEA WebLogic Workshop -- BEA WebLogic Workshop, Application Developer Edition, for Web services and Web application development; and BEA WebLogic Workshop, Platform Edition, for the development of enterprise applications, including custom applications, portal initiatives and integration projects utilizing the entire BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform. Both packages introduce a host of Java controls, easy to use building blocks for rapid application construction that are designed to enable any developer to connect to, use and reuse IT assets -- increasing developer productivity and reducing application time-to-market..."

  • [March 03, 2003] "Fiorina: HP Makes Strategic Investments in Web Services Management. Company Unveils Software, Services, Standards Framework to Help Customers Adopt Web Services, Bridge Competing J2EE and .NET Worlds." - "HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina today outlined several HP investments and technologies to help customers address key management issues that may inhibit the adoption of Web services. During her keynote address at the eighth annual BEA eWorld user conference, Fiorina focused on the critical role Web services management will play in overcoming IT complexity, unifying systems and accelerating a return on IT investments. HP also announced today the creation of a dedicated Web Services Management team to extend the HP OpenView software suite for simplified Web services management. The team, reporting to Nora Denzel, senior vice president of software, will lead HP's efforts to help customers provision and manage Web services with the choice and flexibility to adopt future innovations, including a consistent management interface for J2EE and .NET components. The team also will continue HP's active work in Web services standards, including W3C, OASIS, Liberty Alliance, OGSA (Open Grid Service Architecture) and Web Service Interoperability Organization (WS-I.org)... Fiorina unveiled several investments that HP is making to overcome management barriers to full-scale Web services adoption: (1) HP's dedicated Web Services Management team within the HP OpenView business unit brings 20 years of network and systems management experience to the organization... (2) HP has created a dedicated Web services management and deployment practice for J2EE environments within HP Services. This practice includes more than 500 consultants worldwide that are trained to work with customers to deploy J2EE solutions faster, cheaper and more effectively. By the end of 2003, the J2EE practice will include more than 1,000 people -- all focused on developing repeatable J2EE solutions. (3) Additionally, HP is expanding its market-leading HP OpenView software suite into the realm of Web services management. (4) Working closely with partners, HP plans to make a major contribution to standards efforts, allowing companies to incorporate management capabilities in Web services, rather than take a 'build later' approach. Additionally, over the next few months, HP will contribute a Web services management framework to the OASIS Distributed Management Organization and work with it towards a Web services management standard. This framework is a way to model and design relationships and interacts with a Web services environment. It is designed to enable companies to architect 'management-ready' systems for out-of-the-box integration with top management tools -- all based on Web services standards..." See also: "OASIS Technical Committee Addresses Management of Web Services."

  • [March 03, 2003] "Employment Background Check Specification Approved by the HR-XML Consortium. HR-XML Background Check Specification Enables Integration of Critical Data in the Midst of Heightened Workplace Security." - "The HR-XML Consortium has approved version 2.0 of its data exchange standards for background checks. The newly approved standards enable easy integration of data between HR systems and the systems of background-check service providers. "With legal liability costs continuing to rise and with the current state of heightened workplace security within the United States, fast and effective background checks are more important than ever before," said Brad H. Whitney, chair of the HR-XML Consortium's Screening Workgroup and Executive VP and CIO, American Background Information Services, Inc. "For this reason, U.S. employers are seeking tighter integration between their core HR systems, applicant tracking systems, and the systems of third-party background checking firms. A high level of integration between systems is essential for background checks to be performed quickly and reliably," according to Whitney. The HR-XML Consortium's Background Checking 2.0 improves upon the previous version of the specification. The reporting format within version 2.0 supports the return of very detailed, discretely fielded search results. The types of screenings supported by the standard include criminal records, education, employment, military service, professional licenses, administrative/professional sanctions, and credit. The specification is extensible so that customized search types also can be supported. The built-in extensibility accommodates specialized industry needs as well as the needs of government employers. The third-party background-check model enabled by HR-XML's specifications also helps employers respect employee privacy since it can spare employers from having to see, process, or store background information on the vast majority of individuals for whom no disqualifying information is uncovered..." See: (1) the 2003-03-04 news story "HR-XML Consortium Approves Specifications for Background Checks and Payroll Deductions"; (2) general references in "HR-XML Consortium."

  • [February 27, 2003] "I3A Announces Release of CPXe Specification Suite and New Online Directory Service. Picture Services Network and v1.0 Interoperability Specifications Put CPXe Into Motion." - "The International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) today announced the availability of a suite of CPXe interoperability specifications and the creation of the Picture Services Network (PSN). Working in concert, CPXe specifications and the PSN Directory Service will simplify for consumers and businesses the process of finding, accessing and using Internet-connected and retail photo services. 'The introduction of the PSN Directory Service and the CPXe specifications gives life to the imaging industry's vision for making it as convenient to get prints and other photo services from digital pictures as it is today with film,' said Lisa Walker, president, International Imaging Industry Association. 'Today's announcement signals the beginning of new levels of convenience and flexibility for consumers and incredible possibilities for retailers'... I3A along with Eastman Kodak Company, Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd and Hewlett-Packard Company announced today the availability of a suite of CPXe specifications. The first in a planned series of concurrent specification releases by I3A enables the business-to-consumer components of the CPXe system architecture. It is planned that future specifications will be developed to address the business-to-business elements of the CPXe architecture. Copies of the v1.0 CPXe specifications may be downloaded from the I3A website. CPXe is providing the industry with an extensible and open technology platform on which any imaging device can seamlessly exchange digital images and order and commerce information with any networked imaging application or service, regardless of manufacturer, service provider or geography. The combined impact of CPXe specifications and the PSN Directory Service will simplify for consumers the process of finding and using Internet-connected and retail photo services... CPXe is an International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) initiative group of companies working together to provide more opportunities for consumers to enjoy their digital pictures. Technology companies, software makers, camera and equipment manufacturers, imaging companies, and online photo services providers are working within I3A to develop a series of specifications to enable the transmission of digital pictures and order information between digital cameras, PCs, desktop software, Internet services, photo kiosks, digital minilabs and photofinishers via the Picture Services Network (PSN)..." See general references in "Common Picture Exchange Environment (CPXe)."

  • [February 26, 2003] "OASIS Members Advance Reliable Message Delivery for Web Services. WS-Reliability Specification Submitted to OASIS." - "Members of the OASIS standards consortium announced plans to collaborate on the development of a generic and open model for ensuring reliable message delivery for Web services. The new OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM) Technical Committee will work to establish a standard, interoperable way of achieving reliability at the SOAP messaging level and potentially with other messaging protocols. The WS-Reliability specification, published by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software, and Sun Microsystems, will be submitted as input for the OASIS WS-RM Technical Committee. Other contributions are welcome. The group plans to work closely with related OASIS Technical Committees, such as the ebXML Messaging Services and the Web Services Security teams, and with relevant efforts of other organizations, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Architecture Working Group. According to Thomas Koulopoulos, Delphi Group CEO, 'Through WS-RM, OASIS is once again demonstrating a leadership role in the movement towards building a services-based architecture. The initiative is a critical step forward in creating a solid foundation for virtualization and the underlying, broad-based processes that are critical to its adoption.' 'Interoperability, ease-of-implementation, and ease-of-use are our fundamental goals,' stated Tom Rutt of Fujitsu, chair of the OASIS WS-RM Technical Committee. 'We are determined to build on existing standards wherever possible so that the results of our work will interoperate and not overlap with Web services specifications that are being developed by other open, recognized, standards bodies.' The OASIS Reliable Messaging specification will address message persistence, acknowledgement and resending, elimination of duplicate messages, ordered delivery, and delivery status awareness for sender and receiver applications. It will provide WSDL definitions for reliable messaging, and the message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body content. Members of the OASIS WS-RM Technical Committee include Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IONA, NEC, Oracle, SAP, See Beyond, Sonic Software, Sun Microsystems, webMethods, WRQ, and others. Under the rules adopted by the OASIS WS-RM Technical Committee, each participant has agreed to provide a free license to any of its intellectual property rights which someone building a product to the final technical specification would need. Participation in the technical committee remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment..." See details in "OASIS Members Form Technical Committee for Web Services Reliable Messaging." General references in "Reliable Messaging."

  • [February 25, 2003] "Cape Clear Software Ships New Release of Free Web Services Editor." - "Cape Clear Software has today released a new version of its free WSDL (Web Services Description Language) Editor. The WSDL Editor provides a friendly, graphical environment for creating and editing WSDL, the key building block of Web Services. The editor has been designed for both experienced and novice Web Services developers and works with existing languages such as .NET, Java, J2EE, and CORBA. This latest release makes the creation of Web Services faster and easier, while adding support for building Web Services from large XML Schema. 'Over thirty thousand programmers are using the first release of our WSDL Editor,' said John Maughan, director of engineering at Cape Clear Software. 'The overwhelming feedback from these users has provided us with a rich resource for future product development, and to illustrate our commitment to the community we've upgraded the free editor to incorporate new features and improvements that make it faster and easier to edit and create Web Services.' 'The WSDL Editor is significant because software developers are increasingly placing WSDL at the center of their Web Services development process. It facilitates good Web Service design, enables the reuse of existing data type definitions, and can be used to automatically generate service implementations without developer effort,' continued Maughan. This release of the WSDL Editor introduces a range of improvements over the previous release including: (1) Improved graphical environment, which makes creating and editing Web Services faster and easier. (2) New automated wizards that simplify the creation and editing of proprietary and industry-specific XML Schemas. (3) Support for large XML Schemas, which enables developers to create Web Services that interface to existing business processes. (4) Simplified process for creating different WSDL elements such as service definitions, port types, binding, template operations, and messages. (5) Broader support for WSDL validation against WSDL schema and WSDL profiling. (6) Advanced WSDL capabilities such as imports, faults, SOAP headers, multiple bindings, and parameter ordering, as defined in the latest WSDL specification. (7) Easier retrieval of WSDL files from across corporate networks, UDDI repositories, or the Internet..." See the news story from 2002-09-04: "Cape Clear Software Releases Free WSDL Editor Graphical Tool." General references in "Web Services Description Language (WSDL)."

  • [February 25, 2003] "UML 2.0 Vote Highlights Upcoming OMG Standards Meeting. Orlando, FL, USA, March 24-28, 2003." - "Members of the Object Management Group (OMG) will meet in Orlando, FL, USA from March 24 - 28, 2003, at a meeting sponsored by Compuware Corporation. Members will work the organization's technology adoption process, attend tutorials, and view demonstrations of products implementing OMG specifications. Most notably, OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML) specification, widely used and universally recognized in software modeling around the world, will undergo a major upgrade to Version 2.0. With member evaluations nearly complete, the Analysis and Design (AD) Platform Task Force (PTF) will vote in Orlando to recommend adoption of all four parts of the new standard: language infrastructure and superstructure, Object Constraint Language, and diagram interchange specification. The AD PTF will also vote to upgrade the MetaObject Facility core, IDL mapping, and XMI mapping to Version 2.0, and will review and comment on draft specifications for a UML Testing Profile and Web Services for the Common Warehouse Metamodel. Standardization work will start on a new UML profile for systems engineering. OMG's Middleware and Related Services PTF standardizes the infrastructure for distributed computing, frequently working with other task forces including the Telecommunications Domain Task Force (DTF) and the Realtime, Embedded, and Specialized Systems PTF. In Orlando, these task forces will vote to recommend a number of new standards. Two involve Web Services: One defines a mapping from Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) and SOAP to CORBA, complementing the reverse mapping from CORBA to WSDL/SOAP; the other standardizes a Web Services representation for Enterprise Collaboration. Additional new standards up for vote will define a mapping between CORBA and the telecommunications Stream Control Transmission Protocol, interworking between CORBA Notification and the Java Messaging Service (JMS), deployment and configuration of CORBA components, data distribution in realtime systems, and an extensible network transport framework for CORBA systems. The task forces will also kick off work on two new standards extending the CORBA Component Model: a stream data transport, and quality of service extensions. OMG's Domain Task Forces adopt specifications for enterprise architecture and in vertical markets. In Orlando, the Business Enterprise Integration DTF will evaluate draft specifications standardizing interfaces to such business processes as workflow, electronic commerce, and web services. Expressed as a platform-independent model, this standardizes the representation of these key processes in OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA). This task force will also start work on standardized UML support for business rules... All current OMG specifications may be downloaded without charge from the organization's website..."

  • [February 24, 2003] "Adobe Ships Updated Form Solution for Speeding Data Capture Processes. Enterprise Form Solution Brings Together XML, HTML and PDF for Moving Forms Processes Online with Improved Accuracy and Better Integration with Backend Systems." - "Adobe Systems Incorporated, leader in network publishing, today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Form Server and Form Designer software for improving data capture processes across the extended enterprise. Through the combination of XML, HTML and secure electronic forms in the Portable Document Format (PDF), the updated software enables businesses and governments to improve data capture processes beyond the firewall. Now organizations can reliably communicate, receive and process information from their customers, partners and suppliers. 'Our business partners can complete critical transactions online, such as issuing surety bonds for clients,' said Greg Davenport, assistant vice president and director of surety operations at SAFECO. 'Agents nationwide can enter client data directly into our online forms, and in minutes receive everything they need to issue a compliant surety bond. The Adobe Form Server software eliminates manual processes and prevents lost or incomplete data. There's also no need to waste resources re-keying information because forms can be completed and submitted electronically. These efficiencies add up to significant administrative savings for us, our business partners, and their customers.' Adobe Form Server 5.0 enables virtually anyone to receive and view the form by automatically converting an XML template to PDF and various forms of HTML, depending on the device that is targeted to receive it. From PCs to handheld and wireless devices, forms can be delivered to multiple channels without downloads or plug-ins. With improved Adobe PDF integration, the Form Server allows end users to fill out a form either on-line or off-line. Additionally, the software improves the quality of data captured by including embedded calculations and validations, which speeds data capture into backend databases and improves the accuracy of forms submissions. Adobe's enterprise form solution also includes Adobe Form Designer 5.0, a powerful tool for creating intelligent XML and PDF forms. An intuitive graphical interface allows for precision formatting and layout, while enabling connectivity to backend databases. The software automatically 'tags' the data within the PDF document, which enables companies to leverage XML data by incorporating critical data and documents into existing enterprise systems. The Form Designer enables designers to easily create forms for use with screen readers and accessibility software, helping them comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (requires that information offered by Federal agencies is accessible to employees and members of the public with disabilities). Adobe also shipped new versions of the company's products for document generation including Adobe Output Designer 5.5, Adobe Central Output Server 5.5 and Adobe Output Pak for mySAP.com 5.5. These new versions expand Adobe's family of server products that automate the document-intensive processes companies rely on to run their businesses. With the recent addition of Adobe Document Server and Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions to Adobe's line of server products, Adobe's server solutions enable companies to integrate enterprise applications with document workflows throughout an organization, improving document generation, collaboration and process management across the enterprise..."

  • [February 24, 2003] "Documentum Delivers eRoom Enterprise. Best-in-Class Collaboration Technology Fully Integrated with Leading Enterprise Content Management Platform." - "Documentum, leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM) and extended enterprise collaboration (EEC), today announced the availability of Documentum eRoom Enterprise. This new offering, which integrates eRoom's market-leading collaboration product with the Documentum ECM platform, enables organizations to collaboratively create, share, manage, deliver, reuse and archive the content and best practices that drive business operations. From initial planning and discussion through design, production, marketing, sales, service and other related activities, eRoom Enterprise provides the ease of use and flexibility that brings people together in dynamic team environments, harnesses their collective knowledge and supports all of their collaborative requirements. eRoom Enterprise is the only enterprise-scalable, single-platform solution that offers unified content and collaboration services for all types of project work and all types of content, including documents, email, Web pages, records and rich media, both across and beyond the enterprise. To meet customer, partner and market demand, Documentum is delivering eRoom Enterprise within 90 days of acquiring eRoom Technology and its award-winning collaboration software and services... eRoom Enterprise extends the Documentum ECM platform, with a user-friendly work environment that can be quickly deployed, enabling content-centric and collaboration-centric processes and applications. Project teams can work together in virtual workspaces, and resulting collaborative content can be captured, stored, later referenced and integrated with other enterprise content and processes. With eRoom Enterprise, Documentum ECM customers can now collaborate as they create, manage, share distribute and archive content, and existing eRoom customers can take advantage of Documentum's powerful ECM capabilities, to search, review, share, reuse and archive content created and saved within all eRoom team environments..."

  • [February 21, 2003] "Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services For Windows Server 2003. Rights Management Solution Will Give Organizations and Employees New Ways To Protect Information." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced plans for Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), a new technology for Windows Server 2003 that will give organizations advanced ways to help secure sensitive internal business information including financial reports and confidential planning documents. Windows Rights Management Services will work with applications to provide a platform-based approach to providing persistent policy rights for Web content and sensitive corporate documents of all types. Beta code for Windows Rights Management Services will be broadly available in the second quarter of 2003. 'Customers have told us they need better solutions to help safeguard their critical business information,' said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business Unit at Microsoft. 'What's really compelling about Rights Management technology is that it enables businesses to protect the information they most worry might leak -- either deliberately or inadvertently -- by putting persistent protections in the documents themselves.' Using Windows Rights Management Services, applications such as information portals, word processors or e-mail clients can be built so that users will be able to easily designate both who can have access to specific content and what kinds of access rights they can have. Rights and policy are managed by the server, while clients running RMS-enabled applications allow users to apply rights with a click of a button. For example, Windows Rights Management Services can be used to control forwarding, copying and printing, as well as establishing time-based expiration rules. In addition, enterprises can enforce policy broadly and reliably by centrally delivering templates that automate the process -- for example, making the policy around what constitutes 'company confidential' uniform and easy to manage. Because Windows Rights Management Services technology is an ASP.NET Web service built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, it can more easily interoperate with business processes via Web services. RMS technology uses XrML (Extensible Rights Markup Language), an emerging standard for the expression of rights on digital content. Microsoft will release two software development kits in the second quarter of 2003 to enable developers to begin to build rights management capabilities into a broad range of intra-enterprise solutions and applications for Windows clients..." Related references: (1) "XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)"; (2) "OASIS Rights Language"' (3) "Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)".

  • [February 21, 2003] "OGC Seeks Comment on Proposed Web Map Context Specification." - "The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces a Request for Comment (RFC) on the proposed Web Map Context Documents Implementation Specification. This proposed specification describes a standardized approach to enable the capture and maintenance of the context - or state information - of a Web Map Server (WMS) request so that this information can be reused easily in the future user session. Those interested in this RFC are invited to comment on the document. Comments must be submitted to OGC no later than 21-March-2003. The 'context' aspect of this RFC refers to a process to capture and manage information transacted in WMS based requests and responses. Information typically includes: window size and placement, bounding box (in a common Earth coordinate reference system), URLs and other details that could be used by another client to access the same servers and recreate the same representation of overlaid map layers, or to support generation of a similar map representation based on modified parameters from the original request. This RFC is the result of Web Services work accomplished over the past few years as part of OGC's Interoperability Program of fast paced testbeds and pilot projects. This program has led to a foundation of web-based interoperability involving not only map display but also more sophisticated geoprocessing functions, as well as location based services, sensor and camera geolocation, web catalogs of spatial data and spatial web services, and other capabilities. GeoConnections / Natural Resources Canada, Ionic Software (Belgium), DM Solutions (Canada), Social Change Online (Australia), Syncline (United States) and US National Aeronautics and Space Administration submitted this specification to OGC as a Request For Comment (RFC). OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 250 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications..." Other recent announcements: (1) "OGC Announces OpenGIS Geography Markup Language Implementation Specification (GML 3)"; (2) "OGC Working Group Issues Draft Specification for Sensor Model Language (SensorML)." General references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [February 18, 2003] "Sun Microsystems Laboratories Contributes XACML Security Standard Implementation to Open Source Project. Language for Access Control Policies Simplifies Web Services and Improves Enterprise Security." - "Today, Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the release of its implementation of the new XACML OASIS Open Standard for security under an open source license. XACML contributes to the simplification and cost reduction of developing and deploying secure web services -- or any application that requires secure access control. Today's news demonstrates Sun's leadership role in the development of open standards and underscores Sun's continuing investment in the security space. "Sun's XACML implementation heralds a necessary improvement in web services security and interoperability," said Larry Abrahams, Director, Identity Server and Liberty, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "We expect it to be very useful in creating an open source community around the technology and an important part in the development of future Sun products." Sun's XACML Implementation was developed by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) within Sun Microsystems Laboratories and could have far-reaching impact on enterprise security as well as developer productivity. As XACML replaces the current patchwork of proprietary access control policy languages, administrators will no longer need to learn these many languages and translate policies between them. Software developers won't have to invent their own languages and write custom code to support them as they do today. Both will save time and money. "Sun's decision to release an Open Source implementation of XACML 1.0 is both important and timely, and will certainly encourage rapid adoption of this standard," said Carlisle Adams, principal architect, advanced security, at Entrust, Inc. "Governments and businesses will benefit from the availability of this code because they will immediately be able to incorporate fully-compliant XACML 1.0 implementations into the comprehensive authorization architectures they deploy. Entrust is very pleased to have played a major role in the development of this standard." Sun's release of this code under an open source (modified BSD) license coincides with approval of the XACML standard by OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, and is aimed at jump-starting the adoption of this standard throughout the open source and commercial software development communities... XACML, Extensible Access Control Markup Language is a specification for expressing policies in XML for information access over the Internet. The XACML specification was developed by OASIS, which announced today that XACML has been approved as an OASIS Open Standard, the highest level of ratification. This language is expected to simplify and streamline enterprise access control..." See: (1) "Sun Microsystems Releases Open Source XACML Implementation for Access Control and Security."; (2) "XACML 1.0 Specification Set Approved as an OASIS Standard"

  • [February 18, 2003] "Roundtrip 1.0 Ships for Mac and Windows. Now XML Can Be Beautiful -- Single Source XML Publishing is Practical for the First Time in QuarkXPress." - "Easypress Technologies has released Atomik Roundtrip 1.0, for the first time enabling QuarkXPress to be fully included in an XML workflow. Atomik Roundtrip 1.0 is the only tool to bring full, bi-directional XML support to QuarkXPress. By preserving XML structure throughout the pagination process, Roundtrip redresses the balance between structure and creativity, taking the design flexibility of QuarkXPress and combining it with all the benefits of an XML pagination tool. This new product is expected to transform print publishing enabling a single source of XML content to be used for both print and Web... Another benefit of Atomik Roundtrip is that through XML, QuarkXPress can now be tightly integrated with content management systems, most of which have XML at their core. One of the leading companies in this field is Documentum, who have been working with Easypress Technologies to provide enhanced print publishing support in their systems by XML-enabling QuarkXPress with Atomik Roundtrip. 'Atomik Roundtrip represents a huge step forward for cross-media publishing,' said Mark Arbour, director of products and marketing for Documentum's Digital Asset Management business unit. 'Documentum's native XML support combined with Easypress Technologies' XML-enablement of QuarkXPress further enhances our ability to provide customers with an enterprise content management solution for cross-media and collaborative publishing, eliminating the challenges typically associated with publishing content to print and the Web.' This viewpoint is backed up by content management system integrators that have also struggled to provide this crucial link between print and Web publishing. 'Companies have invested heavily in content management systems that previously were unable to deliver content to print,' said Joseph Bachana, CEO of DPCI, a professional services company based in the United States. 'Atomik Roundtrip adds value to any CMS on the market by building QuarkXPress files directly from valid or well-formed XML. Nothing on the market comes remotely close'... Fully functional demonstration versions and full documentation for Atomik Roundtrip Mac and Windows are available for download. The only restriction in the demonstration version is that some of the XML content will be reversed when imported into QuarkXPress. Otherwise users can fully evaluate the product with their own XML files and QuarkXPress pages..."

  • [February 18, 2003] "XACML Access Control Markup Language Ratified as OASIS Open Standard. Universal Language for Authorization Policy Enables Secure Web Services." - "The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced that its members have approved the Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) as an OASIS Open Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. XACML allows developers to express and enforce policies for information access over the Internet. 'XACML is designed to enable the interoperability of a broad range of administration and authorization products by providing a universal language for authorization policy. Its flexibility and features for supporting large scale, federated environments will literally set the standard for the next generation of authorization products,' explained Hal Lockhart of BEA Systems, co-chair of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee. 'Policies applied consistently across environments and across vendor products is the cornerstone of good security,' added Carlisle Adams of Entrust, co-chair of the OASIS XACML Technical Committee. 'Coupled with secure mechanisms for carrying requester attributes -- such as SAML assertions, Java permissions, or WS-Security tokens -- XACML is a key component in an authorization infrastructure that can span Web services, J2SE, and other e-business environments.' The OASIS XACML specification was developed by Entrust, IBM, OpenNetwork, Quadrasis, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, and other members of the OASIS Extensible Access Control Markup Language Technical Committee..." See: (1) the complete news story "XACML 1.0 Specification Set Approved as an OASIS Standard"; (2) general references in "Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML)."

  • [February 12, 2003] "Corel XMetaL 4 Now Available. The Corel XMetaL 4 Platform Extends the Reach of XML Authoring to the Web and Delivers on the Promise of Content Reuse." - "Corel Corporation today announced the availability of Corel XMetaL 4. Focusing on the specific needs of both developers and end users, Corel XMetaL 4 is a new platform that extends XML content editing to virtually any Windows application, including email and Web browsers. The Corel XMetaL 4 platform provides the only richly-customizable XML editing solutions that support dynamic validation for both DTDs and W3C Schemas. It is composed of four separate applications designed to meet the unique requirements of IT managers, developers, and end users. Corel XMetaL offers tight integration with leading content management systems and provides the ideal environment for enterprise-wide XML content creation. Maximizing content reuse, Corel XMetaL enables authors to create compound documents of valid XML data -- forming documents from reusable sections or 'chunks' that can be managed individually, dramatically improving the way organizations create and reuse their XML content... Corel XMetaL Author is a customizable XML editing environment that makes it easy to create valid and well-formed XML documents. Corel XMetaL for ActiveX is an editing interface that developers can embed into any ActiveX-compliant Windows application, including Web browsers. Corel XMetaL Developer is a centralized development environment for creating Corel XMetaL customizations and applications. Designed as a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, it enables developers to use familiar Web development skills such as scripting, COM and DOM to create customizations for both XMetaL Author and XMetaL for ActiveX. Corel XMetaL Central completes the platform by providing a server-based XML environment management tool that simplifies the deployment and maintenance of customized XML applications across an organization. Corel XMetaL Central enables IT managers to leverage the power of Web services to remotely manage and maintain enterprise customizations and takes advantage of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) technology to provide easy access to the most up-to-date XML customization files, including style sheets, scripts, CSS and templates..."

  • [February 12, 2003] "Intalio Ships Intalio|n³ 2.0. New End-user Interactivity Combines with Productivity, Performance, Standards Enhancements to Reinforce Dominance of Company's BPMS." - "Intalio, Inc., the business process management company, today announced immediate availability of Intalio|n³ 2.0, the company's trailblazing Business Process Management System (BPMS). The move reinforces Intalio's leadership position in BPM arena by adding support for complex workflow interactions with end-users while enhancing Intalio|n³ 2.0 support for industry standards, amplifying its enterprise-class performance, and boosting user productivity. 'Intalio|n³ 2.0 benefits from more than three years of research and development as well as experience acquired through successful deployments by early adopters,' said Ismael Ghalimi, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Intalio. 'The groundbreaking architecture of Intalio|n³ 2.0 takes BPM to the next level as the only BPMS that can support any block-structured process modeling languages such as BPML and BPEL4WS. Perhaps more significant, Intalio|n³ 2.0 leverages organizations' existing IT assets and infrastructure, including application servers, message brokers, packaged applications, heritage systems and Web Services.' With Intalio|n³ 2.0, organizations now have the power to completely and seamlessly manage the entire life cycle of their business processes, from design to execution to optimization. Highlighting Intalio|n³ 2.0 is the introduction of a new platform component, Intalio|n³ Director, as well as standards support, enterprise-readiness, and productivity enhancements to established Intalio|n³ Server and Intalio|n³ Designer components. Intalio|n³ Director allows employees, customers, and partners to seamlessly direct the execution of business processes and perform business activity monitoring tasks through any existing workforce software, including groupware systems, workflow engines, and enterprise information portals. Key to Intalio|n³ Director is XPage, a new XML-based language developed by Intalio, for creating highly-interactive user interface components. XPage replaces the use of up to seven different languages that are required today for the development of interactive Web-based user interfaces (JSP, Java, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, HTML, CSS). In combination with BPML, XPage can reduce the development cost of end-to-end processes by up to 75 percent. Intalio|n³ Director's tight integration with Intalio|n³ Designer lets users visually bind UIs with processes thereby eliminating the need to manually code. Intalio|n³ Director also features an easily customizable BPML-based workflow engine for role-based task management and LDAP integration for user management. Intalio|n³ Director runs on any application server with a servlet engine..." See: (1) "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."; (2) "Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)."

  • [February 11, 2003] "BEA Announces Web Services Release of BEA Tuxedo. Integration with BEA Platform Extends Tuxedo's Service-Oriented Architecture to the Web and Leverages Best of J2EE." - "Continuing to offer customers the most robust infrastructure for the broadest range of development, BEA Systems, Inc., the world's leading application infrastructure software company, today announced BEA Tuxedo 8.1, the Web services-enabled release of the proven transaction processing platform for building mission-critical, large-scale and high-volume distributed enterprise applications. Leveraging improved integration with the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform, the new version of BEA Tuxedo can dramatically simplify Web services development and extends Tuxedo's service-oriented architecture to the Web. BEA Tuxedo, with its multi-language heritage, which includes C, C++, and COBOL, continues to be a key component of BEA's product portfolio and overall application infrastructure strategy. By leveraging Tuxedo's tighter integration with BEA WebLogic Server and BEA WebLogic Workshop, customers can extend their business-critical applications as standard Web services. In addition, tighter integration can also allow for improved BEA Tuxedo operations, administration and maintenance (OA&M), including new support for single sign on and centralized security administration... With thousands of blue-chip customers worldwide, such as ETRADE and FedEx, BEA is powering some of the world's highest-volume, transactional applications. BEA Tuxedo is the backbone behind many of the technologies that people touch every day -- when phone calls are made; credit cards processed; packages shipped; airline tickets purchased; and funds are wired between banks. Tuxedo can enable enterprises to focus on serving their customers through business applications, while BEA handles the underlying complexity of highly transactional, distributed applications that connect the world's businesses..."

  • [February 11, 2003] "Netegrity and Business Layers to Demonstrate Support for Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML). Vendors Are First to Exhibit XML Based Solution for Identity Management." - "Netegrity, Inc., a leading provider of identity and access management solutions, and Business Layers, the eProvisioning Company, today announced the development of the first identity management solution to support the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) standard. SPML provides companies with a standard way to automate, centralize, and manage the process of provisioning user access to corporate systems and data in order to maximize existing IT resources, reduce administrative costs, and enhance security. The OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee is meeting today to finalize the SPML specification. 'Creating a standard way in which to communicate user provisioning information between enterprises will greatly improve corporate efficiency, contribute to cost reduction and increase productivity,' said Roberta Witty, Research Director of Gartner, Inc. 'The adoption of open standards such as SPML provides market assurance that customers do not need to be dependent on their user provisioning solution vendor for proprietary customization which only adds to the cost of the user provisioning implementation.' The challenge of resource provisioning only becomes more complex as companies reach beyond organizational boundaries to conduct business. The move towards service-oriented architectures adds yet another layer of complexity as not only users, but also pieces of applications require access to corporate systems. For example, a large auto manufacturer may have multiple warehouses across the country, some of which are owned by the auto manufacturer and others owned by partners. In order to provide the appropriate parts to the manufacturing plant at the appropriate time, employees at the warehouse must have access to various applications. In order to provision these users to the appropriate applications in a cost effective and timely manner, the company could deploy a provisioning Web service that supports SPML. Using standards based solutions from Netegrity and Business Layers, the auto manufacturer could seamlessly authenticate and authorize the issuer of the provisioning request and perform the appropriate provisioning tasks..." See "XML-Based Provisioning Services."

  • [February 10, 2003] "Oblix Delivers Comprehensive SAML Integration to Provide Advanced Identity Management and Web Access Control. Oblix NetPoint 6.1 Enables Seamless User Authentication and Authorization Across Corporate Extranets Via Secure XML-Based Web Services Standard." - "Oblix, a leading developer of identity-based security solutions, today announced the shipping of the latest version of its identity management and access control solution, Oblix NetPoint 6.1 with comprehensive SAML integration. SAML, Security Assertion Markup Language, is an XML-based security standard for exchanging user authentication and authorization information. By combining SAML with Oblix NetPoint's identity management functionality, not only can companies securely and cost-effectively manage user identity information across corporate boundaries, they can now integrate their security systems as well. Oblix NetPoint's scalability to both internal and external users was one factor in Southwest Airlines' decision to choose Oblix NetPoint as a solution for identity management and Web access control... Oblix NetPoint's integration with SAML gives enterprises the ability to provide its users seamless access to business partners' online resources. For example, a company employee who has entered his or her user name and password into the corporate portal could have access to a Web-based application hosted by a partner's site without being required to enter his or her user credentials again. To achieve this seamless and secure user experience, Oblix NetPoint exchanges SAML assertions between the partners' security systems, in effect forwarding a SAML security assertion that automatically logs the employee into the remote system. Customers have already gained significant advantage from Web single sign-on combined with Oblix's unique identity management system, COREid, especially in large-scale deployments. By supporting SAML in Oblix NetPoint, customers now benefit from even tighter integration across disparate corporate extranets, further reducing the cost of doing business and increasing user satisfaction and productivity... Oblix has consistently focused on building interoperability and support for industry-wide standards into its products, and the incorporation of SAML into Oblix NetPoint furthers this strategy. In addition to its comprehensive SAML support, Oblix NetPoint also supports standards from key organizations, including OASIS, Web Services Interoperability (WS-I), Microsoft .NET and the Liberty Alliance. Because Oblix NetPoint is built to support existing and future standards for authentication and authorization, customers know that Oblix NetPoint will interoperate with their standard of choice. In addition to expanded SAML support, Oblix NetPoint now includes support for Critical Path InJoin Directory Server and a NetPoint Connector for WebSphere. The NetPoint Connector for WebSphere enables tight integration of Oblix NetPoint's single sign-on and identity management functionality with J2EE applications developed on the IBM WebSphere e-business platform..." General references in "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)."

  • [February 10, 2003] "Netegrity Delivers SAML Affiliate Agent to Lower Cost and Complexity of Federated Security Across Partner Sites. Enables Companies to Securely Partner in Order to Provide Enhanced Services to Users." - "Netegrity, Inc., a leading provider of identity and access management solutions, today announced that it has delivered the Netegrity SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) Affiliate Agent. Companies, especially in today's economy, are leveraging the expertise and services of their partners in order to drive down costs while providing greater value and enhanced services to customers, employees, suppliers, and partners. Previously, there were barriers to enabling this online partnership including security concerns as well as the costs associated with development and interoperability. The Netegrity SAML Affiliate Agent is designed to address these challenges by providing an out of the box solution to enable companies to leverage SAML in order to securely exchange user identities across partner sites, regardless of the infrastructure in place. 'Harvard Pilgrim needed a way to securely exchange identity information with external companies that provide content and transactions for Harvard Pilgrim Online,' said Lawrence Rapisarda, CTO at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. 'The Netegrity SAML Affiliate Agent is going to enable us to provide a seamless user experience across these affiliates in a cost effective federated environment.' SAML, which became a standard within OASIS in October of 2002, provides a standard way to securely ex