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Last modified: June 30, 2003
XML Industry News: 2003 Q2

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]

  • [June 30, 2003] "M-Tech Announces Availability of ID-Synch v2.0. Industry's Most Flexible Access Management Solution Delivers Broadest Functionality." - "M-Tech Information Technology, Inc., "leading provider of identity management solutions, today announced the availability of ID-Synch v2.0. ID-Synch is the most flexible and comprehensive access management solution, enabling enterprise organizations to securely manage user accounts and access rights more effectively and efficiently. ID-Synch delivers a broad range of benefits to enterprise organizations including, enhanced systems security, reduced administration costs, improved corporate productivity, and increased customer satisfaction. ID-Synch enables organizations that are looking to streamline identity management to securely create new login accounts, provision physical as well as electronic access, manage user access, and effectively terminate user access to systems faster than manual provisioning... ID-Synch supports the most number of updates compared to competitive solutions, including creating, deleting, enabling, disabling, renaming, moving, changing attributes and changing security group membership for users on over 60 different target systems. ID-Synch's unique architecture and design allows organizations to deploy it very quickly and with very little professional services. New features in ID-Synch v2.0 include: (1)Automatic Access Management: Captures hires, moves and terminations on systems of records (such as HR) and automatically updates target systems. (2)Authorization Workflow for Change Requests: Provides powerful capabilities that extend beyond traditional user-add and user-delete, to include operations like move, change attributes, enable, disable, and join/exit a group. (3)Fulfillment Engine: SOAP and XML compatible web service for fulfilling updates authorized by other identity management systems. This service extends the reach of existing workflow engines, delegated administration systems and meta directories. (4)Central User Administration: Empowers security administrators to manage any user, on any system, from a single point. This web-based console makes security administrators mobile. Built-in support for delegation allows departmental IT staff to manage local users and systems. (5)Reporting and Auditing: Generates audit trails that report on the accounts that each user has, when they were created and who authorized them. Also report on orphan accounts, authorizer response times and much more. Pre-defined reports and a well-documented schema allow enterprises to audit privileges across systems and eliminate unused accounts. (6)Access Control System: powerful access control system combined with simpler management of access control lists. Authorizer ability to see or change user attributes is controlled and logged. (7)Platform Support: Supports over 60 different types of target systems out of the box. Also, allows for the provisioning of physical objects, such as SecurID tokens, down to the level of inventory management..."

  • [June 30, 2003] "Meridian Project Systems Introduces New Business Process Management (BPM) Solution. Proliance is a Revolutionary Enterprise BPM Solution for Real Estate and Construction." - "Meridian Project Systems (MPS), a leading software and application service provider of project management solutions, announces the market introduction of Proliance -- the first Web native enterprise process management solution for corporate real estate and construction markets. MPS brings to market Proliance, a new paradigm for managing projects, programs and organizational processes across global and large national companies. Targeted toward large facility owners, and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) companies, Proliance is MPS' third-generation Internet technology platform enabling the benefits of business process management across the enterprise... Proliance utilizes Web Services and XML technology on the Microsoft .NET application framework. Proliance is built on a powerful foundation of Platform Services that include workflow automation, action and distribution management, security, file management, reporting, and communication tools. Proliance's built-in workflow automates business processes for every function within an organization, allowing enterprises to reduce the time and effort to process information, and enforce best practices company-wide. A business intelligence dashboard that reports on key performance indicators (KPI) across all projects and programs caps Proliance, providing valuable metrics on how to increase revenue by completing projects faster and reduce capital construction costs across the company. While building Proliance, MPS worked with a diverse group of existing and potential clients to assess and anticipate the needs of vast global and national operations. Large enterprises need to consolidate multiple stand-alone software applications across their organizations that represent a significant IT burden and fail to provide an integrated solution for business operations. Proliance addresses this need, consolidating applications on a common Internet technology platform with built-in integration. Proliance enables large enterprises to centrally manage all project information, and provide real-time Web access to their global project managers and clients. Modular business applications incorporate Proliance's platform services and include solutions for companies to gain valuable forward views on forecasted project costs based on real-time information. Some of the initial key capabilities of Proliance include: Budget Management; Contract Management; Change Management; Billing and Invoice Management; Drawing Management; Correspondence Management; File Management; Viewing and Redlining; Project Management Planning; Multi-currency Management; Tax Management; Vendor Management..."

  • [June 25, 2003] "Systinet Announces WASP Server for Java, 4.6 With Full Support For WS-Security. WASP Provides Industry's Best Web Services Security, Performance and Interoperability." - "Systinet, "leading independent provider of Web services infrastructure software, has announced the general release of WASP Server for Java, 4.6, the award-winning Web services infrastructure platform that fully supports the latest standards, including OASIS Web Services Security (WS-S) and offers the industry's best performance and interoperability. The 4.6 release has new and unique functionality that makes it much easier to create and run Web services applications, including enhanced support for asynchronous Web services, full support for SOAP 1.2, and the industry's most comprehensive support for Java Web services APIs, including JAX-RPC, JAXM and SAAJ. WASP Server for Java is a complete solution for creating, running and managing sophisticated Web services applications and is available for free download from Systinet's Website... In addition to the many security capabilities already in WASP Server for Java, version 4.6 now includes WS-S message-level security. WASP supports both the OASIS WS-S standard currently in final draft, and the earlier Microsoft-IBM WS-Security specifications. This support ensures that WASP is compatible with all WS-Security implementations. WASP Server for Java, 4.6 also offers unique security and alerting features. For example, users will be alerted if a message cannot be decrypted or if an authentication event failed... WASP Server for Java offers unique asynchronous web services support: Simple Web services are invoked synchronously -- when a client sends a message to a server, it halts until a response is received. This method becomes unworkable, especially for complex computations or for multi-part tasks. Since it is much more efficient to asynchronously invoke services, WASP 4.6 supports an easy-to-use, event-based way of calling Web services asynchronously. The mechanism eliminates the need for developers to write client code for polling the service. Also, WASP Server for Java features transport-level asynchronous messaging, which relies on using different transport channels for the request and response messages, such as an HTTP request, an e-mail response, or even an email request and an e-mail response... WASP makes is easy to build Web services using popular IDEs and has expanded support to include IntelliJ IDEA, a popular Java development environment. WASP already supports Borland JBuilder, Eclipse, IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Sun ONE Studio and NetBeans. Systinet's WASP suite of products is a complete solution for building, deploying, securing and managing Web services. Systinet WASP Server for Java and WASP Server for C++ are industrial-strength Web services runtime environments that fully support industry standards, including SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2 and WSDL 1.1. WASP UDDI is a V2 complaint registry with advanced V3 functionality. WASP UDDI is a full-featured UDDI registry that allows businesses to standardize the way businesses organize, catalog, discover and reuse Web services across the company..."

  • [June 24, 2003] "SALT Forum Advances Mobile Content Delivery with Enhancements to Scalable Vector Graphics Specification. New Proposal Paves the Way for Speech Applications on Portable Devices." - "The SALT Forum, a group of companies with a shared goal of accelerating the use of speech technologies in multimodal and telephony systems, today announced that it has published a SALT profile for the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) markup language. The new SVG profile supplements the SALT 1.0 specification, which was contributed to the W3C by the SALT Forum and already included profiles for use with the XHTML and SMIL specifications. SVG is an XML-based language for describing advanced graphics that enables developers to deliver a visually rich user interaction experience in their Web applications. By adding SALT to SVG, developers can further enhance the user experience with interactive spoken interfaces coupled directly to the visual interface. The SVG specification has gained considerable support since its release by the W3C, capturing the attention of leading Web developers. Its ability to render high-quality graphics on displays of varying size and resolution, along with a lightweight design that reduces computational requirements, has made it particularly attractive to manufacturers of cell phones, PDAs and other portable devices. SVG with SALT provides the means to build sophisticated mobile applications for these devices with easy-to-use speech interfaces that are accessible without looking at or touching the equipment. SVG with SALT can be used to provide speech 'hot spots' within a graphic or provide spoken commands for scrolling and zooming the display. It can also be used to embed descriptive services for the visually impaired directly within a graphic, streamlining the workflow process. 'SALT seamlessly adds new speech capabilities to the versatility of SVG that enhance its capacity to make Web applications more powerful and easier to develop,' said Antoine Quint, SVG consultant for Fuchsia Design and co-author of the SVG specification. 'Graphics and speech play complementary roles in making information readily accessible no matter what the situation may be.' The SALT specification was designed to add speech input, speech output and call control capabilities to practically any XML-based language. The SALT profile for SVG demonstrates the potential of this flexible and platform-independent approach for responding to technology advances that support improved content delivery. 'The SALT profile for SVG is an example of the exciting industry developments now underway to realize the full potential of SALT,' said Glen Shires, chairperson of the SALT Forum's Technical Working Group. 'The SALT Forum continues to take an active role in refining, enhancing and supporting the SALT 1.0 specification as an open industry initiative'..." (1) "W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)"; (2) "Speech Application Language Tags (SALT)."

  • [June 23, 2003] "DMSi Announces Availability of X2XL Beta." - "Document Management Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of XML integration services for the publishing industry, today announced the beta release of X2XL, a program designed to convert tables adhering to the OASIS XML Exchange model to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. 'Our customers have asked us to develop an application that would make it easy for them to transform their XML tables into Excel spreadsheets for use by their internal users as well as their customers and suppliers,' said David Giusto, President of DMSi. The product was unveiled at Open Publish 2003, held in Philadelphia, PA. X2XL provides an easy-to-use GUI that guides the user through the setup process, defining user-specific markup used within the OASIS model to identify style information such as bold, italic, superscript and subscript, as well as any specific fonts and ruling requirements. The application can be run in the background, processing hundreds of tables at a time, or interactively, depending on the workflow process. 'The OASIS table model is the de facto standard in XML publishing environments,' said Mary McRae, Senior Vice President and Principal XML Technologist at DMSi. 'The only problem is that most individuals do not use an XML editor on a daily basis; instead, they use Microsoft Office. X2XL allows tables to be delivered to users in a format that they're extremely comfortable with -- Microsoft Excel.' Built on Java, X2XL runs on both Windows and Unix platforms, and works with Excel '98, 2000, or XP..." See also OASIS Table Models.

  • [June 18, 2003] "Choreology Launches Cohesions 1.0: BTM Software for Application Coordination and Process Synchronization." - "Choreology Ltd, the business transaction management (BTM) software company, has released Cohesions 1.0, a coordination service that enables the synchronization of related business processes and the coordination of update operations spanning multiple applications. Cohesions ensures application-level consistency, and automated completion of business transactions, even in the event of failures. When processes and interactions between systems involve complex or high-value transactions, inconsistent business results can create serious costs, risks and delays which both afflict internal operations and damage customer relations and business reputation. Until now, there has not been a versatile solution, in product form, for the management of business transactions across applications. Traditionally, organizations have been faced with two choices: either they build complicated logic into their applications or they identify and manually repair transactional discrepancies after the fact. In either case the processes are costly and time-consuming to operate or construct. The management of business transactions spanning multiple applications is a common requirement across a broad range of business sectors. In investment and commercial banks applications include numerous aspects of straight through processing, transactional account aggregation and consistent cross-system data dispersal, such as distributed credit approval. In the insurance sector long-running transactions are common in policy and claims processing. Coordination of multiple systems is also needed in the telecommunications sector where service provisioning and billing applications are widespread. Cohesions implements OASIS Business Transaction Protocol and Web Services Coordination+Transaction. It works in the native Java environment and is also integrated with several leading Web Services toolkits - as well as working in the context of the developing Grid services environment. Cohesions is a critical underlay for reliable BPEL-based processes, simplifying their design and providing transactional control and automated recovery of business state. Cohesions is the culmination of two and a half years of theoretical and practical pioneering work in the developing field of business transaction management. The Cohesions product reflects the experience of Choreology's staff who have previously been involved in the engineering and marketing of three commercial transactional product lines..." On Web Services Coordination+Transaction, see: (1) WS-Coordination Specification Index Page and (2) WS-Coordination Transaction Index Page. Also: "OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee."

  • [June 18, 2003] "Federal Banking Regulators Award Unisys Outsourcing Contract to Transform the Collection of Bank Data. Call Agencies to Employ Web Services and XBRL to Streamline Bank Call Report Processing." - "Unisys Corporation announced today that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), on behalf of the Federal Financial Institution Examination Council (FFIEC) agencies, has selected the company to modernize the current collection of bank data, known as Call Report processing, and to help the agencies transition toward a paperless, electronic environment. The bank data are used in a wide range of regulatory, supervisory and analytical functions, including the design and conduct of banking policy and industry risk assessment. The business process outsourcing contract has an initial term of seven years and value of approximately $28 million; the FDIC can extend it for three additional one-year periods. In addition, the FDIC can order optional technical requirements. If the FDIC exercises all options and extensions, the contract will be worth approximately $39 million. Streamlining the Call Report process should help the agencies to reduce paperwork and lower the cost of doing business. Key to the new process is the implementation of a central data repository (CDR) using proven technologies to collect and process the bank data as well as serve as a single source for all information related to this data submitted by financial institutions. To help the Call Report agencies modernize business operations, the CDR will provide the platform for timely, efficient, low-cost and standardized exchange, storage and distribution of accurate Call Report data. Unisys will provide a range of services covering solution development, hosting, help desk and application maintenance... The solution will be implemented in a Web services architecture leveraging the Microsoft .NET framework. As a Web services-based architecture, the solution implements extensible business reporting language (XBRL) as the standard data format for the Call Reports. XBRL is the XML-based standard for identifying and better communicating the complex financial information in corporate business reports allowing for easier and more reliable exchange of corporate financial information..." General references in "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."

  • [June 17, 2003] "Work on Radio and TV Listing Markup Language Started." - "A new way for broadcasters, newspapers and web sites to exchange TV listings has been begun the formal approval process that will end with adoption as a new worldwide standard. At its annual meeting, the International Press Telecommunications Council voted to move ahead with review and approval of ProgramGuideML, a powerful but simple way to show program and channel information in any language. Designed by a group of Japanese newspapers and broadcasters, ProgramGuideML uses XML technology to mark up important programming information with simple text tags that allow easy files exchange between news agencies and automatic processing. If approved by the IPTC at its spring 2004 meeting in Athens, ProgramGuideML will join a list of standards that are used by news agencies around the world. IPTC members also studied proposals to redesign the group's web site, where standards and documentation are made available at no cost. The redesign will include interactive aids to help programmers and news executives understand the features of the standards... The IPTC's next regular meeting will be in Leipzig, Germany, in October 2003. The IPTC, based in Windsor, UK, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards that are used by virtually every major news organization in the world..." Related story 2003-05-15: IPTC Approves SportsML Version 1.0. See also: (1) NewsML and IPTC2000; (2) News Industry Text Format (NITF); (3) SportsML.

  • [June 17, 2003] "OGC Trials 'Common IT Language' To Drive Government eCommerce Agenda. BASDA's eBIS-XML in Proof-of-Concept Trial With OGC." - "Assessment trials are underway to find the most effective way to allow computers running different purchasing software packages to 'talk to each other'. This is a joint initiative from Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and the Business Applications Software Developers Association (BASDA). The Proof of Concept trials of the common vocabulary (known as XML) are another example of a growing 'joined up' approach between OGC and the IT Industry to establish common IT standards for eProcurement. These standards will enable suppliers and public sector buyers to conduct business online more easily. The objective is to make it easier for government departments to run IT purchasing systems, whilst at the same time ensuring suppliers are able to do business with government online, regardless of which software system they use. Importantly, the move will enable easier access to the government marketplace for smaller suppliers (SMEs) OGC's Executive Director for Supplier and Government Marketplace Development, Martin Sykes, welcomed the collaboration saying: 'OGC has been working closely with BASDA to drive the interoperability agenda forward. OGC is committed to providing better value for money for taxpayers through offering better access for suppliers to the Government marketplace. These trials represent a major step in the right direction.' Commenting on the trial, Dennis Keeling, CEO of BASDA, said: 'We are very pleased to co-operate with OGC on this project which employs a development of eBIS-XML, our eBusiness XML communications standard. Most of our members support the standard, which has already been proved commercially across Europe. It enables their software to generate and read the standard XML based documents which cuts costs and eliminates re-keying. We believe that this will not only help Government departments, but will also encourage more businesses to adopt eBusiness with all the benefits it can bring'..." See details in the news story: "UK Office of Government Commerce and BASDA Conduct eProcurement Assessment Trials."

  • [June 12, 2003] "SAP Unleashes Cross-Enterprise Collaboration with Out-of-the-Box Support of Industry Standards. New Business Content for SAP NetWeaver Enables Immediate Support of Data Exchange Standards Such as RosettaNet and CIDX." - "SAP AG today announced industry-specific enhancements for the SAP NetWeaver integration and application platform that will help companies in diverse vertical industries accelerate cross-enterprise business processes and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). SAP is expanding the integration capabilities of SAP NetWeaver with add-on packages comprising pre-configured, industry-specific business content and out-of-the-box support for XML-based data exchange standards of diverse industries. Beginning with offerings for the high tech and chemicals industries -- providing native support for RosettaNet and Chem eStandards, as well as pre-configured mappings for the most common EDI standards -- the pre-packaged business content in SAP NetWeaver will allow companies to avoid costly, time-consuming integration projects, and quickly and easily enable their IT systems to exchange information in the lingua franca of their respective industries... The industry-specific business content extends SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI), a software component of SAP NetWeaver. SAP XI provides an open business process integration technology platform that supports process-centric collaboration between SAP and non-SAP systems and applications, both within and beyond the enterprise. SAP XI defines the interfaces and XML mappings required for specific business scenarios to manage message exchange, and transform message contents between sender and receiver systems for efficient cross-system collaborative processes. SAP XI offers the capability to deliver industry standard compliant business scenarios as well as the ability to orchestrate industry standard adherent business processes. The technology foundation for all SAP solutions, SAP NetWeaver unifies and aligns people, information, and processes across organizational and technological boundaries. Designed to be completely open, SAP NetWeaver easily integrates information and applications from virtually any source and interoperates with Microsoft .NET, Sun's J2EE, and IBM WebSphere... SAP's support for RosettaNet in SAP NetWeaver will include an RNIF (RosettaNet Implementation Framework) 2.0 adapter, mappings from SAP R/3 and other SAP applications to the RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes (PIPs), RosettaNet message choreography as pre-delivered business scenarios, the ability to maintain trading partner information as well as business process management and error handling capabilities..."

  • [June 12, 2003] "BT, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens form RosettaNet Telecommunications Industry Council. Leading Global Telecommunications Suppliers and Operators Join Forces to Standardize Key E-Business Processes Using RosettaNet." - "RosettaNet, the technology industry's leading e-business standards consortium, today announced the formation of a Telecommunications Industry (TC) Council. BT, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens are among the first major industry players to join as founding member companies with the goal of promoting RosettaNet to streamline the exchange of information throughout the global telecommunications trading network. The TC Council, which is comprised of global network operators and equipment suppliers, will take a leadership role in driving adoption of the standard within the telecommunications industry sector and related supply chain ecosystems. Building on the past standards integration success realized by the high tech industry, the TC Council is slated to work closely with established RosettaNet Supply Chain Managing Boards to support development activities while also engaging in implementation program initiatives and deployment projects... In forming the TC Council, leaders in the telecommunications industry have acknowledged that the RosettaNet model addresses many of the business process issues facing companies today. For example, the acceleration of product lifecycles is impacting business-to-business communication between trading partners more than ever before. Adoption of RosettaNet can, in effect, build-in critical success factors by helping to streamline communications linkages between suppliers and customers, including real-time data exchanges in the areas of design, product information, forecast, order and inventory management and logistics... It is expected that RosettaNet's TC Council will grow to include additional founding member companies representing the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions over the next several months. Currently, active discussions are underway with prospective manufacturer and operators candidates, including Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications network companies... RosettaNet is a non-profit consortium dedicated to the collaborative development and rapid deployment of open internet-based business standards that align processes within the global technology trading networks. More than 500 companies, representing over $1 trillion in annual information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing revenues, currently participate in RosettaNet's standards development, strategy and implementation activities. Information on the consortium's worldwide activities in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and a complete list of partner companies, is available at www.rosettanet.org. RosettaNet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC)..." See general references in: (1) "RosettaNet"; (2) "Uniform Code Council (UCC) XML Program."

  • [June 12, 2003] "ebMail Source Code Donated to ebXML Development Community." - "Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is pleased to announce its code base donation of ebMail to the ebXML development community. This open-source project is released under the Academic Free License that permits royalty free use of the source and binaries. Developers are encouraged to download ebMail at www.freebxml.org and subscribe to the mailing lists set up at SourceForge for enquiries. ebMail is a desktop e-mail client which helps organizations, small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SME) in particular, to engage in B2B e-commerce activities. This lightweight toolkit enables trading partners to exchange business documents cost-effectively through email, or ebXML Message Service (ebMS) over Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). ebMail is a trimmed-down ebMS handler which does not require any application server software and dedicated Internet connection to use ebXML. It allows a user to compose electronic documents offline through graphical user interface (GUI), and send and receive documents when the user is connected to the Internet..." See other details in the news story "Hong Kong CECID Donates ebMail Client Software for ebXML Message Handling."

  • [June 10, 2003] "Microsoft Announces Commitment to Support Uniform Code Council In Commercialization of RFID Technology. Microsoft Will Work Closely With Organization to Develop Standards For Radio Frequency Identification Technology." - "Today at Retail Systems 2003 Conference & Exposition, Microsoft Corp. announced it will join AutoID Inc., a joint venture of the Uniform Code Council Inc. and EAN International, which will develop and oversee commercial and technical standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network. Microsoft will work closely with AutoID to take product and item identification to the next level across manufacturing and retail supply chains. Central to fulfilling that mission is radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which combines the benefits of the silicon chip and radio frequencies. The technology has been widely lauded for its potential to provide an unprecedented level of product visibility across the supply chain. If widely adopted, RFID-enabled systems will have the capability to greatly reduce human error from data collection, reduce inventories, improve product availability, identify and reduce loss and waste, and help ensure safety and security. Microsoft's efforts with AutoID will initially focus on the manufacturing and retail supply chains. In the future, Microsoft plans to work with its partners to develop affordable technology and solutions that take advantage of the capabilities of RFID technology to improve efficiencies throughout the value chain. Microsoft has a significant partner ecosystem that includes independent software vendors and systems integrators that deliver solutions built on Microsoft technologies for customers in a variety of industries, including manufacturing and retail. Microsoft anticipates that many of these partners will benefit from the further development of RFID technologies and standards. Microsoft is already a certified In Sync alliance partner of UCCnet Inc., an industry-endorsed initiative to resolve product data inaccuracies among trading partners. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the Microsoft BizTalk Toolkit for UCCnet, which allows retailers and their suppliers to quickly and cost-effectively connect to UCCnet and helps bring them together with trading partners..." Note: the AutoID, Inc. FAQ document references 'Physical Markup Language (PML)' as one of the EPC network's "five fundamental elements that enable the automatic identification and tracking of physical objects in real time..." See: "Physical Markup Language (PML)." See also: (1) the May 21, 2003 announcement: "UCC Finalizes Agreement with MIT. Forms Joint Venture with EAN International to Drive Standards for Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network." and (2) "Spanning the Supply Chain: Why Microsoft Supports Radio Frequency Identification Technology."

  • [June 10, 2003] "Sun Microsystems Fuses Java Technology and Web Services. Announces Availability of J2EE 1.4 Beta2 SDK, WS-I Basic Profile Support, Web Services Developer Pack Version 1.2, and New Software for Secure Java Technology-Based Web Services. Major Open Source Donation of Web Services Technology to the java.net Initiative." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc., the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, today announced the next step in the convergence of Web services with Java Technology for the Enterprise, version 1.4. 'There is no line of demarcation between Java technology and Web services,' said Mark Bauhaus, vice president of Java Web Services, Sun Microsystems. 'It's not Java technology or Web services. It's Java technology and Web services. Sun is making a significant investment in the Java platform and the related community infrastructure to help ensure that Java technology is the industry's best platform for developing and deploying secure Web services, now and in the future.' With the following announcements, Sun demonstrates its continued leadership in positioning the Java platform as the preferred environment for developing and deploying Web services: (1) Immediate availability of the Beta 2 version of the J2EE 1.4 software development kit (SDK), delivering extensive support for Web services and the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Profile specification. (2) Immediate availability of the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP), Version 1.2, providing enhanced Web services capabilities. (3) Donation of important Java Web Services APIs included in the J2EE 1.4 SDK to the newly created java.net initiative for the development of open source versions (JAX-RPC, JAXB, SAAJ). (4) Immediate availability of enhanced network identity capabilities delivering the strategic foundation for identity-enabled Web services through the use of SAML, Liberty Alliance specifications and, in the future, via the OASIS WS-Security standards. New products include the Sun ONE Directory Server 5.2, Sun ONE Meta Directory 5.1, Sun ONE Identity Synchronization for Windows 1.0 and Sun ONE Identity Server 6.0 Service Pack 1.0. Sun's network identity platform contains extensive Java support including open J2EE standard APIs such as JAAS for authentication; enables management of access to EJBs, servlets and JSPs; and supports XML and SOAP through the use of the JAX-M/JAX-R standards..." See details: (1) "Java Web Services Developer Pack V1.2 Supports WS-I, WS-Security, and UBL Applications"; (2) "Sun Microsystems Launches Java.net Portal for Java Technology Collaboration."

  • [June 10, 2003] "Sun Microsystems Unveils java.net, the Ultimate Destination for Developers and Focal Point for Open Source Collaboration. Sun Will Contribute Millions of Lines of Code to Newly Launched java.net Community Led by Father of Java Technology, James Gosling. New 'Javapedia' Provides Easy Access to Java Terms and Content, Wikis and Blogs Facilitate Collaboration." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today unveiled java.net (http://www.java.net), a new community and Web site created to facilitate Java technology collaboration in applied areas of technology and vertical industry solutions. Sponsored by Sun, the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, with editorial resources and technology infrastructure provided by CollabNet, Inc. and O'Reilly & Associates, java.net aims to expand the Java technology portfolio of applications, tools and services. Leading technology companies, industry associations, universities and research institutions, Java user groups and individual Java technology enthusiasts will all come together at java.net with industry veterans such as James Gosling, the creator of Java technology, to enhance the developer community and experience. java.net, an open source development site, will offer a rich array of advanced collaboration tools including project and community source code hosting, mailing lists, forums, blogs (online journals featuring regular participation by James Gosling) and wikis -- collaborative hypertext documents authored with a simple markup scheme. java.net also hosts a 'Javapedia' -- a wiki-based encyclopedia of Java software, terms, luminaries, service providers and more -- currently being developed by Java technology enthusiasts... Sun Microsystems also announced today that it will open-source millions of lines of code at java.net. Examples of the wide variety of code and toolsets, communities and projects Sun will make available at the site include: (1) Java Desktop: A new gathering place for members of the Java graphical user interface (GUI) community offering discussions, technical articles, open source projects and other news of interest to developers who use the Java desktop platform to produce applications with rich client interfaces. (2) Java Web services and XML: Sun demonstrates its commitment to the open source Web services community with its contribution of key XML technologies including Java API for XML-Based Remote Procedure Calls (JAX-RPC), enabling developers to build Web applications and services with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and supporting Web Services Description Language (WSDL); Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB), enabling developers to generate Java classes from XML schemas, providing an efficient and standard way to map between XML and Java code; and SOAP with Attachments API for Java 1.1 (SAAJ), providing fundamental support in the Java platform for building basic SOAP messages. (3) Java Gaming: A community Web site that provides the gaming community with a place to share ideas and gain up-to-date information about Java technology-related gaming development resources..." See details: (1) "Sun Microsystems Launches Java.net Portal for Java Technology Collaboration"; (2) "Java Web Services Developer Pack V1.2 Supports WS-I, WS-Security, and UBL Applications."

  • [June 10, 2003] "Microsoft Reinvents FrontPage, Tapping Into the Power of XML To Build Live Data-Driven Web Sites. Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Provides More Power to Connect PeopleTo Dynamic Information on the Web." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, part of the Microsoft Office System, has been reinvented to support a wide range of capabilities for building dynamic, Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based, data-driven Web sites, while retaining the ease of use that has helped make it one of the most popular Web site design tools on the market today. FrontPage 2003 will be the first commercially available, fully WYSIWYG Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) editor in which users can work with live data to create interactive and dynamic Web sites, streamlining the process of sharing information on the Web. In the WYSIWYG editor, users can easily create XML data-driven Web sites connecting to XML files, Web services and OLE DB data sources. FrontPage 2003 makes building sophisticated data-driven Web sites accessible not only to the Web developer but to anyone who wants to design dynamic Web sites. It is no longer necessary to program with server-side scripting tools such as the Visual Basic development system, Visual C#, Visual Basic Scripting Edition, ColdFusion or Java to develop data-driven Web sites... 'We have made a big investment in supporting XML throughout the products in the Microsoft Office System to unlock customer data,' said Jean Paoli, an XML architect at Microsoft and one of the co-creators of the XML 1.0 standard with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 'An important component to the Microsoft Office System, the FrontPage 2003 WYSIWYG editor lets you define how XML following customer-defined schema should be formatted on a Web page. This is done by authoring XSLT, a standard defined by the W3C. The XML data-driven functionality makes it easier to transition content from internal systems onto the Web. Data-driven solutions in the past took days or even months of hand-coding, but these can now be accomplished in just hours with FrontPage 2003.' FrontPage 2003 supports a complete set of WYSIWYG tools for creating and editing XSLT data views, including support for styles, sorting, filtering, grouping and conditionally formatting data. Furthermore, users can connect multiple data sources and use the results of one database query to filter the data supplied by an XML Web service. All this work can be saved into a Web package, a new feature in FrontPage 2003 that allows for easy reuse. FrontPage will ship with a couple of prebuilt Web packages, including a Web log (blog) solution that can be set up easily with a couple clicks... Beta 2 of Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 is available as part of the Microsoft Office System..." See also the FrontPage 2003 Overview, Product Guide, and FAQ document.

  • [June 09, 2003] "OGC Board Approves IPR Policies To Further Safeguard Open, Public Standards." - "The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that its Board of Directors voted on May 27, 2003 to reaffirm OGC's intellectual property rights (IPR) policy. OGC's IPR policy is designed to protect the Consortium's standards framework from patents that would impede development of open infrastructure for interoperable geoprocessing. These policies, under review for the last year in OGC, are very similar to those adopted last month by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). OGC manages a global, consensus-based standards process to develop publicly available interface specifications to support interoperable solutions that 'geo-enable' the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. 'Our members support our IPR policy because there is a belief that OpenGIS specifications must be royalty free and unencumbered by patents, and therefore freely available to any party - buyer, commercial developer, government agency, or open source developer - that wants to implement OpenGIS Specifications in their enterprise', explained David Schell, OGC President. 'The net result is that our market can grow, more organizations can benefit from our work, and ultimately buyers will have greater choice at less risk.' OGC's IPR policy works to: (1) ensure that OpenGIS specifications are unencumbered; (2) protect the IPR rights of each of its members; (3) make OGC IPR policy clear and available to both members and non-members; (4) anchor OGC IPR procedures firmly in the mainstream of current standard-setting 'best practices.' OGC's IPR policy is the responsibility of its Board of Directors and the policy has represented the consortium's philosophy and practice since OGC's inception. A number of OGC members with diverse opinions and policies related to IPR have worked with OGC staff to refine the written policy since it was originally published. It also takes into account the significant patent policy work undertaken at the W3C, which has emerged as the consortium leader in establishing a pragmatic way to successfully develop royalty-free Web Standards in the current patent environment. The result reflects agreement with the basic goal to preserve a free and open standards-based information infrastructure. At the same time, the new IPR policy respects the patent rights of member organizations and the value their patents represent..." See details in the news story: "OpenGIS Consortium Adopts Revised Royalty-Free Intellectual Property Rights Policy."

  • [June 09, 2003] "OpenTravel Alliance Announces Publication of OTA Specification Version 2003A." - "The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) is pleased to announce the publication of the 2003A Specification that provides the travel industry and travel related services the ability to deliver new features and enhanced capabilities to travelers, through enhanced XML transactions. The 2003A release enhances messages previously released and introduces three new message pairs, two (2) for the Hotel Industry and one (1) for the Travel Insurance Industry. Also new in 2003A, additional business scenario and instance documents have been added to the text section of the Specification. These were added to assist those companies in the implementation process. OTA would like to thank its 120 member companies, project teams, working groups and committees that worked so diligently to provide a richer, more robust specification and further travel technology and XML development. Thanks to this effort, the OTA is one step closer to its goal of creating a common and complete XML dialect for the travel industry... The OpenTravel Alliance (www.opentravel.org) develops communications specifications to allow for the efficient and effective exchange of travel industry information via the Internet. With over 120 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OTA is comprised of representatives from the airlines, car rental firms, hotels, leisure suppliers, service providers, tour operators, travel agencies, and trade associations. OTA working groups, together with an OTA interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages using XML." See details in the news story: "OpenTravel Alliance Releases OTA Specification Version 2003A for Travel Related Services."

  • [June 09, 2003] "Tibco Drives Web Services Standards to Benefit Enterprise Customers. TIBCO Continues Leadership in Shaping Interoperability Standards." - "TIBCO Software Inc., a leading enabler of real-time business and the leading independent business integration software company in the world, as demonstrated by market share and analyst reports, today announced a number of intiatives demonstrating its leadership role in defining and shaping interoperability standards for enterprise integration solutions. Adherence to standards has consistently been integral to TIBCO's product strategy, and the company's leadership role in setting enterprise integration standards is attracting a wide range of customers to TIBCO, including UTi, a global, non-asset-based provider of logistic services for the shipping and storage of raw material, supplies, components and finished goods to multinational companies and smaller local businesses... TIBCO's commitment to standards emphasizes process modeling and choreography, and employs standards such as XML for data representation, XML Schema for data validation, XSLT for data transformation, XPath for data addressability, and WSDL for description of services. TIBCO designs its products to interoperate with other vendors' solutions and deployment environments, such as J2EE and .NET. In addition, TIBCO is actively participating in standards bodies such as OASIS and W3C, working to define the standards for future development of Web Services. (1) BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services): TIBCO, along with IBM, BEA, Microsoft and other vendors, joined efforts to submit the standard for Business Processes to OASIS for review and approval. Historically, standards for Web Services have not addressed business processes. (2) WSRM (Web Services Reliable Messaging): Based on its fifteen years of experience with enterprise messaging, TIBCO was asked by Microsoft to review the WSRM standard recently submitted to OASIS. TIBCO will also be participating in the co-authoring of this standard going forward. WSRM provides a vehicle for companies to exchange information reliably with each other over the Internet and receive delivery notification, a capability that was not previously supported by existing Web Services specifications. For more information, please see the press release: "Microsoft, IBM, BEA and TIBCO Announce Reliable Messaging Specifications. Publication of WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing Signifies Milestone In Development of Web Services Architecture." (3) Web Services Attachments: TIBCO participated in a consortium with AT&T, BEA, Canon France, Microsoft, and SAP to write the specification for enhanced attachment support for Web Services. This was submitted on April 1, 2003 to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (4) WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization): TIBCO actively participates in the WS-I, the organization responsible for ensuring products are verified as 'fully compliant' with industry standards. TIBCO actively reviews its software to meet compliant with WS-I standards. This is the first of several interoperability tests that TIBCO will be conducting with the WS-I. (5) SOAP 1.2 (Simple Object Access Protocol): Leveraging its extensive experience with messaging, TIBCO is driving the 'next generation' messaging specification that will further define details of the SOAP standard. 'Our ongoing leadership and support for standards is of great importance to our customers and partners. TIBCO products combine The Power of Now with the power of standards to offer customers and partners the most comprehensive integration solutions available today,' said Brad Rode, executive vice president of products and technology, TIBCO Software Inc..."

  • [June 03, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Plenary Endorses Latest ebXML Specifications." - "International standards bodies OASIS and UN/CEFACT today announced that the latest completed versions of ebXML specifications have been endorsed by the 2003 Plenary session of UN/CEFACT meeting in Geneva. The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business endorsed the adoption of ebXML global standards for exchanging business messages, establishing trading relationships, communicating data in common terms and defining and registering business processes. Seven components of ebXML were reviewed and endorsed by the Plenary including the OASIS Open Standards: ebXML Message Service Specification v2.0; ebXML Registry Information Model v2.0; ebXML Registry Services Specification v2.0; and the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement v2.0; as well as the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema v1.01 now managed by UN/CEFACT, and the jointly managed ebXML Technical Architecture v1.04 and the ebXML Requirements v1.06. 'We are proud that the UN/CEFACT Plenary has added another level of international endorsement to the four ebXML specifications which are OASIS Open Standards,' noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. Ray Walker, chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group added, 'The endorsement of the UN/CEFACT Plenary is another milestone for ebXML. It demonstrates conclusively that ebXML has begun to fulfill its promise to make e-business possible for any company or organization anywhere in the world. It also paves the way for the development of a formal UN recommendation to governments and to inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations on the use of ebXML in their eBusiness exchanges'..." General references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [June 03, 2003] "Iopsis Unveils Web Services Assembly Product for ebXML and Business Process Orchestration. Iopsis iNsight Provides Architecture and Modeling Tools for Web Services Applications." - "Iopsis Software, an innovator in production grade Web services development tools and infrastructure, today announced version 2.1 of its iNsight application assembly product. Iopsis iNsight is the industry's first tool that lets developers use standard UML notation to define and orchestrate Web services, and it has pioneering support for OASIS ebBPSS and BPEL4WS modeling. Working as a supplement to the Sun ONE Studio and NetBeans Integrated Development Environments from Sun Microsystems, Iopsis iNsight provides modeling, code generation, choreography, and assembly of Web services for use in business processes and end-user applications. 'Iopsis's iNsight 2.1 is an ideal complement to Sun ONE Studio 4 Enterprise Edition for Java, providing a complete platform for businesses to rapidly develop enterprise class Web services applications,' said Ashwin Rao, Senior Product Manager for SunONE Studio... Iopsis iNsight allows developers to rapidly assemble Web services from existing Java code. Unlike previous tools that blindly generate WSDL and XML from low-level Java interfaces, iNsight helps developers use rich business logic interfaces (e.g., 'reserve inventory') in long-running Web services transactions. 'Until now, tools generated WSDL files that merely reflected internal interfaces that were often useless for application-level contracts,' said Rajesh Pradhan, CTO of Iopsis. 'Iopsis iNsight works at a higher level and automatically handles versioning, object naming and interoperability issues, creating Web services that are useful in a real business context.' Iopsis will be showcasing iNsight in booth 406 at San Francisco's JavaOne next week. The demonstrations will show modeling Web services interfaces, choreographing their actions in long-running business processes, and deploying working applications to the standard environments of .NET, Apache and J2EE's JaxRPC... Iopsis iNsight has always worked as a seamless extension to the SunONE Studio IDE, providing ease of use and automation to Java developers working in Web services. iNsight has added a series of packs that lower the costs and time involved with developing Web services applications: (1) Foundation Pack: The core components that extend the SunONE IDE with new windows and code generators for XML and WSDL, plus functionality for repurposing existing software assets in SAP R/3 and XML data sources. (2) Basic Pack: Creates Web Service Interfaces that conform to the WS-I Basic profile, extending the IDE capabilities with UML based modeling of WSDL interfaces. (3) Orchestration Pack: Creates choreography interfaces based on BPEL4WS 1.1 and ebXML BPSS 1.05 modeling, facilitating deployment to IBM's BPWS4J, Collaxa's Orchestration server, and ebMSH 2.0-compliant servers. (4) Mobile Access Pack: The Configuration and deployment tools for wireless web service applications using the Iopsis iNfinite multi-channel application framework... Iopsis iNsight 2.1 will be available for free download, evaluation and purchase in June 2003 at www.iopsis.com. iNsight runs on Solaris 8 + 9, Windows 2000 + XP, and RedHat Linux 7. Iopsis iNsight 2.1 is typically $1000-2000 per developer seat, depending on the number of packs used..." Related references: (1) "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)"; (2) "Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)."

  • [June 03, 2003] "Microsoft and VeriSign Teaming Up to Provide Next-Generation Security Solutions for Enterprise Customers. Windows Server 2003 and VeriSign Trust Network to Ease Certificate Deployment and Management for a Range of PKI Services." - "Today at Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft Corp. and VeriSign Inc., the leading provider of critical infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, jointly announced plans to develop and deliver a series of next-generation security solutions for enterprise customers. Built on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and VeriSign's Managed PKI Services, this next-generation public key infrastructure (PKI) platform is expected to allow enterprises to deploy and manage secure communications and digital identity management solutions more easily, with seamless interoperability across heterogeneous systems and enterprise networks. The effort is aimed at delivering security solutions that address key enterprise security needs, such as strong authentication for remote access. It would also address emerging requirements, such as allowing roaming users to securely access wireless local area networks (LANs). The next-generation security solutions are expected to become available in late 2003... Initial work will focus on utilizing the certificate auto-enrollment capabilities in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP to develop a simple-to-deploy service that can take advantage of a range of PKI enhancements. Automating the issuance and renewal of digital certificates to users allows customers to facilitate new secure usage scenarios, such as confidential and secure e-mail, file protection and digital signatures, which enable tamper-proof and legally binding transactions. The service would also support secure access to corporate networks through wireless LANs, virtual private networks (VPNs) and other applications. A second initiative is expected to focus on interoperability services to enable enterprises to federate trust, extending internal PKI capabilities beyond the corporate network. This would allow enterprises to extend their secure commerce and communications infrastructure beyond the perimeter and enable applications such as secure e-mail, messaging, form signing and secure network access across enterprises. Enterprises can benefit from Microsoft's ability to embed PKI seamlessly into desktop applications and from VeriSign's expertise in defining, deploying and operating highly scalable and secure PKI solutions. As a pioneer in Internet security, VeriSign also provides SSL certificates, which enable secure e-commerce. In addition, VeriSign manages PKI implementations for thousands of enterprise customers. Finally, the effort is expected to enable enterprises to take advantage of the ubiquitous desktop application and back-office integration that is an important component of Windows Server 2003. This functionality seamlessly integrates the certificate provisioning and life-cycle management with Windows XP-based desktops, Active Directory, Exchange and Internet Authentication Server..." See also "XML Digital Signature (Signed XML - IETF/W3C)." General references in "XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

  • [June 02, 2003] "Enigma Has Been Selected By Volvo Cars as the Foundation For Its Global, Integrated Aftersales Support Solution. Standards-Based Technology Delivers Integrated Service and Parts Information in Real Time to Dealers and Independent Service Technicians WorldWide." - "Enigma Inc., the leading provider of content-driven e-business solutions for the support chain, today announced that Volvo Cars Corporation has selected Enigma's 3C Platform as the foundation for the next generation of its aftersales and diagnostic information system. Designed to leverage Volvo Cars' existing infrastructure and information systems, Enigma 3C will provide Volvo Cars dealers and independent motor traders around the world with access to integrated parts, services and pricing information for all models of Volvo automobiles. The completely integrated, browser-based support chain solution will be deployed globally in 17 languages via the Web and CD/DVD. Volvo Cars is leveraging Enigma's 3C Platform to create a single, easy-to-use application that ties together its existing XML-based service manuals, electronic parts catalogs and service bulletins as well as diagnostic interfaces and software (firmware) downloads for on-board automotive control systems. The resulting support chain solution will provide technicians and mechanics with a customized and comprehensive view of all of the information they need for fast and accurate price quotes and repair information for any Volvo automobile. In addition, the Enigma 3C-based solution will tie into Dealer Management Systems and other dealer-based back-office systems to streamline parts ordering, inventory and other financial processes. Through the Enigma 3C Platform, Volvo Cars will implement 'Horizontal Navigation,' which will allow users to type in an automobile's Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) once and then seamlessly navigate across all relevant information, such as service information, electronic parts catalogs and diagnostics. The result will be to decrease workshop lead time, bolster aftersales efficiency, and promote more cost-effective services and repairs for Volvo Cars' 3,000 dealers and 15,000 independent motor traders around the world... Because this aftermarket service system is being deployed globally, it requires a standards-based, open platform, and a consistent, browser-based user interface that supports both on-line and off-line environments (Web and CD/DVD). The flexibility of Enigma's n-tier architecture and J2EE standards-based environment provides Volvo Cars with the scalability, customization and integration needed to bring its complex content and back-end systems together in one unified, multilingual solution. 'Volvo Cars is dedicated to building the safest, most dependable automobiles on the road and to providing customers with the most efficient and cost-effective service and repairs, and this commitment to excellence and innovation is reflected in its extensive aftermarket information system,' said Jonathan Yaron, CEO of Enigma. 'By choosing Enigma as the foundation for its next generation system, Volvo Cars has made our technology an integral part of a strategic investment that will not only provide cost savings but also drive new revenue. This agreement highlights the growing recognition of the business opportunity that resides within the support chain and of Enigma's value as the software partner of choice for maximizing its potential'..."

  • [June 03, 2003] "OASIS and RosettaNet Form Standards Development-to-Implementation Alliance. Consortia Collaborate to Advance E-Business Standards Across Industries." - "Industry standards consortia OASIS and RosettaNet have formalized plans for a coordinated approach to standards development and implementation that will streamline business-to-business (B2B) integration practices for global supply chain companies. The new alliance leverages the supply chain expertise of RosettaNet with the broad, interoperability focus of OASIS. 'This is a productive alignment of activities, and where practical, a convergence of our work,' emphasized Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'Under this scenario, RosettaNet can leverage standards developed by OASIS, such as ebXML and the Universal Business Language (UBL), creating implementation-oriented solutions at a content level. OASIS, in turn, will look to RosettaNet for domain-specific input to ensure the applicability of universal standards within and between industries.' As a first step in putting this new agreement into practice, RosettaNet has assumed a major role in the OASIS Electronic Procurement Standardization (EPS) Technical Committee. The group provides a forum for government agencies, organizations, and companies to guide the coordinated development of global e-procurement standards. The committee is working to analyze requirements for electronic procurement processes, identify gaps, and recommend new standards as needed. 'While RosettaNet remains committed to developing business process standards required to support the complex needs of the high-technology industry, we also want to realize interoperability across all supply chains. To that end, we see tremendous value in ensuring our supply chain standards are supported by cross-industry, universally accepted standards, such those developed by OASIS,' said Jennifer Hamilton, RosettaNet CEO. RosettaNet and OASIS have established respective liaison memberships that allow representatives of each consortium to actively participate in the technical work of the other. In addition to the OASIS EPS Technical Committee, RosettaNet representatives contribute to the OASIS UBL Technical Committee. RosettaNet is also using the binary collaboration portion of ebXML BPSS, initially developed by OASIS, in its PIP specification format. Possible areas for future collaboration and cross participation are messaging services, advanced business process descriptions, constraint representation, document presentation, repository and meta data standards... RosettaNet is a non-profit consortium dedicated to the collaborative development and rapid deployment of open internet-based business standards that align processes within the global high technology and telecommunications trading networks. More than 500 companies, representing over $1 trillion in annual information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing revenues, currently participate in RosettaNet's standards development, strategy and implementation activities. Information on the consortium's worldwide activities in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and a complete list of Partner companies, is available at www.rosettanet.org. RosettaNet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC)." See general references in "RosettaNet."

  • [June 02, 2003] "Industry Leaders Announce New Consortium to Develop Standards for IP-Based Design. SPIRIT Consortium Focused on Increasing Efficiency Through Standards for IP Packaging and IP Tools." - "Leading companies from the EDA, IP, system and semiconductor industries today announced the creation of a consortium to develop industry standards that will enable easier integration of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and IP tools. The consortium, named SPIRIT (Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-Flows), will focus on developing standards for describing and packaging IP in order to cut costs, increase ease of use and enable greater flexibility in selecting and integrating IP. The founding consortium members are ARM, Beach Solutions, Cadence Design Systems Inc., Mentor Graphics, Royal Philips Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Synopsys Inc. 'SPIRIT will address a key issue dominating the semiconductor industry today: the complexity of IP integration', said Ralph von Vignau, SPIRIT consortium chairman. 'By combining our technological strengths, the SPIRIT consortium members will create standards that will help express complex IP and deliver greater flexibility and efficiency to the SoC design process.' Designers today need a mechanism to express IP integration requirements, performance and configuration capabilities. SPIRIT strives to enable automated IP integration through the development of a standard mechanism for importing complex IP bundles into SoC design tool sets. SPIRIT intends to create two proposed standards: an IP meta-data description and an IP tool integration API. The meta-data standard will create a common way of describing IP so that it is compatible with automated integration techniques. It will enable integrators to use IP from multiple sources with SPIRIT-compliant tools. The tool integration API aims to provide a standard method for linking tools into an IP framework, enabling a more flexible, optimized development environment. SPIRIT-compliant tools will be capable of interpreting, configuring, integrating and manipulating IP blocks that comply with proposed SPIRIT standards. The EDA and IP vendors participating in SPIRIT are committed to making their IP and IP tools interoperable through the proposed SPIRIT standards." From the Consortium FAQ document: "Once the SPIRIT consortium specifications are stable and approved, the defined standards will be transferred to an internationally recognized standards body... Beach Solutions will contribute experience in the field of IP packaging and integration based on XML, and expertise in System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures and IP design. Beach will be Chair of Schema Working Group and will actively participate in other Technical Working Groups as appropriate... Cadence has incorporated schemas into its system level design tools for years, and has recently extended those some of those tools to support SystemC. Cadence will work in the consortium to bring this knowledge into a new and combined XML Schema, meeting the needs and goals of standardization and the users... Mentor Graphics is committed to contributing the Platform Express XML Component Schema technology to the SPIRIT consortium. This schema has been used to generate complex multiprocessor designs from a wide variety of IP sources. As a founding member, Mentor Graphics intends to be an active participant in the standardization to encourage the adoption of this evolving PBD methodology..."

  • [June 02, 2003] "Jabber, Inc. Announces Global Agreement with HP. HP Becomes Development Partner and Global Reseller of Open-Architected Jabber, Inc. Commercial Product." - "Jabber, Inc., the leading developer of open architecture for enterprise-and carrier-class presence-enabled communications, including instant messaging (IM), today announced that HP is now a worldwide distribution and development partner for Jabber, Inc. According to terms of the agreement, HP, already a Jabber, Inc. customer, recently completed the co-development of Jabber for the Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 Enterprise Servers and HP-UX platforms, and will be jointly selling Jabber on these platforms as well as the existing Linux-based platform to HP's worldwide customer base beginning in Q2 of this year. Along with joint development and resale of the Jabber, Inc. commercial server, HP will be offering end-to-end service to businesses for implementation and customization of Jabber, Inc.'s open and extensible XML-based enterprise messaging architecture. According to the Gartner Group, instant messaging is increasingly driving enterprise communications. Beyond chat, businesses are integrating instant messaging into their enterprise applications such as enterprise directories and ERP systems... The Jabber, Inc. commercial product and its open source counterpart, Jabber.org, are based on the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), which ensures that all XMPP-compliant solutions can interoperate. XMPP achieved IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Working Group status in October 2002 and is quickly moving towards full ratification... 'HP's agreement to co-develop, sell, and service the Jabber platform within global accounts speaks to the gathering momentum behind Jabber and XMPP as the underlying architectures that will drive the adoption of a broad range of presence-enabled applications, beginning -- not ending -- with IM.' said Rob Balgley, Jabber, Inc.'s President and CEO..." See also: (1) "Jabber XML Protocol"; (2) "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)"; (3) "IETF Publishes Internet Drafts for XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)."

  • [June 02, 2003] "Microsoft Delivers Beta for First Phase of 'Jupiter,' Dubbed BizTalk Server 2004. BizTalk Server 2004 Delivers Jupiter's Core Foundation for E-Business." - "Today at Microsoft Tech Ed, Microsoft Corp. announced the beta availability for the first phase of "Jupiter," code name for the company's next-generation e-business vision. This first phase, BizTalk Server 2004, provides the key foundational technologies, including business-process orchestration, single sign-on, human-based workflow and Web services support, to enable customers to build tailored e-business solutions to connect people with information and processes. Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and integrated into the Microsoft Office System and Visual Studio .NET, BizTalk Server 2004 addresses the unique needs of information technology (IT) professionals, information workers and developers for increased efficiency and productivity. Paul Flessner, senior vice president of the Server Platform Division at Microsoft, today announced this milestone in his keynote presentation at the conference... Core technologies in Jupiter include (1) Business process: BizTalk Server 2004 provides a powerful orchestration engine as well as integration with Microsoft Office System and Visual Studio .NET, making it easier for business analysts and developers to orchestrate dynamic business processes within and between organizations... (2) Business rules engine: BizTalk Server 2004 provides a single integrated engine through which enterprises can design, build, compose and manage increasingly complex business processes... (3) Human-based workflow: In BizTalk Server 2004, customers will see a core human-based workflow engine that can be used to build end-to-end workflow applications. Microsoft Human Workflow Services (HWS) enables companies to adapt a workflow modeled on the needs of users.... (4) Single sign-on: With the Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) feature in BizTalk Server 2004, organizations can enable users to access multiple heterogeneous applications through a single enterprise login. A core Microsoft technology, SSO will be a strategic asset throughout Microsoft products such as SharePoint Portal Server and Host Integration Server, providing users with easy and secure visibility into enterprise systems... (5) Web services: Native support for Web services, including Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), is built deep into BizTalk Server 2004 to provide a standard way for enterprises to communicate across disparate back-end systems, enabling them to leverage existing investments... Integration with the Microsoft Office System allows for increased ease in monitoring business activity in real time from within Microsoft Office Excel. BizTalk Server 2004 uses Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 as an easy-to-use interface into Business Activity and Human Workflow Services, allowing users to take advantage of XML-based Web services in a familiar Office System environment. Intuitive InfoPath and Windows SharePoint Services based tools for business process and trading partner management help ensure that information workers have easy access to information..."

  • [May 30, 2003] "SchemaSoft and W3C to Host SVG Open Conference in July 2003." - "SchemaSoft and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will host the 2nd annual SVG Open Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in Vancouver, British Columbia from July 13-18, 2003 at the Westin Bayshore Resort & Marina. The SVG Open 2003 Conference and Exhibition is a forum for software developers, Web developers, graphic artists and other technical specialists to exchange ideas, methods and advances related to Web graphics. SVG is the recently adopted W3C open standard for delivering rich graphical content over the Internet. 'The SVG Open Conference is an excellent venue for people to educate themselves on the format and explore how to effectively implement the technology,' said Dr. Philip Mansfield, President of SchemaSoft. The conference will include workshops, presentations, and a product exhibit area. The sessions will explore techniques to author, process and use SVG in a variety of areas including content delivery to mobile devices, interactive mapping, computer aided design (CAD), print publishing, multimedia, business reporting and scientific visualization. For more information and online registration, visit http://www.svgopen.org. Since 1987, SchemaSoft has been designing and building software applications and components for many of the world's top application vendors. Since the formation of the SVG Working Group in 1998, SchemaSoft has been heavily involved in co-authoring the SVG standard, engaging in SVG-related research, and developing SVG software for clients..." General references in "W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)."

  • [May 30, 2003] "Global Computer Enterprises Wins E-Government Contract from GSA. FPDS-NG Will Collect Procurement Data From Across the Federal Government in Real-Time." - "Global Computer Enterprises (GCE) announced today [2003-05-01] that it had been awarded a $24 million dollar contract from the General Services Administration (GSA) for the development, implementation and operation of the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG). The current system will be re-engineered to take advantage of new technology that will allow for millions of transactions to be recorded and reported upon in real-time, while providing tremendous cost savings to the federal government. 'This is a key victory for GCE and our partners,' stated Ray Muslimani, President of GCE. 'We have worked for more than a year on producing a prototype that proves that a services-oriented architecture employing web services, open standards, and XML, can be the underpinning of a federal enterprise system.' 'Federal enterprise systems have hardly scratched the surface when it comes to real-time interoperability. The potential for information sharing between systems is vast, with huge implications for the nation's financial, procurement, logistics and security domains,' stated Venkatesh Kalluru, Chief Technology Officer for GCE. FPDS-NG is the first system in the Federal Government designed from the ground up with large scale integration capabilities -- it will integrate with every government procurement system in real-time. GCE's Plug & Play Integration architecture provides a sound model for interoperability between federal enterprise systems. GCE partnered with IBM, Oracle, and Business Objects in their bid to win this contract. 'We have taken a best-of breed-approach with respect to our partners,' stated David Lucas, Director of Business Development for GCE. 'IBM is the leading provider of hosting services, business process re-engineering, and investment in web services. Oracle provides the GSA with real application clustering, a cost-saving application server technology that allows for the scalability required of an enterprise-wide system. Business Objects is the clear market leader in providing web-based reporting tools that will transform the data collected by FPDS-NG into business intelligence.' One of the GSA's key objectives is the reduction of transaction costs from nearly $40.00 per transaction to under $1.00. 'The FPDS-NG re-engineering effort is a critical e-Government initiative because the award data that it collects helps Congress and the public understand how taxpayer funds are being spent everyday by the government,' said David Drabkin, Deputy Associate Administrator For Acquisition Policy..."

  • [May 30, 2003] "Blue Titan Network Director 2.0 Enables Pragmatic Adoption of Enterprise Service-Oriented Architectures. New Generation of Web Services Networking Software Delivers Adaptive, Event-Driven Control for Enterprise SOAs." - "Blue Titan Software, Inc. today [May 19, 2003] unveiled the most pragmatic path towards adopting enterprise service-oriented architectures (SOAs) with the release of Network Director 2.0, the latest version of its industry-leading Web services networking solution. Network Director 2.0 brings adaptive control through advancements in event-driven messaging, distributed policy execution and shared infrastructure services. Unlike Web services management solutions that manage services for a particular platform, or merely provide visibility applications, Network Director actually enforces policies throughout a distributed enterprise by reacting to real-time operational events and metrics. This makes Network Director a pragmatic solution for actually controlling Enterprise SOAs... 'Enterprise IT organizations increasingly see Web services' strategic value as more than a practical way to achieve simple point-to-point integration, said Brent Sleeper, Principal at The Stencil Group. 'As these innovators work to achieve the strategic benefits of service-oriented architecture, issues of visibility, control, and architectural flexibility become paramount. Blue Titan's service-oriented 'fabric' offers a compelling, and genuinely service-oriented, foundation for realizing this vision.' Network Director 2.0, which is available immediately, offers the following new capabilities enabling customers to realize an Enterprise SOA: (1) Fabric Services - which expose every function of the Network Director as shared, reusable Web services, thus freeing developers and IT managers to utilize their own tools and applications while leveraging the power of Blue Titan (2) Active Event Messaging - which provides an easy and powerful way to introduce event-driven capabilities into an Enterprise SOA (3) Adaptive Policy Execution - which introduces adaptability into how enterprises manage Web service interactions, enabling them to change policies in real-time based on current traffic information (4) SOAP Stack Interoperability - ensuring virtually any service consumer or provider has a zero footprint path to benefit from a Blue Titan network (5) Emerging Standards Support - giving customers a path for adopting emerging standards such as WS-Security, WS-Policy and WS-Reliable Messaging in a structured, pragmatic fashion..."

  • [May 30, 2003] "New XML DTD Describes Standard Content Model for Electronic Archiving and Publishing of Journal Articles." - "Today we release two Document Type Definitions (DTDs) that will simplify journal publishing and increase the accuracy of the archiving and exchange of scholarly journal articles" [said Dr. David Lipman, Director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM)]. The Journal Publishing DTD and the Archiving and Interchange DTD were both created from the Archiving and Interchange Tagset, a set of XML elements and attributes that can be used to define many other types of documents, including textbooks and online documentation. NCBI created the Journal Publishing DTD to define a common format for the creation of journal content in XML. The advantages of a common format are portability, reusability, and the creation and use of standard tools. Although the Publishing DTD was created for electronic production, the structures are robust enough to support print publication as well. Built using the same set of elements, the Archiving and Interchange DTD also defines journal articles, but it has a more open structure. Where the Publishing DTD defines the content and order of most of its elements (which eases content creation), the Archiving DTD is less strict about required elements and their order. The Archiving DTD defines a target content model for the conversion of any sensibly structured journal article and provides a common format in which publishers, aggregators, and archives can exchange journal content. The Tagset provides a set of XML modules that defines elements and attributes for describing the textual and graphical content of journal articles as well as some nonarticle material such as letters, editorials, and book reviews. The purpose of the Tagset is to preserve the intellectual content of journals independently of the form in which that content was originally created. The Tagset has been written as a set of XML DTD modules, each of which is a separate file. No module is a complete DTD by itself, but these modules can be combined to create any number of new DTDs. The Archiving and Publishing DTD may be used as is, or the Tagset can be used to construct DTDs for authoring and archiving journal articles as well as DTDs for transferring journal articles from publishers to archives and between archives..." See details in the news story "NLM Releases XML Tagset and DTDs for Journal Publishing, Archiving, and Interchange."

  • [May 28, 2003] "OASIS Works to Establish Classification Standards for Web Security Vulnerabilities." - "Members of the OASIS standards consortium are uniting to create an open data format to describe Web application security vulnerabilities. The new OASIS Web Application Security (WAS) Technical Committee will produce a classification scheme for Web security vulnerabilities, a model to provide guidance for initial threat, impact and risk ratings, and an XML schema to describe Web security conditions that can be used by both assessment and protection tools. 'Gartner believes the OASIS WAS standard effort will play a key role in supporting innovation in security assessment tools and application-level intrusion prevention products,' said John Pescatore, Vice President for Internet Security at Gartner Inc. 'Having a standard vulnerability description language will allow enterprises to choose and integrate best-of-breed products to best address changing threat scenarios.' 'Currently, security advisories are published in ambiguous textual forms or proprietary data files. The same vulnerability is often described in several different ways, using different languages and contexts that quantify risks in different ways,' explained Mark Curphey, chair of the OASIS WAS Technical Committee. 'WAS will allow vulnerabilities to be published and received in a consistent manner. Risks will be universally understood by law enforcement agencies, government representatives, companies, and organizations, regardless of which tools or technologies are used.' OASIS WAS Technical Committee members include NetContinuum, Qualys, Sanctum, SPI Dynamics, and others. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment. The committee will hold its first meeting on 3-July-2003. 'WAS is complementary to the work of the OASIS Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) Technical Committee, which was formed earlier this year to standardize the format for the way security products communicate. AVDL, using WAS vulnerability classification, will deliver a standard method for vulnerabilities to be described and communicated across multi-vendor products,' noted Kevin Heineman of SPI Dynamics and Jan Bialkowski of NetContinuum, co-chairs of the OASIS AVDL Technical Committee. In the interest of convergence, the OASIS WAS Technical Committee will consider contributions of related work from other groups and companies. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), an Open Source community group dedicated to helping government and industry understand and improve the security of Web applications and services, plans to submit its Vulnerability Description Language (VulnXML) to the new OASIS technical committee..." See details in the news story of 2003-05-13: "OASIS Members Form Web Application Security Technical Committee." General references in "Application Security."

  • [May 28, 2003] "Open GIS Consortium Releases Web Map Service Cookbook." - "The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today announced the availability of the Web Map Service (WMS) Cookbook version 1.0, the first in a planned series of books detailing the implementation and use of OpenGIS Specifications. WMS defines interfaces for Web-based software to learn about, retrieve, merge and query maps. The Cookbook provides the basic understanding and steps needed for implementing and exploiting the WMS interface and related technologies... The book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 establishes the background and context of the WMS interface implementation specification including a discussion of WMS client and server development technologies (XML, XSL/XSLT, ASP/JSP, etc.). This introductory chapter provides a general orientation for all readers but is targeted for managers and end-users. Chapter 2 addresses the design architecture of software systems that implement the WMS interface through use-case scenarios, WMS request examples, and illustrations. DTD/XML documents and XSL/XSLT style sheet examples highlight the role these technologies can play in WMS client and server implementations. Chapter 3 explores implementations of WMS in existing software on both the server and client side. Detailed 'recipes' for implementing WMS in popular commercial, open source and freeware products are provided. Technical personnel deploying existing systems and developers implementing new systems will find this chapter particularly useful. Stephan Winter, Associate Professor at the Institute for Geoinformation, Technical University Vienna, Austria shared his students' experience with the Cookbook. 'The students were able to implement a WMS service (with no prior knowledge of server installation) within 4 weeks of part-time effort. The result is currently running on an intranet. The students reported that it was possible to do such a project with only the cookbook in hand. I'm confident the Cookbook will be valuable to a wide range of users.' 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..." Related: (1) "OGC Releases OpenGIS Location Services (OpenLS) Implementation Specification"; (2) "OGC Announces OpenGIS Geography Markup Language Implementation Specification (GML 3)." General references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [May 27, 2003] "XML for Analysis Council Gains Momentum and Added Industry Support. Public Interoperability Event Showcases Industry Adoption and Support of XMLA." - "The XML for Analysis (XMLA) Council today announced the success of the first public XMLA Interoperability Event, which took place at The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) conference in San Francisco, May 11 - 14, 2003. The goal of this event was to provide more detail into the efforts and progress of the XMLA specification, and to further demonstrate the importance of XMLA as a leading open, industry standard in the Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management marketplaces. The event, sponsored by the XMLA Council, showcased early release versions of XMLA-compliant products from 18 Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management solution providers, including Applied OLAP, Arcplan, Aspirity, Brio, Comshare, Crystal Decisions, Hyperion, Intellimerce, Microsoft, Microstrategy, MIS, Panorama, ProClarity, SAP, SAS, Simba Technology, SPSS, and Temtec. The event followed the XMLA Council's second successful Interoperate Workshop, hosted by Simba Technologies, in early April 2003... The new council members join a growing group of industry leaders who have previously announced their support for XMLA. The importance of the growing list of companies supporting XMLA underscores the need for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to adopt XMLA as an open, industry standard, as well as the importance of customers to evaluating the purchases they are making in order to ensure that their investments will be able to interoperate with the leading products in the industry... As part of the recent Interoperability Event(s) the XMLA Council has not only demonstrated the interoperability among the various ISVs that make up the Council, but also the interoperability between XMLA and J2EE architected solutions and other cross-platform technologies. Given that XMLA is built on standard Web services technologies and is fundamentally a standard Web services query and reporting interface for Business Intelligence platforms, it is proving itself to be an open and cross-platform industry standard that works well in either .NET or J2EE environments. As an example of the cross-platform interoperability that is enabled via XMLA, one of the Council members, MIS AG, demonstrated both Java and DHTML based Consumers that use XMLA to seamlessly connect to XMLA Providers at the recent Interoperability Event(s)..." General references in "XML for Analysis."

  • [May 23, 2003] "ebXML Applications Demonstrated Live at London Conference." - "The XML Europe 2003 Conference showcased two days of live ebXML demonstrations and presentations that tackled demanding real-life business needs, to an overflow audience each day.Highlighting the event, a group of five technology companies -- XT-I, Seeburger AG, Sun Microsystems, Sonic Software, TIE International -- representing the e-Business Board for European Standardization, in association with OASIS, demonstrated ebXML messaging in real-life steel industry business scenarios. The business cases, supplied by the European steel industry e-marketplace Steel24-7, showed transactions with XML and EDI business payloads sent and received by different vendors' systems using the ebXML Messaging Services protocol. In each case the systems exchanging the data integrated the payloads into simulated corporate databases. The demonstrations showed that ebXML can routinely handle the rigorous requirements of high-performance business under realistic conditions. In one demonstration, the participants even took one of the systems out of service interrupting the transaction, but the message remained in persistent storage -- a key requirement of ebXML messaging -- which allowed the message to go through once the system came back online. The event featured several case studies of current business uses of ebXML including: the telecommunications industry in the U.K. (Martin Roberts, BT), the container shipping industry in India (Visva Visvanathan, Indian Institute of Science), a travel industry global distribution system in the U.S. (Mike Wheaton, Sun Microsystems), General Motors (Dan Malks, Sun Microsystems), and the international paper industry (Tilo Zimmermann, Ponton Consulting). The program also discussed innovative applications and extensions of the ebXML architecture, including: the European openXchange project (Erwin Folmer and Dennis Krukkert, TNO E-business), an open-source implementation of the ebXML registry specifications (Farrukh Najmi, Sun Microsystems), Content Assembly Mechanism (David Webber, SmartDraw), ebXML Test Framework (Jacques Durand, Fujitsu), ebXML Test Centers (Monica Martin, Sun Microsystems), and interoperability of ebXML messaging (Rik Drummond, Drummond Group). Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS who gave the welcoming address to the conference participants said, "The ebXML Showcase illustrated that these specifications are for real, and delivering solid business value for companies large and small... The demonstrations and cases discussed at the conference should erase any doubt that the ebXML framework can provide the reliability, security, and flexibility companies need to do e-business in the 21st century'..." General references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [May 22, 2003] "Microsoft, ACORD Link Insurance Forms to XML Web Services, Helping Agents Enter Data Once and Share Data Across Their Businesses. Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 to Help Insurance Industry Cut Processing Time and Costs, Reduce Errors." - "[On May 19, 2003] at the 2003 ACORD Conference, Microsoft Corp. and the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) announced that ACORD will provide more than 500 insurance forms built using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, Microsoft Office System's new information-gathering application. InfoPath utilizes XML and XML-based Web services to enable insurance agencies to complete forms once and then link the data to other forms, databases, back-end systems and applications. As part of the forms service, Microsoft .NET Web services can be used to provide additional functionalities, including e-mail, printing and data-routing. The ability for insurance agents and brokers to use InfoPath-based forms is expected to help the insurance industry reduce the processing time and cost of completing insurance transactions, while reducing errors associated with re-entering data multiple times. It also will unify and standardize the way forms are delivered and relate to Extensive Markup Language (XML) standards such as that of ACORD's, which is the most commonly used standard in the insurance industry today. "Availability of current ACORD Forms is essential for agents and brokers. This technology will deliver and update ACORD Forms quickly and encourage the development of Web services around ACORD Forms," said Gregory Maciag, CEO of ACORD. "We've embraced XML as a key standard in insurance transaction processing, and Microsoft's InfoPath tool will increase productivity and efficiency for ACORD participants." InfoPath will be available as part of Microsoft's most popular Office suite for businesses, Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition, with standalone versions available via retail outlets, volume licensing and OEM channels..." See details in the news story "Microsoft and ACORD Use InfoPath for Linking Insurance Forms to XML Web Services."

  • [May 22, 2003] "Microsoft and ACORD to Link Insurance Forms to XML Web Services." - "At the ACORD 2003 Annual Conference, one of the largest insurance industry conferences of the year, Microsoft and the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) -- a nonprofit insurance industry standards organization -- announced a joint effort to create a forms service that will link standardized insurance forms to XML Web services. The XML-based forms, which will be developed using Microsoft Office Infopath 2003, Microsoft's new information-gathering application, will enable insurance agencies to fill out electronic forms once and then link the data with the click of a button to other forms, databases, back-end systems and applications via XML Web Services. Aimed at helping the insurance industry reduce the overhead associated with complex transaction processing and the errors that result from having to re-key data several times, the forms service is expected to standardize the way forms relate to industry-specific XML data standards such as ACORD's, and how the data itself is delivered... PressPass spoke with Josh Lee, managing director and lead strategist of the Financial Services group at Microsoft, about the significance of the announcement, Microsoft's overall strategy for serving the insurance industry and the role of InfoPath and XML Web Services in the new technology solution... [Lee:] 'We hope the work we're doing with ACORD sends a strong message to insurance carriers, brokerages, and agents that Microsoft is committed to solving some of their biggest business challenges, which include workflow inefficiency, data redundancy and errors. Microsoft has been working hard to increase the relevance and value of its products to vertical industries, and announcements like this one are direct evidence that we're totally committed to increasing support for industry workflow and standards'..." See other details in the news story "Microsoft and ACORD Use InfoPath for Linking Insurance Forms to XML Web Services."

  • [May 21, 2003] "UCC Finalizes Agreement with MIT. Forms Joint Venture with EAN International to Drive Standards for Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network." - "The Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC) and EAN International, leaders in facilitating efficient international business, announced today at the UCC's annual U Connect Conference, the intention to establish AutoID, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that will develop and oversee commercial and technical standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network. The EPC Network, based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), uses radio frequency in combination with a network system to allow items or products to be identified. This technology will enable companies to have true visibility of their supply chains in real time, in any industry, anywhere in the world. AutoID, Inc. is an initiative between the UCC and EAN International. Both organizations have more than 25 years developing standards for the Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) and EAN13, now incorporated in the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). Through the global standards of the EANUCC System, nearly one million member companies in more than 140 countries worldwide conduct business every day using bar codes and related electronic communications... The EPC Network was developed by the Auto-ID Center, a not-for-profit global research project headquartered at MIT. In addition to a research lab at MIT, the Center has established research facilities at Cambridge University in England, Adelaide University in Australia, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, Keio University in Japan, and Fudan University in China. 'We knew that our research would one day migrate from the lab to real world applications,' said Sanjay Sarma, co-founder and chairman of research at the Auto-ID Center and professor in the department of mechanical engineering at MIT. 'That day has come, and we are pleased to work with the UCC and EAN International not only to bring this technology to market, but to continue to refine it in the future.' AutoID, Inc. will continue to work closely with Professor Sarma and lead researchers at the Center's sister labs around the world..." Note: the AutoID, Inc. FAQ document references 'Physical Markup Language (PML)' as one of the EPC network's "five fundamental elements that enable the automatic identification and tracking of physical objects in real time..." See: "Physical Markup Language (PML)." See also "Uniform Code Council (UCC) XML Program."

  • [May 21, 2003] "Yellow Dragon Announces the General Availability of Yellow Dragon Messaging 1.0. Secure and Reliable Messaging for Web Services and ebXML." - "Yellow Dragon Software Corporation, a developer of key messaging and metadata management software for Service Oriented Architectures (SOA's), including ebXML and Web Services, announced today the general availability of Yellow Dragon Messaging version 1.0, its ebXML Messaging Services v2.0 compliant messaging platform. Yellow Dragon Messaging 1.0 supports all mandatory and optional features of the ebXML Messaging 2.0c specification, as well as Collaboration Protocol Agreements, version 2.0. The software has been certified interoperable with 12 other software vendors under under another name. The software makes secure and reliable messaging for web services a reality. This is a "must have" requirement for many web service users. Yellow Dragon Software's offers the product for a free evaluation period along with a new Messaging Server Management console to make it easy to get up and running. Yellow Dragon Software has experienced a high degree of serious interest from value added resellers who appear to agree that this ebXML-based messaging solution is a needed commodity. The business community has been applying pressure to web services vendors to offer this functionality. Now anyone can download and have it running in less than 30 minutes... Yellow Dragon Software provides messaging and metadata management software for Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), including ebXML, Web Services and others. Yellow Dragon is an active member of the ebXML community, and several of its personnel are prominent participants in the standardization activities within the W3C, OASIS, UN/CEFACT and OAG..." General references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [May 20, 2003] "World Wide Web Consortium Approves Patent Policy. W3C Members, Director Establish Policy for Encouraging Royalty-Free Web Standards." - "Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced approval of the W3C Patent Policy, based on widespread Member endorsement, agreement in the W3C Patent Policy Working Group, and support from interested members of the public. The W3C Patent Policy aims to solve a specific problem -- to reduce the threat of blocking patents on key components of Web infrastructure. 'W3C Members who joined in building the Web in its first decade made the business decision that they, and the entire world, would benefit most by contributing to standards that could be implemented ubiquitously, without royalty payments, explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. 'By adopting this Patent Policy, W3C's Members will continue to be able to concentrate on the business of producing the best possible technical standards for the Web with the best chance for widespread adoption. W3C now sets the benchmark for the pragmatic way to successfully develop royalty-free Web Standards in the current patent environment.' Berners-Lee's full remarks are available on the Web... Based on overwhelming support of the W3C Membership, agreement in the Patent Policy Working Group and support from interested members of the public, W3C's Director approved the W3C Patent Policy. The Policy lends support to the basic intellectual property business model that has driven innovation on the Web from its inception. Companies, researchers and independent developers make contributions of design insights, valuable engineering resources, and hard work in order to develop technical interoperability standards upon which a worldwide information infrastructure can be built. Beyond establishing a commitment to royalty-free standards, the policy provides W3C with a stable, practical patent policy, a clear licensing framework, consistent disclosure obligations, and a reasonable dispute resolution process. This policy will help W3C concentrate on the business of producing the best possible technical standards for the Web... The premise of the policy is that it is in the interests of all who participate in building and using the Web -- including patent holders and all others alike -- to enable royalty-free implementation of Web standards. To this end, the policy doesn't require giving up one's entire patent portfolio; it concerns only those patent claims held by W3C Working Group participants that are essential to implement the specific W3C standard... The W3C royalty-free license requirements are consistent with generally recognized Open Source licensing terms. This royalty-free definition provides reasonable assurance that the Recommendations themselves are available to all users and implementors of the Recommendation..." See details in the news story "W3C Approves Patent Policy Supporting Development of Royalty-Free Web Standards."

  • [May 20, 2003] "UDDI v2 Ratified as OASIS Open Standard. Building Block for Web Services Advances Within Open Process." - "The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced that its members have approved the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration specification (UDDI) version 2.0 as an OASIS Open Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. UDDI enables companies and applications to dynamically publish, locate, and use Web services. Uttam Narsu, Vice President, Forrester Research, Inc. noted, 'While UDDI has not been as widely adopted as SOAP and WSDL, UDDI v2, under the aegis of OASIS, offers a concrete step to the widely anticipated version 3 specification. We forsee UDDI adoption as critical to the realization of a service-oriented architecture, and expect to see a significant increase in its adoption over the next two years.' 'We came to OASIS with the goal of advancing UDDI into a recognized industry standard with support and input from the broadest possible range of constituents,' recalled Luc Clement of Microsoft, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. 'UDDI's ratification as an OASIS Open Standard indicates our success in establishing an interoperable, cross-industry standard that provides a cornerstone for the Web services architecture.' Members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee include Computer Associates, Fujitsu, IBM, IONA, Microsoft, Novell, OpenNetwork, Oracle, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, Tata Consultancy Services, and others. According to Tom Bellwood of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee, 'UDDI v2 is being widely implemented today. It provides powerful features like business relationships and external taxonomy validation. As OASIS now continues moving version 3 towards a standard, with its support of multi-registry environments and digital signature features, we expect the use of UDDI in all environments to expand even further.' Before becoming an OASIS Open Standard, UDDI v2 first completed an extensive public review and was approved by the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. Then, the specification demonstrated its readiness through multiple implementations, after which UDDI was reviewed and approved by the OASIS membership as a whole..." See: (1) the news story "UDDI Version 2 Approved as an OASIS Open Standard"; (2) general references in "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."

  • [May 19, 2003] "XML 2003 Call for Presentations, Tutorials, Exhibits, and Sponsors." - "XML 2003 will be held December 7-12, 2003 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Now We're Cooking is the XML Conference theme for this year. XML is now used in many different ways and in many different applications. Leading (best) practices are starting to emerge, and recipes for success are starting to be reliable and reproducible. The Conference this year is dedicated to telling people what they need to know to get their systems working. This is where you come in. We are looking for top-quality tutorials and talks that help attendees understand what the leading practices are, how to use them, what to watch out for, and how to solve problems that show up. They also want to know which new technologies are coming down the pipeline. The attendees at XML 2003 want to hear first hand from the experts which products will solve their problems and which methodologies will meet their needs. Whether as speaker, tutorial presenter, exhibitor, or sponsor, you will find that XML 2003 provides the best forum to share your knowledge or demonstrate your products. We already have some excellent keynote speakers confirmed: Adam Bosworth (BEA), Jon Udell (InfoWorld), and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) and expect to confirm others shortly... Suggested topic areas are Case Studies, Core Technologies, Integration, B2B, Vertical Industries, Government, Graphics and Multimedia, Knowledge Management, Publishing, Storing XML, Web Services, Wireless... The XML Conference has earned a reputation for excellence, providing vendors access to a very well-informed and well-qualified audience. We invite you to join the exhibiting companies at this year's event. The conference and exposition also has sponsorship opportunities available..." See also the event listing.

  • [May 19, 2003] "International Consortium Seeks Global Standard for Electronic Data Exchange for Advertising. AdsML Standard Will Build on Existing Standards, Set Specifications For Crucial Processes. All Advertising Media Ultimately Affected." - "An international consortium of organizations serving the print and electronic publishing industries is creating a global standard that will govern how digital information is exchanged for all types of advertising, across all media and through all stages of the lifecycle of an advertisement. The AdsML standard will provide standardized electronic processes for all sectors of the advertising industry, in order to shorten deadlines and time to market, save time and money, improve communication, reduce errors, enhance business relationships and create new business opportunities. Beginning with the planned fall 2003 release of AdsML 1.0, the proposed standard will simplify and accelerate business interactions at all points of the advertising workflow between the time an ad is booked through the point at which it runs or is aired and then billed. The standard ultimately will support the various business cycles for advertising in television, radio and the Internet, through mobile technologies, on billboards or outdoor advertising, even on-screen advertising at movie theaters and cinemas. 'The advertising industry needs a set of standards that allows us to efficiently handle the data exchanges and transactions between the different systems in the business chain,' says Allan Marshall, managing director of Associated Mediabase in London. Associated Newspapers played a leading role in setting up AdsML... The AdsML standard is based on the widely accepted XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard and supports other electronic data exchange standards, including AdConnexion for Ifra, CREST from NAA and SpaceXML from IDEAlliance. These and other existing standards focus on different aspects of the overall advertising process. AdsML will fill in the gaps between existing standards (there are no standards for inventory management, for example), extend their reach and encourage convergence when they overlap... AdsML 1.0 will support classified advertising in print and online, online advertising, including banner and pop-up advertising, and advertising that is part of the core content of a Web site, ROP advertising in print, inserts, mail advertising and advertising by SMS, MMS or other mobile technologies." See details in the news story "AdsML Consortium Creates Electronic Data Exchange Standard for Advertising Industry"; general references in "AdsML Consortium."

  • [May 15, 2003] "Worldwide Sports Data Language is Launched." - "A new computer language to describe sports results has been given final approval by a worldwide consortium of news organizations. Sports Markup Language, or SportsML, is a standard created by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), an association of the world's major news agencies. Plans to integrate SportsML into mainstream news feeds were discussed at an IPTC meeting in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 2003. This followed formal ratification of the standard at the regular spring 2003 IPTC meeting in Nice, France. SportsML breaks sports data into bite-sized pieces and allows publishers to completely describe the how, what, when, where and why of sports. Documents in SportsML can be as simple or as complex as needed, drawing from a wide range of available descriptions for sports scores, schedules, standings and statistics. Team and player names, results, standings and other important information are handled in a standardized way, greatly reducing the tedious editing process that is often required to prepare sports results for publication. League data can also be stored in SportsML, making standings and playoff results easier to handle. In Washington, members decided to more tightly integrate SportsML with other IPTC standards, making it easier to install and maintain applications that use SportsML. The final version of SportsML and supporting documents is now available at no cost on the IPTC's web site. Members of the IPTC include The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Press-Agentur, Reuters, Sweden's Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, and Pinnacor (formerly ScreamingMedia)..." See also: (1) NewsML and IPTC2000; (2) News Industry Text Format (NITF); (3) SportsML.

  • [May 15, 2003] "Galileo International Launches Web Services Platform Globally Enabling Clients To Build Customized Applications. Travel Industry's First Web Services Solution Leverages Galileo's GDS, Saves Up to 80% in Development Time and Lowers Cost." - "Galileo International, a leading global distribution services (GDS) company and subsidiary of Cendant Corp., today announced the availability of its leading Web services technology on a global basis. The first GDS to offer Web services to the travel industry last summer, Galileo has successfully implemented a multitude of travel agency and developer Beta customers, deployed Web services to some of its own travel brands and is now making the services available globally in the North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions to existing and future customers. According to Henry Harteveldt, principal analyst with Forrester Research, Web services' ability to link disparate operating platforms and applications quickly and at a relatively low cost makes them critical technologies for travel. Forrester views Cendant Corp. as travel's most comprehensive Web services provider. Cendant uses Web services to link various business units like Cheap Tickets to content and functionality within the Galileo GDS and beyond. Galileo has developed its Web services using simple XML standard industry protocols and infrastructure easily accessible via the World Wide Web, eliminating the traditional technology barriers of disparate operating systems and the need for costly user hardware, such as servers, and dedicated telecommunications lines. The product also reduces support and development costs by ending the need for developer knowledge of Galileo-specific GDS commands in order to bring the client's applications online... With a Web services offering, Galileo International now offers a wider choice of XML-based developer tools for its client base than any other GDS. Galileo has continued to invest in XML-based API (Application Programming Interface) solutions since 2000, which saw the release of an install version XML Select API solution. Subsequently, the Web services API suite of services was built on the same XML structures, allowing a developer an easy transition to the Web services version of the XML Select API. Galileo's desktop XML API also uses the same XML structures, allowing re-usage of code and skills for customers developing client and internal desktop solutions. The investment in a Web services architecture also paves the way for Galileo to combine existing applications, components and business logic as shared services in a service orientated architecture, further adding value to it's offering while reducing overall costs by re-using the same service for multiple solutions and channels."

  • [May 15, 2003] "Conference Examines the Role of XML for Clinical Data Management and Regulatory Submissions." - "The Center for Pharmaceutical Training will present its XML and Pharmaceutical Data Management conference in Philadelphia, PA, September 23-24, 2003. The development of XML standards for the pharmaceutical industry is creating new and unique approaches for preparing, managing and exchanging clinical data. This conference examines the evolving standards being developed by CDISC and HL7 and their impact on data management processes being implemented in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries. 'Data capture and archiving are major issues facing these highly-regulated industries,' explains Michael Gurton, Director of Conference Programming. 'XML technology can tie together disparate systems and allow improved data sharing and management across the pharmaceutical enterprise. Experts at this conference will explain the evolving standards and demonstrate their impact within real-world operational settings.' Companies and organizations presenting at the conference include HL7, Wyeth, Pfizer, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and more..." Topics: "Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium" and "Health Level Seven XML Patient Record Architecture." See also the event listing.

  • [May 15, 2003] "RWS Group Co-sponsors LISA Forum Europe 2003. RWS Expert Localization Engineer Yves Savourel Presents XML and Localization Workshop." - "RWS Group (translate.com), a leading global provider of translation and localization services, is pleased to announce co-sponsorship of The LISA Forum Europe 2003, June 30 - July 3, at the Radisson Edwardian Heathrow in London. The LISA Forum Europe 2003 will focus on increasing global ROI through the successful implementation of global content management technologies and processes. The conference program will feature case studies along with panel and workgroup discussions designed for enterprise clients, content management system users, developers, service providers and system integrators... In addition to co-sponsoring this industry event, RWS Group Expert Localization Engineer, Yves Savourel will deliver a comprehensive workshop; XML and Localization, Thursday, July 3, 2003. Savourel will address the challenges and advantages of implementing an XML content management solution, specifically: (1) Using XML to improve the management of localizable data; (2) Using XML to reduce localization costs and time-to-market at various stages of product development; (3) Using XML-related technologies to assist in the development of interoperable custom solutions; (4) Developments with interoperable formats such as XLIFF and TMX." See "XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF)."

  • [May 13, 2003] "Systinet WASP is Reference Implementation for Proposed Recommendation of W3C SOAP 1.2 Specification." - "Systinet, leading independent provider of Web services infrastructure software, today announced support for the latest World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) SOAP 1.2 Specification, which has advanced to Proposed Recommendation status. Systinet WASP for Java, 4.5 is a reference implementation for the standard, and was used to provide valuable evidence of interoperable implementations of SOAP 1.2 to advance the specification along W3C's Recommendation track. 'SOAP 1.2 is a significant achievement and is now close to completion,' said Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of Systinet. 'Systinet is pleased to work in organizations like W3C, and to develop early implementations in our products and technology of what will be industry's most pervasive Web services standards'... SOAP 1.2 is a lightweight protocol intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment, and is one of the key standards that underpin Web services technology. The latest SOAP 1.2 specification has a clearer framework for extensibility, which will make interoperability between different implementations much easier. SOAP 1.2 also defines a formal binding framework and XML Infoset, both of which allow SOAP to be used across many different applications and environments... Systinet has been on the forefront of Web services standards development and is a founding member and active promoter of key standards efforts for SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, Web services security, Web services interoperability and other cooperative efforts at W3C, UDDI.org/Advisory Group, OASIS, WS-I and WS-S. Systinet's WASP suite of products is a complete solution for building, deploying, securing and managing Web services. Systinet WASP Server for Java and WASP Server for C++ are industrial-strength Web services runtime environments that fully support industry standards, including SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2 and WSDL 1.1. WASP UDDI is a V2 complaint registry with advanced V3 functionality. Systinet's OEM Edition is a Web services solution tailored to fit the needs of ISVs... Systinet provides Web services infrastructure software. Systinet's products make it easy for enterprises, ISVs and OEMs to build, deploy, secure and manage Web services. The Systinet WASP suite of products is based on industry-standards such as XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. WASP products are available for Java and C++, interoperate seamlessly with other Web services implementations such as Microsoft .NET, and are portable across a wide variety of platforms and servers..." See "W3C Publishes SOAP Version 1.2 as a Proposed Recommendation."

  • [May 13, 2003] "GXS' Global Product Catalogue Service Achieves Certification for UCCnet Foundation Services 2.1. GXS to Provide Global Synchronization of Detailed Product Attributes through Automatic Registration of Vendor Products with UCCnet's GLOBALregistry." - "Global eXchange Services (GXS) today announced that its Global Product Catalogue (GPC), www.gpcatalogue.com, a multi-industry data repository of product attributes and synchronization service with more than 65 million line items and over 17,000 trading partners, is the first service of its scope to be certified for UCCnet Foundation Services 2.1. UCCnet's GLOBALregistry provides a global product directory, through which independent data repositories interface to achieve seamless, accurate, consistent data synchronization for global, multi-industry supply chain partners. This inter-operability certification enables GPC clients to extend their data synchronization needs by having GXS promote needed information to UCCnet while continuing to provide the value of a centralized database for multiple users to access in a variety of ways (Web, EDI, XML, Batch, and or real-time)... GPC certification provides subscribers with these UCCnet capabilities: (1) Register products with UCCnet's GLOBALregistry; (2) Ensure product and attribute compliance with standardized UCCnet validations and business rules; (3) Publish products to specific UCCnet retailers; (4) Handle bi-directional XML Internet messaging and reporting; (5) Send and receive UCCnet and other product attributes using X12 and EDIFACT, with minimal user internal upgrades; (6) Support all 62 UCCnet-defined attributes per product, in addition to the 550 GPC already supports. 'In addition to the GPC certification, GXS has also received certification for its AS2 transport services and plans to certify its Enterprise and Application Integrator offerings. By providing an end-to-end suite of UCCnet-enabling services, we can help our customers to leverage their B2B e-commerce investments and infrastructures into even greater supply chain optimization,' stated Jim Rogers, GXS VP of Integration Solutions. Within its single hosted service environment, GPC operates active data synchronization communities in 3 major countries -- U.S. Retail, ECCnet (Canada), and EANnet (Australia). GPC uniquely provides features to 'community owners' like ECCC and EAN Australia, enabling them to provide their member companies with additional value-added services. 'GXS' Global Product Catalogue is the engine that powers ECCnet, Canada's National Product Registry. The GXS and ECCnet partnership has been helping to drive country-wide standards-based data synchronization in every retail sector for over four years,' said Art Smith, president of the Electronic Commerce Council of Canada (ECCC). 'GPC already allows cross-community data synchronization between its U.S. and Canadian communities, eliminating the need for suppliers to subscribe to multiple catalogue services for each country in which they do business. As strategic business partners, GXS and ECCC plan to continue to coordinate their respective areas of expertise to bring even greater value to retail supply chain partners worldwide'..." See: "Uniform Code Council (UCC) XML Program."

  • [May 13, 2003] "Corel and LightSpeed Software Deliver Integrated Content Management Solution for Technical Publishing. Joint Offering Provides a Seamless Way to Easily Create, Manage and Reuse Structured Content for Multi-Channel Publishing." - "Corel Corporation and LightSpeed Software today announced a strategic partnership to deliver a comprehensive content management solution for authoring, managing and publishing technical documentation. The companies have built an integration between Corel XMetaL, Corel's enterprise-class XML editing tool, and LightSpeed Astoria, LightSpeed Software's content management system, providing customers with a single solution to protect and extend the significant investment they have made in their content assets. This offering is available now and has been adopted by customers including Texas Instruments and Open Learning Agency. 'A primary driver for organizations is to maximize use of their resources,' said Michael Maziarka, Director of CAP Ventures' Dynamic Content Software Strategies. 'Businesses are beginning to understand the value of their content, and that content effectively managed becomes even more valuable as it is leveraged by the organization's many constituencies. The LightSpeed Software and Corel solution provides a way for organizations to achieve their goals using an XML-driven content strategy to maximize the return on their content.' The Corel/LightSpeed Software solution offers content experts a flexible way to create reusable XML content at an element level -- breaking documents into small and easily managed elements or 'chunks' that can be easily shared, updated, located and delivered to multiple channels. By enabling anyone within an organization to create XML content, the costly and repetitive process of converting content from proprietary document formats into XML is eliminated. Combining the strengths of Corel XMetaL and LightSpeed Astoria, the offering provides a robust XML authoring environment integrated with a powerful content management repository that is easily accessible through a common user interface. The XMetaL interface enables knowledge workers to create XML content in an environment that is as easy to use as a word processor. LightSpeed Astoria manages this content and makes it available to be shared and reused throughout the organization for delivery to multiple channels - whether it is to be published online, in print or to wireless devices. The solution supports the newly-released Corel XMetaL 4, giving authors the power to create XML content within any ActiveX-compliant application, including email and Web browsers. The ability to create XML content virtually anywhere enables improved collaboration in the authoring process across distributed workgroups. 'Faced with the challenge of doing business on short deadlines in a dynamic marketplace, nothing is more important than saving time and reducing costs. XML is the ideal format for creating and managing reusable content - enabling our customers to find huge efficiencies in their document creation processes,' said Bruce Sharpe, Vice President of XML Content Solutions for Corel..."

  • [May 13, 2003] "Novell exteNd Application Server 5. Powerful J2EE and Web Services Development and Deployment Platform Now Shipping." - "Featuring a robust deployment platform, high-productivity development tools and support for the latest industry standards, the Novell exteNd Application Server 5 is now shipping worldwide to provide organizations with an enterprise-class J2EE and Web services development and deployment platform. This release provides a powerful platform for the Novell exteNd Web application development suite, and for Novell NetWare 6.5 when it ships later this summer. For customers of Novell exteNd and NetWare, the Novell exteNd Application Server 5 can dramatically reduce the costs associated with a separate application server, increasing the value provided by these leading Novell products... The Novell exteNd Application Server 5 provides a complete foundation for deploying applications built with the Novell exteNd Web application development suite. The Novell exteNd suite includes the Novell exteNd Application Server and the following components: (1) Novell exteNd Composer: a comprehensive integration server that provides a unified, standards-based solution for mission critical enterprise application integration, business process automation and legacy to Web service enablement. (2) Novell exteNd Director: an interaction and portal server that enables IT organizations to rapidly deliver and easily maintain rich, personalized Web applications. In keeping with Novell's cross-platform strategy, the Novell exteNd suite is specifically tested to support both the IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic application servers as well as the Novell exteNd Application Server..."

  • [May 12, 2003] "Covisint and Consortium of Automotive Leaders to Develop Data Messaging Solution. Product Will Be a Cost Effective Alternative to EDI." - "Covisint today announced the formation of a technology development consortium that will build and implement a data messaging solution to improve communications between companies in the automotive industry and replace costly EDI solutions. The messaging solution will also enable smaller companies, not currently using EDI, to connect to their customers and suppliers. Members of the consortium include DaimlerChrysler, Delphi, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Johnson Controls and Lear. Each has committed financial and human resources to contribute to the development of the solution. When deployed in late 2003, the new messaging solution will allow Covisint customers to send and receive electronic data to applications behind each other's firewalls, as well as to Covisint applications, at a significantly lower cost than available from current EDI solutions. It will support the latest Internet based protocols, XML standard messages, as well as the millions of EDI (EDIFACT and X12) messages, that are exchanged daily in the automotive business. The specifications for this solution are being developed in cooperation with the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG). "A coordinated messaging implementation will lead to common processes and increased velocity of information throughout the automotive industry," said Bruce Swift, president, CEO and Chairman of Covisint. "Simplification of the messaging process will provide increased participation and reduced costs to businesses at every level of the supply chain. This will be core to Covisint's strategy in becoming the hub for the global automotive industry..." See also from the Q & A: "The Covisint Messaging Consortium is "a group of seven companies -- Covisint plus DaimlerChrysler, Delphi, Ford, GM, JCI and Lear -- that share common views about the problems of the way information is currently being exchanged within the automotive industry and how it could be improved in the future. The companies will jointly develop the new service. All of the companies have made financial and human resource commitments to the development. The Consortium has been formed and development work is well underway. Teams of people from the consortium companies are busy designing the service and architects and programmers are assembling the pieces. The Messaging service application, called the Covisint Hub, is a collection of off-the-shelf software plus some code that customizes the service for the automotive industry. In addition, the consortium is developing standard business document formats based on XML. This work is being done with the help of the AIAG and OAGI organizations. These XML documents will become the automotive industry's canonical model for business documents..."

  • [May 12, 2003] "Reuters Joins RIXML.org's Efforts to Facilitate the Adoption and Implementation of its Standard for Investment Research. RIXML.org Appoints New Committee Co-Chairs. Industry Organization Establishes Adoption Committee to Help Firms Utilize RIXML." - "RIXML.org, a consortium of buy- and sell-side global market leaders committed to the development and implementation of the first open standard for investment research, announced today the addition of Reuters as an Associate Member, which brings the total number of Associate Members to six. RIXML.org currently has 17 Steering Committee members, who oversee the strategy and overall direction of the RIXML specification... RIXML.org's Associate Membership category was established in April 2001 as a way to engage all industry participants in the development and implementation of the RIXML standard. As Associate Members, organizations can get involved in the continued development and implementation of the standard as well as participate as members of the Standards and Technical Committees of the RIXML organization... 'The newly elected committee members exemplify the dedication and expertise needed to continue the growth and expansion of RIXML.org,' said Deirdre Goldenbogen from Putnam Investments and Buy-Side Co-Chair of the RIXML.org Steering Committee. 'As a result of the commitment from our committee co-chairs and members, we have established the expertise necessary to enhance the specification as needed and work directly with firms to facilitate the adoption and implementation of RIXML across the globe'... As part of RIXML.org's efforts to increase the adoption of the RIXML standard, a new Adoption Committee has been formed at the Steering Committee level. The Adoption Committee is being co-chaired by Ellen Callahan of Fidelity Investments and Colette Linzmeyer of Deutsche Bank. The committee will work closely with Associate Members on adoption issues as they move forward on implementation of the standard. The committee will also focus on increasing awareness and adoption of the RIXML specification, as well as provide an open forum for both Steering Committee and Associate Members to discuss RIXML issues and share information... RIXML.org is a consortium of buy- and sell-side global market leaders who joined forces to develop an open, global standard for the tagging and delivery of investment research...' See general references in "Research Information Exchange Markup Language (RIXML)."

  • [May 12, 2003] "Ipedo Enhancements Boost Award-Winning XML Information Hub. Content Conversion, Auto-Organization, Universal XQuery, Web Services Views Reduce Cost and Complexity of Information Delivery." - "Ipedo, a leading provider of software products for integrating and delivering information over the Internet, today introduced the latest version of its award-winning XML Information Hub, incorporating several important new product enhancements to facilitate the growing use of XML in Web and Web Services applications. Designed specifically to reduce cost and complexity of information delivery, the Ipedo XML Information Hub 3.3 now features integrated content conversion, rules-based auto-organization, a universal XQuery engine and enhanced XML Views for Web Services... The Ipedo XML Information Hub 3.3 introduces: (1) Content Conversion: Integrated content conversion reduces the work and manual effort required to move Word, PDF and other non-XML documents into XML, where the content can be more widely used in applications. Converted content is automatically validated for quality and indexed for optimal query performance. Includes integration with Liquent Xtent. (2) Auto-Organization: Inbound information can be inspected and organized based on business rules, reducing staff costs and allowing instant availability. XML documents are organized based on schema, content or combinations of content; additional XML tags can be added to simplify subsequent processing; and information sources can be combined and transformed. (3) Universal XQuery Engine: Local and remote content and data sources can be searched and updated using a universal XQuery engine, consolidating the number and complexity of queries while giving access to a broader range of sources. The universal XQuery engine can perform XML search and update, targeted full-text search, federated query for information aggregation and integration, as well as result set format customization -- all compliant with the latest W3C XQuery specification. (4) XML Views for Web Services: Real-time queryable views of Web Services allow applications to integrate and control feeds of information, presented in a common XML format that can be simply combined with other local and remote information sources. (5) Scalability and Availability Enhancements: Support for Linux and Windows clustering improves availability and reliability. New high-speed bulk loading provides faster import and indexing for environments with large volumes of XML data..."

  • [May 06, 2003] "Arbortext 5 Simplifies Multichannel Publishing for Dynamic Content. New Products Reduce Hidden Costs and Inefficiencies, Improve Content Creation and Publishing." - "Arbortext, Inc., a leading global provider of XML-based software for content creation and multichannel publishing, today announced Arbortext 5. Featuring three major new products and many enhancements, Arbortext 5 is designed to help medium and large enterprises eliminate the substantial costs and pain associated with the implementation of content systems to create and share information. Arbortext 5 represents a significant advancement for the business user by putting them in control rather than requiring the specialized expertise of an XML programmer. This new version provides the business user with direct access to XML content across the enterprise, which protects document integrity and enables them to quickly and easily create applications for publishing dynamic content to multiple types of media. Additionally, Arbortext 5 augments the XML editing capabilities of the Enterprise and Professional versions of Microsoft Office 2003... Contributor, Styler and DCA Manager are the three new products that will be available with Arbortext 5. Additionally, Arbortext 5 contains the following enhancements: (1) Enterprise Content Creation: Arbortext 5 provides two new options to connect everyone in the organization to the power, efficiency and flexibility of XML-based information. For subject matter experts who create content, this release supports both Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Contributor, the new browser-based editor from Arbortext. For power authors who not only create content, but also package that content for publishing and distribution, Arbortext's Epic Editor continues to offer greater power and greater ease of use. (2) Stylesheet Development: The new Styler is the first stylesheet development tool aimed at designers, not programmers. This product will dramatically reduce the time it takes to develop and update stylesheets for multichannel publishing because it allows designers to work within a familiar user interface while shielding them from the complexity of the actual stylesheet. (3) Dynamic Elements: This feature gives authors a powerful set of controls for making content dynamic, eliminating the need for highly skilled technical resources. DCA Manager tracks and manages the relationships among dynamic elements to ensure the integrity of the resulting publications. (4) Application Integration: Arbortext 5 improves integration with content management systems with its new WebDAV support as well as supporting programming interfaces through SOAP, which allows for easier interface to other business systems..."

  • [May 05, 2003] "TIBCO Delivers First Solution for Enterprise-Scale Management of Metadata. TIBCO XML Canon Sets the Standard for XML Enterprise Metadata Management." - "TIBCO Software Inc., a leading enabler of Real-Time Business and the leading independent business integration software company in the world, as demonstrated by market share and analyst reports, has announced the first solution that gives customers the ability to manage and leverage their investment in XML enterprise metadata. With the general availability of TIBCO XML Canon 2.4, TIBCO extends its lead in offering the industry's most robust and comprehensive solution for enterprise-scale management of XML-based metadata. TIBCO's solution to manage and organize XML metadata lays the foundation to support industrial-strength business integration. Metadata is methodology to describe a piece of data so it can be used and reused throughout an organization. A metadata description might include the data's name, location, perceived importance, quality or value to the enterprise, and its relationship to other data. The challenge is that each application has its own way of describing this data, so, to accurately catalog the relationships between them becomes a daunting task... TIBCO has solved this problem by using an industry-standard 'canonical' data model that maps each piece of metadata against a central repository or 'canon.' Any application can use or reuse that metadata without worrying about how it will affect other applications, which ultimately translates into huge savings for enterprise customers. 'This technology is at the core of our strategy for enterprise integration,' said Gautham Viswanathan, vice president of product marketing, TIBCO Software Inc. 'Today, enterprise customers have little means to keep track of and control their metadata used by various applications. Business integration requires systems to track changes and identify system interdependencies. TIBCO XML Canon enables users to perform intelligent versioning of metadata across disparate applications.' TIBCO XML Canon brings two key benefits: (1) Metadata Management: With TIBCO XML Canon, business users can access and use the same meta-tagged information in multiple systems, and therefore significantly reduce costs of duplicate data. Until now, enterprise users had no way to share data that was organized using a metadata structure, for example, customer information stored within a CRM-system and an ERP-system. This resulted in substantial duplicate effort and increased inconsistency errors. (2) Logical Analysis: TIBCO XML Canon, built from the ground up based on XML standards, helps users quickly spot data dependencies, conflicts and issues, and perform an impact analysis. Previously, users had no easy way to identify system dependencies, which frequently resulted in delayed rollout schedules. Strict adherence to XML standards reduces costs of deploying and maintaining enterprise systems..."

  • [May 02, 2003] "SeeBeyond Sponsors Formation of Technical Committee for Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL). OASIS Member Supports Merging of Competing Specifications to Accelerate Development of Open Standards for Business Process Integration." - "As an active member of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) open standards consortium, SeeBeyond, the leading global provider of enterprise integration and composite application assembly solutions, today announced its role as a sponsor organization in the advancement of a specification to formally describe interoperable business processes and business interaction protocols for Web services orchestration. SeeBeyond has joined the newly formed OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee, and will continue work on the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) specification -- an XML-based language that allows users to describe business process activities as Web services and define how they can be orchestrated to accomplish specific tasks. Additional participants in the technical committee include such organizations as BEA Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Siebel Systems... 'SeeBeyond works with all of the major standards organizations to support the deployment of open solutions, and we will continue to participate in the further development of this important specification to meet our customers' integration and BPM needs,' said Alan Davies, vice president of Standards for SeeBeyond. 'It is especially beneficial when competing technologies can be merged through an open standards process, and with SeeBeyond's experience in integrating enterprise systems for over a decade, we believe WSBPEL will provide greater interoperability between disparate systems to both accelerate and complement the adoption of business process management solutions'..." See the news story "OASIS Forms Web Services Business Process Execution Language TC (WSBPEL)."

  • [April 30, 2003] "SCO Outlines SCOx Web Services Strategy for Future Growth. Company to Roll Out Technology Framework for Integrated Web Services Applications at SCO Forum." - "The SCO Group (SCO), a leading provider of business software solutions, today announced the company's SCOx strategy, a technology framework that will allow SCO, its resellers and developers to provide the benefits of Web services to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and branch offices. Using industry standards, such as XML and SOAP, SCO and its partners will deliver Web services-enabled applications. SCO's UNIX and Linux operating systems, the foundation of SCOx, will be updated to better enable Web services. The SCOx framework will allow customers to continue implementing SCO solutions in a traditional on premise environment, or access their applications and services online. SCOx will also allow for the integration of any Web services-enabled application including Microsoft .NET and SunOne J2EE applications. 'SCO's strength in the market has been to take complex UNIX and Linux technologies and simplify them for the value added reseller to deliver to the SMB and branch offices,' said Jeff Hunsaker, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, The SCO Group. 'SCOx will allow SMBs and resellers to leverage SCO's UNIX and Linux platforms, while taking advantage of the emerging world of Web services. This will be an attractive solution for our customers who want to worry less about their IT infrastructure and focus more on growing their business.' More than 4000 applications currently run on SCO platforms, including many that are focused on specific vertical markets such as manufacturing, pharmacy, retail and finance. SCOx enables applications to integrate with e-business solutions such as SCObiz -- SCO's technology that provides e-commerce solutions to SMBs and branch offices. This integration allows SCOx customers to share information between traditional applications and e-business services. For example, data can be shared real-time between an onsite inventory management system and an online shopping cart... Developers that are interested in participating in future SCOx webinars from SCO can obtain more information at www.sco.com/scox. SCO plans to showcase many of the first applications available for the SCOx framework at SCO Forum, the company's annual worldwide conference. SCO Forum will take place in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel from August 17-19, 2003..."

  • [April 30, 2003] "Corel Smart Graphics Studio Now Available." - "Corel Corporation today announced the availability of Corel Smart Graphics Studio, a development platform designed to speed and simplify the creation of SVG-based smart graphics. Smart graphics are a new form of enterprise-class, graphically-rich application built using open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to transform XML and legacy data into powerful and compelling intranet and extranet applications. 'Enterprise and government organizations are incorporating XML as a key technology component in their IT development strategies. XML-based technologies that can be used to build dynamic applications that are data-driven and feature rich are drawing the attention of developers within these organizations,' said Rikki Kirzner, Research Director at IDC. 'SVG is an open standard, XML-based language that can be used to create graphics and images to represent information in a more effective and understandable manner. It also provides the ability to dynamically interact with intranet and extranet applications. SVG is a key XML technology being considered by many professional developers.' SVG-based applications are ideal for enterprise and government customers for a variety of purposes including interactive electronic technical publishing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), schematic diagramming, and building Human Machine Interfaces (HMI)... Corel Smart Graphics Studio is composed of four integrated applications: (1) Corel Developer SG: Corel Developer SG includes three components: Design Window enables application developers to design client interfaces while working in a visual development environment; Template Builder lets application developers prepare SVG documents with dynamic objects for data mappings; Data Mapper allows application developers to define the connections between the inputs of an SVG template and the data. (2) Corel Process Builder: Corel Process Builder lets application developers build processes for binding multiple data sources including XML, ODBC, Web Services, and legacy data. The data is then combined with graphics and application logic to create a run-time process. Process Builder allows the developer to visually create server-side processes using drag-and-drop modules. There is no need to learn complicated scripting languages. (3) Corel Server SG: Corel Server SG is a high performance platform for the management and transformation of application data and images. Processes created in the Process Builder are executed on the Server. Corel Server SG is available in both developer and enterprise editions. (4) Corel SVG Viewer: Corel SVG Viewer is a Web browser plug-in that lets application developers view and interact with the SVG graphics as they develop the application interface. It offers: unparalleled rendering capability; compliance with open standards; an ActiveX control for integration with enterprise applications..." Details in the news story "Corel Smart Graphics Studio Uses SVG for Graphical Applications Development." General references in "W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)."

  • [April 29, 2003] "Mobilkom Austria and Weblicon Announce World's First Wireless SyncML Synchronization on the Sun One Platform." - "mobilkom austria and Weblicon today announced the world's first wireless SyncML server in a mobile operator environment on the Sun ONE platform. The Weblicon SyncML server provides over-the-air synchronization of mobilkom austria's popular A1 ORGANIZER with mobile phones from Nokia, SonyEricsson or Siemens. A1 ORGANIZER provides communications and personal information management (PIM) services based on the Sun ONE Messaging Server and Sun ONE Calendar Server. With the new SyncML solution, users can seamlessly synchronize the address book and calendar of their A1 ORGANIZER with the built-in address book and calendar of a mobile phone. In addition, users can synchronize their A1 ORGANIZER with Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express desktop organizer and Palm or PocketPC PDAs resulting in a harmonization of various address books and agendas... mobilkom austria is using the Weblicon SyncML Server to enable wireless synchronization of PIM services with SyncML enabled mobile phones, PCs and PDAs. The SyncML standard plays an important role, because it enables cross-vendor compatibility with any SyncML-enabled mobile phone. The new protocol is quickly becoming the defacto-standard for synchronization and has been adopted by leading mobile phone vendors like Nokia, SonyEricsson and Siemens which have recently integrated SyncML into their products. The addition of the Weblicon SyncML Server links these products with the A1 ORGANIZER that was developed on the scalable, robust Sun ONE Messaging and Calendar server. Sun ONE is an open, integratable product platform enabling the development and delivery of Java Web services... More than 3 million Austrians make their calls with A1. Over 44 percent of all Austrian mobile phone users trust in the market leader in mobile communications. With a share of 69 percent, mobilkom austria is also the market leader in the business-customer segment... SyncML is the open standard that drives data mobility by establishing a common language for communications between devices, applications and networks. The foundation of the SyncML open standard ensures a consistent set of data that is always available on any device or application, any time. Sponsored by Ericsson, IBM, Lotus, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Symbian and others, the SyncML initiative accelerates the development and market success of SyncML technologies... Weblicon Technologies AG is a pure technology provider focused on Personal Information Management (PIM) and Synchronization software for corporate carriers. The Weblicon product development is based entirely on open standards such as Java, J2EE, SyncML and WCAP. Weblicon is an active member of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and has achieved official SyncML certification of its SyncML Server as one of the first companies worldwide in April 2002. The Weblicon SyncML Server has been proven in live operation of leading carriers using the Weblicon SyncML Server in combination with the SunONE Calendar and Messaging Server..." General references in "The SyncML Initiative."

  • [April 29, 2003] "OASIS Members Form Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee." - "Members of the OASIS Open standards consortium will advance a specification to formally describe interoperable business processes and business interaction protocols for Web services orchestration. The new OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee will continue work on the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) specification, an XML-based language that allows users to describe business process activities as Web services and define how they can be connected to accomplish specific tasks. BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and SAP intend to formally submit BPEL4WS version 1.1 under royalty free terms to the new OASIS Technical Committee at its first meeting on 16 May 2003. The committee is open to submissions of other in-scope contributions and will establish liaison relationships with related Web services efforts within OASIS and other standards organizations including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)... 'To solve real-life business problems, companies may need to invoke multiple Web services applications inside their firewalls and across networks to communicate with their customers, partners, and suppliers,' said Diane Jordan of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee. 'BPEL4WS allows you to sequence and coordinate internal and external Web services to accomplish your business tasks. Thus, the result of one Web service can influence which Web service gets called next, and successful completion of multiple Web services in a process can be coordinated.' John Evdemon of Microsoft, co-chair of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee, added, 'The participants in this Technical Committee are committed to building and delivering standards-based interoperable Web services solutions to meet customer requirements. Business processes are potentially very complex and require a long series of time- and data-dependent interactions. However, BPEL4WS allows companies to describe sequential interactions and exception handling in a standard, interoperable way that can be shared across platforms, applications, transports and protocols.' OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee members include Booz Allen Hamilton, BEA Systems, Commerce One, E2open, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, NEC, Novell, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sybase, Tibco Software, Vignette, Waveset, and others. Participation remains open toall organizations and individuals, and OASIS encourages both vendors of business process automation software as well as end users interested in automating and integrating their internal or external business processes to join this effort. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment..." See: (1) the news story of April 16, 2003 "OASIS Forms Web Services Business Process Execution Language TC (WSBPEL)"; (2) general references in "Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS).". The document "Business Process Management and Choreography" references related standards activity.

  • [April 29, 2003] "Intalio Joins IBM, Microsoft to Promote OASIS BPM Standard. Intalio Co-Submits BPEL Spec, is Initial Member on OASIS Technical Committee to Drive Industry Towards BPM Standards Convergence." - "Intalio, Inc., the business process management company, today announced it has joined IBM and Microsoft to co-submit the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) 1.1 specification to OASIS. Intalio will also participate in a new OASIS Technical Committee charged with guiding BPEL to standardization. The announcement reflects Intalio's commitment to driving the business process management (BPM) market toward a common, convergent set of industry standards. 'The most critical issue facing the BPM arena today is the proliferation of competing standards and specifications,' said Ismael Ghalimi, chairman of BPMI.org and co-founder, chief strategy officer of Intalio. 'The overlap is confusing to business users and ultimately detrimental to BPM and the business community. If Web services are to prevail, vendors need to start working towards convergence and consolidate the number of standards in this space. Submitting BPEL to OASIS and the new Technical Committee are moves in the right direction'...' Intalio|n³ provides full support today for the BPEL 1.0 specification and the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) specification. Native support for BPEL 1.1 will be included in the next product release... The tremendous growth within the BPM arena over the past few years has included the introduction of multiple, overlapping specifications that threaten to raise artificial barriers, stall the growth of the BPM market, and hinder the evolution of Web services. Clearly, standards convergence is critical to avoiding these pitfalls, and the formation of the OASIS WSBPEL TC and the submission of BPEL 1.1 is a positive step in this direction. Submitting BPEL to OASIS allows the specification to be reviewed in a public and open forum where multiple vendors can influence the evolution of the specification towards standardization. As a member of the OASIS WSBPEL TC, Intalio will bring its extensive experience and unique knowledge to bear on the standards convergence challenges. The company understands how to address business requirements using Web services and relevant BPM technologies. Intalio also understands the importance of formal models (such as ii-calculus) as a means to validate the correctness and integrity of process definitions. Intalio will participate in any industry effort, including OASIS and W3C efforts, to which it can provide guidance based on its unique expertise in this space. Intalio's participation in OASIS and the OASIS WSBPEL TC reinforce its underlying BPM philosophy, which asserts the interests of the business community are best served by promoting open, royalty-free standards based on the foundation of Web services and support both short and long-lasting transactions that deliver on the promise of the process-managed enterprise. From its inception, Intalio has empowered the business user with solutions that address their most demanding business problems, deliver a standard that meets the stringent requirements of the business community, is supported by a large collective of vendors, and is provided on a royalty free basis..." See: (1) the news story of April 16, 2003 "OASIS Forms Web Services Business Process Execution Language TC (WSBPEL)"; (2) general references in "Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)"; (3) "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)." The document "Business Process Management and Choreography" references related standards activity.

  • [April 29, 2003] "Commerce One Releases Open Source, Royalty Free DocSOAP XML Developer Kit for Document Style SOAP. DocSOAP XML Developer Kit Designed to Increase Use and Adoption of Web Services in Business. Provides Better Performance and More Complete Standards Support Than Other Solutions." - "Commerce One today announced that it has posted an Open Source, royalty free Web services and SOAP XML Development Kit as part of its ongoing drive to foster the adoption of Web services technology for business. The DocSOAP XML Development Kit (DocSOAP XDK) is designed to provide developers and businesses with advanced XML and SOAP tools to take advantage of Web services technology, particularly when used to handle the large business documents associated with e-commerce integration and the development of composite applications. One of the major predicted uses for SOAP is the integration of businesses, systems and partners. This requires efficient handling of potentially large XML and non-XML documents. The DocSOAP XDK is designed specifically to address this type of problem. In initial tests conducted by Commerce One, the DocSOAP XDK processed large-sized XML documents up to twice as fast and using less memory than other available SOAP toolkits. The DocSOAP XDK includes: (1) 'UNIParser,' an XML compiler that parses and validates XML documents and checks for compliance with their XML schema; (2) 'Xgen,' an XML Java bean generator that generates Java beans to make it easier for Java programmers to manipulate XML documents without understanding XML; (3) 'Document Framework APIs' that facilitate the efficient manipulation of XML documents through DOM, SAX and Bean interfaces. Efficient support for non-XML documents is also provided; (4) 'DocSOAP Framework APIs' that can generate and process SOAP messages that conform to SOAP versions 1.1 and 1.2, SOAP with Attachments and DIME. To optimize developer flexibility and choice, the UNIParser XML parser and the Xgen bean generator provide more complete support for XML schema than other Java schema compilers, allowing developers to more fully exploit the features of XML schema..."

  • [April 29, 2003] "Bluestream Releases XStreamDB 3.0 Native XML Database. Major Upgrade Adds Features for Collaborative Content Management." - "Bluestream, a leading provider of XML data solutions for content management and e-business integration, releases a major upgrade to its native XML database. Available immediately, XStreamDB Version 3.0 adds features designed to help developers and integrators deploy solutions for collaborative content management with XML and binary data. XStreamDB 3.0's new resource manager enables integration with authoring and publishing software for complete lightweight content management solutions for publishing to Web or print. Supported XML editors include Corel XMetaL and Altova XMLSpy. Improvements to searching include: faster full-text search and indexing, new LIKE wildcard matching, found word marking, phrase search, and proximity search. Other new features are: WebDAV, resource URIs, checkout, event triggers, automated backup, Server Console, binary data support with MIME type, and derivation by extension and attribute groups for schemas. 'We're very excited to offer our XML database with capabilities often found only in much higher-priced enterprise systems,' says Jim Tivy, Bluestream president. 'Armed with XQuery, full text search, and resources, application developers will be able to deliver amazing value to customers at a much-reduced cost.' XStreamDB 3.0 is a cross-platform XML database server built on Java technology, accessed using a Java API, WebDAV, or XstreamDB Explorer. It supports XQuery with update, full-text search, resources, and XML schemas with automatic validation. XstreamDB 3.0 is ACID compliant, has full transaction model capabilities, and MD5 authentication. Requirements: XstreamDB 3.0 pure Java technology-based server supports Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris. Minimum 64MB RAM, under 10MB disk (not including data). J2EE compliant Web application server (Apache Tomcat included) required for WebDAV and resource URIs..."

  • [April 28, 2003] "OASIS Guides Development of Global Electronic Procurement Standardization." - "The OASIS interoperability consortium today announced that it is providing a forum for government agencies, organizations and companies to guide the coordinated development of global e-procurement standards. The OASIS Electronic Procurement Standardization (EPS) Technical Committee will work to analyze requirements for electronic procurement processes, identify gaps, and recommend new standards as needed. 'Our first priority will be to develop a comprehensive framework for electronic procurement standards, relating existing specifications to those in development. It is vital that we reach consensus on how these standards fit together,' noted Terri Tracey of the Institute for Supply Management, chair of the OASIS EPS Technical Committee. 'Once we establish our framework and priorities, we will create technical committees within OASIS to advance the necessary standards and implementation processes.' To facilitate the adoption of its work, the OASIS EPS Technical Committee has secured broad global representation from the entire supply chain. Participants include the Institute for Supply Management, Information Society Standardization System of the European Standards Committee (CEN/ISSS), US National Institute for Governmental Purchasing (NIGP), US National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO), RosettaNet, SeeBeyond, and others. 'Input from government and industry on the direction of the OASIS EPS activity is essential to ensure credible, effective, and neutral specifications,' said Patrick Gannon, OASIS president and CEO. 'OASIS is pleased to provide a common ground where e-procurement stakeholders of every type can collaborate amongst themselves and with related efforts, such as the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) and the OASIS e-Government Technical Committees.' 'CEN/ISSS will participate to ensure the maximum synergies between the emerging global consensus and regional requirements in Europe,' said John Ketchell, CEN/ISSS director. 'CEN/ISSS plans to start an e-procurement project to complement European legislative initiatives to develop and harmonize public e-procurement across EU member states by analyzing standards requirements. Our results will be contributed to the OASIS EPS Technical Committee'..." See: (1) the news story of 2003-04-04: "OASIS Forms Electronic Procurement Standardization Technical Committee"; (2) general references in "Electronic Procurement Standardization."

  • [April 28, 2003] "BEA and Siebel Systems Expand Alliance to Deliver Integration Solutions for Universal Application Network. Customers Speed Time to Value and Minimize Long-Term Cost of Ownership for Application Integration With Emerging Integration and Process Standards." - "BEA Systems, Inc., the world's leading application infrastructure software company, and Siebel Systems, Inc., a leading provider of multichannel eBusiness applications software, today announced an expansion of their strategic alliance agreement to deliver integration solutions through joint development, sales and marketing initiatives. Designed to help customers speed the time to value and minimize the long-term cost of ownership for business process integration projects, Siebel Systems and BEA are collaborating around emerging integration and process standards. Expanding on their successful alliance, Siebel Systems has named BEA a Strategic Software and Universal Application Network (UAN) Partner in the Siebel Alliance Program and designated BEA WebLogic Integration as one of its strategic integration solutions for UAN, a standards-based approach to multiapplication integration based on best-practice business processes. BEA plans to offer full out-of-the-box support for UAN in upcoming versions of BEA WebLogic Integration and BEA WebLogic Platform. The companies are committing additional resources as a part of their alliance, which include dedicated engineers, technical architects, product managers, and alliance managers; an on-site interoperability testing laboratory; joint development; and over $1 million in marketing to deliver integration solutions. BEA and Siebel Systems are collaborating around the emerging integration and process standards, namely Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), XML Schema, XML Query Language (XQuery), Extensible Stylesheet Transformation (XSLT) and the J2EE Connector Architecture, within BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 and UAN. In addition, BEA WebLogic Workshop will be designed to provide out-of-the-box support for integration with Siebel Application Service Interfaces (ASI) and Web Services. These solutions can offer customers quicker and less expensive ways to build and deploy integrated Web Services applications... The agreement between these two companies is further strengthened by support from such industry leaders as Accenture and HP, who will be working with BEA and Siebel Systems to deliver the BEA WebLogic Integration-UAN solution. BEA has designated HP hardware as the preferred hardware platform for the BEA WebLogic Integration-UAN solution. Accenture, HP, Siebel Systems and BEA are aligned on UAN activity in sales accounts today, and they will further strengthen the relationship designating Accenture and HP as BEA's strategic global systems integrators for BEA WebLogic Integration implementations on UAN..."

  • [April 23, 2003] "WS-I Announces Availability of Testing Tools. Pre-Release Now Available for Public Comment." - "The Web Services Interoperability Organization ('WS-I') today announced the availability of two testing tools for interoperability assessment with the WS-I Basic Profile. Pre-release versions of the Web Service Communication Monitor and the Web Service Profile Analyzer are now available. The tools, with implementations in both C# and Java, can be used on any Web services platform. The testing tools and their supporting documentation and processes were developed by the WS-I Test Tools Working Group. 'The tools have been designed in such a way to allow for expansion and extension, so they can accommodate the Basic Profile as well as future profiles,' said Jacques Durand, chair of the Test Tools Working Group, and director, Industry Relations at Fujitsu Software Corporation. 'They can be configured to specifically address whichever profile definition they need to verify. Testing results will help developers ensure that their Web services meet the WS-I interoperability guidelines.' The Web Service Communication Monitor ('Monitor') captures messages exchanged between Web services and the software that invokes them and stores the messages for later analysis. Today's pre-release version captures HTTP-based SOAP messages. The Web Service Profile Analyzer ('Analyzer') evaluates messages captured by Monitor, and also validates the description and registration artifacts of the Web service. This includes the WSDL document(s) that describes the Web service, and the XML schema files that describe the data types used in the WSDL service definition and the UDDI registration entries. The output from Analyzer is a report that indicates whether or not a Web service meets the interoperability guidelines of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0. The report provides details on the specific deviations and failures, so that users know which requirements of the WS-I Basic Profile were not met..." Note: Versions of the tool were available for C# and Java. See general references in "Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)."

  • [April 22, 2003] "OGC Prototyping US Government's Open Platform 'GeoSpatial One-Stop Portal'." - "The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) announced today that work on the Geospatial One Stop Portal architecture and prototype is well underway by OGC member companies. As of this date, the following companies are actively participating or have agreed to provide technology: Compusult, CubeWerx, Galdos Systems, SAIC, Autodesk, Intergraph, PCI Geomatics, Sapient Technology, Questerra, Oracle and Northrop Grumman Information Technology, TASC. Twenty companies offered proposals in response to a December, 2002 Request for Quotations (RFQ)/Call for Participation (CFP) in the OGC Geospatial One-Stop Portal Initiative (GOS-PI). The goal of the GOS-PI is to build a standards-based architecture and prototype for a portal that will provide geospatial information discovery, access, and mapping in the US. The portal implementation will be a "prototype" in the literal sense of a first working example on which future instances will be based. OGC is partnering with the Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) project on this work. Led by the Department of the Interior, GOS is one of 24 US Office of Management and Budget E-Government initiatives to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service throughout all layers of government. Geospatial One-Stop builds upon National Spatial Data Infrastructure objectives to enhance interoperability among geographic components of government activities. More information about Geospatial One-Stop is available at http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/... GOS-PI is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that rapidly delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative's sponsoring organizations... 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..." See: (1) OGC Interoperability Program; (2) general references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [April 22, 2003] "Software AG's Natural Mainframe Development Platform Now Supports XML. XML Document Creation and Processing Capability in Natural Version 4 Helps Extend Powerful Mainframe Applications Into the Future." - "Software AG, Inc., a pioneer in XML solutions, today announced that version 4 of its Natural 4GL development platform for mainframes now supports the creation and processing of Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents. Support for XML in Natural Version 4 allows developers to bring mainframe applications into the future by extending them directly to the Internet, the Web and Web services. "Given the reality of extraordinarily tight IT budgets, one of our most important objectives is to help organizations extend and expand the value they are receiving from their current infrastructure," said Joe Gentry, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Software AG, Inc. "The ability of Natural Version 4 to process XML documents immediately- brings this reliable and widely-used development platform into the realm of many new possibilities." In addition to supporting XML, Natural Version 4 provides several other important new capabilities, including improved overall application performance, accelerated and simplified access to Software AG's Adabas by other databases, the ability to develop applications for a UNIX production environment using a Windows desktop, and expanded interoperability between Natural for IBM's OS/390 or z/OS and Natural for Linux... Natural Version 4 for OS/390 or z/OS can be extended with the current version 5 (or the forthcoming version 6) of Natural for Linux on the same machine. This two-tier architecture allows the stability and performance of Natural for OS/390 or z/OS to complement the enhanced browser support, Web access and Tamino XML Server query capabilities of Natural for Linux... Runtime performance is significantly enhanced through Natural Version 4's improved object-code-handling techniques, redesigned execution algorithms, widened access paths, increased buffer sizes, use of 64-Bit technology (z/OS only) and a completely new version of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) server..."

  • [April 21, 2003] "OGC Releases Request for Comment for Proposed Location Services Specification." - "The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) has released the proposed OpenGIS Location Services (OpenLS) Implementation Specification for public comment as a Request for Comment (RFC). The RFC defines XML for Location Services, which consists of interfaces for a variety of specific services. Also included in the RFC is a separate document detailing the interface for the Navigation Service Extension. The documentation is available online and comments are invited from any interested parties for 30 days, until May 19, 2003. The proposed OpenLS specification is the product of the OpenLS 1 testbed initiatives held between October 2001 and October 2002. The initiatives aimed to define and build the 'core' location application services and information framework necessary for interoperable use of mobile devices, services and location-related data. The proposed OpenLS specification includes details of several interfaces including those for a Directory Service (a Yellow Pages used to 'find the nearest' or a specific product or service), Gateway Service (fetches the position of a mobile device from the network), Geocoder Service (converts a location, such as a street address to a point with latitude/longitude), Presentation (Map Portrayal) Service (draws a map), Reverse Geocoder Service (transforms a given position into a description of a feature location, such as a street address), and a Route Service (creates a travel route). The Navigation Service Extension, an enhanced version of the Route Service is part of the RFC, but contained in a separate document. This complex service was separated from the core since it may not be needed for all implementations. The OpenLS specification submission team includes Autodesk (USA), ESRI (USA), Image Matters (USA), Intergraph IntelliWhere (Australia), MapInfo (USA) and Webraska (France)..." See details and references in the news story "OGC Releases OpenGIS Location Services (OpenLS) Implementation Specification." See general references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [April 15, 2003] "Liberty Alliance Releases New Specifications, Privacy and Security. Guidelines to Drive Development of Identity-Based Web Services. Liberty Alliance Announces New Management Board Representatives Ericsson, Fidelity Investments, Novell and VeriSign, Inc. as Consortium Gains Momentum." - "The Liberty Alliance, a global consortium formed to develop open standards for federated network identity, today unveiled drafts of its highly anticipated Phase 2 specifications -- an important step in creating a commonly accepted and more trusted way of building and managing identity-based Web services. Drafts of security and privacy implementation guidelines as well as a "Privacy and Security Best Practices" document, were also introduced today with the Phase 2 draft specifications. These documents highlight global privacy laws and fair information practices, as well as provide implementation guidance for organizations using the Liberty Alliance specifications to build identity-based services. The Phase 2 draft specifications and related Privacy and Security documents are immediately available for public review and comment. The Liberty Alliance expects to incorporate comments and finalize the specifications in Q3 2003..." See details in the news story: "Liberty Alliance Releases Phase 2 Specifications for Federated Network Identity."

  • [April 14, 2003] "Liberty Alliance Contributes Phase 1 Network Identity Specifications to OASIS for Consideration in SAML 2.0." - "The Liberty Alliance Project and OASIS today announced that the Liberty Alliance has contributed its version 1.1 federated network identity specifications to OASIS. The OASIS Security Services Technical Committee requested Liberty's contribution to permit possible incorporation of Liberty version 1.1 specification features in future versions of the OASIS Open Standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). SAML, an XML-based security framework for authentication and authorization in Web services, serves as a key underpinning to the Liberty Alliance federated network identity architecture. In keeping with Liberty Alliance's philosophy to leverage existing open standards whenever possible and build new functionality only if needed, the Alliance incorporated SAML into its Phase 1 specifications introduced in 2002. The Liberty Alliance chose to extend SAML in version 1.1 to include additional security enhancements vital to identity management, such as opt-in account linking, simple session management and global log-out capabilities. For the benefit of SAML and Liberty implementers and the industry as a whole, Liberty Alliance is providing those extensions back to OASIS for future versions of SAML... 'Collaboration between standards groups enables the Web services industry to move forward at a pace that meets the needs of the market,' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'As SAML evolves, it makes sense to leverage the work Liberty Alliance has already done in this area. Our mutual goal is to decrease time-to-market for new technology, enhance interoperability between products and drive broader adoption of open standards.' 'We will continue to work closely with OASIS as the Liberty Alliance federated identity architecture evolves,' said Michael Barrett, president of the Liberty Alliance Management Board and vice president for Internet strategy at American Express. 'The Alliance will continue to develop Liberty's Identity Federation Framework within the consortium, and plans to collaborate closely with OASIS on future enhancements'..." Related references in: (1) "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization"; (2) "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)."

  • [April 14, 2003] "Business Layers and Netegrity Partner on Industry's First Demonstration of SPML at RSA Conference. Vendors Present First XML Specification to Leverage Web Services for Secure Federated Resource Allocation." - "Business Layers, the eProvisioning Company and Netegrity, Inc., a leading provider of identity and access management solutions, will today demonstrate the industry's first XML-based solution for identity management at the RSA User Conference in San Francisco, Calif. As a pioneer of industry standards, Business Layers is responsible for submitting the original provisioning specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information (OASIS). Business Layers and Netegrity are committed to driving the development of SPML to provide the enterprise with the first XML specification designed to leverage the reuse of Web services to achieve secure, federated user resource allocation to maximize existing IT resources, reduce administrative costs and enhance security. Business Layers and Netegrity will demonstrate the industry's first identity management solution using the current SPML specification, with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML), which will allow companies to securely leverage Web services to automate, centralize and manage the process of provisioning user access to internal and external corporate systems and data. Led by Business Layers' Gavenraj Sodhi and Netegrity's Amit Jasuja, the presentation will illustrate how SPML allows for businesses, via a common language, to more securely manage the identity lifecycle of a user including the dynamic allocation of their associated resources, across a trusted boundary. 'One of the biggest obstacles impeding the rapid adoption of Web services technologies is the enterprise's concern about the security holes that exist when sharing sensitive information in an open IT environment,' said Pete Lindstrom, Research Director of Spire Security. 'Business Layers and Netegrity are addressing this issue head-on with an interoperable SPML/SAML environment, offering users an open standard in which businesses can leverage Web services to achieve secure, federated resource provisioning with their trusted business partners.' Today's SPML demonstration will address the challenges associated with complex resource provisioning for inter-organizational business transactions. As businesses move towards service-oriented architectures, internal and external users require secure access to applications and corporate systems that often contain sensitive data. To illustrate SPML in this setting, Netegrity and Business Layers will provide real-world examples of Web services-enabled identity management and provisioning scenarios. For example, a large manufacturing company may work with several suppliers and business partners to provide a complete set of product lines. To help ensure that its supply chain is managed most effectively, the manufacturer must grant each set of users -employees, customers and partners- the appropriate access to information and applications. Using SPML, the manufacturer is able to automatically register, authenticate, and accommodate the provisioned information requests in a secure environment to protect each of these business relationships. This standards-based offering utilizes the SPML specification in conjunction with Web services technologies to create a secure, dynamic workflow..." See "XML-Based Provisioning Services."

  • [April 14, 2003] "OASIS Members Collaborate to Address Security Vulnerabilities for Web Services and Web Applications." - "Members of the OASIS interoperability consortium announced plans to define a standard method of exchanging information concerning security vulnerabilities within Web services and Web applications. The new OASIS Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) Technical Committee will address the challenge of how businesses manage ongoing application security risk on a day-to-day basis. 'Although there are several products available that help companies discover application vulnerabilities, block application-layer attacks, repair vulnerable web sites, distribute patches and manage security events, there is currently no universal way for these products to communicate with one another, making pragmatic risk management a highly manual, often complex process,' explained Kevin Heineman of SPI Dynamics, co-chair of the OASIS AVDL Technical Committee. 'The goal of AVDL is to enable companies to manage and simplify the full application security lifecycle by providing a uniform way to communicate application security vulnerabilities, policies and events using XML.' 'With the growing adoption of Web-based technologies, applications have become far more dynamic, often changing daily, or even hourly,' said Jan Bialkowski of NetContinuum, co-chair of the OASIS AVDL Technical Committee. 'Keeping pace with these rapidly changing threats will increasingly require close cooperation between various security components. The formation of this technical committee will give vendors an optimal forum to synchronize their products across the entire application security lifecycle.' Initial members of the OASIS AVDL Technical Committee include Booz Allen Hamilton, NetContinuum, Reed Elsevier, Sanctum, SPI Dynamics, and others. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment. The committee will hold its first meeting on 15-May-2003. See: (1) OASIS TC to Standardize Classification of Application Vulnerabilities; (2) the news story "OASIS Forms TC for Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL)"; (3) AVDL TC Proposal; (4) "Application Security" (general reference document).

  • [April 14, 2003] "Sonic Software Releases Sonic ESB 5.0. Newest Release of Industry's First Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Adds High Availability, Scalability and Security Capabilities, Award-winning Development Tools." - "Sonic Software today announced the availability of Sonic ESB 5.0 (formerly SonicXQ), the foundation of Sonic's enterprise integration product line: the Sonic Business Integration Suite. Sonic ESB provides a distributed, standards-based, cost-effective, easily managed infrastructure that reliably integrates applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise using Web services and the J2EE Connector Architecture. Sonic's standards-based approach to distributed integration is more flexible and cost-effective than integration brokers or application servers. Leveraging the proven enterprise-grade communications and management infrastructure of SonicMQ, the industry's most scalable enterprise message server, Sonic ESB 5.0 includes new capabilities that streamline and simplify the configuration, deployment, instrumentation and management of distributed, standards-based integration projects. Sonic ESB 5.0 includes an enhanced management framework that allows companies to configure and monitor large integration networks from a single dashboard. This release also extends Sonic's leadership in scalability and availability for mission critical environments, and includes a pluggable security framework to ensure that the infrastructure honors existing corporate security policies. Sonic ESB 5.0 also includes Sonic Stylus Studio, the award-winning XML development environment that delivers new levels of developer productivity to integration projects... Enhancements in Sonic ESB 5.0 include: (1) Enhanced Distributed Management Framework: A Java Management Extensions (JMX)-based management infrastructure makes configuration, deployment, monitoring and diagnosis of thousands of distributed services possible. All of these management functions can be performed from a unified management dashboard. (2) High Availability & Scalability: Sonic ESB provides transparent access to redundant communication servers to enable the high-availability required by mission critical deployments. (3) Pluggable Security: A pluggable security framework provides the ability to integrate across the multiple security domains that co-exist within an enterprise, or between business partners. This ensures that connected information and applications honor established security policies. (4) Integrated Development Tools: Sonic ESB is integrated with Sonic Stylus Studio, an award-winning XML development tool that includes a visual XSLT transformation mapper and debugger and an XQuery expression builder, as well as XML document and schema editors. With this new tool bundle, developer productivity increases to rapidly accelerate time-to-deployment for these projects..."

  • [April 14, 2003] "Leading Application Security Vendors Propose New XML-Based Interoperability Standard Through OASIS. Application Vulnerability Description Language Will Enable Easy Communication Between Products That Find, Block, Fix, and Report Application Security Vulnerabilities." - "Application security vendors Citadel Security Software, Inc., GuardedNet, NetContinuum, SPI Dynamics and Teros today announced the proposal of a new XML standard to define, categorize and classify application vulnerabilities in a standardized fashion that can be understood and used by a variety of security products throughout the application security lifecycle. The new Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL), to be managed through the OASIS consortium, will enable customers to more easily manage and reduce security risk in constantly changing web application environments... AVDL will address the business problem of how companies manage ongoing application security risk on a day-to-day basis. With the wide adoption of web-based technologies, applications have become far more dynamic, often changing daily, or even hourly. Keeping up with these changes can be an extraordinary challenge for security administrators. To address this problem, companies have begun deploying best-of-breed security products to identify application vulnerabilities, block application-layer attacks, repair identified vulnerabilities, distribute patches and manage security events. Unfortunately, there is currently no standard way for these products to communicate with each other, making the overall security management process far too manual and time-consuming... By establishing a standard XML format for describing application vulnerabilities, AVDL would give security administrators far more freedom in managing application security risk. Application vulnerability assessment tools, for example, could create an AVDL file for a particular application that could be read by an attack prevention product to recommend the optimal attack prevention policy for that specific application. Remediation products could use AVDL files to determine the best course of action for correcting problems, while reporting tools could use AVDL to correlate event logs with areas of known vulnerability. OASIS has established a Technical Committee to develop the standard. The AVDL Technical Committee will focus on defining a schema that enables easier communication and coordination between any of the various security entities that address application security, including, but not limited to: application vulnerability assessment tools, application security gateways, reporting tools, correlation systems, and remediation tools. All OASIS members interested in solving application security problems are welcome to join... Additional information on AVDL is available at http://www.avdl.org..." See details in: (1) the news story "OASIS Forms TC for Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL)"; (2) AVDL TC Proposal; (3) "Application Security" (general reference document).

  • [April 09, 2003] "XyEnterprise Announces Release of XML Professional Publisher 7.2." - "XyEnterprise, the leading developer of XML content management and enterprise publishing software, announced today that it has released XML Professional Publisher Version 7.2. This latest release of XyEnterprise's powerful publishing software contains new features designed to enhance the creation, deployment, and support of XML publishing environments. Customers as diverse as R.R. Bowker, Motor Information Group, Letterpart Ltd (U.K.), Portalyx (Netherlands), Grafikon (Belgium), Reed Technology and Information Services Inc. (RTIS), a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier Group plc, the Boeing Company, and i2 Technologies, Inc. have already implemented this new release and are utilizing its enhanced feature set. XML Professional Publisher (XPP) is the proven standards-based composition, transformation and rendering software for complex and automated publishing in the technical documentation, commercial, legal, journal, and financial publishing markets. Leading corporations use XPP to process and transform XML and other structured content into high-quality PDF and print output. This latest release extends programmatic access to XPP's publishing functions by integrating an adapter for the Perl programming language. This access enables customers to use industry standard Perl scripts and programs to reduce the cost of systems deployment and enhance the integration of the XPP publishing engine with content management systems, databases, and other sources of enterprise content. XPP 7.2 also includes a new MathML module for the import, use, and publishing of MathML structure and content, further enhancing XPP's capabilities to add value to XML standards-based publishing workflows. This functionality is particularly important for XPP's wide variety of users in the STM (Scientific, Technical, and Medical) Journals market, the textbook publishing market, and e-Leaning and testing organizations. Portalyx, a Netherlands-based reseller and integrator of XML Professional Publisher, uses XPP 7.2 to support a wide range of publishing environments. Recently, Portalyx employed XPP 7.2 to migrate a major customer to a MathML environment and simplify text processing through the new Perl program access. Ellyn Larson, CEO of Portalyx, said: 'XPP 7.2 builds on the core strengths of XPP's high speed composition engine, extending its XML support and integration flexibility. We find it a powerful and agile platform for producing high-quality PDF output fast and reliably, meeting the toughest formatting challenges for our broad range of international customers'..."

  • [April 8, 2003] "Sun Continues Web Services Leadership Push With New Products and Technologies For Java Technology-Based Web Services. New Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent Part of Goal to Bring Best Security Features in the Industry to Sun's Network Computing Systems." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the availability of the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent, a new Java technology-based integration product that enables customers to securely and reliably exchange XML, EDI or any other electronic documents between trading partners over the Internet. The availability of this product, combined with several recent additions to the overall Sun ONE Java Web Services offering, demonstrates that Sun is addressing the cost, complexity, risk and integration challenges faced by enterprise developers and customers as they adopt Web services technology. The Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent is provided as an extension to the Sun ONE Integration Server B2B Edition . A business-to-business solution built on Internet and Web service standards such as XML, ebXML and SOAP with attachments, the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent delivers secure, reliable messaging with lower cost and less complexity than traditional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solutions using Value Added Networks (VANs) for message transport. For example, customers can save up to $75,000 in monthly charges using the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent and the Sun ONE Integration Server B2B Edition, thereby eliminating the need for a VAN. The Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent is available now at a price of $2,000 per host connection. 'The availability of the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent is an important step in Sun's larger strategy to deliver the most complete, integrated and feature-rich set of Java Web Services products in the industry,' said Mark Bauhaus, vice president, Java Web Services for Sun Microsystems... The availability of the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent, a peer-to-peer technology, featuring SSL security support and digital signatures; message reliability through persistence and non-repudiation; and a browser based user interface. Combined with the Sun ONE Integration Server B2B Edition, Sun is also providing Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) support, a key retail industry protocol that leading retail vendors require small and medium-sized suppliers to support..." See also: "Sun Secure Trading Agent Technology Preview Supports ebXML MS and CPA."

  • [April 8, 2003] "Microsoft and BearingPoint Team to Launch Innovative Electronic Filing Solution to State Courts Nationwide. Solution Uses Microsoft .NET Software to Ensure Efficient Exchange of Information Among Attorneys and State Courts." - "BearingPoint, Inc., one of the world's largest business consulting and systems integration firms, and Microsoft Corp. today introduced an innovative electronic filing solution to state courts nationwide. 'eFiling for Courts powered by BearingPoint and Microsoft' takes advantage of the companies' leadership positions in government consulting services and Web services technologies to streamline the process for filing and managing court documents, enabling courts and attorneys to increase efficiencies and improve customer service... BearingPoint will offer the solution as a managed service, allowing a state court to participate without incurring the cost of acquiring, building, and operating an e-filing system of its own and allowing smaller county courts to easily adopt the solution. The company also plans to offer a revenue sharing option to help states meet the demand for additional online services while increasing their revenue. BearingPoint and Microsoft will jointly market and sell the eFiling solution initially to state and local governments. 'Courts and law firms are demanding sophisticated but easy-to-use electronic filing systems to handle a variety of scenarios -- from complex litigation to simple cases,' said Frank Giebutowski, General Manager for Microsoft's state and local government business. 'By collaborating with BearingPoint we have developed a comprehensive system built on Microsoft .NET that can adapt to the needs of the entire filing community and courts everywhere.' Using the LegalXML standard schema and Web services standards like Simple Object Access Protocol. (SOAP), eFiling for Courts powered by BearingPoint and Microsoft integrates easily with existing front-end and back-end technology systems and applications, making it straightforward for state courts to adopt the solution and exchange data with attorneys throughout the state, regardless of the systems they are using. Attorneys using e-filing can file documents and make payments to multiple courts through one standard interface accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, enabling them to improve operations and reduce courier and personnel costs. eFiling for Courts powered by BearingPoint and Microsoft is based on Microsoft technologies, including Windows Server 2000, BizTalk Server, SQL Server database, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, and Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft's rapid application development tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services..." See LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC

  • [April 8, 2003] "OpenLink Software Unleashes Virtuoso 3.0. Virtual Database Integrates Disparate SQL, XML, and Web Services Data Sources." - "OpenLink Software, Inc., a leading provider of universal data access and enterprise information integration middleware, announces the commercial release of Virtuoso 3.0 -- the latest edition of its cross platform Virtual Database for SQL, XML, and Web Services. The new release enables transparent and concurrent access in real-time to heterogeneous data sources that include ODBC/JDBC/OLE DB/.NET-accessible databases, XML documents, and data-set oriented Web Services. Virtuoso provides access to heterogeneous data sources through industry standard data access interfaces such as XML, XQuery, XPath, SQL, ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, and ADO.NET. It also integrates transparently with runtime environments for distributed computing such as Microsoft .NET, Mono, and J2EE, enabling the creation and hosting of WSDL-compliant XML Web Services, Stored Procedures, Functions, Triggers, and User Defined Types written in Java or any .NET bound language. Virtuoso 3.0 is now commercially available for the following platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX. 'Virtuoso 3.0 is aimed squarely at the biggest corporate IS infrastructure challenge of the day - integration of heterogeneous islands of data, and disparate application logic,' said Kingsley Idehen, President & CEO of OpenLink Software. 'Virtuoso is the only product available today that guarantees alleviation of systems integration challenges without compromising broader IS infrastructure choices such at the application development environment, operating system, or back-end database engine(s). Once again, an OpenLink product release underscores our continued leadership in the area of standards-compliant, cross-platform middleware,' he added. Virtuoso 3.0 is now available for download from OpenLink's web site..."

  • [April 07, 2003] "AIIM International Announces XML Standards Initiative for the Exchange of Document Images and Related Metadata. New Draft Standard Enables XML Users to Leverage Existing Software Systems and Expertise to Exchange Images of Documents, Related Indices, and Metadata." - "AIIM International, the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) industry association, today announced the ballot results on a new standard using Extensible Markup Language (XML) tags to facilitate the exchange of information managed by document management technologies -- this includes the associated metadata defining and/or describing the information to be shared. This standard focuses specifically on document image files and may result in the development of an International Standard within ISO TC 171/SC2/WG2. Scanned bitmap images of paper documents have become a common method of storing and sharing information in the business and private sector. The increasing growth of the Internet and sharing of information demands an efficient standardized method for exchanging images and the metadata associated with them. This standard will establish a method for not only enabling the sharing of images, but also the critical index and other values needed to store, retrieve, and distribute them. 'We view this standard as an opportunity to provide the industry with much needed direction toward the standardization of XML for use in exchanging images and the critical data associated with them,' said John Mancini, president, AIIM International. 'We look forward to extending the industry's knowledge for leveraging image data, as it relates to ECM.' XML is rapidly growing in use as a method of sharing metadata with text files, but does not currently support binary data, such as document images. This standard will identify ways to accomplish the exchange of images using XML data structures to enable the growing body of XML users to leverage existing software systems. The goal of the standard is to improve document image exchange and facilitate the sharing of indices and other data without needing to convert them from other non-standard formats..." See other details in the news story "AIIM Publishes Draft XML Standard for Interchange of Document Images and Related Metadata."

  • [April 07, 2003] "Adobe Brings Together XML with the Power and Ubiquity of PDF. New XML Architecture Enables Intelligent Documents to Extend the Value of Enterprise Systems." - "Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today announced a comprehensive XML architecture for document creation, collaboration, and process management across the enterprise. [See separate announcement, 'Adobe Delivers Document Integration Solutions for the Extended Enterprise.] The new XML architecture provides an open framework for extending the value of business processes inside and outside the firewall. Now, businesses can bring people and processes together via XML, while retaining the inherent presentation, security, and interactivity of documents in the Portable Document Format (PDF). Adobe's XML architecture supports end-to-end document processes. Key components include intelligent forms, process automation, data integration, security and publishing for archiving and printing. The architecture will be supported across Adobe's client and server solutions and will integrate Adobe PDF. It will take full advantage of XML for integration and bring continuity to business processes by presenting XML data in PDF for reliably sharing, viewing and interacting through Acrobat 6.0 software or Adobe Reader. 'PDF is a recognized standard for universal access to digital information, and XML provides a powerful mechanism for interchanging data between systems,' said Shantanu Narayen, executive vice president, Worldwide Products, Adobe. 'By combining these standards, Adobe can provide a set of document integration solutions that promise to redefine how people in large enterprises, government agencies, and financial institutions work with data and documents.' Now, companies can create intelligent and interactive documents that include embedded calculations and business logic to help ensure accurate data collection both on and offline. Once the data has been captured, the process can be managed with the Adobe Workflow Server or other core systems. The architecture also enables dynamic rendering of PDF documents from XML for publishing or archiving with XMP meta data for search and retrieval. XML has become a critical standard within the enterprise and government agencies because of its ability to provide data utilization for Web services, reporting and interoperability with enterprise systems. With more than half-a-billion copies of the Adobe Reader distributed to date, PDF is already a universal standard for document-based communications. Now, companies that take advantage of Adobe's XML architecture can easily enable people to participate in business processes..." See details in the news story "Adobe Announces XML Architecture for Document Creation, Collaboration, and Process Management."

  • [April 02, 2003] "Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) Releases Content Protection Specification for Peer Review. Finalization Expected in June 2003." - "The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA), a global alliance of nearly 40 industry leaders in content management, distribution infrastructure, and streaming media, today announced that it is releasing for peer review a new content protection specification which will serve as the technical foundation for the secure delivery of streaming and download media content. Finalization of the new content protection specification is expected in June following a two-month period of peer review. The specification provides a single, end-to-end encryption scheme for streaming media and file downloading that can easily integrate with different key and rights management solutions and licensed content protection devices. The specification builds upon the ISMA's v1.0 specification released in 2001, which defines an end-to-end, implementation agreement for streaming ISO-compliant MPEG-4 video and audio over Internet Protocol networks... 'ISMA's goal is to bring the same level of ubiquity and interoperability to streaming that such broadly used technologies as HTML and HTTP have done for the World Wide Web. ISMA's new specification is to secure media delivery what secure sockets layer (SSL) and HTTPS are to secure web communication.' Jacobs noted that the new specification is based upon open standards and technology, including the National Institute of Standards & Technology's (NIST) 128-bit AES encryption standard, which has been embraced by the consumer electronic and wireless communities. As such, Jacobs said that the ISMA's content protection solution is 'unencumbered by any additional royalty fees and intellectual property concerns.' The specification is also compatible with established Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specifications... Key features of the ISMA's new specification include end-to-end encryption for the secure delivery of streaming and download content at the content level. This allows media content to stay encrypted throughout video delivery over IP networks and remain encrypted on player devices. The content protection scheme has been designed for easy integration with many different types of rights and key management systems providing content owners with maximum flexibility to manage business and technology decisions. 'In developing this specification, we spent a significant amount of time gathering feedback from major content owners,' Jacobs said. 'As a result, our specification does not bind them to utilize specific rights and key management systems or pre-selected solution vendors. This allows content owners to retain control over critical business processes and related decisions.' Technical members of the security or content protection community who are interested in contributing to the peer review of ISMA's draft content protection specification can apply by visiting the ISMA web site, or by contacting ISMA Executive Director, Laura Nugent..."

  • [April 01, 2003] "WS-I Charters Basic Security Profile Working Group. Industry Organization Tackles Interoperability Issues with Web Services Security." - "The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) today announced the formation of the Basic Security Profile Working Group (BSPWG). The BSPWG was chartered following the organization's fourth plenary session held recently in Salt Lake City. The formation of the BSPWG is the result of several months of research and planning conducted by the Basic Security Work Plan Working Group, a security task force chaired by Eve Maler, XML standards architect at Sun Microsystems. The Basic Security Work Plan Working Group, formed in late November 2002, created a work plan prioritizing and scoping key security interoperability issues. The Basic Security Work Plan Working Group presented its recommendations to the membership at the recent plenary session. "Web services security is a key challenge facing both vendors and consumers of Web services," said Maler. "Our goal is to focus specifically on the interoperability issues involving security technologies and to deliver a profile as a way to encourage secure Web services." The newly chartered BSPWG will develop an interoperability profile involving transport security, SOAP messaging security and other security considerations implicated by the WS-I Basic Profile. The Basic Security Profile is intended to be an extension to the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 and will reference existing specifications used to provide security and provide clarifications and guidance designed to promote interoperability of those specifications. The BSPWG will also develop a set of usage scenarios and their component message exchange patterns (MEPs) to guide their work. A timeline for the deliverables will be determined in the next month..." See details in "WS-I Charters Basic Security Profile Working Group (BSPWG)."

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