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:

• Main "What's New" Column
• XML Industry News July - September 2003
• XML Industry News April - June 2003
• XML Industry News January - March 2003
• XML Industry News October - December 2002
• XML Industry News July - September 2002
• XML Industry News April - June 2002
• Earlier press 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

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• [December 31, 2003] "W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to be Knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Web Inventor Recognized for Contributions to Internet Development." - "Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. This was announced earlier today by Buckingham Palace as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours list. The rank of Knight Commander is the second most senior rank of the Order of the British Empire, one of the Orders of Chivalry awarded. Berners-Lee, 48, a British citizen who lives in the United States, is being knighted in recognition of his 'services to the global development of the Internet' through the invention of the World Wide Web. 'This is an honor which applies to the whole Web development community, and to the inventors and developers of the Internet, whose work made the Web possible, ' stated Berners-Lee. 'I accept this as an endorsement of the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralized way; of making best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and without having to pay licensing fees.' 'By recognizing the Web in such a significant way, it also makes clear the responsibility its creators and users share,' he continued. 'Information technology changes the world, and as a result, its practitioners cannot be disconnected from its technical and societal impacts. Rather, we share a responsibility to make this work for the common good, and to take into account the diverse populations it serves.' Born in London, Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at Oxford University, England in 1976. While there he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. In 1980, while Berners-Lee worked as a consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, he wrote for his own private use his first program for storing information using the kind of random associations the brain makes. The 'Enquire' program -- which was never published -- formed the conceptual basis for the future development of the Web. While at CERN in 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project to be known as the World Wide Web. Based on the earlier 'Enquire' work, it was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a Web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, 'httpd', and the first client, 'World Wide Web,' in October 1990. He also wrote the first version of the document formatting language with the capability for hypertext links, known as HTML..."

• [December 28, 2003] "Perens To Highlight Legal, Technical Curbs on Information Exchange in NISO Keynote. Annual Meeting Free and Open to All. Other Events Include ISBN and NISO Standards Briefings." - "With a focus on the potential threats to the future of libraries, Open Source leader Bruce Perens will address the National Information Standards Organization's (NISO) Annual Meeting, to be held in conjunction with the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association. The international meeting -- free and open to the public -- on Sunday, January 11, 2004 at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego will include participants from technology vendors and software developers, publishing companies, content aggregators, universities, government, and libraries. Citing the value of an Open-Source approach to information standards and distribution, Perens will explore the places where intellectual property law can impinge on the operation of libraries. 'We now have the technological means to control the copyright of material in ways we never had before,' he noted. 'I will cover specific efforts to curb the distribution of information by libraries or otherwise restrict it' in the speech entitled 'A World of Constraint.' Among those efforts are HR 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriate Act; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA); and software patenting. 'The big question for libraries,' Perens continued, 'is "will it be considered legal to be a lending repository of knowledge?"' Perens (www.perens.com) is a leader in the Free Software and Open Source community. He is creator of the Open Source Definition, the manifesto of the Open Source movement in Software. He is founder or co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, The Linux Standard Base, Software in the Public Interest, and No-Code International... On January 12, 2004 NISO will continue its programming with 'An ISBN Briefing: Size Matters!' The program in Room 2 of the San Diego Convention Center will tell participants how to transition to the new 13-digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN) from the current 10-digit format... On January 9, 2004 NISO will hold a joint meeting with the Automation Vendor Information Advisory Committee (AVIAC) at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 17A/B. The meeting will focus on the new NISO Networked Reference Protocol and the trial implementations to be launched in the first quarter 2004. Participants will explore how this new standard can be the cornerstone of expanding a company's services... On January 10, NISO will conduct a standards briefing for the Library & Information Technology Association (LITA) Standards Special Interest Group. To be held at the Courtyard by Marriott Bankers Room, the meeting will explore the new Statistics and Metrics Standard, the OpenURL, and the Metasearch Initiative, among other projects... NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation..."

• [December 15, 2003] "BEA Systems Delivers New Innovations, Standards Contributions to Help Developers Reduce Coding Complexity for Dramatically Increased Productivity. New Portability Kit, Open Source Project and Web Site Further Drive Investment Protection and Faster Time to Value for Customers." - "As part of its ongoing effort to reduce computing complexity, BEA Systems, Inc., the world's leading application infrastructure software company, today announced new resources, including a Page Flow Portability Kit, XML Beans as an Apache Project and a BEA standards portal, all designed to help developers realize increased productivity and to help customers realize faster time to value. By delivering these innovations to the standards community, BEA continues its commitment to creating customer-driven innovations which can help ensure interoperability and therefore customers' long-term IT investment. Today's news -- Page Flow Portability Kit, XML Beans as an Apache Project and a BEA standards portal -- was issued in response to customers' and developers' demand for easier application development and increased flexibility. BEA has traditionally provided these offerings by delivering both the first and the best implementations of new standards, helping to allow customers to experience exceptional reuse and portability of their applications. As an example, BEA created XML Beans to make XML and Java easier to use together. More recently, customers requested portability kits and open source initiatives and again, BEA has responded to help ensure application portability and interoperability... The BEA WebLogic Workshop Java Page Flow innovation is designed to make it easier for developers to build enterprise-class Web applications on BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1. The new Page Flow Portability Kit is designed to give customers the flexibility to deploy their page flows to the J2EE platform of their choice. Page Flows can provide a software engineering framework that is designed to allow developers to separate user interface code from navigational control and other business logic, and to track application status. WebLogic Workshop's Page Flows are based on Struts 1.1, a popular framework embraced by many developers for building large, enterprise-scale Web sites. Struts 1.1 is powerful, but difficult to use due to the vast amount of files and configurations developers must learn and manage. Workshop's Page Flows can offer significant advantages, including the automatic generation and synchronization of XML configuration files, plus a sophisticated graphical IDE to define, build, deploy and maintain the Web application... Launched earlier this year, XML Beans is an innovative technology that is designed to help Java developers more easily manage XML documents. XML Beans can provide Java object interfaces while preserving full access to the underlying XML messages, helping ensure true loose-coupling between applications for greater application reliability and scalability. By BEA submitting XML Beans as an Apache Project, developers can be assured that the technology will drive interoperability by supporting the broadest spectrum of XML and schema types..."

• [December 10, 2003] "OASIS Interoperability Demos Showcase ebXML, SAML, UBL, WS-Reliability, and XACML at XML 2003. Adobe, BEA, Citrix, Cyclone Commerce, Drake Certivo, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Korean National Computerization Agency (NCA), NEC, US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Vignette, and Others Demonstrate Interoperability of Standards." - "Companies, users, and government agencies from around the world collaborated on four separate interoperability demonstrations of OASIS Standards and specifications at the XML 2003 conference this week. In scenarios as varied as epidemic management, weather portal aggregation, supply chain operations, and messaging, the practical usage of OASIS Standards was shown. 'These demonstrations provide more evidence that e-business, security and Web services standards are being deployed to solve real-world challenges,' said James Bryce Clark, OASIS Manager for Technical Services Development. 'The excitment here is not limited to what is being demonstrated. The types of participants -- vendors and end users, large and small, government agenies--as well as the geographic span they represent clearly indicates buy-in from all stake-holders.' Demos: (1) Achieving Interoperability Using Test Frameworks: Drake Certivo, NCA, and NIST implemented a real-world ebXML test scenario involving a supply chain in which a buyer tests an upgrade with their solutions as well as with their customers' solutions. The enhancements were then integrated into production operations. The demo also provided access to services via an ebXML Registry which supported the supply chain operations. (2) OASIS WS-Reliability Interoperability Demonstration: Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems demonstrated their independently developed implementations of the OASIS WS-Reliability specification. WS-Reliability is intended for use in mission critical applications that require guaranteed delivery, duplicate message elimination, and/or message ordering within a transaction. These three fundamental properties of the WS-Reliability specification were demonstrated utilizing a use case derived from a commercial scenario. (3) Epidemic Management Using OASIS ebXML, UBL and XACML: Adobe, Cyclone Commerce, NIST, Sun Microsytems, and others demonstrated an end-to-end data transmission process using OASIS Standards for ebXML Registry, ebXML Messaging, ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPP/A), ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Universal Business Language (UBL), and eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). In the demo, a public health care entity for disease control, uses a registry to manage epidemiological data. Laboratories, emergency rooms, and airports send periodic reports on persons that may be carrying communicable diseases to the registry. (4) Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP): BEA, Citrix, IBM, Oracle, and Vignette showcased a common use case for WSRP in which a weather site was configured as a portal. Pages on the site were aggregated by the portal and all of the application components used to produce the forecasts and other data were implemented as portlets. These portlets were then reused on other portals via WSRP rather than requiring the portals to separately install the complete set of portlets. WSRP was shown to maximize both control and availability for the weather site while minimizing costs for the remote portal sites..."

• [December 10, 2003] "WS-I Delivers Sample Applications for Basic Profile. Sample Applications Provide Real-World Business Requirements to Web Services." - "The Web Services Interoperability Organization ('WS-I') today announced the general availability of the WS-I Sample Application 1.0. This important deliverable consists of the WS-I Supply Chain Management Use Cases 1.0, the WS-I Usage Scenarios 1.0, the WS-I Supply Chain Management Technical Architecture 1.0 and Sample Application 1.0 implementations developed by 10 vendor companies. These documents and implementations model a simplified supply chain management scenario and demonstrate the features in the recently released WS-I Basic Profile 1.0. The availability of this material was announced today at the XML Conference & Exposition 2003 taking place this week in Philadelphia. 'The availability of the WS-I Sample Application 1.0 deliverables help define best practices for using the Basic Profile 1.0, and provide the real-world implementation guidance and support necessary for customers deploying Web services,' said Sinisa Zimek, chairman of the Sample Applications Working Group. 'We believe that the WS-I Sample Application 1.0 is an important catalyst in the WS-I effort to create industry-level Web services profiles and tools.' The WS-I Sample Application 1.0 provides a configurable collection of Web services, which exercise the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 using a supply chain scenario that models the interactions between multiple retail storefronts, warehouses and manufacturers. Implementations of the Sample Application have been delivered by BEA Systems, Bowstreet, Corillian, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Quovadx, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. WS-I will be demonstrating these implementations at an interoperability showcase this week at the XML Conference & Exposition 2003. The Sample Application Technical Architecture 1.0 details a common design and implementation of the supply chain management application. One of the goals of the WS-I Sample Application 1.0 is to exploit as many of the aspects of the Basic Profile 1.0 as possible. To this end, the Sample Application Technical Architecture implements several schema-naming conventions, SOAP message formats, SOAP message styles, and WSDL design practices that all conform to the Basic Profile..." See: (1) Supply Chain Sample Applications; (2) general references in "Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)."

• [December 10, 2003] "IDEAlliance Issues ICE 2.0 RFC at Industry News Standards Summit. Industry Strength, Web-Services Compliant Syndication Protocol Nears Final Approval." - "IDEAlliance, a leading trade association dedicated to fostering information technology standards, highlighted the new ICE 2.0 Specification and issued a Request for Comment at the News Standards Summit held in conjunction with the XML 2003 Conference and Exposition. XML 2003 is being held Dec. 7-12, 2003 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The News Standards Summit, co-sponsored by IDEAlliance, IFRA (INCA-FIEJ Research Association), IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council), NAA (Newspaper Association of America), and OASIS, brought together 75 major players in the news industry -- experts on news metadata standards, as well as commercial news providers and aggregators, to analyze the current state of (and future expectations for) XML-enabled news publishing efforts from both the content and processing-model perspectives. The ICE specification, originally developed in 1998 by a community of 80 content providers and software venders, provides businesses with an XML-based common language and architecture that facilitates automatic delivery, updating and managing content assets in a trusted fashion without manual packaging or knowledge of remote Web-site structures. With the development of this major revision to the ICE Specification, robust content syndication is supported in a Web Services environment for the first time. According to Dr. Richard Martin, Chairman of the ICE2 Specification Development Committee, 'For Version 2.0 of the ICE protocol, it was critical to consider integration of Web Services related standards for the ICE2 definition. Given that ICE content syndication and the Web Services standards are squarely focused on distributed computing space, the synergy between the two sets of standards should be exploited to make ICE2 more complete and easier to adopt.' Dianne Kennedy, Vice President of Publishing Technologies for IDEAlliance and Editor of the ICE 2.0 Specification, commented, 'Unlike RSS and other light-weight syndication protocols, ICE 2.0 is designed to support industrial-strength content syndication. It provides for subscription management, verification of delivery, and scheduled delivery in both push and pull modes. ICE is the protocol for syndicators who are distributing 'valued content' that generates a revenue stream or requires guaranteed delivery in a secure environment.' Development of the ICE2 specification is an open industry activity, and user participation is welcomed. The ICE Authoring Group is now seeking comments from organizations that have interest in putting the proposed ICE2 specification to use..." See: (1) "XML 2003 News Standards Summit Seeks Interoperability and Convergence"; (2) "Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Protocol."

• [December 10, 2003] "XML Cup 2003 Awards Presented to Michael Sperberg-McQueen of W3C, Adam Bosworth of BEA. Annual Awards Honor Achievements, Contributions to XML Standard." - "IDEAlliance, a leading trade association dedicated to fostering information technology standards, today presented the XML Cup 2003 for contributions to XML to Michael Sperberg-McQueen of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Adam Bosworth of BEA Systems, Inc. The Cup was presented during the Wednesday Keynote Session of the XML Conference and Exposition 2003. 'Adam Bosworth and Michael Sperberg-McQueen have both been instrumental in making XML successful,' said Lauren Wood, Chair of the XML 2003 Conference, who awarded the Cup. 'They persuaded different communities to use XML, have thought deeply about potential problems and how to solve them, and have been an inspiration for many people. We're honored that both Michael and Adam are speaking at XML 2003 and congratulate them on being awarded the Cup.' 'Within the XML community, it is generally acknowledged that XML as we know it today would not exist without Michael and Adam's efforts,' said Marion L. Elledge, Vice President of Information Technology Alliances and Conferences, IDEAlliance. 'The XML Cup Awards were created to honor our industry's true visionaries and pioneers, and these two gentlemen certainly qualify.' Michael Sperberg-McQueen is the Architecture Domain Leader for the World Wide Web Consortium, an international member organization responsible for developing interoperable Web technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools). He co-edited the XML 1.0 specification and the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative; he also co-chairs the W3C XML Coordination Group and the W3C XML Schema Working Group. 'Michael's depth of knowledge and passion has played a key role in the creation of XML as we know it,' declared Tim Berners-Lee, Web inventor and W3C Director. 'Drawing on the experiences in both the Text Encoding Initiative and his foundation work on XML 1.0, Michael has contributed greatly to structured data evolution on the Web, for which W3C and I are most grateful. I'm pleased to see that the XML 2003 Planning Committee shares our sentiments and chose to award him the XML Cup.' Adam Bosworth is Chief Architect and Senior Vice President of Advanced Development at BEA Systems, driving the strategic and technical direction for the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform. Before joining BEA, Bosworth co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm acquired by BEA in 2001. Prior to starting Crossgain, he was a senior manager at Microsoft, where he drove the company's XML program from 1997 through 1999. He was then named General Manager of Microsoft's WebData organization, a team focused on refining the company's long-term XML strategy. 'Our industry is undergoing constant innovation, and it has been a thrill to be on the frontlines. I'm honored to have been chosen amongst this group of experts as the recipient of the 2003 XML Cup. IDEAlliance's XML Conference showcases the advancement of XML technology, and is an impressive gathering of visionaries,' said Adam Bosworth, BEA Systems chief architect and senior vice president of advanced development..." See also: (1) "XML Cup Award 2002 Presented to Jon Bosak and Tim Bray. Industry Leaders Recognized for Their Achievements and Work on the XML Standard."; (2) "First XML Cup Award Presented to Industry Pioneer James Clark. Recognized for Achievements and Work on the XML Standard."

• [December 10, 2003] OMG Announces Workshop on Deploying Service Oriented Architectures." - "The Object Management Group (OMG) announces a call for proposals for the its new workshop on Deploying Service Oriented Architectures taking place February 23 -26, 2004 in San Jose, CA, USA... A service is a function that is well-defined, self-contained, and does not depend on the context or state of other services. A Service-Oriented Architecture is essentially a collection of services communicating with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services collaborating to perform some activity. Communication can be between internal or external systems. The notion of "Service-Oriented Architecture" is not new. Middleware solutions such as Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on OMG's CORBA specification and Microsoft's DCOM existed well before the term was coined. What is new is the technology addition of loosely-coupled web services employing XML over the internet as a means of communications between services. Various standards organizations like the OMG and the W3C have taken the lead on standardization of various aspects of technologies related to this broad area. For instance, with its Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach to specifying a system independently of the platform that supports it, the OMG is promoting the development of architectures and standardized mappings to specify and implement enterprise applications built to Service-Oriented Architectures that can be deployed on a variety of execution platforms including CORBA and J2EE. Hosted by the OMG, this summit will explore how Service-Oriented Architectures can be best designed and deployed to produce the most useful enterprise solutions. The Workshop will also address how related modeling, architectures and standards are and can be used in Service-Oriented Architectures within individual enterprises. The Workshop is open to all with an interest in, and understanding of the topic of Service-Oriented Architectures. Workshop participants will include representatives of standards bodies, implementers (architects, modelers, developers, systems integrators), large end-user organizations, and technology providers. Practitioners with relevant experience are invited to come and share their experiences with each other and their vendor community. The four-day program will consist of tutorials followed by sessions and open panel discussions that describe case studies and technology issues and choices for enterprise applications that were designed using industry standards and specifications..." [source CFP]

• [December 09, 2003] "IPTC Joins in XML News Standards Summit. IPTC Roadmap 2005 for NewsML, NITF and SportsML." - "XML-based formats for sharing news are rapidly gaining acceptance and may soon revolutionise the way news is shared between agencies and is presented to the public, a software developer's group was told today. But traditional newspaper publishers are still moving cautiously. 'Customers prefer extremely simple solutions,' said Geoff Haynes, manager of product development for The Associated Press. More than 100 news organisations, news system vendors and XML developers gathered here for The News Standards Summit, an all-day session where progress reports were delivered by developers and users who share XML as their lingua franca. As a major force in news standards for nearly 40 years, IPTC presented its latest versions of NewsML, NITF and SportsML -- standards that are already in use by major news agencies around the world. 'The wide interest and participation in the News Summit proves that there is an industry-wide need to develop the business cases for the required for management support and implement the existing standards for news,' said John Iobst, chairman of the IPTC. With several text-based systems for tagging news content and important data about the news, IPTC is provides a framework for moving news stories from creation through editing and onward to publishing. For magazines and web discussion 'blogs', several XML standards group presented plans for publishing and syndication. The IPTC described its own plans -- called IPTC Roadmap 2005 -- to update NewsML and revamp the method for proposing, designing and maintaining its XML standards. 'The IPTC Roadmap 2005 has as its primary goals to make standards easier to implement and to improve documentation and education on standards. This is driven by requirements from our users, and shows that IPTC is already aligning with wide user demand,' said Michael Steidl, IPTC's Managing director. 'This makes us work harder on these aims.' The News Standards Summit was held in partnership with the XML 2003 Conference of IDEAlliance and OASIS. The IPTC's next regular meeting will be in Athens in March 2004. The IPTC, based in Windsor, England, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies, news publishers and news industry vendors. It develops and maintains technical standards that are used by virtually every major news organisation in the world..." See: (1) "XML 2003 News Standards Summit Seeks Interoperability and Convergence"; (2) "NewsML"; (3) "SportsML"; (4) "News Industry Text Format (NITF)."

• [December 09, 2003] "Software AG Increases XML Support Within Its Natural Development Environment for Windows, UNIX and Linux Platforms. Natural version 6 Enables Developers to Access XML Documents Stored in the Company's Tamino XML Server Without Learning an XML-Specific Query Language." - "Software AG, Inc., a pioneer in XML solutions, today announced the availability of Natural version 6 for Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms. Software AG's popular 4GL development environment, which is currently installed at approximately 3,000 organizations worldwide, now enables Natural programmers to access XML documents stored in the company's Tamino XML Server without needing to learn an XML-specific query language. Natural version 6 also allows developers working in Windows to access Natural programs running in UNIX or on a mainframe -- a capability the company calls Single-Point-of-Development. Both capabilities are designed to increase the speed and convenience of using Natural in an open systems environment. The announcement was made at the 2003 XML Conference and Exposition. Thanks to an expanded XML tool kit and new language constructs, users of Natural version 6 can process XML documents with greater ease and flexibility. For example, developers can gain access to Software AG's Tamino XML Server using familiar Natural DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements, meaning that XML documents residing in Tamino can be queried from Natural without the developer having to learn XPath, XQuery or a similar XML-specific protocol. In addition, Websites and HTML pages can now be designed more easily and efficiently in Natural version 6 through the incorporation of XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) support and the implementation a revised Web interface... The Single-Point-of-Development interface allows a Windows PC running Natural version 6 to access Natural programs running on Unix and mainframes -- thus combining the flexible development potential found on a Windows operating system with the stability and performance of mainframe and Unix. Using Single-Point-of-Development, programs created in Windows can be modified directly on the server platform, thereby addressing versioning and synchronizing issues flowing from the need to save code separately on multiple platforms. Single-Point-of-Development is available not only for the core Natural system, but also for four Natural add-ons: Natural Construct, Natural Engineer, Predict and Mainframe Navigator. These additional Natural engineering tools can therefore also be used via the Single-Point-of-Development interface..." See general references in "XML and Databases."

• [December 09, 2003] "Blue Titan Advances Industry's First Enterprise SOA Fabric. Network Director 2.5 Delivers Increased Scalability and Extensibility." - "Blue Titan Software, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of Network Director 2.5, the industry's first and only enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) Fabric. Network Director 2.5 introduces significant improvements in scalability and extensibility validated directly from numerous real-world Fortune 500 customer deployments. Network Director 2.5 is the first and only enterprise SOA Fabric that provides a unified control layer, bringing security, reliability and manageability to Web service-based interactions and enabling enterprises to realize the true value of Web services. Network Director 2.5 allows users to define, enforce and adapt consistent enterprise-wide infrastructure policies in a distributed, non-invasive approach... Network Director 2.5 meets the growing scalability requirements of large enterprise customers. Network Director 2.5 now delivers: (1) Proven scalability up to 2,000 messages per second and beyond in a distributed deployment using only commodity-based Linux hardware; (2) Throughput throttled and increased with zero administrative effort in configuration or deployment; (3) Deployment across multiple network topologies and line of business boundaries in a geographically transparent manner. Network Director 2.5's unparalleled extensibility is already helping customers create adaptable Enterprise SOAs. Using Blue Titan's extensible policy framework, a customer created and deployed a highly customized service-#PPQb ased, priority access policy based on real-time network availability that is re-useable for any service across the SOA Fabric. One customer met their immediate need to address Web services security concerns while simultaneously scaling out an Enterprise SOA by integrating a best-in-class XML firewall into their Blue Titan Fabric as a third party security policy implementer, effectively creating a secure SOAP channel. Two Fortune 100 customers created custom management and visibility applications using Blue Titan Fabric services. These projects each took less than two weeks, demonstrating the ease of leveraging Fabric services; and enabling customers to avoid creating silos of critical operational metadata within proprietary management consoles..."

• [December 08, 2003] "Sun's Radical New Java System Software Wins Whitehall Approval. Sun Microsystems and the UK Government Sign Software Purchasing Agreement to Offer the Public Sector Open, Secure Software Technology and Reduced IT Costs." - "Sun Microsystems announced today that it has secured a strategic five year agreement with the UK's Office of Government Commerce (OGC), that will allow public sector organizations to realize significant value-for-money savings when purchasing desktop and enterprise software. The arrangement, which is effective immediately and includes the Sun Java Desktop System and the Sun Java Enterprise System, offers the Public Sector a genuine alternative to costly licensing agreements. The OGC, part of HM Treasury and the central purchasing body for the UK Government, seeks to maximize value for money for the public sector in all areas of procurement. It has entered into the arrangement with Sun as it felt the company's Java Enterprise System and Java Desktop System offered great potential to support the requirements of the UK public sector in terms of size and strategic nature of its operations, and volumes of software being purchased within it. The Java System software is based on a secure, open architecture delivering compelling value - all key requirements for the UK public sector. The use of 'proof of concept' trials in government organizations will look at the practicalities and potential to generate significant value-for-money improvements. 'The UK Public Sector is faced with huge IT purchasing decisions, it requires best value desktop and underlying software architecture that is based on open standards, predictable pricing models and infinite right to use,' said Scott McNealy, chairman, president and CEO of Sun. 'Our arrangement with the OGC, delivers transparent IT buying to the UK public sector and introduces competition in the desktop space'..."

• [December 08, 2003] "CA Ships Innovative Solution to Monitor and Manage Web Services Across and Beyond the Enterprise. Unicenter Web Services Distributed Management Ensures Reliability and Performance for On-Demand Computing." - "Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced the general availability of Unicenter Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM), the first complete solution for monitoring and managing Web services across and beyond the enterprise. Unicenter WSDM is the latest addition to CA's portfolio of end-to-end management solutions that help customers build enterprise-class reliability and security into their Web services applications and supporting infrastructure. By automatically discovering, testing and monitoring Web services, Unicenter WSDM enables IT organizations to closely track a full range of performance indicators and rapidly respond to service interruptions. Web services are emerging as key business enablers for efficiency of business processes within the enterprise, and to facilitate commerce beyond the enterprise. Effective management of Web services is therefore essential for ensuring the reliability and performance of on-demand computing environments. MapPoint, the technology behind Microsoft's mapping and location services platforms and applications, plans to use Unicenter WSDM to provide visibility into 15 million daily transactions. 'Microsoft MapPoint views the ability to provide personalized support and care of its customers as essential in the competitive services business,' said Jeff Carson, group operations manager of the MapPoint Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. 'With Unicenter WSDM, MapPoint is able to provide detailed, customer-specific help and analysis during customers' development and production life-cycle phases.' Managing J2EE and .NET Web services natively at the services network level, Unicenter WSDM: (1) Optimizes performance of Web services through real-time monitoring of metrics such as response times, transaction volume and message size. (2) Speeds deployment of management capabilities through automatic detection, discovery and cataloging of newly-deployed Web services in the enterprise. (3) Improves application availability by ensuring that Web services are responsive and performing at appropriate service levels. (4) Reduces costs and complexity of Web services by providing a central point-of-management with advanced reporting and predictive analysis capabilities. (5) Increases enterprise responsiveness through non-intrusive monitoring and automatic detection of problems and service failures, real-time alerts and self-configuration capabilities..."

• [December 08, 2003] "XyEnterprise Releases Version 1.1 of XPP Web Services Toolkit. New XPP Personal Edition Available." - "XyEnterprise, the leading developer of XML content management and enterprise publishing software, announced today that it has released version 1.1 of its XML Professional Publisher (XPP) Web Services Toolkit. XyEnterprise also announced the availability of XPP Personal Edition, a new single-user version of its proven XML publishing software. Both offerings are available now and add to the numerous deployment options of XyEnterprise's leading XML rendering and transformation technology. Version 1.1 of the XPP Web Services Toolkit builds on the proven capabilities of the initial release, adding functions for e-mail notification, support for SOAP attachments, improved file manipulation capability, and other enhancements. Through the standards-based XPP Web Services interface, XPP users can proof, modify, and publish their documents in a browser from virtually any location. XPP and its Web Services offerings are used by companies such as LexisNexis, Letterpart, and others to profit from a more seamless content management and publishing lifecycle while reducing deployment time, training, and support costs. XPP Personal Edition is a new offering designed to meet the needs of users who require the sophisticated composition controls of XPP in a single-user environment. Customers include individual users who have had prior experience with XPP at larger organizations, initial deployments in specialty publishing environments (such as STM journals or reference guides), or remote contributors working for larger organizations. XPP Personal Edition includes the XyView interactive interface with composition and editing functionality, the CITI module for generating Contents, Indices, Tables, and Illustrations, and a choice of two Hyphenation and Justification dictionaries from the over 30 languages supported by XPP. Other optional components (including MathML, XyDiff, EDGAR, and other specialized items) are also available... 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, financial, and pharmaceutical publishing markets. Leading corporations use XPP to process and transform XML and other structured content into high quality PDF and print output. XPP's Web Services Toolkit is driving new ways to conduct publishing operations and enhance the content lifecycle, creating new opportunities for customer satisfaction, product revenue, and business growth..."

• [December 08, 2003] "Oracle Leads Development of Open Standards for Human Resources Software, Helps Customers Automate Information Exchange and Reduce Integration Costs. Oracle Human Resources Management System One of First to Receive HR-XML Certification." - "Oracle Corp. today announced that Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS) is one of the first human resources software suites to successfully achieve HR-XML certification for effortless communication between Oracle HRMS customers and their business partners. HR-XML, developed by the HR-XML Consortium, is an open data exchange standard that enables secure, automated communication between companies. By leveraging one common data standard for human resources-related information -- resumes, job postings, competencies, performance metrics, timecards, benefits enrollment, payroll contributions, and background checks -- HR-XML helps companies cut integration costs and improve efficiencies by eliminating the multiple interfaces historically required to accommodate different data formats... Leveraging Oracle's extensive network of human resources partners, HR-XML enables Oracle HRMS customers to quickly gain access to fully integrated solutions, services and content from leading companies such as Mohomine, HireRight and Magnaware. Prior to the HR-XML standard, companies had to develop interfaces for each of these partners. Now one interface is created for data exchanges between all partners, helping minimize integration costs and complexity. "The HR-XML certification for Oracle HRMS is further testament to Oracle's commitment to open standards that promote simple and secure information exchange between businesses," said Bill Kerr, principal software engineer at Oracle and member of the HR-XML Consortium Board of Directors. "This is a customer-driven initiative focused on helping companies overcome the barriers normally associated with exchanging information with other businesses and fostering better communication practices." As part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle HRMS helps companies manage all aspects of the workforce, including payroll and expense management, recruiting and hiring, benefits administration, training, and performance management. While other HR applications provide limited snapshots of the workforce, Oracle HRMS integrates with all business areas to provide a comprehensive view of the workforce and performance in the enterprise. The improved visibility and analysis capabilities help companies make better HR decisions, such as when to hire key skill areas based on predicted future shortfalls and demand, for improved performance and cost savings..." General references in "HR-XML Consortium."

• [December 05, 2003] "Web Editor Framework Out of Beta. Ontopia Announces Ontopia Knowledge Suite Release 2.0." - "Ontopia AS, the world's leading vendor of topic map technology, announced Release 2.0 of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite, which will be available from 19 December 2003. This major release of the OKS brings: (1) the full release of the Web Editor Framework for building custom topic map authoring environments; (2) extension of the query language to cover tasks that had required either API programming or use of the Navigator Framework tag libraries, new built-in predicates now allow querying all parts of a topic map; (3) support for import and export of RDF data to topic maps; (4) the popular free-download, Omnigator, now includes support for hierarchy visualization... Steve Pepper, Founder of Ontopia, says 'Now, finally, the Topic Maps community has a real, powerful, flexible tool for editing Topic Maps. Implementations in Norway and the UK are already using the Web Editor Framework to create custom editing environments.' The OKS uses the powerful Topic Maps model to enable the rapid development of complex systems. Using the OKS, integrators can create representations of diverse information and knowledge models, and then access and manipulate them with a common tool set and query language. 'I am really pleased with the new RDF support in OKS 2.0 and Omnigator VII because it finally bridges the gap between these two closely related knowledge technologies, enabling users to easily move data back and forth between topic maps and RDF,' remarked Lars Marius Garshol, Development Manager. 'The most important aspect of the approach we've taken is that it allows users to use the same vocabularies with both RDF and topic maps.' The OKS, a Java toolkit for applying Topic Maps functionality, consists of a topic map engine with scalable API, J2EE-compliant toolkits for development of editing and browsing applications, full-text search, schema tools, persistent and scalable storage of topic maps in an RDBMS..." General references in "(XML) Topic Maps."

• [December 02, 2003] "HR-XML Assessments Standard Enables End-to-End Talent Management. Data Interchange Specification Offers More Timely, Better Integrated Assessments." - "Employers that use assessments as part of their workforce management strategy will benefit from a new standard that makes it easier to integrate assessments into the workflow and decision-support framework of recruiting and HR management systems. The new standard, approved in a vote by the more than 100 member organizations of the HR-XML Consortium, provides employers the flexibility and efficiencies of being able to order, manage, and apply assessments from within their HR or recruiting solution of choice. 'In-depth assessments provide a strong foundation for important decisions about people in the workplace,' said Romuald Restout, Product Architect, Recruitsoft, Inc., and leader of the HR-XML Assessments Project Team. 'The HR-XML Consortium's Assessments standard has been created so organizations can more efficiently integrate a collection of third-party assessment instruments within an employer's workforce management solution,' according to Restout. 'By applying a more systematic approach to the integration process, organizations can centralize the process and generate improvements in productivity that contribute to the bottom-line,' he explained. Version 1.0 of the HR-XML Consortium's Assessments Standard is designed to support orders to third-party suppliers of assessment services as well as the return of assessment status and results. The Assessments standard can be applied to assessments of 'hard skills,' such as those acquired through training and education, as well as soft skills, such as customer orientation, analytical thinking, and leadership. The HR-XML Consortium's Assessment's Workgroup is planning future releases of the standard that will support additional options, such as the discovery of available assessment instruments based on the particular competencies an employer may want to assess. 'Employers are interested in the higher return on investment that quality employees deliver. In turn, employers are using assessment solutions in all stages of the human capital lifecycle to ensure they develop employees with the right skills and that they promote people into the positions where they will succeed,' said Shawn Lyndon, CTO, ePredix. 'The HR-XML Consortium's Assessments Standard better serves employers by opening the door to easy integration of a wide variety of assessment tools within HR systems,' according to Lyndon..." See: (1) details in the news story "HR-XML Consortium Approves Assessments Specification for Skills Evaluation"; (2) general references in "HR-XML Consortium."

• [December 01, 2003] "New Version of Adobe FrameMaker Extends Powerful XML Capabilities. Upgrade Includes New Migration, Import Features and Support for Popular Graphics Formats to Capitalize on Existing Assets." - "Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe FrameMaker 7.1, an upgrade to its award winning, enterprise-class authoring and publishing solution. FrameMaker combines the simplicity of word processing with the power of Extensible Markup Language (XML), making it easier to repurpose content and publish to multiple channels, including print, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and the Web. FrameMaker 7.1 includes new features for cross-referencing between documents and allows multiple variations of a document to be stored as a single file. With FrameMaker 7.1 users can now migrate legacy technical documents and assets from Quark XPress and Adobe PageMaker formats, while expanded support for popular graphics file formats means Adobe Photoshop files can be imported directly into FrameMaker, saving valuable time... FrameMaker gives corporate users the ability to easily create, edit and import valid XML content in full WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode when authoring documents. FrameMaker 7.1 introduces conditional text support for XML to allow multiple variations of an XML document to be stored in a single file. This greatly streamlines the production of documentation with subtle content variations, such as region-specific information for different electrical requirements or warranty and customer service details. FrameMaker 7.1 extends its cross-referencing features to allow links between XML documents. For example, a product installation guide in XML can now reference and provide a direct link to a specific section in a user manual that is also in XML format. Based on user feedback, an automatic save to XML feature was added so that users don't have to remember to select a special 'save as' function when editing XML documents -- a simple save or file close will automatically save the document to the correct format... New filters enable PageMaker and Quark XPress files to be easily migrated into FrameMaker. Users with legacy files in these formats can now take advantage of FrameMaker's superior long document handling and multi-channel support to publish directly to print, Adobe PDF, HTML, XML and other formats. Corporate publishers can work more efficiently by importing Photoshop files directly into FrameMaker 7.1, eliminating the need to save files to an intermediate format. Other additions include support for the JPEG 2000 graphics format and improved filters for handling artwork in Adobe PDF, including native files from Adobe Illustrator. Expanded support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) means a single graphics file can be the source for both high quality vector graphics in print and PDF as well as an interactive, high quality vector graphic on the Web..."

• [November 19, 2003] "Oracle Application Server Supports Latest Industry Portlet Standards With New Tools." - "Oracle Corporation today announced the availability of preview releases of new Oracle Application Server tools supporting Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 and Web Services Remote Portlets (WSRP). The two portlet standards were developed by the Java Community Process (JCP) and OASIS, respectively. Today's businesses implement numerous applications spanning the organization and multiple lines of business, and portals play an important role in integrating applications and providing a single, consolidated view for end-users. Industry standards such as JSR 168 and WSRP make it possible for an increasing number of applications to be accessible via a portal, increase developer productivity and significantly reduce development costs. The preview release of Oracle's tools supporting JSR 168 and WSRP standards include: (1) Portlet Container for Java: A container that implements the JSR 168 APIs, allowing developers to build interoperable portlets using Java code; (2) Portlet Wizard for Java: An Oracle JDeveloper extension, which provides a wizard-based user interface that quickly defines various characteristics of a portlet such as display modes, customization, translation, security, initialization and caching. Additional portal development resources are available in the Portal Developer Kit, which includes documentation and more than 15 code samples of JSR 168-compliant portlets running in WSRP containers... Prior to the introduction of JSR 168 and WSRP, developers created portlets using proprietary APIs for a single portal platform — requiring a lot of time and greatly limiting the number of portlets available to other portal platforms. For example, developers and portlet resellers who built portlets for one platform had to rebuild the same portlet for each portal platform they supported. JSR 168 and WSRP ensure interoperability among different portal platforms, enabling developers and portlet resellers to build their portlets once with confidence that they will run in all portals that support the standards. The JSR 168 specification defines a standard application programming interface (API) for aggregating several content sources and front-end applications into a single portal. The WSRP standard enables portals to consume portlets from remote locations. Compatible and complementary to each other, the standards enable portal components to be deployed across any platform..." General references: "Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)."

• [November 19, 2003] "Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) Ratified as OASIS Standard. Abridean, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Business Layers, Computer Associates, Entrust, Netegrity, OpenNetwork, Waveset, and Others Develop OASIS Standard for Exchanging User, Resource, and Service Provisioning Information." - "The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. SPML provides an XML-based framework for managing the allocation of system resources within and between organizations. Encompassing the entire life-cycle management of resources, SPML defines the provisioning of digital services such as user accounts and access privileges on systems, networks and applications, as well as non-digital or physical resources such as cell phones and credit cards. 'As provisioning becomes a more widely available network service, the need for an open standard to support the integration of account and service management in identity infrastructures is clear,' says Darran Rolls of Waveset, chair of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee. 'By fostering interoperability across business units or with business partners, SPML frees companies to focus on the business rules for provisioning user accounts and not on the technology to wire everything together.' 'Enterprise architects should consider SPML real and deployable,' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'It provides a much needed starting point for a long-term user access provisioning strategy that can be implemented today within the enterprise and will work in the future for integrating with Web services implementations. We congratulate the developers of SPML 1.0 and invite additional participation from the community on advancing SPML 2.0 to achieve full Web services compatibility.' Members of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee include Abridean, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Business Layers, Computer Associates, Entrust, Netegrity, OpenNetwork, Waveset, and other users and providers of identity management software. SPML relates closely to another OASIS Standard, the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Together, SPML and SAML provide a standard way to create user accounts and validate users as part of an identity management infrastructure. The two offer the basis for integrating single sign-on and provisioning software for Web services..." See: (1) "SPML Provisioning and Identity Management Specification Balloted for Approval"; (2) general references in "XML-Based Provisioning Services."

• [November 18, 2003] "J2EE 1.4 Specification Wins Unanimous Vote of Approval from the Java Community Process. New Standard for Web Services Interoperability Also Licensed Under Open Source Terms to Apache Software Foundation and JBoss Group. For First Time J2EE 1.4 Platform SDK to Include Fully Deployable Application Server Based on Developer Release of Sun Java System Application Server 8 Platform Edition." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc., the inventor and leading advocate of Java technology, today announced that the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition [J2EE] version 1.4 specification was approved by the Java Community Process (JCP) in a unanimous vote making it the industry's approved platform for Web services interoperability. This accomplishment for the Java community is marked with another Web services industry-leading move to license the new specification and its Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) under new license terms friendly to non-profit and open source projects. Apache Software Foundation and JBoss Group are demonstrating their commitment to the compatible J2EE technology industry, a key value proposition for the IT industry, by being amongst the first open source organizations to license the J2EE 1.4 specification and CTS. 'With nearly four million downloads and over 30 licensees, the J2EE platform and Software Developer Kit (SDK) are being established as the popular choice and premier platform for Java and Web services development,' said Mark Bauhaus, Vice President of Java Web Services for Sun Microsystems. 'The delivery of the J2EE 1.4 specification realizes the vision of an architecture that fuses Web services standards and the Java platform, and represents the most complete implementation of the WS-I Basic Profile that provides cross-vendor Web services interoperability.' Shared with a wide community of developers who contributed to the design of the J2EE 1.4 standard through the JCP, Sun brings to developers the best in Java Web services technology that is the first to support the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Basic Profile. The J2EE 1.4 specification also includes improved deployment and management capabilities to help developers accelerate time to market for their Web services applications. Complete information about the J2EE 1.4 specification can be found on the web. 'We received a clear message from the J2EE technology community to provide complete support for Web services standards and interfaces,' said Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer for Sun Microsystems and co-spec lead of the J2EE 1.4 specification. 'Sun took this challenge and in collaboration with the J2EE 1.4 Expert Group, we believe we have delivered the most interoperable and standard Web services platform in the form of this important Java specification, Reference Implementation and Software Developer Kit.' Taking advantage of open source license terms for J2EE 1.4 specification that Sun is making available for non-profit and open source projects, Apache Software Foundation and JBoss Group have licensed the J2EE specification and CTS to bring the benefits of Java technology compatibility to their open source communities for development and deployment. This will lead to increased adoption of J2EE technology through a broader community of developers and further popularize this premier middleware platform. The new licensing provisions were introduced by the JCP program through the JCP 2.5 process document and require that all Java specifications allow for development and distribution of compatible independent implementations, make specification products available separately and offer Technology Compatibility Kits (TCK) free of charge to qualified non-profits, educational organizations and individuals..."

• [November 18, 2003] "OMG, OAGI, and POSC Join WS-I. New Associate Membership Category Extends Communication and Cooperation Among Key Web Services Organizations." - "Today, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) announced that the Object Management Group (OMG), the Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI), and the Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium (POSC) have become associate members of WS-I. This new membership category was created to improve communication and cooperation between WS-I and standards development organizations to best meet the needs of customers and the Web services industry. The announcement was made at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit being held this week in Baltimore. 'While WS-I and standards organizations like the ones announced today have different purposes, we share a common vision for the future of Web services,' said Ed Cobb, board director and chair of the WS-I Liaison Committee. 'WS-I is committed to building and maintaining strong relationships with these organizations, and the associate membership category enables these organizations to participate more directly in the work of WS-I. In addition, WS-I continues to work with other standards organizations through informal liaison channels.' [...] Associate member benefits to qualified organizations include access to the WS-I member website and its documents, access to technical working group materials, participation in technical working groups and community meetings, and the use of the WS-I logo... WS-I is an open industry organization committed to promoting consistent and reliable interoperability among Web services across platforms, applications and programming languages. The organization unites a diverse community of Web services companies to provide guidance, recommended practices, and supporting resources for developing interoperable Web services. Since its formation in February 2002, more than 170 companies have joined WS-I..." General references in "Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)."

• [November 18, 2003] "The Java Community Process Program Celebrates Five Years of Excellence in Community-Based Java Technology Development. Outstanding Track Record Makes the JCP IT's Premier Organization for the Development of the Java Technology Binary Software Standard." - "On behalf of the members of the Java Community Process (JCP) program, the JCP Program Management Office (PMO) today announced at ApacheCon, that December 2003 marks its fifth anniversary of providing successful support for community collaboration for the development of high-quality Java technology standards. Today's announcement coincides with the publishing of the final results of the JCP Executive Committees (EC) 2003 elections. Tasked in their EC roles with guiding the evolution of Java technology and shaping the future of the JCP program itself, the new and reelected members to the JCP ECs will take office on November 25, 2003... 233 JSRs were submitted to the JCP program since the process began in 1998, representing an average of 45 new specifications per year. About a third of the submitted JSRs have been completed. Introduced by Sun in 1995, the JCP was formalized in December 1998 as a community based program for evolving and maintaining Java technology. The community has steadily grown into an open organization of international Java technology developers whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations and technology compatibility kits. With a membership made up of more than 680 participants, the JCP program boasts having the most advanced Java technology expertise in the industry and top developer talent. Experts from leading IT corporations, developer communities including the open source community, academia and individual developers work together under the JCP to deliver on the promise of Java technology compatibility. They balance consensus with speed to develop and maintain a comprehensive standards-based platform that benefits entire industries... The future direction of the JCP program is outlined in JSR 215 which, based on feedback from specification leads, experts, EC members and the JCP Program Office, proposes a series of changes aimed at increasing the transparency and the efficiency of the process while maintaining the focus of the community on the establishment of the Java technology binary software standard. The proposed specification draft is in advanced approval stages by the community and the ECs and is expected to be delivered in early 2004. Since its introduction in 1998 as the open, inclusive process to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits, the Java Community Process program has fostered the evolution of the Java platform in cooperation with the international Java developer community. The JCP has over 680 company and individual participants; more than 200 Java technology specifications are in development in the JCP program out of which 46% are in final stages..."

• [November 12, 2003] "The SNIA Teams with INCITS To Standardize Storage Management Interface. Action Puts SNIA Specification on Fast Track to Status as American National Standard." - "The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced they have reached agreement to take the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) through the INCITS Fast Track process. The process, reserved for specifications that have already gone through rigorous technical review, is expected to result in SMI-S becoming an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard in the second quarter of 2004. Sheila Childs, chair of the SNIA, said, 'Our organization views the strategic alliance with INCITS as a significant milestone. The Storage Management Initiative Specification directly addresses the needs of storage users throughout the world for greater interoperability and lower costs. Our partnership with INCITS is key to fulfilling our goal of standardization through a formal ANSI-accredited standards body, allowing vendors and users alike to adopt SMI-S compliant products with complete confidence.' Pat Morris, Executive Director of INCITS, said, 'The fundamental interoperability of multi-vendor components in storage networks has been a key concern for both vendors and end users. Work on the Storage Management Initiative Specification has been underway by a group of more than 30 companies and organizations through the SNIA for two years. It is time to use the INCITS Fast Track process so we will have an American National standard within months.' The Storage Management Interface Specification is the result of several years of collaborative effort by the SNIA members representing a cross section of storage manufacturers, integrators, OEMs and end users from around the world. The specification defines an open system standard application program interface (API), allowing applications to manage storage devices manufactured by all of the industry leaders. SMI-S 1.0 represents the first step of several planned iterations of the specification to extend from standardizing storage management of SANs, to NAS, iSCSI and other storage networking technologies. The SNIA's Storage Management Initiative includes extensive interoperability testing in the association's SMI-Lab, comprehensive education programs and tools for developers, and demonstrations of the new technology. These combined efforts have already resulted in a robust specification that has been extensively field tested..." General references in "SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S)."

• [November 12, 2003] "Sun's Java Enterprise System Provides Immediate Support for Next Generation of Liberty Alliance Specifications. Sun Java System Identity Server Delivers Support for Liberty Alliance Phase 2 Specification for Secure Federated Identity. Early Access Available for Qualified Customers." - "Sun Microsystems Inc., a founding member of the Liberty Alliance Project, today announced that its market-leading Java System Identity Server is the industry's first commercial product from a software platform vendor to support the Liberty Alliance Phase 2 specifications. This support expands the broad functionality of the Sun Java System Identity Server, a key component of the Java Enterprise System, further enabling the deployment and adoption of secure and federated identity-based Web services to fixed and mobile users' devices. 'Open standards are fundamental to the development of secure, federated identity solutions and Web services. Expanding on our support for the Liberty Alliance specifications will help our customers deliver mobility with security -- the right services to the right people at the right time on any device,' said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president of software for Sun Microsystems. 'Identity is a critical component for secure delivery and deployment of the network services that help our customers gain a competitive advantage in an ever-changing marketplace.' The integrated identity services of the Java Enterprise System -- access management, directory, provisioning and delegated administration -- provide the best offering for customers to reap the benefits of federated network identity. The Java Enterprise System allows Sun customers to leverage functionality of the current and future Liberty specifications through the Java System Identity Server. Early access to the Java System Identity Server's latest Liberty functionality is available for qualified Sun customers today... The Java System Identity Server was the industry's first commercial-grade identity management solution to support both SAML and the Liberty Phase 1 protocols. Sun is the first software platform vendor to support the Liberty Phase two specifications. The J2EE-based architecture of Java System Identity Server makes it the preferred developer solution for 'identity-enabling' mobile and data Web services. Java System Identity Server uses role-based access control mechanisms to centrally create and manage users, delegate user administration, and define the access policies for users on intranets and extranets... The Liberty Phase 2 specifications are critical for deploying an effective federated identity infrastructure. Expanding upon the Phase 1 specifications, which allow for cross-domain single sign-on, these new specifications add support for cross-domain attribute exchange and a foundation for Liberty-based Web services. A federated identity architecture allows an authenticated identity to seamlessly take part in targeted Web services from multiple organizations or Web domains that have business agreements in place. This brings greater efficiencies for employee identity management, creates new market and revenue opportunities between business partners, and increases the end-user's control over identity information while facilitating their access to valuable Web services..." See details in the news story: "Liberty Alliance Publishes Final Phase 2 Specifications and Previews Phase 3." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization." [source]

• [November 10, 2003] "Adobe Extends Commitment to XML Standards with Acquisition of Yellow Dragon Software. Acquired Technology Assets Enable Native ebXML Support in Adobe's Intelligent Document Platform and Streamline Collaboration Across the Extended Enterprise. - "Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that it has acquired the technology assets of privately held Yellow Dragon Software, a developer of XML messaging and metadata management software. The acquisition will deliver technology that further strengthens Adobe's XML architecture, which enables businesses and governments to combine the powerful data and business logic capabilities of XML with the rich presentation and enhanced security capabilities of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Yellow Dragon provides a commercial, off-the-shelf ebXML (Electronic Business eXtensible Markup Language) solution using an XML registry, as well as a messaging product, for reliably delivering XML messages between servers. The ebXML specification is a technical framework for using XML in a consistent manner in the exchange of electronic business data. By enabling native support for ebXML transactions within the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform and PDF, Adobe is making it faster and easier for organizations to automate their external business processes and protect their investments using open standards. Adobe plans to integrate this technology into its server products next year. 'The addition of Yellow Dragon is a powerful extension to the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform,' said Ivan Koon, senior vice president at Adobe. 'We believe Yellow Dragon's technology will enable us to offer XML functionality which will be mandated by governments and businesses over the next few years. We also gain experienced engineers who are active in the XML standards arena, and who helped define the ebXML standard.' 'The core team at Yellow Dragon has been involved in the XML standards effort since the beginning,' said Duane Nickull, executive vice president and co-founder of Yellow Dragon. 'Joining the Adobe team will help ensure that our XML technologies enjoy broad adoption as the need for document services grows in the market. We look forward to continuing to deliver new XML technologies that will solve customers' document problems.' Sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), ebXML is a globally developed open XML specification that provides a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms, and define and register business processes. The ebXML standard is being widely adopted by governments and manufacturers worldwide..." General references also in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [November 10, 2003] "OASIS Members Advance Protocol for Monitoring and Controlling Asynchronous Web Services." - "Members of the OASIS international standards consortium have begun work on a specification to enable the control and monitoring of asynchronous or long-running Web services. The OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP) Technical Committee is developing an extension of the World Wide Web Consortium's Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) that will accommodate latency between the request for a resource or service and its actual return. ASAP is applicable for areas as diverse as workflow, business process management, e-commerce, data mining, and mobile wireless devices. 'Not all services are instantaneous -- especially when transactions involve human intervention or approval,' observed Jeffrey Ricker, chair of the OASIS ASAP Technical Committee. 'Probably the biggest breakthrough ASAP can offer is the ability to treat manual processes as Web services. Mass integration need no longer be held hostage by the weakest link. Mass integration can proceed without waiting for full automation of every process in every organization.' OASIS ASAP Technical Committee members include representatives of Computer Associates, DataPower, Fujitsu, and others. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS provides mechanisms for public review and comment..." See: (1) Call for Participation in OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP) TC"; (2) general references in "Asynchronous Transactions and Web Services."

• [November 5, 2003] "Sun to Open a Wal-Mart Compliant RFID Test Center. New Director of Auto-ID Business Unit Claims New Facility Will Speed Supplier Compliance to Wal-Mart Standards." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced that it will open an RFID test center where Wal-Mart suppliers can test their RFID solutions to guarantee compliance with the Wal-Mart standard. 'The impact of Wal-Mart's Radio Frequency ID (RFID) mandate to its suppliers is enormous and will change the way manufacturers and suppliers track inventory,' said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president of Sun software. 'RFID is a game changer for retailers, manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies to name just a few of the impacted industries. Sun is committed to providing open, standards-based RFID middleware software that leverages our Sun Java Enterprise System." The Wal-Mart imposed January 1, 2005 deadline is the first step in the worlds largest retailer's move to implement RFID in its inventory management system store-wide. Wal-Mart will use the Electronic Product Code (EPC) compliant RFID technology for identifying, tracking and tracing deliveries and inventory. Wal-Mart's hundreds of suppliers must take action now to ensure they will remain on the shelves of the retail giant. Because the Wal-Mart Test Center and the RFID Test Centers are built using the same technology, its suppliers can test their RFID solution first with Sun to ensure compliance with Wal-Mart's RFID specifications. 'Sun's target design point has been aimed at reliable, scalable, manageable, secure systems and is a natural fit for supporting RFID based systems,' said Julie Sarbacker, Sun's director of the Auto-ID Business Unit. 'We've been working with customers to determine the most cost effective way to help with compliance to Wal-Mart requirements and needed to provide hands-on access to the technology and systems needed. With this new center, we aim to reduce the time and expense suppliers will have to undergo to support Wal-Mart's requirements.' The Sun RFID test center will be located in Dallas, Texas, and will be open to Wal-Mart's suppliers by December 2003. The Sun RFID Test Center will be powered by the Solaris Operating System using Sun Java Enterprise Software and the Sun standards-based implementation of Savant with additional value around self-healing and provisioning of EPC readers. Customers will also be able to test RFID technology in conjunction with Sun's Java Enterprise Software to smoothly integrate this technology into their existing technology strategy. Sun Services will team with the suppliers to provide the IT consulting expertise, using best practices to ensure that their solution is architected and implemented to maximize return on investment and minimize total cost of ownership in the most timely and efficient way. For more information on Sun's early involvement with RFID and the RFID Test Center, visit http://www.sun.com/software/solutions/auto_id/ Suppliers who want to start testing in the Sun RFID Test Center should contact Sun at autoid-testcenter@sun.com..." See: (1) "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Resources and Readings"; (2) "Physical Markup Language (PML) Core Specification Version 1.0 for EPC Objects."

• [October 28, 2003] "FTC Issues Report on How to Promote Innovation Through Balancing Competition with Patent Law and Policy." - "The Federal Trade Commission today issued its report on how to promote innovation by finding the proper balance of competition and patent law and policy. Although both competition in markets and patents for inventors can work together to foster innovation, the report states that each policy requires a proper balance with the other to do so. 'Consumers and innovators win when patents and competition policy are aligned in the proper balance. Although questionable patents can harm competition and innovation, valid patents work well with competition to promote innovation. This Report analyzes and makes recommendations for the patent system to maintain the proper balance with competition,' said Timothy J. Muris, FTC Chairman. Today's report -- which makes recommendations for the patent system -- is the first of two reports about how to maintain that balance. A forthcoming second report by the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) will make similar recommendations for antitrust law. Among the ten recommendations of today's report, the FTC proposes legislative and regulatory changes to improve patent quality. Patents of questionable validity can slow further innovation and raise costs to consumers. Specifically, the report recommends: (1) Creating a new administrative procedure that will make it easier for firms to challenge a patent's validity at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), without having to raise an expensive and time-consuming federal court challenge; (2) Allowing courts to find patents invalid based on the preponderance of the evidence, without having to find that clear and convincing evidence compels that result. The current standard of 'clear and convincing evidence' undermines courts' ability to weed out questionable patents. This is especially troubling, since certain PTO procedures and rules tend to favor the issuance of patents. The report also recommends that Congress limit the award of treble damages for willful patent infringement. Some hearings participants explained that they do not read their competitors' patents because of concern that learning about others' innovations will expose them to treble damages infringement liability. Failure to read competitors' patents, however, can harm innovation and competition. The FTC's recommended legislative change would allow firms to read patents to learn about new innovations and to survey the patent landscape to assess potential infringement issues, yet would retain a viable willfulness doctrine that protects both wronged patentees and competition..." See also: (1) "W3C Presents Prior Art Filing to USPTO and Urges Removal of Eolas Patent"; (2) "Patents and Open Standards."

• [October 27, 2003] "Industry Milestone: New Standard for Online Content Ready for Prime Time. Time Inc., LexisNexis, Hearst Publishing, Platts/McGraw-Hill, ProQuest and Others to Begin Using PRISM Aggregator Specification for Content Delivery and Acquisition." - "Publishers, aggregators, syndicators and other content companies are now ready to exchange content for secondary licensing using a standardized XML format -- the newly released PRISM specification, the PRISM Aggregator DTD (Document Type Definition) Version 1.0. Time Inc., a founding member of the PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) Working Group involved in development of the new DTD, is working with its aggregator partners, including PRISM members LexisNexis and ProQuest, to put the new format into production by the end of this year... The new PRISM Aggregator DTD was developed by members of PRISM, an IDEAlliance Working Group, in close cooperation with publishers and content aggregators. The new DTD is a use case of the PRISM specification offering a standard format for publishers to mark up and transmit magazine and journal content to aggregators and to push data to their internal web sites... By providing the industry with a standardized vocabulary and rules for defining content electronically, the PRISM Aggregator DTD enables aggregators to lower their costs of bringing new sources of information online. It also enables them to publish the content online more quickly, making it more valuable both to them and to the owners of that content... The Aggregator DTD is the result of a comprehensive review of publisher and aggregator requirements begun in September 2002. The DTD, combined with extensive documentation and samples, is now available for download from the PRISM website. It is being put into testing and production by companies such as Time Inc., LexisNexis, ProQuest, Hearst Publishing and The McGraw-Hill Companies' Platts division. The PRISM aggregator DTD includes basic structural elements found in any serial publication or web-based editorial, such as paragraph headings, photographs and sub-headings. Future releases of the DTD will include additional elements to aid searching and to help track copyright ownership, rights and permissions information, and license agreements. The PRISM working group has adopted well-established industry standards as part of its specifications. The PRISM Aggregator DTD provides customization of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XHTML standard and a set of PRISM metadata that augments the widely-accepted Dublin Core metadata standard. Where appropriate, PRISM will continue to adopt additional complimentary standards in the future. The PRISM specification was first released in April of 2001..." See also: (1) the news story "XML 2003 News Standards Summit Seeks Interoperability and Convergence"; (2) "Atom as the New XML-Based Web Publishing and Syndication Format"; (3) general references in "Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM)."

• [October 23, 2003] "DoD Announces Radio Frequency Identification Policy." - "The Department of Defense announced today the establishment of a Radio Frequency Identification Policy (RFID). RFID technology greatly improves the management of inventory by providing hands-off processing. The equipment quickly accounts for and identifies massive inventories, enhancing the processing of materiel transactions to allow DoD to realign resources and streamline business processes. Implementation of RFID minimizes time spent through the normal means of inventory processing. This technology allows the improvement of data quality, items management, asset visibility, and maintenance of materiel. Further, RFID will enable DoD to improve business functions and facilitate all aspects of the DoD supply chain. The new policy will require suppliers to put passive RFID tags on the lowest possible piece part/case/pallet packaging by January 2005. Acknowledging the impact on DoD suppliers, the department plans to host an RFID Summit for Industry in February 2004. The RFID policy and implementation strategy will be finalized by June 2004. RFID policy and the corresponding RFID tagging/labeling of DoD materiel are applicable to all items except bulk commodities such as sand, gravel or liquids..." See: (1) "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Resources and Readings" and (2) "Physical Markup Language (PML) for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)."

• [October 20, 2003] "Oracle and Corel to Provide Open Standard Content Solutions. Corel Integrates XML and SVG Tools with Newly Introduced Oracle Database 10g." - "Corel Corporation today announced that it has teamed with Oracle Corp. to build and deliver a complete solution to enable the creation, storage and delivery of XML content and SVG Smart Graphic applications. Demonstrated in the Oracle booth at Oracle World Paris this week, the solution integrates the powerful Oracle Database 10g with Corel's award-winning XML tools, Corel XMetaL and Corel Smart Graphics Studio. Corel XMetaL and Corel Smart Graphics Studio work together with the XML DB functionality in Oracle Database 10g to provide intelligent user interfaces for rich structured documents such as product documentation, financial reports, technical manuals and government legislation and regulation. Oracle's XML DB offers deep and comprehensive support for XML, a preferred format for enterprise data and content. Together with Oracle Database 10g, Corel's technologies simplify the integration of open-standard text and graphics into an enterprise publishing workflow. Corel's applications hide the complexity of open standards code from the intended end users, whether they are writers using XMetaL to create XML-based content or application developers using Corel Smart Graphics Studio to build SVG-based Smart Graphics applications. Using this new solution, enterprise customers are able to reduce costs and simplify the process of creating, managing and delivering business critical content. Corel technology provides tools that for the first time create unified interfaces that give end users the ability to interact with a full range of business information stored in their Oracle Database, from unstructured content to transactional data such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), inventory management and e-commerce applications. Announced last month, Oracle Database 10g represents a significant rethinking of the traditional role of software infrastructure in areas such as system performance, clustering and storage. Oracle 10g is the first infrastructure designed for grid computing. This integration with Oracle Database 10g builds on the strengths of Corel's enterprise XML and SVG platforms Corel XMetaL 4 and Corel Smart Graphics Studio. Corel XMetaL is an authoring platform that enables XML text content creation across an organization, streamlining the process of distributing information to the Web, print and other media. Corel Smart Graphics Studio is a development platform that speeds and simplifies the creation of SVG-based Smart Graphics applications, transforming XML and legacy data into powerful and compelling intranet and extranet applications..." See also: (1) Corel Smart Graphics Studio; (2) "Corel Smart Graphics Studio Uses SVG for Graphical Applications Development."

• [October 20, 2003] "ADX Introduces Third Generation Network for Supply Chain Integration. ADX Network Enables Any-To-Any Document Translation. Improved Network Access Tools For Suppliers Also Released." - "ADX (Advanced Data Exchange), a leading provider of supply chain integration solutions, today introduced the third generation of the ADX Network, the backbone of ADX's outsourced supply chain connectivity service that enables companies to automate transactions with all of their suppliers and partners. ADX helps large enterprises expand the success of business process automation beyond their own businesses to streamline outdated, manual processes that they share with their trading partners. The ADX Network now enables any-to-any document translation, providing large enterprises with the capability to transfer a wide array of critical business documents with suppliers using any data standard, dialect or intermediary, including all EDI, XML, VAN and flat file formats. ADX customers are not limited by standards or formats as ADX can translate any format to any format, allowing them to exchange documents with any trading partner. ADX can accommodate any XML dialect, SAP IDoc, Oracle, MIMs or EDI document and translate and transport those to a supply or demand chain rapidly, accurately and securely. In addition to announcing the third generation of ADX Network, ADX also released new versions of its ADX Network access products. Using the new ADX WebAccess and ADX Desktop, mid-size and small companies now have enhanced, easy-to-use tools to help them avoid the cost and complexity of installing and managing EDI or XML software solutions, and rely instead on ADX's simple, outsourced service. 'ADX has delivered on the promise of modernizing our supply chain relationships and improving business processes for us and our business partners,' said James McLauchlin, EDI Analyst/Coordinator, Do it Best Corp. 'The new capabilities within the ADX Network and the supplier access tools prove ADX's commitment to highly functional, cost-effective solutions for larger enterprises like Do it Best Corp. as well as suppliers in the extended supply chain.' In addition to the upgrade of the ADX Network for any-to-any document translation, ADX now offers complete AS1/AS2 interoperability. AS1/AS2 standards let large enterprises significantly reduce the high costs of EDI communications through VANs by routing transactions over the Internet through ADX Network instead. ADX customers with AS2-based supplier connectivity report secure, reliable document transportation at substantial cost savings. For suppliers, ADX WebAccess represents ADX's first completely Web-enabled access tool and gives suppliers a complete, Internet-based option to connect to the ADX Network for document exchange. Unlike other Web-based solutions, ADX WebAccess allows users to connect to multiple trading partners concurrently. ADX Desktop 3.3 offers enhanced database and back office integration through easy-to-use import/export tools..."

• [October 20, 2003] "ebXML Business Process Specification Advances Within OASIS. Fujitsu, Sterling Commerce, Cyclone Commerce, Sun Microsystems and Others Support Expanded ebXML Work at OASIS." - "Developers of the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) have decided to advance their work under the technical process of the OASIS international standards consortium. The newly formed OASIS ebXML Business Process (BP) Technical Committee will further define the royalty-free ebXML BPSS model for binary and multiparty business collaborations both within and between enterprises. ebXML BP will support the exchange of standards-based business process definitions, such as those developed by industry-specific organizations, enabling standard, interoperable process configurations that effectively meet business collaboration requirements for analysis, design, and production use. ebXML BP is part of the modular suite of specifications that enable enterprises of any size, in any global region to conduct business using the Internet. ebXML comprises open, royalty-free standards for business process collaboration, core data components, collaboration protocol agreements, messaging, and registries and repositories. ebXML implementers span the globe and include General Motors, the US Center for Disease Control, the Pan Asia e-Trade Alliance, and TransCanada Pipelines. RosettaNet has formally adopted ebXML BPSS as a mechanism for expressing business collaborations involving RosettaNet PIPs, and government agencies around the world recommend the use of ebXML. 'ebXML is the only framework that is at the same time generic and flexible and can be used for inter-administrations relations,' concluded the European Commission's Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) in its study, 'Business to Business Frameworks for IDA Networks.' 'Moreover, ebXML is clearly the only trend for organised business communities. The general recommendation is to follow ebXML standards as much as possible.' 'ebXML BP will enable legally enforceable, easily manageable, and fully traceable collaborations,' said Dale Moberg of Cyclone Commerce, convenor and proposed co-chair of the OASIS ebXML BP Technical Committee. 'Industry standards organizations will be able to use ebXML BP schemas and formats to specify business process definitions for their own collaboration communities.' The OASIS ebXML BP TC will base its work on ebXML BPSS version 1.01, jointly developed by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) and on derivative work expected to be donated by a range of participants. 'We're excited to continue this work within the OASIS technical process,' noted Monica J. Martin of Sun Microsystems, proposed co-chair of the OASIS ebXML BP Technical Committee. 'OASIS provides an environment for us to adhere to the ebXML principles of a loosely coupled, highly aligned specification set, while enabling support for other emerging Web service technologies, OASIS specifications, and products from industry standards organizations'..." (1) "OASIS Members Form ebXML Business Process Technical Committee"; (2) related news in "UN/CEFACT Announces Release of Its ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.1"; (3) general references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [October 18, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Announces Release of Its ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.1." - "The Technologies and Methodologies Group (TMG) of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business announce the final release of its ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) Version 1.1 prepared under the UN/CEFACT Open Development Process. Over the last 2 years interested parties from around the world have collaborated in the development of the Specification addressing a number of deficiencies implementers of Version 1.01 identified. Regarding the BPSS road map, as agreed to by the TMG in March 2003, work on Version 2.0, alignment with the UMM Meta-Model's Business Transaction View (BTV), will commence starting with the upcoming TMG meeting in December. Interested parties are invited to attend the meeting in Waidhofen/Ybbs (Austria), 8-12 December 2003. Parties interested in the BPSS V1.1 can download it from the TMG's Web Site under 'Approved Documents'. UN/CEFACT, which is based in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and has a global remit, has led the development of international standards for electronic transactions for government, commerce and industry. Its experience and ability to bring together world class experts and match trends in information technology with business requirements, in an open and transparent way, gives UN/CEFACT a unique viewpoint..." See also: (1) related news in "ebXML Business Process Specification Advances Within OASIS. Fujitsu, Sterling Commerce, Cyclone Commerce, Sun Microsystems and Others Support Expanded ebXML Work at OASIS."; (2) general references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [October 15, 2003] "Liberty Alliance Launches Certification Program for Liberty-Interoperable Products and Services. Initiative Ensures Product Compatibility to Help Increase Buyer and Partner Confidence in Identity Management Products and Services." - "The Liberty Alliance Project announced a new program today that will validate products and services, which have successfully implemented the Liberty Alliance standards for federated network identity. The new certification program will help vendors, integrators and implementers ensure interoperability between Liberty-enabled solutions. This program, managed by the Liberty Alliance, will also drive overall buyer confidence in interoperability, help predict product functionality and provide a third-party reference point for both technology vendor and implementer expectations. 'Businesses, governments and other organizations want solutions based on open, mature industry standards that will cut integration costs and guarantee the long-term viability of their investment,' said Michael Barrett, president of the Liberty Alliance Management Board and vice president of Internet strategy at American Express. 'Standards are often open to interpretation which can harm confidence in complete interoperability. With the growing maturity and adoption of the Alliance's specifications, our work needs to focus now on alleviating the business complexity of implementing identity federation.' The Liberty Alliance interoperability certification program awards usage of the Liberty Alliance interoperability logo to products and services that have conformed with a stated version of the Liberty specifications. The vendors declaring conformance must participate in a Liberty-sponsored interoperability event, following published guidelines to prove compatibility with other Liberty-enabled products and compliance with the Liberty standard. The program is open to both members and non-members. Liberty Alliance's specifications and associated implementation guidelines offer specific features that enable organizations to build more efficient, secure and trusted identity-based web services. The ability to deploy an environment that promotes confidence and trust with employees, partners and customers will help advance the promise of single sign-on and web services. 'We've seen a growing demand from a wide variety of vertical markets express interest in Liberty conformance,' said Roger Sullivan, president and CEO of Phaos Technologies and chair of the Liberty Alliance certification sub-team. 'We believe the ability to demonstrate proven support for the Liberty standard will be important to potential buyers and users'..." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization"

• [October 15, 2003] "IPTC Approves New Versions of its NITF and NewsML Standards." - "Maintenance releases of two popular standards for sharing news have been unanimously approved at the autumn meeting of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) here. News industry representatives also approved further work on a next-generation version of NewsML that will further streamline the sharing of multimedia news files among agencies and news consumers. Upgrades to the world's most widely used XML news markup formats -- News Industry Text Format 3.2 and NewsML version 1.2 -- are part of an ongoing maintenance programme that is designed to keep both standards near the state of the art in XML. Broader development of the proposed NewsML version 2 continued, with members hearing that NewsML 2 will be compatible with previous versions. Preliminary NewsML 2 specifications are expected to be released next year. Meanwhile, NewsML users in China, Hong Kong and Macau announced plans for a regional meeting; details will be posted on the IPTC's web site. ProgramGuideML 1.0, an initiative by Japanese members for sharing television and radio programming information, gained preliminary approval. A final vote is scheduled for March 2003. The new standard will allow channel, program and time details to be sent from broadcasters to news outlets, cable system operators and web sites in a common computer-readable format. A uniform method of describing the content of photographs was also passed. The list of terms, which is expandable, can be used alone or in conjunction with any of the IPTC's XML formats. The descriptive terms are expressed as numbers, making multilingual applications easy to design. Work continues toward the News Standards Summit prior to XML Conference 2003 in Philadelphia on 8 December, 2003. The IPTC and other XML interest groups will join software designers, news system managers and system vendors in a comprehensive review of XML in the news industry. The day-long News Standards Summit will be held in conjunction with XML Conference 2003, a major trade show and education forum for the XML industry..." See: (1) "NewsML"; (2) "News Industry Text Format (NITF)"; (3) "IPTC Releases Version 3.2 Preview for News Industry Text Format (NITF)"; (4) XML 2003 News Standards Summit Seeks Interoperability and Convergence."

• [October 14, 2003] "Spotlight on Government, Military XML Applications at XML 2003. Government, Industry Representatives to Detail XML Implementations. Premier XML Industry Event Runs December 7-12 2003 in Philadelphia." - "IDEAlliance, a leading trade association dedicated to fostering XML and other information technology standards, today announced that XML Conference and Exposition 2003 will feature 14 presentations on government-related applications of XML technologies and standards. 'The U.S. federal government, state governments and the military have recognized the advantages of using XML as a basis for their applications.' says Lauren Wood, XML 2003 conference chair. 'These presentations will show various aspects of XML in practical use.' Reginald L. Hobbs, computer scientist with the Army Research Laboratory, is giving a presentation titled 'Using XML to Support Military Decision-Making' on Thurs., Dec. 11, at 2:45 p.m. 'XML is improving military efficiency in a number of areas,' says Hobbs. 'My presentation will focus on XML and XML technologies in the military decision-making process, specifically through modelling and simulation environments.' [See the PR text for other listings.] XML 2003 will feature a full schedule of educational programs on critical XML topics such as B2B, content management, government XML applications, graphics and multimedia, publishing, vertical industry applications, Web services, and more. Keynote speakers and presenters at XML 2003 will include representatives from Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Oracle Server Technologies, Reuters, BEA Systems, Inc., Hewlett Packard, and IBM Corporation. To learn about the new IDEAlliance TechDoc Community of Practice visit http://www.tech-doc.org. This activity is sponsored by Antenna House, Arbortext, Architag, Astoria, Data Conversion Laboratories, Empolis, Exegenix and XyEnterprise. The full XML 2003 schedule is available online. Opportunities to sponsor or exhibit at XML 2003 are still available... IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) is a not-for-profit membership organization. Its mission is to advance user-driven, cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes by developing standards, fostering business alliances, and identifying best practices. IDEAlliance has been a leader in information technology since 1966 (founded as Graphic Communications Association) having fostered the development and adoption of standards such as ADIS, GRACoL, ICE, JIFFI, Mail.dat, papiNet, PRISM, PROSE XML, SPACE XML, SGML, and XML..."

• [October 14, 2003] "PureEdge Strengthens Support for XForms. XForms 1.0 Released Today as a W3C Recommendation." - "PureEdge Solutions Inc., the leader in secure, XML forms-based business process automation, congratulates the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the XForms Working Group on its release today of XForms 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. PureEdge is a founding member of the W3C's XForms Working Group. 'We're pleased to have co-authored XForms 1.0,' said Dr. John Boyer, a PureEdge Senior Product Architect and Research Scientist. 'PureEdge has played a leading role in shaping open standards based on our secure and dynamic XML forms language, XFDL.' Dr Boyer played an active role in the working group and is the author of the computation engine featured in XForms 1.0. PureEdge electronic forms are 100% native XML. XFDL, the original XML e-forms language published as a W3C Note, provides a secure and auditable equivalent to paper transactions. It binds together questions, answers, presentation format, logic, attachments and metadata in a single, signable XML file. To meet the rigorous security and functionality requirements demanded by many government, financial services and insurance organizations, PureEdge enables XML data markup, in any XML vocabulary and conforming to any XML schema, to be deployed with the key security features and rich, dynamic presentation functionality of XFDL. By transforming XFDL into a host presentation and security layer for XForms, PureEdge will be able to scale up XForms applications to any level of security anytime. With the movement of XForms to recommendation status, PureEdge will move to provide a fully XForms compliant implementation of XML model concepts already inherent in XFDL..." See: (1) "World Wide Web Consortium Releases XForms 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation"; (2) W3C XForms Implementations."

• [October 14, 2003] "Radicchio to Submit M-Commerce and Security Standards Work to the Liberty Alliance Project." - "Radicchio Ltd. and the Liberty Alliance Project announced today that Radicchio, a cross-industry initiative for secure m-commerce, will contribute all its existing work in the area of mobile data services to the Liberty Alliance for further development. The move will provide the Liberty Alliance, an organisation developing an open standard for federated network identity, further expertise in the mobile and European markets, as well as additional resources. It will also help speed development of a secure standard for authenticating and sharing identity-based data services across mobile networks around the globe. Radicchio, formed in 1999 to advance the potential of mobile e-commerce and mobile security, has worked in concert with its members, a number of partners in the mobile industry, the Liberty Alliance and regulatory and standardisation organisations like the European Commission and ETSI to develop the 'Trusted Transaction Roaming' platform. Radicchio's newly developed platform, a method for securely authenticating mobile users across different mobile networks, already utilises the Liberty Alliance Federated Identity Architecture, and will continue to be supported within the Alliance. 'During our work we quickly learned identity and authentication is key to security and mobile services,' said Stefan Engel-Flechsig, Radicchio CEO. 'Our work was becoming more identity-related and the Liberty Alliance is the natural and universal place for conversations, concepts and standards around identity to develop.' The consolidation of Radicchio's work within the Liberty Alliance will also help Radicchio's member base, many of whom are also part of the Liberty Alliance. Engel-Flechsig continued, 'There are numerous standards developments occurring simultaneously which is a strain not only on the those who must implement the standards but on the members involved in standards development as well. Because of the Alliance's strong support and our shared membership, we feel this is the best place for our work to continue.' [...] Radicchio's new Trusted Transaction Roaming platform is a concept for securely authenticating mobile users across networks for offering data services. The platform will allow service providers to be able to offer data services to other network operators' customers providing more value to their own customers and offering customers a wider choice of services without leaving their existing operator network..." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

• [October 13, 2003] "Westbridge Technology Establishes Web Services Management Leadership with Release of XML Message Server 3.0. Enhancements Simplify Management and Security of XML Web Services and Services-Oriented Architectures." - "Westbridge Technology today announced the release of Westbridge XML Message Server (XMS) 3.0. With XMS 3.0, Westbridge addressed customer requests in deploying XML Web Services and Services-Oriented Architectures (SOA) by building a complete end-to-end Web Services Management (WSM) solution focused on the security and management of Web Services. Westbridge XMS 3.0 includes major enhancements that provide advanced Web Services Management (WSM) capabilities. XMS 3.0 is the premier implementation of the Service Views capability. Service Views enable customers to achieve the reusability and interface control that is central to Services-Oriented Architectures. Additional capabilities include SmartParser performance improvements, auto-validation of messages, 'Getting Started' productivity wizards, integration with additional existing infrastructure, team administration enhancements and dynamic routing. 'Our product development process works in lock step with our customer's Web Services needs,' said Kerry Champion, president and founder of Westbridge Technology. 'Our customers were first concerned about securing their Web Services and leveraging their existing infrastructure for securing the special requirements of Web Services. For 2.0 we addressed many of their scalability and Web Services Management (WSM) needs and added WS-Security and SAML support. XMS 3.0 caps a year long effort in working with customers to provide leading edge WSM capabilities that leapfrog the competition.' ... Service Views has been enhanced to enable organizations to easily manage, control and improve their XML and Web Services interfaces throughout the organization saving them significant money, time and resources for development and maintenance. Service Views are virtual services composed from one or many different services that can be 'mixed and matched and modified' according to the administrator. Service Views serve as the logical control point for security, interoperability, monitoring and business rule enforcement. Service Views are easy-to-create and highly flexible, enabling administrators to instantly 'upgrade' any web service to be standards compliant and interoperable with any Service Consumer. For instance, an XML interface can be upgraded to be SOAP interface and be able to talk to SOAP clients. Furthermore, any interface, including legacy services, can be instantly upgraded to be compliant with WS-Security or SAML, XML Encryption, XML Signature, JMS, HTTPS, as well as a number of other standards. No coding or integration is required saving developers' time and resources and insulating companies from changing standards... Westbridge XMS 3.0 also introduces SmartParser, a series of performance improvements that provide over 10x improvement for some XML intensive operations. 'It's well known that XML can be verbose, so we have made a number of significant improvements to intelligently and efficiently handle the message stream,' said Dr. Matthew Fuchs, Member of Technical Staff at Westbridge and one of the original members of the XML and XML Schema SIGs at W3C. Such patent-pending improvements are related to handling XML in stream format, parsing XML intelligently according to the particular rules required and caching. Westbridge provides 'software acceleration' that work with optional hardware acceleration products for very high performance and scalability..."

• [October 10, 2003] "IBM and Cisco Unveil Innovative Approach Toward a Self-Healing Infrastructure. Companies Collaborate on Technologies and Standards to Address IT Complexity." - "IBM and Cisco today announced a set of open software technologies designed to increase the end-to-end intelligence and responsiveness of the global IT infrastructure -- representing a major advancement in the development of "self-healing" computing systems and networks. IBM and Cisco are working on a set of proposed technologies and standards creating a common language to detect, log and resolve system problems. The two companies will further outline this initiative next week at IBM's annual CIO conference in San Diego, CA. IBM plans to start integrating these new autonomic technologies into its entire portfolio of software, storage and server hardware products immediately. In the second phase of this initiative, Cisco intends to integrate these technologies into its products and services. Together the system and network enhancements will help to enable a self-healing enterprise infrastructure. Pioneered within both companies development labs, the new problem determination technologies are envisioned as the basis for standardized exchange of problem determination data across the IT enterprise. These new technologies lay the foundation for systems and networks to detect, analyze, correlate, and resolve IT problems and automatically diagnose the root cause of a problem in complex systems. Customer data centers have a large set of products with diverse and often proprietary instrumentation, which makes end-to-end analysis difficult or impossible. Adapting an architected, standards-based design results in an infrastructure that helps enable delivery of end-to-end problem determination and problem remediation... The new technologies are part of the companies' commitment to develop and drive open standards. IBM and Cisco are working across the industry to develop an open standards approach. IBM has submitted a Common Base Event (CBE) format, which is envisioned as the basis for standardized exchange of problem determination data via web services, to the OASIS Standards Body... Once problem determination tools and processes are implemented, enterprises have the ability to diagnose problems more quickly, and often before they happen, reducing downtime and the associated revenue losses. Building and implementing networked self-healing systems into the enterprise environment is a gradual one and IBM has already begun helping the industry by developing a common approach and terminology to architecting autonomic computing systems. In April IBM introduced the autonomic computing blueprint, which is based on open standards and is designed around developing self-managing systems that use intelligent control loops to collect information from the system, make decisions and then adjust the system as necessary. IBM is also working with the business partner community, providing ISVs with the latest technologies as well as supporting them in bringing new applications to market with these latest capabilities, all built around open standards. One of the factors contributing to the complexity in problem determination can be attributed to the multitude of ways that different parts of a system report events, conditions, errors, and alerts. Today, even simple e-business solutions may contain as many as 25 to 40 logging mechanisms. These log files contain a variety of content formats because systems are built using disparate pieces and parts, often with products from multiple vendors. Technology developed by the IBM Research Division has been crucial to overcoming these difficulties by providing a way to automatically learn the format of log files, thereby reducing the time required to process and develop interfaces to new log data (often from days to hours)..." For information on Common Base Event (CBE) format, see References and Additional Information in the IBM/Cisco press release.

• [October 07, 2003] "OASIS Members Collaborate on Composite Application Framework for Web Services. Arjuna Technologies, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, IONA, Oracle, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, Yellow Dragon, and Others Work to Define Transactional Coordination Specifications." - "Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to collaborate on a generic, open framework for applications composed of Web services used in combination. The OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee will define a set of royalty-free, interoperable, modular specifications that will enable the development of composite applications, ranging from simple to complex combinations of Web services and encompassing a useful range of transaction and coordination requirements. 'A serious problem remaining in Web services standardization is transactional coordination,' explained Mark Little of Arjuna Technologies, convener of the OASIS WS-CAF Technical Committee. 'Web services combined in composite applications require interoperable mechanisms to set the boundaries of an activity (such as start/end, or success/failure), to create, access, and manage context information and to inform participants of changes to an activity.' 'We expect WS-CAF specifications will become the building blocks for other Web services standards,' said Martin Chapman of Oracle Corporation, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-CAF Technical Committee. 'That's why we're taking an incremental, multi-protocol approach, creating a modular stack of specifications. Instead of mandating a single protocol, we want to offer users the option to implement portions of WS-CAF based on their needs.' The OASIS WS-CAF Technical Committee intends to accept as input the WS-Context, WS-Coordination Framework, and WS-Transaction Management specifications published by Arjuna, Fujitsu, IONA, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. Other contributions are welcome on an equal basis. 'Composability is a critical aspect of Web services,' added Eric Newcomer of IONA, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-CAF Technical Committee. 'That's why WS-CAF will be designed to be non-overlapping and interoperable with other open Web Service specifications. We plan to invest in gathering requirements input and defining relationships between related specifications and WS-CAF. Above all, we want to promote convergence, consistent use, and a coherent architecture.' WS-CAF specifications will provide WSDL definitions for context, coordination, and transactions. Message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body content. The new group will collaborate with other OASIS Technical Committees, such as the OASIS Business Transaction Technical Committee, the OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP) Technical Committee and the OASIS Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee. WS-CAF developers also plan to liaise with efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), including the XML Protocol, Web Service Architecture, Web Service Description, and Web Service Choreography Working Groups..." See: (1) the news story 2003-09-18 "OASIS Forms Web Services Composite Application Framework Technical Committee"; (2) "Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) for Transaction Coordination"; (3) general references in "Messaging and Transaction Coordination"

• [October 07, 2003] "CA's eTrust Admin Identity Management Solution to Support OASIS SPML. CA Demonstrates Interoperability With Emerging Web Services Standard at Recent PeopleSoft Conference." - "Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) announced [September 24, 2003] that its eTrust Admin identity management solution will support the new OASIS Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) 1.0 specification, an emerging industry standard designed to streamline and automate the provisioning of systems and Web services across organizations. eTrust Admin increases user account management security while reducing administration costs. SPML is intended to provide a standards-based approach to removing user accounts across heterogeneous systems. This common administration can significantly reduce IT workloads, help ensure compliance with security policies, and provide employees with immediate access to critical resources. Changes in human resource systems can be propagated automatically to IT applications without human intervention. CA has tested eTrust Admin's SPML capabilities with PeopleSoft's leading human resources platform, and demonstrated interoperability with SPML at the recent PeopleSoft Connect 2003 Conference in Anaheim, California. 'CA's adoption of SPML enables a flexible and portable approach to leveraging HR information when managing and enforcing identity-based security policies,' said Phil Schacter, vice president and service director at Burton Group, a leading enterprise IT research and advisory services firm. 'Standards-based identity solutions, driven by authoritative HR information, improve overall security and substantially reduce the risk of exposing valuable business systems and information assets.' SPML has been approved by the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee prior to submission to the consortium's membership at-large for voting as an OASIS Standard. As an XML-based framework, SPML allows eTrust Admin's capabilities to be extended to any enterprise system or Web service with the necessary compliant interface. 'The use of standards is essential as the number of applications and services proliferates,' said Karl Best, vice president of OASIS. 'CA's embrace of SPML is a welcome contribution to the advancement of efficient, open standards-based IT management architectures.' 'As organizations integrate business processes with their partners, they need to dynamically manage the authorization and de-authorization of access rights for users,' said Gavenraj Sodhi, CA product manager for eTrust Admin. 'By leveraging both the SPML specification and existing investments in PeopleSoft technology, eTrust Admin provides an ideal means of achieving these objectives'..." General references in "XML-Based Provisioning Services"

• [October 07, 2003] "ContentGuard Releases a Web-Based Rights Editor for MPEG REL. RightsExpress Tool to Assist Deployment of MPEG Rights Expression Language." - "ContentGuard, a leading provider of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, today launched RightsExpress, a web-based Rights Editor for MPEG REL, the forthcoming industry-standard rights expression language developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) and currently at Final Draft International Standard status in the ISO process. Using this service, a user can quickly understand the features and deployment options of MPEG REL as they explore how rights and conditions can be used in various DRM application workflows. Through RightsExpress' intuitive user interface and online guidance, technical and non-technical users can quickly experiment, model and create REL licenses relevant to their business needs. RightsExpress also provides preloaded sample licenses that can be modified by the user, further facilitating the understanding and adoption of various MPEG REL deployment options. 'As the DRM industry continues to develop, content owners and technology providers need to work together to leverage the potential of digital content delivery,' said Michael Miron, co-chairman and CEO of ContentGuard. 'The MPEG REL will be an ISO standard by the end of 2003, and in order to accelerate digital content distribution, the industry can start developing and deploying MPEG REL-based solutions today. RightsExpress builds on ContentGuard's history of contributions towards developing and promoting DRM standards. It will help the DRM industry embrace interoperable standards that promote consumer choice.' RightsExpress is available now and can be accessed [online]..." See: (1) "MPEG Rights Expression Language"; (2) "Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)"; (3) general references in "XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

• [October 6, 2003] "Microsoft Announces Steps to Address Eolas Patent Ruling. Documentation for Developers and Modest Changes in Software Will Minimize or Eliminate Impact on Consumers and Address Issues Raised by August 11 Ruling While Appeal Moves Forward." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced how it will respond to the August jury decision in the Eolas patent lawsuit. The steps include modest changes to Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer as well as measures that Web developers and others who use Internet Explorer technology can take to ameliorate or eliminate the impact of the ruling. Microsoft is providing full documentation for these changes to help guide Web developers and other developers that use its Internet Explorer technology to create the best possible user experience. Other companies providing specialized documentation related to this change are listed on the Web site. 'This ruling affects more than just Microsoft; it affects a broad array of partners and customers -- including companies that many would view as competitors,' said Michael Wallent, general manager of the Windows Client Platform at Microsoft. 'Microsoft has been very proactive in reaching out to this group to develop steps that will reduce or eliminate the ruling's impact on consumers and other companies, even as we appeal it.' 'Microsoft and Macromedia have worked together for years to deliver great Web experiences,' said Norm Meyrowitz, president of products, Macromedia. 'Together, we have developed a straightforward solution that should result in little impact for our mutual customers.' Eolas Technologies Inc. is the exclusive licensee of a patent owned by the University of California. In the case, Eolas asserted that the patent covered one specific mechanism used by Web page authors to embed and automatically invoke certain interactive programs. Although Microsoft asserted that the patent was invalid due to pre-existing inventions, the court refused to let the jury consider the prior art. The jury rendered its verdict on August 11, 2003. The parties are still in the process of submitting their post-trial motions and briefs. The final judgment has not yet been entered. The solution developed by Microsoft has two main parts: (1) First, Microsoft will make minor changes to Internet Explorer's handling of some Web pages that use ActiveX Controls, such as Macromedia Flash, Apple QuickTime, RealNetworks RealOne, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Sun Java Virtual Machine and Microsoft Windows Media Player. It is currently anticipated that this change will be deployed by early next year. If Web developers have not updated their Web pages using the techniques suggested by Microsoft and others, users may see a simple dialog box before the browser loads the ActiveX Control. (2) Second, Microsoft and other industry partners are working to provide documentation for Web developers that describe how to author Web pages so the dialog box would not be necessary..." See: (1) "W3C Opens Public Discussion Forum on US Patent 5,838,906 and Eolas v. Microsoft"; (2) general references in "Patents and Open Standards."

• [October 6, 2003] "Sybase Announces Availability of Latest Version of Its Enterprise-Class RDBMS. Sybase ASE 12.5.1 Demonstrates Lower Total Cost of Development and Operations on Both Unix and Linux Platform." - "Sybase, Inc., a leading enterprise infrastructure and integration company, today announced the availability of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 12.5.1, the latest release of the company's enterprise-class relational database management system (RDBMS). Sybase ASE has established itself as one of the most cost-effective data management platforms for business-critical computing, and builds on that reputation with the introduction of key enhancements in version 12.5.1 to further drive down total cost of ownership and operations. Key new features are designed to make ASE even more cost-effective and easier to use through self-management capabilities, enhanced system performance and advanced Web services and XML support. ASE 12.5.1 remains a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) leader. According to The Standish Group, the life-cycle cost of RDBMS applications running on ASE, is on average more than 15 percent lower than the equivalent offerings from Oracle. Sybase is committed to addressing current business problems in data management through comprehensive low-cost solutions that offer the best performance with the economical use of resources - as demonstrated by announcements earlier this year on record-breaking Linux performance, a partnership with TIBCO, and TPC-H benchmarking tests for Sybase IQ 12.5... 'We've used both Sybase and Oracle in building applications for our customers but prefer Sybase ASE because of its ease-of-use,' said Chris Young, president, Cascadia Software, a Seattle-based technology consulting firm. 'It is dramatically easier for us to develop systems using Sybase ASE, and with ASE 12.5.1 we are very much looking forward to taking advantage of the new performance and development features, including the job scheduler, and complete XML support.' 'The scalability and high-performance of ASE 12.5.1 allows our customers to build, deploy and manage database applications on the most cost-effective platforms -- including Linux on Intel, Windows and UNIX,' said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Infrastructure Platform Group. 'This release demonstrates our continued commitment to data management solutions that offer the best performance with the best use of resources - both systems and people. It builds on announcements earlier this year on record-breaking Linux performance, the real-time database partnership with TIBCO, TPC-H benchmarking tests for our highly-scalable analytical engine, Sybase IQ 12.5, as well as our leadership in mobile data management solutions.' New capabilities in this RDBMS release enable customers using Sybase ASE 12.5.1 to affordably close today's 'Operational Gap' -- the gap created between the need to scale up to handle exponential growth in data volume/complexity, and the need to control or reduce the cost of data management -- including people, systems and applications..."

• [October 01, 2003] "OpenOffice.org Announces Release 1.1. Open Source, Cross Platform Office Productivity Suite for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X X11." - "OpenOffice.org is proud to announce the immediate availability for download of the new version of the award-winning office suite, OpenOffice.org 1.1, for Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Linux (x86 & PowerPC), and Solaris Operating System (SPARC platform edition) in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean and Japanese. The suite comes complete with word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation and various other components and provides a revolutionary open, future-proof XML file format. The new release introduces many enhancements and new features including native one-click PDF (Adobe Acrobat) export, Macromedia Flash export for presentations and drawings, faster load-time, enhanced MS Office file compatibility, accessibility support and a smoother look and feel. The suite, according to the terms of its open source licenses (LGPL and SISSL), is free for all to use, improve, modify, and to redistribute to anyone. 'The release of Version 1.1 of OpenOffice.org is a major achievement for the OpenOffice.org community,' said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of desktop solutions at Sun Microsystems, Inc. 'With the successful inaugural Openoffice.org conference earlier in the year, the energy in the community drove many corporate and individual contributors to work together with Sun to create the most stable and powerful release of the OpenOffice.org application so far, which is the core of the new StarOffice 7 Office Suite. 'New features like the native PDF export and the support for assistive technologies will accelerate the fast growing, worldwide adoption of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice as well as more secure, alternative desktop environments. We've seen community members work for days on end to create translated versions. This kind of enthusiasm helped to make OpenOffice.org one of the leading open source projects today,' adds Sasaki. Versions for Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris (x86) will be available later this year. Other platforms continue in development..." See details in the news story "OpenOffice.org Releases Free, Open Source, Cross Platform Office Productivity Suite."

Earlier Press Releases 2003 Q3

• [September 30, 2003] "Adobe and Xerox Announce Strategic Initiative to Promote Print Production Workflow Standards. Adobe PDF, JDF, XML and PostScript Technologies Incorporated Into Xerox FreeFlow Initiative." - "Adobe Systems Incorporated and Xerox Corporation today announced an initiative to jointly support and promote the widespread adoption of emerging print industry standards for both static and variable information workflow technologies. The standards include Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), JDF (Job Definition Format) job ticketing, Adobe PostScript, XML (Extensible Markup Language), and variable information workflow technologies. The initiative is part of Xerox FreeFlow Digital Workflow Collection that improves digital workflow -- the process by which print jobs make their way from creation through final production and fulfillment... Adobe technologies are incorporated throughout the latest release of the Xerox FreeFlow Digital Workflow Collection. (1) Xerox DigiPath Production Software 4.0 with Adobe Acrobat, PDF Libraries and PDF plug-in support as part of a full and robust Adobe PDF workflow. Adobe PDF is supported throughout all of DigiPath's functionality, including scanning, preflight, imposition, editing, storage, viewing and printing. (2) Xerox DocuSP 3.7 Controllers for production printing with Adobe PostScript 3, PDF Libraries and Normalizer solutions for reliable, consistent print output, native PDF consumption and the highest quality PPML support. (3) The Xerox VIPP Thin Printer for high-volume production, tagging and delivery of optimized Adobe PDFs from the same print data streams used for production printing, using Adobe Acrobat, Distiller Server and PDF Libraries. These PDF files can be used for single or multi-set proofs, archiving, electronic distribution, and Web presentment of variable data documents produced from Xerox VIPP applications. As part of the new initiative, Adobe and Xerox are undertaking joint efforts to drive acceptance of the JDF standard for job ticketing, and to develop integrated solutions that leverage the strengths of their respective variable data printing technologies. Both companies embrace PostScript, PDF, XML and variable data print streams to provide the broadest possible range of one-to-one business applications. Consistent with these priorities, Xerox is supporting the latest PPML Graphic Arts Conformance Subset standard across its line of production products and one-to-one solutions architecture..." See also: (1) "Job Definition Format (JDF)"; (2) "Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML)."

• [September 29, 2003] "Antarctica Systems Announces Visual Net 4.0. Maximizing Information Display to Reveal Clarity, Truth in Data." - "Antarctica Systems Inc., a pioneer developer of visualization technology, today announced the availability of version 4.0 of its Visual Net (VN) software. Visual Net's map-based visual displays convey the relevant, meaningful content that business users need to address key business issues. Most enterprise software tools focus on collecting, aggregating and slicing/dicing data -- they have not focused on presenting information in a compelling and usable manner. As a result, many of these tools obscure problems more than they help to clarify. 'The business problems that people address on a daily basis are complex and multidimensional,' states Tim Bray, founder and CTO of Antarctica Systems. 'Other tools fail to meet this challenge. Sometimes key problems and opportunities are missed, even though all of the required information exists.' The improvements in Visual Net 4.0 are aimed at changing the user focus from dealing with the complexities of constructing complex queries to dealing with key business issues... The VN maps display all the complexities inherent in real business issues, showing multiple dimensions of both macro and micro data, unlike other enterprise tools that try to present complex business problems boiled down to one-dimensional snapshots. This enables users to have a complete view of their business problems. Users are presented with better/more relevant information. The VN interface is designed to provide the maximum amount of relevant content to users. Business users do not need to access multiple reports, screens, graphics etc to collect the information required to solve problems. Visual Net screens contain 60-80% relevant content compared to less than 25% for most other enterprise tools. Key issues 'rise to the top' so they can be acted upon quickly before they become critical problems. Once a problem is identified, users can easily drill down to investigate and gather more details -- 'to clarify, add detail.' Critical business information is easily made available to executives and business users, instead of a small set of 'power users'. Users do not need to know how to construct complex queries or generate reports. Visual Net 4.0 has built in more interactivity, allowing users at all levels of the organization to manipulate and filter data to customize the information on the maps, giving users more flexibility in what they see. Visual Net is now equally adept at visualizing three types of information: numeric, textual and geographic -- either individually or in combination..." See also the Visual Net FAQ document.

• [September 29, 2003] Open Archives Initiative and Project RoMEO Initiate OAI-Rights Working Group." - "The Open Archives Initiative and Project RoMEO announce the formation of OAI-rights. The goal of this effort is to investigate and develop means of expressing rights about metadata and resources in the OAI framework. The result will be an addition to the OAI implementation guidelines that specifies mechanisms for rights expressions within the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The area of rights expressions is wide-open with many organizations proposing languages and mechanisms. Therefore, the OAI-rights effort will aim to be extensible, providing a general framework for expressing rights statements within OAI-PMH. These statements will target both the metadata itself and the resources described by that metadata. In the context of this broader framework, OAI-rights will use Creative Commons licenses as a motivating and deployable example. A white paper describing the scope and issues in OAI-rights is available online... OAI-rights work will begin in September 2003, with completion of specifications planned for second quarter 2004." Members of the Organizing Committee include Carl Lagoze, Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael Nelson, and Simeon Warner (for the OAI); Elizabeth Gadd, and Steve Probets (for Project RoMEO). The OAI-Rights Working Group includes representatives from US Library of Congress, Rightscom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, American Physical Society, Erasmus Electronic Publishing Initiative, Hewlett/Packard DSpace, Project RoMEO/Loughborough University, eprints.org/University of Southampton, Cornell University Information Science, Humboldt University Berlin, Old Dominion University Computer Science, California Digital Library, FEDORA/Cornell University Information Science, UKOLN, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Creative Commons. See details in the 2003-09-26 news story: "RoMEO and OAI-PMH Teams Develop Rights Solution Using ODRL and Creative Common Licenses."

• [September 29, 2003] "OASIS Members Collaborate on Global Framework to Enhance Web Services Deployment." - "Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to collaborate on the development of a global Web services framework that will define a methodology for broad-based, multi-platform, vendor-neutral implementation. The new OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) Technical Committee plans to design a template for Web services deployment, enabling systems integrators, software vendors, and in-house developers to deliver eCommerce solutions faster and easier. 'FWSI will define the functionality required to help people build robust applications for Web services and Service Oriented Architectures,' said Roberto B. Pascual of the Singapore Government's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), proposed co-chair of the OASIS FWSI Technical Committee. 'It will speed adoption of Web services by tremendously reducing the risk, complexity, and implementation effort involved.' The OASIS FWSI Technical Committee will specify a set of functional elements required for practical implementations of Web Services-based systems. These functional elements provide building blocks for developers to use when deploying Web services architectures, enabling rapid development of eBusiness applications by eliminating the need to re-invent elements for each implementation. 'The work of the OASIS FWSI Technical Committee will be analogous to creating a recipe for baking a cake,' explained Dr. Lee Eng Wah, of the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), proposed co-chair of the OASIS FWSI Technical Committee. 'We will first develop a set of implementation methodologies, which will be like cooking instructions. Then we will focus on designing a set of functional elements for Web services -- the ingredients for the cake.' Rather than define standards for implementing specific Web services components, FWSI will leverage applicable work within OASIS and other standards groups. Technical Committee members predict that the work of the WS-I Consortium will complement FWSI at OASIS. 'We are very pleased that the OASIS FWSI Technical Committee is being launched in Singapore and has the backing of so many companies and agencies here and around the world,' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, in an address today at the iX2003 conference. 'By creating a library of core eCommerce Web services, FWSI will accelerate the deployment of Web services and Service Oriented Architectures into the critical eBusiness marketplace.' Members of the new OASIS FWSI Technical Committee include CommerceNet, IDA, Information Technology Standards Committee of Singapore, RosettaNet, SIMTech, Sun Microsystems, Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) at the University of Hong Kong, Yellow Dragon, and other OASIS members. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS will host a mail list for public comment..." See the TC website and other details in the news story: "OASIS Announces Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) TC."

• [September 26, 2003] "FSTC Issues Results of Web Services Proof of Concept." - "The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) today announced the results of a proof of concept to develop a set of Web services for cash management system integration. The test was aimed at validating the use of Web services technologies for cash management application and data integration for bank-to-bank and bank-to-customer connections. FSTC brought together Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia, NEC and its consulting arm Niteo Partners, and Sun Microsystems in this five-month initiative to test aspects of interoperability, security, and the reliability of Web services technologies when applied to multi-bank reporting services in treasury management. The project produced a set of Web services, reference implementation, and next generation treasury portal to demonstrate the utility of the services developed. Some of the key results of this project include: (1) A reference implementation generated from the test, comprised of a re-usable architecture and set of technical specifications that can be developed into commercial offerings, provides project participants a valuable set of baseline Web services and a detailed set of supporting technical and business documentation for planning and developing banking applications in .NET and Java environments. (2) The assessment that more work in technical standards and interoperability is needed, particularly for applications and bank interactions that require end-to-end security and reliability to meet expected service levels. (3) The realization that additional industry efforts are needed to address issues of including attachments and the transport of non-XML data using SOAP messaging. The first phase of the project also concluded that interoperability at the interface level is very immature. In addition, having multiple open source and commercial technologies use a common Web services description language (WSDL) file is problematic as the automatic code generators carry numerous bugs. Fortunately, implementations can typically be made to conform with some re- programming of the generated code. Also, project participants found through this hands-on activity that security, including key management, must be examined and tested carefully in banking applications since security interoperability is very immature in open source code and commercial offerings. XML signature and encryption packages proved difficult to use across heterogeneous technology platforms. The project further recommended that financial institutions should remain optimistic about the benefits pledged by these technologies for partner, customer, and enterprise integration, and that the transition to Web services technologies requires a careful examination of the underlying service architecture required to provide manageable, secure, and reliable financial applications. See also: FSTC Completes Industry Assessment of Liberty Alliance and SAML Technologies. Report Identifies Opportunities for Financial Institutions to Extend Trusted Relationships with Customers and Employees Out to Third Parties."

• [September 26, 2003] "IEEE Communications Magazine Special Issue on XML-based Management of Networks and Services." - Call For Papers, IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on XML-based Management of Networks and Services. The increasing dependence of society on the availability and the correct operation of the Internet demands for continuous improvement of Internet management technologies. Traditionally, Internet management is based on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which defines the management information exchange between managers and agents. Within agents, the management information is organized in Management Information Bases (MIBs) and described according to the rules of the Structure of Management Information (SMI). Although several versions of SNMP, MIBs and the SMI exist, the basic concepts did not change since the first versions appeared nearly 15 years ago. At that time bandwidth was scarce and processing power of devices was limited. Although many years of experience proved that existing Internet management technology is well suited to monitor network devices, it also became clear that SNMP technology is hardly used for configuration management and management of higher level services. These management tasks still rely on proprietary and ad-hoc technologies. Currently, there is a growing interest in using XML technologies for management purposes. XML has the advantage that it is widely accepted, which means that there are many tools available that potentially support the implementation of management functions. In addition, the promise of XML is to facilitate the easy integration of different applications; something that is particularly important for the cooperation of network and service management applications... It is the intention to present the state of the art and recent developments in XML based management in a feature issue of IEEE Communications Magazine. Authors are therefore invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review for any other conference or journal, in the following areas: Architectures for XML based management, Management based on Web Services (SOAP, WSDL), Management information and data modeling using XML Schema, Translation from traditional information and data models to XML schemas or DTDs, Protocols for XML based management, Interworking between XML and traditional management systems, Secure management using the XML security framework, Application of generic XML technologies (XPath, RDF, XQuery) for management, Implementation experiences and case-studies, Standardization activities (IETF, DMTF)..." Submission Deadline: November 15, 2003. See also: (1) IEEE Communications Magazine; (2) online CFP.

• [September 24, 2003] "Microsoft and Monster to Offer Customers 'Smart' Resumes. XML-Enabled Smart Document Templates in Microsoft Office Word 2003 Will Help Job Seekers Create a Professional Resume." - "Microsoft Corp. and Monster, the leading global online careers property and flagship brand of Monster Worldwide Inc., today announced a technology alliance designed to help job seekers build professional resumes. Through the alliance, Monster's downloadable Extensible Markup Language (XML)- enabled 'smart' document templates can be seamlessly installed in Microsoft Office Word 2003, enabling job seekers to upgrade the quality of their resume. The templates will be available via the Microsoft Office Online Web site, which is visited by nearly 25 million unique visitors per month. The Microsoft-Monster alliance is designed to help job seekers create and submit professional-quality resumes easily using industry-standard XML. The resume templates, created in Word 2003, give job seekers the opportunity to build their resumes in a familiar format while incorporating expert resume advice from Monster, the leading provider of comprehensive career management products and services. The advanced technology of Microsoft and Monster also allows job seekers to save their resume in Microsoft Word and promptly post it on the Monster Web site, making it readily viewable to thousands of leading employers nationwide. The use of XML enables the delivery of ready-to-use data to the Monster site, so that resumes can be instantly posted to an individual's My Monster account. Any Microsoft Office Word 2003 customer with an Internet connection will have access to the Monster resume templates. 'The combination of Monster resume templates and XML-enabled Microsoft Word is a natural fit that will offer great benefits to people who want to create an effective, professional resume,' said Brian Farrey, president of Monster Technologies. 'We are very excited about this relationship, which will provide quality Monster resume templates to the extensive Microsoft Office Online audience. The alliance is also further confirmation of Monster's leadership position in providing job seekers the best technological tools and services by being the first career site to partner with Microsoft with this innovative integrated tool.' The templates will be created using smart document technology. Smart documents, an XML-based feature in Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003, include an interactive task pane that provides context-sensitive information and a list of actions the user could choose from that are relevant to the user's current location in a structured XML document. The content available via the task pane will provide job seekers with relevant advice and feedback from Monster as they create their resumes while using the resume templates. For example, job seekers creating a resume can type their 'Objective' information into the document. As they do this, information from Monster resume experts will be available to provide detailed advice on how to create the most effective description of their objective for the type of position they seek..." See also "Rosetta Group XML Résumé Library."

• [September 22, 2003] "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Version 1.1 Ratified as OASIS Standard. Baltimore Technologies, BEA Systems, Computer Associates, Entrust, Hewlett-Packard, Netegrity, Oblix, OpenNetwork, Reactivity, RSA Security, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, and Others Collaborate on Authentication and Authorization." - "The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. SAML provides an XML-based framework for exchanging authentication and authorization information, enabling single sign-on -- the ability to use a variety of Internet resources without having to log in repeatedly. 'SAML has gained widespread industry adoption as a basis for federated identity and security environments,' said James Kobielus, senior analyst at Burton Group. 'Clearly, SAML is a living, evolving standard, and OASIS has, with the new version 1.1, incorporated changes that reflect real-world experience with SAML version 1.0.' According to Prateek Mishra of Netegrity, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee, 'Prior to SAML, there was no XML-based standard that enabled exchange of security information between a security system (such as an authentication authority) and an application. SAML provides a way to specify authentication, attribute, and authorization decision statements. It also specifies a Web services-based request/reply protocol for exchanging these statements.' 'The SAML 1.1 standard introduces important enhancements that improve its interoperability and utility to other Web services security efforts in the industry. This can be seen through the adoption of SAML 1.1 as a foundation for the Liberty Alliance's Identity Federation Framework, the implementation of SAML 1.1 by the Internet2/MACE Shibboleth project, and the development of a SAML profile by the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) Technical Committee for using SAML with WS-Security,' added Rob Philpott of RSA Security, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. 'The growing participation of OASIS member companies in SAML's development and our committee's increasing collaboration with other security-related standards groups demonstrate the value of OASIS SAML standardization to the industry.' Liberty Alliance Management Board president, Michael Barrett, also vice president of Internet Strategy at American Express, commented, 'Collaboration between standards organizations is critical to industry momentum and to ensure new technologies like single sign-on and Web services succeed. Organizations looking to benefit from these new technologies need access to proven, interoperable, and secure standards that they can build on for the next new technology. Open standards like SAML and Liberty's specifications have been proven to meet that need.' Members of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee include Baltimore Technologies, BEA Systems, Computer Associates, Entrust, Hewlett-Packard, Netegrity, Oblix, OpenNetwork, Reactivity, RSA Security, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, and other security software vendors, financial institutions, government agencies, and academia..." See: (1) "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)"; (2) "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

• [September 22, 2003] "RSA Security Announces New Products to Deliver on Identity and Access Management Strategy. RSA ClearTrust V5.5 Software Enhances Identity Infrastructures with Tighter Integration with Microsoft Platforms and New User Management and Federated Identity Management Capabilities." - "RSA Security Inc., the most trusted name in e-security, today announced RSA ClearTrust v5.5 web access management software. Delivering advanced user management capabilities, web services support (including SAML v1.1-compliant federated identity management capabilities), robust transactional authorization functionality, and unparalleled integration with Microsoft platforms, RSA Security demonstrates progress in its Identity and Access Management strategy with this new release of RSA ClearTrust software. RSA Security's Identity and Access Management strategy includes an integrated architecture (codenamed NEXUS), new products and strategic alliances that enable organizations to quickly derive quantifiable business value -- including reduced costs, enhanced revenue opportunities and increased user productivity -- from their online applications by securely leveraging digital identities across their infrastructure. "Global enterprises are today faced with the increasing complexity of securely managing expanded populations of users accessing internal and external applications and systems," said Ray Wagner, research director, Gartner Inc. "To meet these challenges, it is critical that they implement a flexible identity management solution that integrates easily with existing technology, protocols and standards. Features like innovative user administration, support for federated identity initiatives, and strong out-of- the-box integration options increase the value of these solutions." ... RSA ClearTrust v5.5 software offers new functionality in the primary areas of concentration within RSA Security's Identity and Access Management strategy, including: (1) Identity Authority Services: The RSA ClearTrust Federated Identity Management Module provides the first commercially available Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) functionality for generating and consuming SAML v1.1 assertions, enabling customers to leverage identities across business boundaries to drive new relationships and business models. Features of the implementation include full web-based administration, simple installation and configuration, a time-saving policy cloning feature and advanced built-in security capabilities, including digital signatures, certificate validation and authentication mapping between different sites. (2) Access Authority Services: Transactional Smart Rules extends the business rules and user properties of RSA ClearTrust software, enabling real-time dynamic authorization decisions based on attributes from multiple data sources, including databases, directories, XML, flat files or web services. This powerful capability allows customers to implement sophisticated authorization rules using real-time business data and processes..." See also "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Version 1.1 Ratified as OASIS Standard. Baltimore Technologies, BEA Systems, Computer Associates, Entrust, Hewlett-Packard, Netegrity, Oblix, OpenNetwork, Reactivity, RSA Security, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, and Others Collaborate on Authentication and Authorization."

• [September 17, 2003] "Sun Microsystems Selects Sleepycat Software for New Middleware and Desktop Initiatives. Sun to Standardize on Berkeley DB to Meet Non-Relational Data Management Needs Within Key Components of Sun Java Enterprise System and Sun Java Desktop System." - "Sleepycat Software, makers of Berkeley DB -- the most widely-used application-specific data management software in the world with over 200 million deployments -- today announced a worldwide agreement with Sun Microsystems for internal use of Berkeley DB in all current and future Sun products, including key components in the Sun Java Enterprise System, previously called Project Orion, and the Sun Java Desktop System, previously called Project Mad Hatter. The agreement also includes premium support and rights for Sun to use future Berkeley DB upgrades. 'We're very pleased that Sun has standardized on Berkeley DB for embedded use within its software product line,' said Michael Olson, CEO of Sleepycat Software. 'Based on our long, successful history with Sun and proven reliability across thousands of open source and proprietary products, Sun knew they could count on our company and our technology within key components of their exciting new desktop and enterprise software initiatives.' 'Sun Java Enterprise System and Sun Java Desktop System reduce cost and complexity for our customers,' said Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for Java Web Services and Tools, Sun Microsystems. 'Many of the components in Java Enterprise System and Java Desktop System incorporate Berkeley DB, and its stability, performance, scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness make it the natural choice to embed in these components.' 'The agreement between Sun Microsystems and Sleepycat Software is an important demonstration of the viability and value that open source software can deliver in a maturing IT market that demands price performance and ROI,' said Wayne Kernochan, senior vice president at market research firm the Aberdeen Group. 'Sun has carefully chosen best-of-breed software components and Sleepycat's Berkeley DB is certainly a leader in application-specific data management software.' Java Enterprise System is Sun's new integrated infrastructure software system for enterprise computing that offers customers simplified pricing and licensing, and predictable, quarterly updates to lower the cost and complexity of enterprise software. It includes several components that use Berkeley DB for persistent storage, including Sun's market-leading Directory Server, Messaging Server, Identity Server, Portal Server, and Calendar Server. Java Desktop System is Sun's lower cost alternative to the Microsoft Windows and Office desktop software stack, and includes many applications that rely upon Berkeley DB's fast, reliable and proven data management technology for elements of functionality. Berkeley DB helps manage, store and retrieve data in Sun's StarOffice productivity suite, Ximian's Evolution email/PIM client, and the GNOME desktop environment, as well as many other applications that are included with the Linux operating system. Project Mad Hatter also supports connectivity to any database with a JDBC interface..." See: (1) "Sleepycat Software Releases Berkeley DB XML Native XML Database"; (2) "Berkeley DB XML: An Embedded XML Database."

• [September 17, 2003] "Attachmate to Host World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Choreography Working Group September 15-17, 2003." - "Attachmate Corporation, with more than 20 years of innovation in the legacy application integration space, will host the upcoming World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Choreography Group meeting, September 15-17, 2003, at its corporate headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. The W3C develops interoperable technologies, such as specifications, guidelines, software, and tools, to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C provides a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding between organizations. As part of W3C, the Web Services Choreography Working Group, formed in January 2003, addresses issues inherent in the development of Web services and the relationships between different levels of operations within organizations. Web Service Choreography aims at using the power of Web services to allow corporations to create business processes that mirror today's dynamic and ever-changing business needs. 'We are pleased to provide a venue for the important work being done by the W3C because it closely aligns with our customer solutions,' said Markus Nitschke, Attachmate vice president, marketing and product management. According to W3C, the term 'choreography' is used to denote the space that includes differing terminology in the industry, such as orchestration, collaboration, coordination, and conversations -- these terms share a common characteristic of describing linkages and usage patterns between Web services. There is a need for a common interface and composition language to help address choreography. Corporations can expose their application software and resources as Web services so that other corporations can dynamically find and use them in their business processes. Creating a business process requires not only a clear definition of collaboration patterns of all its components but also a way of depicting standard B2B interactions... Attachmate Corporation is a privately held, worldwide supplier of host data and business-logic access and management solutions for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises. The company provides solutions for direct, real-time access to back-office systems, Web-to-host and desktop-to-host solutions, and flexible enterprise application integration and Web service offerings. Attachmate is member of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Unisys Partner, and BEA Star Partner..." See: (1) W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group; (2) general references in "Messaging and Transaction Coordination."

• [September 16, 2003] "XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF) Ratified as OASIS Standard." - "The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. XCBF provides a standard way to describe information that verifies identity based on human characteristics such as DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, and hand geometry. XCBF can be used in applications as varied as homeland security, corporate privacy, law enforcement, and biotechnical research. It will assist in identifying citizenship, measuring attendance, controlling access to documents, facilitating non-repudiation in commerce, and many other functions... XCBF adds to the growing portfolio of OASIS Standards and specifications for security, which also includes SAML for exchanging authentication and authorization information, SPML for provisioning, XACML for access control, WS-Security, and others. OASIS currently has more than 60 active technical committees. Members of the OASIS XCBF Technical Committee include Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, MTG Management Consultants, and others... Tyky Aichelen of IBM, chair of the OASIS XCBF Technical Committee, stated, "XCBF bridges the gap between the worlds of biometrics and Web services, making it possible to have a common, standardized, secure way to define, store, manage, and exchange biometric information with greater interoperability between systems." "Traditional biometric standards are based on binary encoding formats, which severely limit their use in XML-enabled systems and applications," explained John Messing, American Bar Association representative to OASIS. "By providing a standard way for biometric information to be exchanged using XML, XCBF literally redefines biometrics as a practical solution for a Web-based environment'..." See: (1) OASIS XML Common Biometric Format TC website; (2) XML and Security; (3) general references in "XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF)."

• [September 16, 2003] "Sun Microsystems Announces Vision and Initiative for Enterprise Auto-ID/EPC Deployments. Newly Formed Sun Business Leads Auto-ID/EPC Product and Market Development Efforts." - "Sun Microsystems today announced its enterprise Auto-ID initiative. Sun, an Auto-ID leader and visionary with over three years of involvement as a leading member of and advisor to the Auto-ID Center, along with partners including Alien Technology, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, ConnecTerra, Gorilla Logic, Manhattan Associates, Provia, ThingMagic, Tyco Sensormatic, VeriSign and Xterprise, announces the vision and initiative for delivering the hardware, software and services that enable enterprises to link into the EPC (Electronic Product Code) Network. The EPC Network helps make the supply chain efficient, safe and secure by tracking goods along the way, reducing threats of counterfeiting, tampering and terrorism while increasing regulatory compliance. Further accelerating its presence in the Auto-ID market, Sun today also named Julie Sarbacker as director of a new Auto-ID Business Unit at Sun Microsystems. This new business unit will work aggressively with customers and partners to develop and deliver a standards-based Auto-ID/EPC Solution. Encompassing hardware, software, services and best-of-breed partnerships, Sun's enterprise Auto-ID initiative and proposed solution go far beyond that of any other company today. The initiative will help enterprises integrate real-time supply chain data seamlessly into their existing business processes and enterprise assets. 'Sun welcomes all Wal-Mart suppliers, and all other companies seeking to leverage EPC deployments to comply with next generation Auto-ID standards,' said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president for Sun Software. 'Our commitment is indisputable -- with an Auto-ID Business Unit, Julie Sarbacker's executive leadership -- and now with a commitment to leverage our Java Enterprise System in pursuit of Auto-ID opportunities, Sun has clearly set itself apart from those simply writing press releases. Auto-ID is here, and so is Sun with technology and programs.' Enterprise-class reliability, availability and scalability (RAS) is delivered through Solaris OE and Linux-based hardware platforms from Sun, setting the stage for transparent integration into the EPC Network. Sun's software for managing EPC events and the Sun ONE Integration Server are the key software components for this comprehensive offering. Based on the standards set forth today by the Auto-ID Center, Sun software tightly manages EPC events. Specifically designed for the enterprise, the software will deliver a dynamic federated service architecture emphasizing RAS along with manageability and integratability for Auto-ID pilots and deployments. The proposed solution will also include lifecycle services to maximize the value of Auto-ID deployments, helping customers proactively architect, implement and manage IT operations in heterogeneous environments..." See: (1) "Physical Markup Language (PML) for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)"; (2) "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Resources and Readings."

• [September 15, 2003] "IBM Announces Comprehensive New RFID Service. Helping Retailers and Consumer Packaged Goods Companies Boost Accuracy in Picking, Packing, Shipping. Cutting Theft in the Supply Chain." - "IBM today announced a comprehensive new service to help retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies harness radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for advanced product tracking and inventory control. IBM made the announcement at the Electronic Product Code Symposium here, where the company conducted live demonstrations of pallets and computer read-outs that show how goods move through -- and are automatically tracked by -- the RFID system, and how payments and inventory are expedited. IBM's offering, which comprises consulting and implementation services as well as specialized software, gives companies a phased approach to RFID. The IBM offering is based on open standards and leverages existing technology investments by linking with the retailer's existing back-end inventory system. It is based on Websphere Business Integrator running on WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Information Integrator, Tivoli Access Manager, and WebSphere Portal Server. Phases: (1) Phase I includes consulting and development of the business case for RFID; (2) Phase II is a 12-week pilot; (3) Phase III, IBM provides the full roll-out of the system... It is estimated that the retail industry, alone, could reduce inventory levels by 25 percent, saving billions of dollars annually by tagging products and using computers to automatically trace them from the warehouse through shipping and to store shelves. In June, executives at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, called for their top 100 suppliers to implement an RFID system at the case and pallet level by 2005. More recently this was extended to all their suppliers by 2006. 'IBM believes RFID's time has come,' said Faye Holland, worldwide RFID leader, IBM Global Services. 'As our retail and CPG customers see the dramatic benefits this technology brings in cost reduction, improved customer service and streamlined operations, the demand is escalating for RFID expertise, and IBM -- with its Business Partners -- is perfectly aligned to deliver the most comprehensive RFID solution in the marketplace'..." See: (1) "Physical Markup Language (PML) for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)"; (2) "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Resources and Readings."

• [September 15, 2003] "ODRL International Workshop 2004 In Vienna." - "The ODRL International Workshop 2004 will be held in Vienna, Austria on 21-23 April 2004. Over the past four years the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Initiative has gained international significance in the field of digital rights management (DRM) for many sectors and communities. Rights Expression Languages (REL) enable the formalisation of standard and interoperable semantic agreements and contracts from rights holders over the usage of their content by end users and other parties. RELs, like ODRL, are seen as key infrastructure for the management and trading of digital content on the Internet. The ODRL rights expression language has been adopted as an international standard by the Open Mobile Alliance for mobile content and numerous projects and groups around the world. The objective of the ODRL International Workshop is to bring together the research and industry communities to share experiences and discuss the future developments of the language to ensure its timeliness, usability, openness, and future success. The ODRL International Workshop topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following aspects: Implementations of ODRL or parts of ODRL; Processing of ODRL instances in applications; Language concepts and semantics of ODRL; Technical and Semantics Extensions to ODRL; Industry and Research Experiences with ODRL; Domain Specific Vocabularies and Profiles of ODRL; Deploying ODRL for Rights Expressions and Contract Modelling; Potential applications for the use of Rights Expression Languages. The Call for Participation includes the details of the submission requirements for the Workshop..." See also: (1) Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Initiative website; (2) Open Mobile Alliance; (3) local references in "Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL)"; (4) general references in "XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

• [September 15, 2003] "Center for Document Engineering Established at UC Berkeley. Focal Point for Initiatives in XML and Model-Based Approaches for Automatable, Standards-Based Business Computing." - "UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) and the e-Berkeley Program have established the Center for Document Engineering (CDE). The CDE's mission is 'to invent, evaluate, and promote model-driven technologies and methods' that allow business semantics to drive IT systems. The CDE's origins date to Spring 2002 when SIMS became the first academic institution in the world to teach courses on Document Engineering, emphasizing analysis and design methods that yield XML-encodable models of business processes and business documents. A collaboration with the e-Berkeley Program began soon afterwards because of the natural fit with e-Berkeley's goal of using the Web to transform the University's information-intensive operations. Dr. Robert Glushko, an Adjunct Professor at SIMS and an XML industry veteran, is the Director of the CDE. Glushko said, 'The complex legacy computing environment of the University is a perfect test bed for XML, information architecture, and web services and the E-Berkeley program is a perfect partner for an academic research team.' Jon Conhaim, who heads the E-Berkeley program, will serve as Associate Director of the CDE... The CDE will create, collect, and disseminate XML schemas, software, best practices, and other content for building web services and applications that allow business semantics to drive IT systems and automate business processes. 'I'm delighted to see Berkeley take the lead in the emerging discipline of document engineering, which will be critical to the development of the data standards on which the next generation of electronic commerce systems will be constructed,' said Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, leader of the working groups that created the XML and the Universal Business Language (UBL). 'An enlightened public policy requires the existence of unbiased centers for the development and vendor-neutral evaluation of technologies for business data modeling. The establishment of the Center for Document Engineering represents a milestone in the development of our future business infrastructure and a model for the creation of similar programs in other colleges and universities.' The first initiative of the CDE is the Berkeley Academic Business Language (BABL), an evolving set of models and associated XML schemas for the domain of University education and operations. A second major CDE initiative is an XML application platform that uses models like those in BABL to implement enterprise-class applications whose core data-models are encoded in XML. This platform allows developers to represent data models, business rules, workflow specifications, and user interfaces as externalized XML documents, rather than mixing and scattering them throughout application code. This will make it easier for nonprogrammers to design, develop, and maintain forms and workflow-based Internet applications..." See details in the news story: "Berkeley Center for Document Engineering (CDE) Promotes XML-Encodable Business Models."

• [September 15, 2003] "Talking Blocks, CA, and, IBM Announce Submission of Web Services Manageability Standard to OASIS. Leaders in Systems and Web Services Management Create and Jointly Submit Standard to OASIS Web Services Distributed Management Technical Committee." - "Talking Blocks in collaboration with Computer Associates International, Inc. and IBM, will today announce a proposed standard for Web services manageability. The three companies will jointly submit the proposal to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) technical committee. The tenets of the proposed standard create an easily implemented Web services solution that dramatically reduces the amount of custom development that must be done on an ongoing basis. Specifically, the proposed standard: (1) Enhances manageability with XML and WSDL; (2) Uses existing infrastructure mechanisms; (3) Is fully consistent with existing standards based Web Services infrastructures; (4) Does not imply the implementation of the manageability or the manager..." See details in the news story "IBM, Computer Associates, and Talking Blocks Release WS-Manageability Specification."

• [September 11, 2003] "Sun is First to Market With Platform for WS-I Compliant Web Services Applications. Recent Beta Release of the J2EE 1.4 Software Developer Kit and Java Web Services Developer Pack 1.2 Demonstrate Sun's Java Web Services Leadership." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the availability of a qualification release of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) version 1.4 source code for licensees of the J2EE platform. Available less than one month after the WS-I Basic Profile was finalized, the source code delivers support for the final WS-I Basic Profile and includes the J2EE programming model for portable Web services applications. The source-code release includes compatibility tests, allowing J2EE licensees to make progress on implementing J2EE 1.4. 'With our partners and as a WS-I board member, Sun is leading the charge in supporting standards-compliant, Java Web Services platforms,' said Jeff Jackson, vice president of Sun J2EE platform and application server engineering, Sun Microsystems, Inc. 'Java and Web Services merge in J2EE 1.4 as the preferred platform for building enterprise-grade applications and the only available software environment that is platform independent and interoperable by design. The introduction of J2EE 1.4, with its support for more Web services standards and protocols than any other platform, is a prime example of Sun's leadership position in this space.' WS-I specifications are designed to ensure interoperability between different vendors' Web services products. Through the Java Community Process (JCP), Java provides open application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide enterprises with a choice and to keep developers from becoming dependent upon a single vendor's technology. Java developers can save time and money by working with standard APIs for XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Web Services, such as JAXP, JAXB, JAX-RPC and JAX-R, instead of proprietary APIs that may change from vendor to vendor. Java and XML technologies allow users to easily develop applications that can be seamlessly deployed across all major operating platforms, including Solaris, Linux and Windows. In addition, Java developers won't be tasked with learning specific Web services specifications or acquiring WS-I interoperability expertise, because profile guidelines are included in Java platforms and development toolkits such as the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP). The Java platform also enables IT organizations to leverage their current technology investments by providing simplified integration with applications and legacy systems, reducing cost and complexity within the organization. As a board member of the WS-I organization, Sun is continuing to make key technological contributions to enhance the interoperability of Web services. To date, Sun has released several versions of its J2EE platform based on early WS-I specifications, such as Java Web Services Developer Pack 1.2 and J2EE 1.4 SDK Beta 2. Once J2EE 1.4 is finalized, Sun will release compatibility tests, source code and a software development toolkit (SDK). Java has long been the developer's choice for Web services, and J2EE 1.4 represents a culmination of work by the JCP and the technology industry to deliver the first platform to support the WS-I Basic Profile..." See also: Java Web Services Developer Pack V1.2 Supports WS-I, WS-Security, and UBL Applications."

• [September 11, 2003] "Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Approved as OASIS Standard. BEA Systems, Citrix Systems, Factiva, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Vignette, and Other OASIS Members Standardize Integration of User-Facing Web Services." - "The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSRP standardizes the consumption of Web services in portal front ends, as well as the way in which content providers write Web services for portals. 'WSRP defines how Web services plug into portals,' explained Delphi President, Thomas Koulopoulos. 'Once a WSRP service is published to a public directory, portal administrators are able to locate and dynamically integrate it with just a few mouse clicks. WSRP is a critical standard enabling distributed portals to share portlets as visual, user-facing Web services for integration with other portals.' WSRP eliminates the need for content aggregators to choose between locally hosting a content source or writing code specific to each remote content source. Instead, WSRP allows content to be hosted in the environment most suitable for its execution while still being easily accessed by content aggregators. The standard enables content producers to maintain control over the code that formats the presentation of their content. By reducing the cost for aggregators to access their content, WSRP increases the rate at which content sources may be easily integrated into pages for end-users. 'The OASIS WSRP Technical Committee was founded in early 2002 with the vision of providing a single interface standard for all interactive, presentation-oriented Web services. WSRP v1.0 succeeds in providing this platform neutral definition of an interface,' said Rich Thompson of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. 'Early vendor support for WSRP -- we've tracked eight implementations to date -- clearly demonstrates the need for this standardized means of accessing remote content.' 'WSRP builds on foundational work from the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C),' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'WSRP uses WSDL to describe interfaces, and requires SOAP bindings for all conformant services. WSRP is an excellent example of how an open, standards-based approach will enable end-user interactive web services to be deployed in a lower cost, faster-to-implement, plug-and-play environment.' WSRP allows remote portlet Web services to be implemented in a variety of ways, including Java/J2EE and Microsoft's .NET platform. WSRP is the result of a collaboration of 25 OASIS member companies..." See details in the news story: "Web Services for Remote Portlets Specification Approved as OASIS Standard."

• [September 9, 2003] "Advent 3B2 Launches 3B2-FO, A New XSL-FO Rendering Tool, At Seybold San Francisco 2003." - "Advent 3B2, a leading supplier of standards-based publishing software, is announcing a new, quality-oriented, Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Object (XSL-FO) rendering engine called 3B2-FO at Seybold San Francisco 2003. Advent 3B2-FO software has been singled out as a Hot Pick by the editorial staff of The Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies, as a product that should not be missed on the show floor... Advent 3B2-FO software supports both simplified yet flexible document production workflows for adding composition and page formatting information to XML documents so they can be printed. In operation 3B2-FO takes either ready-made XSL-FO files containing layout and formatting data, or files containing raw XML content plus an XSLT transformation script, and converts them into printable Postscript or PDF files. Advent 3B2-FO software was developed in accordance with the W3C XSL 1.0 recommendation of October 15, 2001. In addition to providing compliance with the W3C XSL-FO specification, the software engine includes a number of additional functions that provide extended composition and page layout controls. These will give users more versatile document formatting capabilities resulting in higher quality document aesthetics. The additional capabilities in 3B2-FO include controls over vertical justification on a page, extensive hyphenation controls, and the ability to add crop marks and registration marks to a page. Hyphenation features include the ability to specify the number of characters in words that can be hyphenated, the ability to prevent hyphenation at the end of a block and to use caps to keep capitalized words together, spacing controls (plus and minus) for letter and word spacing of text. Advent intends to add additional extended functionality to 3B2-FO over time. 'We announced our intention to develop an XSL-FO rendering tool last year at our annual International Conference in Atlanta,'comments George Punton, President of Advent Publishing Systems. 'We believe that publishers of XML documents will appreciate the advantages 3B2-FO delivers in terms of expanded functionality and the ability to produce higher quality documents compared to the other engines on the market. Should they eventually require even more comprehensive composition and pagination formatting capabilities, our high-end 3B2 software which is also fully XML compliant, is a logical upgrade path.' 3B2-FO is based on the composition and pagination formatting capabilities of Advent's 3B2 professional publishing software which has been in use in high end STM journal, legal, financial, book, and technical documentation publishing environments worldwide for over 16 years. Because it is based on this mature foundation, Advent expects its 3B2-FO software will provide an unprecedented level of performance and reliability... Advents global customer base includes The European Parliament, Boeing, GlaxoSmithKline, the US Patent and Trademark Office, Bertelsmann and the Canadian House of Commons. The Advent Group consists of Advent Publishing Systems UK (the parent company), Advent 3B2 GmbH (Germany), and Advent 3B2 Inc.(USA)..." See also (1) the FAQ document; (2) "XSL/XSLT Software Support."

• [September 09, 2003] "Cisco Systems Unveils Color IP Telephone, A Powerful New Platform for Network-Based Productivity Applications. XML Developers at Cisco ITC Expo Demonstrate Advanced Business Applications on Cisco IP Phones." - "Cisco Systems today announced a new Internet Protocol (IP) telephone with a high resolution, color touch screen, as well as enhancements to two of its entry-level IP phones, which enable a host of compelling new productivity applications that have the potential to greatly improve business processes. The new Cisco color IP Phone 7970G, and XML support on the Cisco IP Phones 7905G and 7912G will be unveiled at the third annual Cisco Innovation Through Convergence Expo (ITC) September 10-12, 2003 at the Westin Santa Clara Hotel in Santa Clara, California. The Cisco ITC Expo provides Cisco's growing community of Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data (AVVID) partners the opportunity to showcase their innovative Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications running on Cisco AVVID networks. Cisco has introduced five new IP phones in the last year, extending the company's industry-leading portfolio of IP phones, to meet the wide range of business user requirements. Building on the success of Cisco's existing IP Phone 7940G and 7960G with grey scale pixel-based displays, the Cisco IP Phone 7970G enables users to take advantage of a high resolution color graphics display and touch screen to gain desktop access to enhanced images and more detailed network data, improving employee productivity and customer satisfaction... The Cisco IP Phone 7970G supports a comprehensive suite of advanced applications for mobility and collaboration, especially for workers in industry segments such as retail, hospitality, education and government. The IP phone's high-resolution color touch screen delivers high impact color graphics applications that make accessing and interacting with multi-media services faster, easier and more intuitive... Cisco today also announced the availability of XML and network based application support on the entry-level Cisco IP Phones 7905G and 7912G. The added XML-support on these entry-level phones enables users to access business information using the monochrome pixel-based display, extending productivity applications to a broader range of users... Cisco's growing portfolio of XML-enabled phones, such as the new Cisco IP Phone 7970G and enhanced 7905G and 7912G, as well as the 7940G and 7960G enable customization and integration, connecting business processes and people to critical information by providing display-based access to services and applications. Users can easily access information and perform tasks including: (1) Retail: Check customer order on the inventory tracking database using an IP Phone while talking to the customer on the phone -- including a tracking number, confirmation, and delivery details; (2) Hospitality: Use the displays on the IP Phones in hotel rooms to make dining reservations, set up wake-up calls, purchase attraction tickets, get directions, and check on flight status; (3) Education: Take student attendance, locate students, issue monitor passes and daily bulletins; (4) Government: Communicate instantly with employees through instant text messaging and audio streaming to all or selected groups of IP Phones; (5) General Office: Access visual corporate directories with photo images, identify the called or calling party, and touch a section of a colored graph showing on the phone screen to gather details on a statistic..." See additional information appended to the announcement.

• [September 08, 2003] "Ipedo Announces New Multi-Source Enterprise Information Integration (EII) Capabilities. Completes Industry-First Realtime Assimilation of Oracle 9i, DB2, MySQL, SQL Server and Web Services Data." - "Ipedo, a leading provider of software that integrates and delivers realtime views of information, today announced the first software platform to complete concurrent assimilation of complex information sets from Oracle 9i, DB2, MySQL, SQL Server and Web Services. The information integration was done using Ipedo's powerful XML-based views and query technologies. With this new capability, Ipedo allows enterprises to create custom information views on demand. Organizations can use these capabilities in a range of corporate initiatives that require composites of disparate information, including employee or partner portals, executive dashboards, and reporting applications. Unlike previous integration technologies, the powerful XML-driven EII capabilities of the Ipedo XML Information Hub go beyond integration and allow custom assembly and persistence of information, in the variety of industry standard formats. The testing was done using the Ipedo XML Information Hub 3.3 with Oracle 9iR2, DB2 Universal Database v3.1, MySQL Pro v4.0, SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition, and a public Web Service from Google. Information was integrated using XQuery to quickly aggregate real-time business information across multiple sources, leveraging Ipedo's XML Views, Web Services Views, Content Conversion and Universal XQuery Engine capabilities. Details of these features include: (1) XML Views: Creates virtual, real-time snapshots of information from external XML and non-XML sources presented in a standard, common XML format to simplify integration tasks in applications. (2) Web Services Views: 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. (3) Universal XQuery: The distributed XQuery engine searches information across any arbitrary information set using powerful query tools built on open standards. Information is indexed at a highly granular level and indexes are automatically regenerated to insure consistent search performance and quality. (4) Content Conversion: Allows users to create XML representations unstructured content or document sources, including text files, Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Converted XML content can be staged in the Ipedo XML Information Hub for subsequent integration with other business information, and delivery to multiple target systems..."

• [September 8, 2003] "PureEdge, ACORD Work Together to Provide Insurance Brokers and Companies with Greater Efficiency in Data Collection and Management. Development of ACORD XML Forms to Cut Processing Time and Operational Costs, Improve Data Accuracy." - "PureEdge Solutions Inc., the leader in secure, XML forms-based business process automation, today announced it is working with the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) to develop ACORD XML forms using PureEdge XML technology for use by ACORD's customers. ACORD, a non-profit membership organization aimed at developing data standards for the insurance industry, is leveraging its XML standards to enhance the functionality of the ACORD forms. The new smart e-forms will create opportunities for vendors to develop a broad array of applications that can integrate with agents and brokers' systems and streamline the workflow for carriers. Recently, Microsoft announced it was making ACORD Forms accessible to ACORD Advantage participants through the InfoPath application, which is part of its new Office 11 suite of products. These strategic partnerships between PureEdge, Microsoft and ACORD will cut processing time and operational costs while improving the accuracy of data. Forms will be accessible to insurance providers via point-to-point services, Web services, fax, print and email. Most insurance providers acknowledge the way they gather information via paper forms is both inefficient and cumbersome. In the past, while some custom solutions have been developed to help insurance workers enter data electronically, to date there has been no standardization of the workflow surrounding insurance industry e-forms. For insurance companies, the use of XML-based forms will streamline the collection of data, and then that data can be seamlessly transferred between applications as needed, providing real-time data processing... 'Our work with ACORD reinforces XML as a key standard in insurance transaction processing,' said Mark Upson, President and CEO, PureEdge Solutions. 'By combining business standards with XML data standards the insurance industry will be able to significantly improve on their current means of doing business which ultimately benefits customers. This announcement is evidence of PureEdge's continued commitment to its core vertical markets, and vision of delivering solutions that address the specific pain points within these industries.' By converting the forms into XML e-forms using PureEdge technology, ACORD's standardized forms will become much more dynamic and offer more intelligence in order to seamlessly manage and automate the business process associated with the form. The delivery of this new offering comes as part of PureEdge's business process automation framework, composed of products, partnerships and services to create, manage and deploy XML forms-based processes. With PureEdge, users have the ability to digitally sign documents, use both adhoc and structured routing, work remotely, move data in and out of corporate systems and store all elements of a process in one secure file..."

• [September 04, 2003] "Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and Oracle Showcase Reliable Web Services. OASIS Members Demonstrate Successful Interoperability of Reliable Messaging for Web Services at Technical Committee Meeting." - "Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corp. and Oracle Corp. today announced that they have successfully demonstrated interoperability between four independent implementations of reliable Web services based on the Web Services-Reliability (WS-Reliability) specification, which the companies jointly submitted to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) in January. The WS-Reliability specification defines an open reliable messaging infrastructure that enables companies to conduct reliable business-to-business trading or collaboration using Web services. This demonstration is the first deliverable of an ongoing Proof-of-Concept activity for the Web Services-Reliability specification. The OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM) Technical Committee members plan to update their implementations to accommodate the upcoming release of the next version of the specification, already under development by the committee. The interoperability demonstration will be conducted today during the latest WS-RM Technical Committee meeting in Bedford, Massachusetts. The WS-Reliability specification enabled the four Web service applications used in the Proof-of-Concept demonstration to reliably exchange messages over an unreliable network test bed that simulates message loss, duplication and delays. The network test bed will be used by the group for future WS-Reliability interoperability tests. Additional supporters of WS-Reliability are expected to participate in future Proof-of-Concept demonstrations. The demonstration highlights two functions of the WS-Reliability specification. The first one is 'Guaranteed Delivery' in which the sender will automatically resend the same message if no positive acknowledgement was received, and the other is 'Duplicate Elimination' in which the receiving application eliminates duplicates of the same message. These two functions greatly improve the reliability and efficiency of business applications, by preventing message loss and duplication. This will allow, for example, buyers to ensure that Purchase Order messages are successfully delivered to their suppliers, and prevent suppliers from receiving duplicate orders due to network routing problems. In addition to guaranteed delivery and duplicate elimination, the OASIS WS-Reliability specification also addresses message delivery management, including message persistence, ordered delivery, and delivery status notifications for sending and receiving applications..." See also: (1) "Reliable Messaging"; (2) "OASIS Members Form Technical Committee for Web Services Reliable Messaging"; (3) OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging TC website.

• [September 04, 2003] "HP Advances Grid Strategy for the Adaptive Enterprise. HP Systems to be Grid-enabled. Grid Services to Simplify Use, Management of Infrastructure Resources." - "HP today announced plans to further enable its enterprise infrastructure technologies for grid computing. By leveraging open grid standards, HP plans to help customers simplify the use and management of distributed IT (information technology) resources. The initiative will integrate industry grid standards, including the Globus Toolkit and Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), across HP's enterprise product lines. HP also announced enterprise consulting within HP Services for grid-based platforms. HP Services will provide management, deployment and lifecycle support of grid architectures. HP's product and service plans extend the company's Adaptive Enterprise strategy to perfectly synchronize business and IT. Grid computing will enable enterprises to draw on IT resources anywhere in the world to meet their dynamic needs for computing resources. Analysts have estimated grid software and services will become a $4 billion market by 2008, but HP expects the opportunity to be significantly larger as corporate IT departments embrace the grid. 'HP started developing grid-like infrastructures more than five years ago. Grid is an important piece of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy, where today, we see the shared computing vision soon turning into reality as commercial enterprises more aggressively seek the agility and cost benefits the grid affords,' said Shane Robison, chief strategy and technology officer, HP. 'The grid has the potential to solve real business problems by simplifying global access to enterprise computing services. 'For CIOs, the grid can help better synchronize business and technology demands in real time. To help realize that potential, HP has committed to grid-enable our IT systems. Over the next few years, this means products ranging from HP's smallest handhelds, printers and PCs to our most powerful storage arrays and supercomputers, will be able to connect with and serve as resources on the grid.' The 'grid' concept was formally developed in the mid-1990s as a shared computing approach that coordinates decentralized resources and uses open, general-purpose protocols and interfaces to deliver high-quality service levels. The grid is designed to render almost anything in IT -- computers, processing power, data, Web services, storage space, software applications, data files or devices -- as a 'grid service.' Today, HP delivers grid-enabled services, solutions and products to help enterprises better manage and capitalize on change..." See details and references in the news story "HP Integrates Industry Grid Standards Across All Enterprise Product Lines."

• [September 03, 2003] "Systinet WASP Developer, 4.6 Extends Popular Java IDEs for Web Services Creation, Supports SOAP 1.2, WS-Security." - "Systinet, the leading independent provider of Web services infrastructure software, today [August 25, 2003] announced the availability of WASP Developer, 4.6, which seamlessly extends the industry's most popular Java IDEs to support Web services creation, debugging and deployment. The new release includes unique support for OASIS Web Services Security (WS-S), providing standards-based message-level security. WASP Developer also offers full support for SOAP 1.2, SOAP with attachments, and the industry's most comprehensive support for Java Web services APIs, including JAX-RPC, JAXM, and SAAJ. WASP Developer, 4.6 is available for the latest editions of Sun ONE Studio/NetBeans, Eclipse, IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer, and Borland JBuilder. WASP Developer is offered free. WASP Developer, 4.6 provides a point-and-click experience that quickly turns any existing Java application into a Web service in minutes, allowing customers to leverage the benefits of Web services quickly and efficiently. New features in the 4.6 release include: (1) SOAP 1.2 Support WASP Server for Java, 4.6 was used as a reference implementation by the W3C for the latest SOAP 1.2 specification. The standard offers a much clearer framework for extensibility, which ensures interoperability between different SOAP implementations. (2) Support for Web Services Security (WS-Security): In addition to the many security capabilities already in WASP Developer, version 4.6 now includes WS-S message-level security. WASP supports both the OASIS WS-Security standard currently and the earlier, Microsoft-IBM WS-Security specifications. This ensures that WASP is compatible with all WS-Security implementations. (3) SOAP with Attachments: WASP Developer supports MIME and DIME encoding of SOAP attachments. Most vendors have standardized on the newer DIME mechanism for handling SOAP attachments. WASP Developer can automatically generate client-side code for an existing Web service, regardless of where it is running, what programming language it used for development, or what SOAP implementation it is running on. WASP Developer also automates the conversion of Java to WSDL, or WSDL to Java. WASP Developers can browse UDDI registries, select a Web service, import its WSDL file, and generate client code. WASP Developer 4.6 also publishes to a UDDI directory, greatly simplifying the discovery process. Integrated debugging supports client- and server-side debugging - there's no need for an external debugging tool. SOAP Spy is an interactive message-tracking console that traces SOAP messages and allows arbitrary modification of any SOAP request. WASP Developer, 4.6 is designed to make developers quickly productive: it leverages popular and familiar IDEs, automates the creation process, and provides integrated tools for debugging and message tracking..."

• [September 03, 2003] "Plumtree Ships Products to Fully Support WSRP and Proposed JSR 168 Portlet Standards. Plumtree's Standards Implementation Consumes Portlets from BEA, Citrix, IBM, and Oracle." - "Enterprise Web leader Plumtree Software today released new software to support Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) from OASIS and the proposed final draft of the Java Specification Request 168 (JSR 168) portlet standard. Plumtree is one of the first software vendors to release products for supporting the new WSRP and the proposed JSR 168 portlet standards, and one of the only vendors to build and test those products for use on application servers from several different vendors. For both standards implementations, Plumtree's support extends to versions 4.5, 4.5WS and 5.0 of the Plumtree Corporate Portal. The standards are important to Plumtree because they free customers from basing technology decisions on whether a vendor's proprietary conventions will prevail in the market: a customer investing in Plumtree's industry-leading Enterprise Web software can now develop industry-standard portlets, and ensure that the investment can be put to work within virtually any portal... Plumtree's implementations of WSRP and of the proposed JSR 168 standard are based on its Web Services Architecture, which allows portlets to run remotely from the application server hosting the portal. This architecture helps ensure that the portal remains open to resources hosted on a wide range of application servers, and unaffected by faults in any one portlet. This architecture also supports a wide range of other integration components that run as Web services, for indexing content, importing security information, federating searches and profiling users. Plumtree is one of the only vendors that has published performance and scale-test data for a Web services-oriented architecture, and has successfully deployed hundreds of portals based on that architecture... To support JSR 168, Plumtree participated in the Java Community Process review of the draft standard, developed the Plumtree JSR 168 Portlet Container based on the proposed final draft, and pre-tested the Plumtree Container against the current version of the JSR 168 Technology Compatibility Kit to prepare for full compatibility. Plumtree plans to update its container with any changes made in the final release of the JSR 168 standard. In any implementation of JSR 168, the portal communicates with a container, which contains the actual JSR 168 portlet. Unlike implementations planned by some other vendors for JSR 168, the Plumtree Container was designed to run on many application servers and Web servers including Apache Tomcat, BEA WebLogic and IBM WebSphere... As a major participant in the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee, Plumtree is now releasing its WSRP Portlet Consumer to allow customers to embed WSRP-portlets in Plumtree-powered Web applications. Plumtree's WSRP Portlet Consumer is a software component that acts as the intermediary between the portal and the raw WSRP portlet, which is known as the WSRP producer. The Plumtree WSRP Portlet Consumer can run on the same platform as the producer, on the portal, or on a middle tier between the portal and the WSRP producer, offering customers flexibility in scaling the portal deployment to many business units, each with their own portlets..." See: (1) Plumtree Corporate Portal; (2) "JSR 168 Portlet API Specification 1.0 Released for Public Review"; (3) OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets TC website; (4) "Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)."

• [September 02, 2003] "Uniform Code Council's U Connect Conference to Connect People, Process and Technology. Expanded Conference May 25-27, 2004 to Feature over 90 Sessions." - "The Uniform Code Council (UCC), leaders in facilitating efficient international business, announced today that the organization will hold its annual U Connect Conference May 25-27, 2004, at the Hilton Anaheim Resort in Anaheim, California. The three-day education and networking event will bring together a global audience of supply chain technology users from a variety of industries for educational sessions, networking opportunities, and an exhibition by technology vendors. In 2003, the conference accounted for nearly 1,200 supply chain professionals, including consultants, solution providers and technology executives. 'There is no greater need in our knowledge-based economy than to be connected with the people, process and technology that drive business. The 2004 U Connect Conference is planned around this concept,' said Tom Rittenhouse, President and Chief Executive Officer of the UCC. 'U Connect will deliver a comprehensive educational and business-building experience for attendees.' The conference focuses on how companies can employ the latest standards-based solutions, technologies, and business processes to manage their supply chain more efficiently. Sessions will deliver insight from industry professionals about practical applications and case studies on improving business practices and solving supply chain challenges. 'Year after year, U Connect proves itself as a unique conference that truly is developed by supply chain technology users to benefit supply chain technology users,' said Becky Pickett, Development Manager, eBusiness, Ahold Information Services. 'Whether you are a new attendee or have been to U Connect in the past, you will walk away with the knowledge and tools to bring more efficiency to your business.' The 2004 U Connect Conference will offer more than 90 informative sessions that cover business-critical topics... Tracks include: (1) Implementing Foundational Data will offer 'how-to' basics and case studies on implementing UCC keys, including Global Trade Item Identification Numbers (GTIN), Serial Shipping Container Codes (SSCC), Global Location Numbers (GLN), and Global Individual Asset Identifiers (GIAI). (2) Electronic Product Code (EPC): Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) To 'E'Volutionize The Supply Chain will cover the commercialization of the electronic product code (EPC), which has begun through a joint venture of the UCC and EAN International. This global industry initiative has the potential to transform the supply chain and deliver unprecedented benefits. The track will focus on how the EPC is moving from the laboratory to the real world and give attendees the roadmap they will need to get started. (3) Data Synchronization will offer information on UCCnet foundational services, comprehensive sessions on the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), and case studies on implementations of GDSN. (4) Technologies and Standards in Trading Partnerships will include business case examples and discussions on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Extensible Markup Language (XML), EDI over the Internet (AS2), and Business to Business (B2B) integration. (5) Collaborative Commerce Standards Development and Implementation will provide information about the Global Standards Management Process (GSMP), current and future initiatives of the process, and the global standards of foundational data. (6) Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) will provide an understanding of CPFR, the value it can bring to a company, and the barriers that companies have encountered when implementing CPFR..."

• [September 02, 2003] "Webswell Connect 1.1 Beta Provides Open Source ebXML Integration Framework." - "The Webswell company has launched a new release of its open source ebXML integration framework Webswell Connect, version 1.1 Beta. The 1.1. Beta version contains: (1) E-business registry server and client. The server stores and allows to find and process information about partners participating (or willing to participate) in e-business integration. The information includes partner profiles, technical descriptions of services, business processes and technical agreements. This component is based on ebxmlrr registry and repository implementation. (2) Messaging system, a component responsible for secure and reliable messaging between communicating parties. It is used for transmitting business documents during business transactions (which can be conducted by special agreements between business partners). (3) Simple user interface for sending/handling messages. It allows end users to participate in e-business transactions without having full framework with business processes implementations installed. Additional software necessary for installation, configuration and running of the framework (database server, Tomcat, etc.) All components are preconfigured and ready to use. Webswell Connect allows easy, interactive and user-friendly installation. It is entirely open source, free and available for download..." General references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [August 28, 2003] "First Opera for Bidirectional Languages. Opera 7.20 for Windows Fine-Tunes Speed and Performance." - "Opera Software today released Opera 7.20 for Windows Beta. The new release makes it truer than ever that Opera adheres to the its popular tagline 'The Fastest Browser on Earth,' with Opera's engineers having fine-tuned version 7's development branch for maximum performance. Opera 7 for Windows is Opera's most successful version ever, with over 10 million copies downloaded so far just from www.opera.com. In addition to the copies downloaded from Opera's homepage are the many millions more downloaded from other sites around the world. With Opera 7.20's added support for bidirectional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, Opera is now a true global browser. At the same time, recent press reports indicate that IE is slowing down browser development and that development of Netscape has been largely abandoned. Microsoft will not develop the stand-alone version of Internet Explorer further, instead going for full integration in the upcoming 'Longhorn' operating system to be released in a few years time. Internet Explorer users thus need to buy a new operating system to get a new browser. This leaves Opera as the only major commercial player continuing to push browser development, offering a vast number of new users a continually up-to-date and enhanced Internet experience. 'Opera 7 has been greeted with cheers from users and press all over the world. By continuously listening closely to our users throughout Opera's development cycle over the years, we have succeeded in creating the very best browser there is,' says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software ASA. 'This technological lead is further expanded with today's release. The feedback from our testers has been unison: Opera 7.20 significantly boosts speed and performance.' Opera 7.20 for Windows has already been released in pre-beta versions not announced to the wider public. Opera's Elektrans, the volunteer group that helps millions of Opera users get the very best Internet experience available in every release, has joined forces with a select group of power users that frequent Opera's newsgroups and forums. This elite group has run Opera 7.20 through intensive stress-testing over the last few weeks to ensure that all critical bugs are found and fixed before the final release. The final Opera 7.20 for Windows will be released sometime later this summer." See the changelog for a list of V 7.20 features.

• [August 25, 2003] "Waveset Offers SPML Toolkit to Promote Open Standards for Provisioning Across Diverse Identity Infrastructures." - "Waveset Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of innovative identity management solutions, today announced it has developed the industry's first open source SPML (Service Provisioning Markup Language) toolkit that allows third parties to SPML-enable their applications and management platforms. The toolkit offers an easy-to-use interface for configuring, issuing and interpreting standards-compliant provisioning requests across diverse identity infrastructures. This functionality helps organizations extend secure user access privileges and profile information to dynamic user populations, particularly in Web services environments. It is based on SPML version 1.0 which is in the final stages of ratification as an OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) worldwide standard. It is publicly available for download at no cost or restriction at www.openspml.org According to Phil Schacter, vice president of directory and security strategies at Burton Group, 'The availability of an open source implementation of SPML is a critical step in gaining broad industry adoption of this important emerging standard. Standards play a key role in an enterprise identity management architecture by solving difficult integration and interoperability problems and enabling applications to leverage the identity infrastructure independent of any specific vendor's implementation. Waveset's release of its open SPML toolkit will make it easier for both commercial application software providers and enterprise application developers to take advantage of SPML, and should lead to earlier deployment of identity management systems that incorporate support for SPML.' Platforms and software solutions that conform to the SPML specification facilitate the automation of user or system access and entitlement rights to electronic services across diverse IT infrastructures. Waveset's SPML toolkit reduces the time and technical proficiency required of programmers to build this framework by providing a simple to use and easy to understand graphical environment for SPML message generation and analysis. The toolkit also offers a unique browser capability that scans SPML-enabled provisioning systems to provide a graphical view of services offered -- much like a standard Web services UDDI browser -- as well as to generate and de-bug test requests. 'The industry has spent two years working to establish SPML as a key standard for enabling provisioning services across diverse identity infrastructures,' said Darran Rolls, directory of technology at Waveset and chair of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee. 'As such, it's important that tools like these be made publicly available to drive the adoption of open, standard protocols and ensure continued industry support for a Web services-based, identity-centric business process model..." General references in "XML-Based Provisioning Services."

• [August 25, 2003] "Macromedia Announces Dreamweaver MX 2004. New Version Builds Foundation for Widespread Adoption of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)." - "Macromedia, Inc. today announced Dreamweaver MX 2004, the professional choice for building web sites and applications. Dreamweaver MX 2004 continues the product's tradition of innovation by providing a solid foundation for widespread adoption of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a well respected, but previously difficult to implement web standard. Because CSS helps developers separate presentation and style from content, websites built with CSS require less bandwidth, are easier to maintain, and give developers and end users precise design control. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is the only comprehensive tool to deliver deep CSS support in a visual development environment, removing the learning curve and enabling developers to use this standard to cost-effectively deliver great experiences on their web sites and applications. Dreamweaver MX 2004 builds on the success of Dreamweaver MX by further integrating visual layout tools, application development features, and code editing support within a technology-agnostic, platform-independent environment. By supporting all major HTML and server technologies, Dreamweaver MX 2004 unlocks the power of open, standards-based development for the web community while enhancing the basic tools that professionals need. Dreamweaver MX 2004 also includes SecureFTP, dynamic cross-browser validation functionality, built-in graphics editing, seamless integration with Microsoft Word and Excel, and updated support for ASP.NET, PHP, and ColdFusion server technologies... Dreamweaver MX 2004 includes state of the art, standards-based design controls to ensure high-quality design. The entire design environment is built around CSS to enable fast, more efficient development of clean-coded, professional sites with sophisticated designs. Dynamic multi-browser validation automatically checks tags and CSS rules for design compatibility across leading browsers, the most common headache for developers. A built-in graphics editor using Macromedia Fireworks technology enables users to crop, resize, and edit graphics without leaving the Dreamweaver environment... The open, technology-agnostic nature of Dreamweaver MX 2004 allows developers to work with their technologies of choice. Its platform-independent development environment supports all major server technologies, including Macromedia ColdFusion, ASP.NET, JSP, and PHP. SecureFTP encrypts all file transfers and prevents unauthorized access to data, file contents, user names, and passwords. Seamless integration with Microsoft Word and Excel enables users to preserve formatting as CSS when cutting and pasting into Dreamweaver. The product also includes tighter integration with Macromedia Flash, Fireworks, and other design and development tools in Macromedia Studio MX 2004..." See related references in "W3C Cascading Style Sheets."

• [August 21, 2003] "The Uniform Code Council Solution Partner Program Launched. Solution Partners Drive Business Opportunities by Providing Integrated Solutions for UCC Member Companies." - "The Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC), leaders in facilitating efficient international business, recently announced the official launch of its UCC Solution Partner Program. The UCC Solution Partner Program increases awareness, adoption, and implementation of UCC standards by facilitating a partnership between the UCC and solution providers to produce standards-compliant, 'off-the-shelf' implementation solutions for the expanding UCC community. The program benefits the UCC community by providing member companies with UCC-certified resources where they can find software, hardware, and consultants for implementation services. By utilizing standardized and compliant solutions, companies will be able to minimize implementation costs, maximize supply chain cost savings, and raise productivity. UCC standards include the EAN.UCC System and RosettaNet standards. EAN.UCC System standards provide companies in 23 major industry verticals with a global language of business to uniquely identify products, assets, locations and logistics units across the global supply chain, as well as enable corresponding electronic information to be communicated in a consistent fashion. RosettaNet uses open Internet-based business standards that align processes within the global high technology and telecommunications trading networks. The new UCC Solution Partner Program serves as an umbrella program for all of the divisions of the UCC. It will support implementation of Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) and Electronic Commerce standards of the EAN.UCC System as well as UCCnet, RosettaNet, and the newly formed AutoID U.S., LLC. The UCC is currently migrating UCCnet Alliance Partners to the new UCC Solution Partner Program. The UCC Solution Partner Program will then be expanded to embrace AIDC and Electronic Commerce certification programs later in 2003, with support for the RosettaNet and AutoID U.S., LLC communities in 2004. According to UCC Senior Vice President and President of EAN.UCC Dennis Harrison, the UCC Solution Partner Program has generated significant interest from companies around the world eager to become certified UCC Solution Partners. 'This is a tremendous program that delivers cost effective solutions for our member companies and their trading partners, while driving correct implementation of Uniform Code Council standards,' said Mr. Harrison. Since the program's inception in early July 2003, the following companies have signed as UCC Solution Partners: bTrade, EDS, FullTilt Solutions, HAHT Commerce, Integrated Software Systems (ISS), iWay Software, Inc., LANSA, Ontuet Technologies, Sterling Commerce, TR2 Consulting, Thomas Smith (AGSA.US), Trigo Technologies, Inc., Velosel Corporation, and webMethods..." General references in "Uniform Code Council (UCC) XML Program."

• [August 21, 2003] "ebXML Asia Committee Starts New ebXML Interoperability Certification Program. Twelve Organizations Receive Certifications on ebXML Message Service specification 2.0." - On August 8, 2003 the ebXML Asia Committee "announced the start of a new ebXML interoperability certification program and issued ebXML interoperability certification on ebXML Message Service specification 2.0, including basic functions and reliable messaging, for twelve (12) companies and organizations passed the interoperability test. Interoperability is one of key issues to realize Internet based B2B eBusiness using multi-vendor implementations,even across countries. ebXML Message Service is designed for B2B communication and its reliable messaging function is to guarantee message delivery such as arrival of a business message sent from one company to another,preservation of message order and elimination of duplicated arrival of business messages. The goal of the ebXML ASIA Committee interoperability certification is to promote ebXML through the certification of interoperability among ebXML Asia Committee members' products. The certificate includes such information as 'Class' which specifies the ebXML specification to be covered and 'Level' which specifies the test categories. ebXML Asia Committee interoperability test is performed by the Interoperability Task Group (ITG) and the interoperability certification is issued by ebXML ASIA committee... ITG will soon initiate the third round of ebXML Interoperability test, which will cover security related test items of ebXML Message Service Specification... ebXML Asia Committee is a regional committee jointly initiated by the Electronic Commerce Promotion Council of Japan (ECOM) of Japan, the Korea Institute for Electronic Commerce (KIEC) of Korea and the Taipei Computer Association of Chinese Taipei. The Committee was established in December 2000 to promote ebXML in Asia, to jointly deal with ebXML work through the cooperation among Asian countries and to facilitate electronic commerce in the Asian region. With the gradual increase of membership, there are currently more than 24 organizational members from 11 regions of Asia Pacific (Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand)..." See: (1) ebXML.org website; (2) UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG); (3) general references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [August 21, 2003] "UDDI Operators Council Releases Version 3 of the UDDI Business Registry. Beta Version to Include Enhanced Functionality for Companies to Build Secure Web Services Registries. UDDI Operators SAP, IBM and Microsoft to Provide Beta APIs for Public Usage of UDDI Version 3 Free of Charge." - "The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Business Registry (UBR) Operators Council announced today the availability of UDDI Version 3 (V.3) beta nodes. The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration protocol is one of the major building blocks that enable successful Web service deployments. UDDI creates a standard interoperable platform that enables companies and applications to quickly, easily and dynamically find and use Web services. 'The beta release of UBR V.3 takes a further step in bringing this important specification closer to successful real-world implementations,' said Charles Abrams, research director, Gartner Research. 'The UDDI Operators Council is providing companies with an early opportunity to explore new functionality when considering extended Web service implementations.' The UDDI V.3 Specification brings the following important capabilities to the UBR: (1) User-Defined Keys: This allows users to create human readable values for keys based on the known concept of domain names. (2) UDDI Business Registry (UBR) as a Root Registry: Once the UBR migrates to V.3, the UBR will serve as the recognized root registry for globally unique keys, where affiliate registries will be able to reserve UDDI keys. (3) Portable Keys: V.3 introduces the ability to copy keys between registries without being altered, enabling public and private registries to import information from others. (4) Digital Signatures: The addition of digital signature support for entities in UDDI enables clients to establish the veracity of data registered in the UBR. UDDI is a cross-industry effort driven by major platform and software providers, as well as marketplace operators and e-business leaders within the OASIS standards consortium. IBM, Microsoft and SAP will provide UDDI V.3 beta nodes. With this beta, the UBR operators continue to provide validation of the UDDI specification through early reference implementations. Early availability of new V.3 features affords tool providers and early adopters publicly available access to this technology. The UDDI Operators Council, which consists of IBM, Microsoft, NTT Communications and SAP, continues to provide support for the momentum in the developer community to harness real-world implementations of the advanced specification. The Operators Council documents and submits their experience with the beta implementation to the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee to help refine and improve the UDDI V.3 Specification..." Further details are given in the news story: "UBR Operators Council Announces Beta Release of UDDI Business Registry for UDDI Version 3.0." See also: (1) "UDDI Version 3.0: UDDI Spec Technical Committee Specification; (2) OASIS UDDI Member Section; (3) general references in "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."

• [August 2003] "OASIS ebXML Update: Completion of ebXML Second Phase." [Memo of August 27, 2003 from Patrick Gannon, President & CEO, OASIS.] "OASIS and UN/CEFACT have completed the second phase of ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language), our joint initiative that began in 1999. In the first 18-month phase, joint teams completed a set of substantive technical specifications which provided an interoperable, vendor-neutral, openly available stack of XML standards for B2B e-commerce. In a second transitional phase, OASIS and UN/CEFACT split the substantive work, each housing several of the ongoing project teams while maintaining linkage through a Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC). After two years, the ebXML JCC has completed its mission. The two organizations will continue to support and promote the ebXML standards under respective separate procedures. The transitional second phase saw many successes for ebXML, including: (1) the issuance of updated versions 2.0 of the ebXML Message Service (MSG), Registry Information Model (RIM), Registry Services (RS) and Collaboration Protocol Profile & Agreement (CPPA) specifications as OASIS Standards (2) approval by the UN/CEFACT plenary of all the ebXML OASIS Standards (3) widespread implementations and tools based on ebXML, particularly by government agencies and vertical industry supply-chain consortia In its third phase, OASIS will continue to support the OASIS ebXML specifications and serve as a focal point for users and vendors interested in the maintenance, implementation and advancement of our ebXML Standards. This ongoing work includes the following: [a] OASIS Technical Committees for ebXML Messaging, CPPA, Registry/Repository, and Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) each will continue to actively develop and refine ebXML specifications in use today... [b] Additional efforts, including the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) TC, the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging TC, and the OASIS Web Services for Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) TC, also will have the opportunity to liaise and define interoperability with the ebXML stack. [c] OASIS will continue to maintain the www.ebxml.org informational web site that we have hosted since the project's launch... OASIS expresses its thanks to the representatives from Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Sterling Commerce, Global Exchange Services, and other organizations who served as our representatives to the ebXML Joint Coordinating Committee and the Joint Marketing Committee during the project's transitional phase. We expect to continue to promote and support various ebXML activities, directed by our four existing OASIS ebXML TCs, the OASIS ebXML Joint Committee, and such other projects as may be initiated under OASIS rules. Indeed, there are many reasons to celebrate our ebXML accomplishments, many exciting opportunities ahead, and many ways for members to drive our continued success..." See also: (1) OASIS ebXML.org website; (2) UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG) website; (3) general references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [August 21, 2003] "UN/CEFACT Announces Successful Completion of ebXML Technical Standards Work Programme with OASIS. UN/CEFACT Continues Development of Technology- and Implementation-Neutral E-Business Standards." - "The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) announces the successful completion of the ebXML technical standards work with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). UN/CEFACT continues to capitalize on the gains made from ebXML in the further development of technology-neutral and implementation-neutral global e-Business standards for government, industry and commerce. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have since 1999 been working on a joint initiative to expand the use and growth of the Internet by developing the next generation of electronic business standards based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). The ebXML (electronic Business with XML) initiative called for an 18-month worldwide open development project to create a technical framework enabling the use of XML as a consistent means for the exchange of electronic business data. The original ebXML initiative concluded in May 2001 with full community approval of a framework of technical specifications. For the past two years, UN/CEFACT and OASIS have enjoyed a close working relationship to finalize the set of ebXML specifications, and in May 2003 the UN/CEFACT Plenary adopted these as UN/CEFACT Technical Specifications. 'Working closely with our colleagues at OASIS has been a unique opportunity for UN/CEFACT to lead the development of global technology standards and help drive awareness of how XML and Internet technology support government, industry and commerce' says Ray Walker, Chair of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'We are extremely proud of our OASIS working relationship and we remain open to working with OASIS in the future.' UN/CEFACT, which is based at UNECE in Geneva and has a global remit, has led the development of international standards for electronic transactions. Its experience and its ability to bring together world-class experts and match trends in information technology with business requirements, in an open and transparent way, gives it a unique viewpoint. 'Recognition that the next technology trend is just around the corner resulted in the recent UN/CEFACT Plenary meeting directing a new work programme to move UN/CEFACT closer to web services' said Dr Christian Fruhwald, Chair of UN/CEFACT. 'This new work, known as UN/CEFACT Business Collaboration Framework (BCF), will allow UN/CEFACT to identify the growing needs of government, commercial and industrial organizations as they approach their global information exchange requirements.' 'Going forward we expect to make use of much of our ebXML technical work as we continue to develop UN/CEFACT's technology neutral and implementation neutral global e-framework. We hope to use the newly established liaisons with the OASIS Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Technical Committee (TC), plus the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) and our UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Business Process Working Group to align our efforts, and eliminate duplication of work', says Klaus-Dieter Naujok Chair of UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group and former Chair of the ebXML Project..." See also: (1) OASIS ebXML.org website; (2) UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG) website; (3) general references in "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [August 20, 2003] "Siebel Systems and webMethods Announce Expanded Offering for Universal Application Network. Siebel Integration Applications for Communications, Media and Energy Industries Now Available on webMethods Integration Platform." - "webMethods, Inc., the leading provider of integration software enabling Global Business Visibility, and Siebel Systems, Inc., a leading provider of multichannel eBusiness application software, today announced the general availability of Universal Application Network (UAN) integration applications for the communications, media and energy (CME) industries on the webMethods Integration Platform. Developed by Siebel Systems in collaboration with leading technology companies, Universal Application Network (UAN) is a standards-based architecture for business integration. UAN includes packaged applications and industry-specific business processes that run on industry-leading integration servers, eliminating the cost and complexity associated with traditional integration methods. With UAN, companies can leverage their existing IT investments, deploy best-in-class applications, and optimize their cross-application business processes, resulting in greater organizational agility and a lower total cost of ownership. With this product release, webMethods expands support for UAN by making Siebel integration applications for the CME industries available on the webMethods Integration Platform. UAN CME is available today on webMethods 6 and includes prebuilt objects, transformations, and business process logic to enable rapid, cost-effective delivery of integration solutions. The combination of prebuilt Siebel integration applications and the webMethods Integration Platform provides customers with an optimal architecture and solution for automating critical business processes and eliminating manual data entry steps across multiple IT systems..." Note on UAN from the Siebel white paper on UAN, Universal Application Network: The Industry's First Standards-Based, Vendor-Independent Application Integration Solution: "Universal Application Network is based on Web Services and Extensible Markup Language (XML), which provide the standards for specifying Universal Application Network business processes... At the highest level, Universal Application Network consists of three components: business process library, business process design tool, and integration server. The business process library is a collection of prepackaged end-to-end industry-specific business processes -- such as Customer Creation or Quote to Order -- which can be configured and executed across multiple systems of record and business logic. These business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and thus are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server... The Business Process Design Tool is an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions -- including business process flows, common objects, and transformation maps. The design tool has import and export capabilities to accept and emit definitions of the business process solutions in XML standards. The design tool consists of two components: Business Process Flow Modeler and Transformation Modeler. The Business Process Flow Modeler enables the user to describe business processes at various levels of abstraction. A business analyst uses the modeler to describe the business process independent of the underlying applications. A developer can then define further details by providing process flows that indicate how a specific application accomplishes those steps. The Business Process Flow Modeler also provides visual representation of error conditions, transactional boundaries, and compensating transactions. The modeler accepts and emits Web Services-based XML representations of the defined processes... The Transformation Modeler is used to define common objects and transformation maps. The user can visually drag and drop fields and choose available functions libraries to define transformations. The Transformation Modeler also can be used to define custom transformations. It accepts and emits XSD schemas and XSLT-based transformations... The integration server coordinates interapplication communication. Examples of commercially available integration servers include IBM CrossWorlds InterChange Server, Mercator Integration Broker, SeeBeyond Business Integration Suite, TIBCO BusinessWorks, Vitria BusinessWare, and webMethods Platform..."

• [August 19, 2003] "World Wide Web Consortium Issues Web Ontology Language Candidate Recommendations. Emerging Ontology Standard, OWL, Strengthens Semantic Web Foundations." - "Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued Web Ontology Language (OWL) as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. Candidate Recommendation is an explicit call for implementations, indicating that the document has been reviewed by all other W3C Working Groups, that the specification is stable, and appropriate for implementation. OWL is a language for defining structured, Web-based ontologies which enable richer integration and interoperability of data across application boundaries. Early adopters of these standards include bioinformatics and medical communities, corporate enterprise and governments. OWL enables a range of descriptive applications including managing web portals, collections management, content-based searches, enabling intelligent agents, web services and ubiquitous computing. 'OWL is an important step for making data on the Web more machine processable and reusable across applications, ' said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. 'We're encouraged to see OWL already being used as an open standard for deploying large scale ontologies on the Web.' OWL is specified in 6 documents: The OWL Overview; OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax; OWL Use Cases and Requirements; OWL Test Cases, OWL Guide, and the OWL Reference... OWL is a Web Ontology language. Where earlier languages have been used to develop tools and ontologies for specific user communities (particularly in the sciences and in company-specific e-commerce applications), they were not defined to be compatible with the architecture of the World Wide Web in general, and the Semantic Web in particular. OWL rectifies this by using both URIs for naming and the linking provided by RDF to add the following capabilities to ontologies: (1) Ability to be distributed across many systems; (2) Scalable to Web needs; (3) Compatible with Web standards for accessibility and internationalization; (4) Open and extensible. OWL provides a language for defining structured, Web-based ontologies which delivers richer integration and interoperability of data among descriptive communities. OWL builds on RDF Model and Schema and adds more vocabulary for describing properties and classes: among others, relations between classes (e.g., disjointness), cardinality (e.g., 'exactly one'), equality, richer typing of properties, characteristics of properties (e.g., symmetry), and enumerated classes. Already there are multiple implementations and demonstrations of OWL, which are available to the public..." See: (1) "W3C Releases Candidate Recommendations for Web Ontology Language (OWL)"; (2) "OWL Web Ontology Language"; (3) general references in "Markup Languages and Semantics."

• [August 15, 2003] "Oracle Helps Developers Build Interoperable Web Services." - "Oracle Corp., the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced the availability of a new sample application to help developers test the interoperability of software and Web services, based on the latest recommendations from the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) organization. The sample application -- an early release of WS-I supply chain application for Oracle9i Application Server --implements a real world supply chain scenario by modeling the interactions between multiple Web storefronts, retail warehouses and manufacturers. The sample is based on WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, and demonstrates how Web services can connect heterogeneous systems and autonomous organizations. As a result, developers will be able to test the interoperability of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based Web services deployed on Oracle9i Application Server with Web services deployed on other platforms such as .NET and J2EE application servers from other vendors. The sample application can be downloaded free-of-charge from Oracle Technology Network (OTN)... The sample application utilizes many of the features of the WS-I Basic Profile, including a variety of XML schema naming conventions, SOAP message formats, SOAP message styles, and WSDL design practices. The upcoming release of Oracle JDeveloper, recently announced at JavaOne 2003, is scheduled to feature integrated support for WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 Conformance Testing, enhancing the existing Web services capabilities of the tool, which include instant deployment and testing with the embedded Oracle9i Application Server, local and remote debugging, profiling and integrated SOAP message monitoring. The new feature will enable developers to deliver WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 compatible applications and services more quickly and easily... The WS-I sample supply chain application for Oracle9i Application Server is immediately available for free download from Oracle's online developer community Web site, OTN, which also offers many additional resources for Web services developers and architects. A developer's preview of the new Oracle JDeveloper is scheduled to be available for free download and evaluation from OTN by the end of the year..." See also the news story "WS-I Releases Basic Profile 1.0a Final Specification for Interoperable Web Services."

• [August 13, 2003] "SAP Announces Support for WS-I Basic Profile 1.0. SAP NetWeaver to Align with the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, Enabling Greater Industry Adoption of Web Services for Enterprise Customers." - "SAP AG today announced its support for the first release of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 (BP 1.0), a set of implementation guidelines for companies to utilize a set of core Web services specifications to develop interoperable Web services. The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) brings the work of multiple standards organizations (such as W3C and OASIS) together for the purpose of providing clarity and guidance around Web services interoperability. As a founding WS-I Board member, SAP actively participated in the development of the BP 1.0 and will support the new guidelines throughout their implementation and industry adoption. The SAP NetWeaver technology platform, which drives lower cost of ownership across heterogeneous IT landscapes, corresponds to the BP 1.0 and allows SAP customers to develop, deploy and integrate enterprise applications in alignment with the new implementation guidelines. Through SAP's support of the BP 1.0, customers can operate directly with the new implementation guidelines, rather than dealing with the individual Web services specifications, such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration). SAP's support for the BP 1.0 will allow companies to easily implement and continue using Web services while leveraging their existing technology investments, saving considerable time and expense. WS-I is an open industry organization committed to promoting Web services interoperability across platforms, applications and programming languages. The organization unites a diverse community of Web services companies, including SAP, to provide guidance, recommended practices and supporting resources for developing interoperable Web services. WS-I BP 1.0 has the potential to become the industry's common denominator for developing and deploying interoperable Web services based on industry-wide standards like XML, SOAP and WSDL. 'As a founding WS-I member, SAP AG is pleased to welcome the release of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0,' said Sinisa Zimek, director of technology strategy and standards, SAP. 'WS-I participants like SAP have taken a great step in developing and promoting interoperability between applications. The BP 1.0 is significant for SAP customers who want to pursue business beyond what traditional integration strategies can provide'..." See "WS-I Releases Basic Profile 1.0a Final Specification for Interoperable Web Services."

• [August 13, 2003] "Southwest Airlines Deploys Industry Leading SAML Implementation On Oblix NetPoint. NetPoint SAML Solution Enables User Authentication and Authorization Across Corporate Extranets." - "Oblix, a leading developer of identity-based security solutions, today announced that Southwest Airlines has successfully deployed the Oblix NetPoint Identity Management and Access Control Solution with comprehensive support for SAML. As a result of the deployment, Southwest has reduced administration costs associated with password resets and account expirations, while simultaneously promoting its 'family' corporate culture by helping more employees feel connected via easy access to business-critical information when they need it. Hundreds of Southwest engineers and mechanics can now access technical documentation and other proprietary content housed on its aircraft supplier's secure Web site by using SAML-enabled single sign-on. Oblix NetPoint facilitates a seamless and secure Southwest user experience by exchanging SAML assertions between Southwest and supplier's security systems, in effect forwarding a SAML security assertion that automatically logs the employee into the supplier's remote system. 'Southwest Airlines' history of success is built on giving our Customers a 'positively outrageous' level of service. Consistently getting them to their destination on-time is a big part of that,' said Brian Buege, manager of Application Frameworks, Southwest Airlines. 'By deploying Oblix NetPoint integrated with SAML, our mechanics can spend more time keeping our fleet airborne and our flights on-time rather than searching for lost passwords or related information. A SAML-integrated identity and access management infrastructure delivers significant business benefits, including reduced administrative costs and increased productivity.' SAML, Security Assertion Markup Language, is an XML-based security standard for exchanging user authentication and authorization information. By combining SAML with Oblix NetPoint's identity management functionality, Southwest now securely and cost-effectively manages its employee identity information across disparate corporate boundaries, and can also integrate with partner/supplier security systems..." See general references in "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)."

• [August 12, 2003] "Mindreef Announces Availability of SOAPscope 2.0. Features First WSDL Interoperability Checker, Including Rules for WS-I Basic Profile 1.0." - "Mindreef, Inc. announced today the availability of Mindreef SOAPscope 2.0, the second offering in the company's flagship product family and the industry's first Web Services Diagnostics System. This emerging category of products addresses the challenges of isolating and solving problems of applications built with Web services throughout the development, testing and management process. With over 1000 copies now in use, SOAPscope is gaining broad adoption by developers, testers and application support technicians as an easy-to-use, platform-independent tool. Released in November 2002, SOAPscope 1.0 focused on SOAP visibility for development organizations 'getting their feet wet' with Web services. These early adopters needed a tool to see and understand the content of their SOAP messages. At this point in the maturity of Web services, many organizations are now connecting real-world applications and data. SOAPscope 2.0 focuses on the interfaces between Web services. These interfaces are described in a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) document. Errant WSDL results in Web services that are not interoperable, or do not function properly. The design of interfaces using WSDL is a complex specialty, but almost every Web service developer, tester or troubleshooter will have to know WSDL as it is the key to Web services interoperability. SOAPscope 2.0 makes WSDL approachable by automating the four steps people use when solving Web services problems: Visualizing, Analyzing, Experimenting, and Comparing... SOAPscope 2.0 builds upon the SOAP diagnostic capabilities of SOAPscope 1.0. The system introduces a collection of tools that allow a broad audience to better understand and solve WSDL-related problems. With SOAPscope 2.0 Mindreef introduces four ways to 'know your WSDL.' (1) See It: Quickly view and understand the contents of a WSDL document without wading through the XML. SOAPscope provides pseudocode, tree, syntax-colored XML and raw views of the WSDL document. (2) Check It: Automatically checks a WSDL against WS-I Basic Profile 1.0, as well as the WSDL 1.1 specification and Mindreef's own knowledge base of 'best practices.' (3) Try It: Allows users to call and test a Web service with an easy-to-use form. Designed to be a troubleshooting aid that allow users to quickly test many different conditions when determining the cause of problem, it offers the opportunity of 'trying out' Web services before writing any code. (4) Diff It: Provides a view of what has changed since the last time a WSDL was modified. A small change in a WSDL can create many errors. 'DIFFing' a WSDL against a previous version clarifies the change that may have been the root of the errors..."

• [August 12, 2003] "WS-I Announces General Availability of the Basic Profile 1.0. WS-I Member Community Delivers Guidelines to Ensure Interoperability, Reduce Cost and Lower Complexity of Implementing Web Services Solutions." - "At XML Web Services One the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) announced the general availability of the Basic Profile 1.0. The Basic Profile 1.0, which has been formally approved by the WS-I member community, consists of implementation guidelines on how core Web services specifications should be used together to develop interoperable Web services. The specifications covered by the Basic Profile include SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, XML 1.0 and XML Schema. 'Starting today, every Web service developer and provider will have a common framework for implementing interoperable solutions, and buyers will have a common reference point for purchasing decisions,' said Tom Glover, chairman of WS-I. 'WS-I has resolved more than 200 interoperability issues associated with using the core Web services specifications together. The Basic Profile 1.0 will significantly simplify the task of implementing interoperable Web services solutions within and across enterprise boundaries.' 'Support for the Basic Profile is the baseline for interoperable Web services,' said Dan Sholler, vice president of Technology Research Services at the META Group. 'Customers should demand that all of their Web services-enabled technology be compliant with the Basic Profile, and that in turn will lay the foundation for Web services to fulfill their promise and provide technology independent interoperability.' Later this Fall, WS-I will release Test Tools and Sample Applications supporting the Basic Profile 1.0. The Test Tools, available in both C# and Java(TM) implementations, are designed to inspect and validate that a Web service meets the interoperability requirements of the Basic Profile. The Sample Applications demonstrate the Basic Profile at work, including the design, implementation, test and deployment of Web services, based upon selected business scenarios and implemented on 10 different platforms. In parallel with the release of the Test Tools, WS-I will announce how Web services software vendors, hardware vendors, and services providers will be able to claim conformance of their products to the Basic Profile 1.0..." General references in "Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)."

• [July 30, 2003] "NetContinuum and SPI Dynamics Integrate Attack Prevention And Application Vulnerability Assessment Technologies. First Integration Between Independent Solutions Demonstrates Real-World Benefits of Emerging AVDL Standard for Application Security Interoperability." - "NetContinuum, a leading provider of web and application security solutions, and SPI Dynamics, the expert in web application security assessment, today announced they have completed initial integration between NetContinuum's NC-1000 web security gateway appliance and SPI Dynamics' WebInspect Enterprise Edition application vulnerability assessment software. Integration between the two technologies automates the ongoing security assessment and protection cycle required to fully defend against the growing risk of application-layer security threats, which now comprise up to 70 percent of all new attacks. This interoperability allows organizations to respond more quickly to new threats and dramatically decrease their exposure to attacks and potential downtime. The new integration is based on an expanded XML schema that allows application assessment information discovered by WebInspect to be reported and organized in a way that can be easily read and interpreted by the NC-1000 web security gateway. SPI Dynamics and NetContinuum have submitted the knowledge gained from this integration to the OASIS Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) technical committee for consideration as part of the AVDL 1.0 specification, scheduled for release later this year... With new security patches and vulnerabilities appearing at a rate of nearly 50 per week, most experts agree that complex web applications can only be secured through an ongoing process that incorporates both vulnerability assessment and attack prevention solutions. With no standard way for such products to share information, however, security managers are often left to manually translate the results of security assessments into policies that ensure optimal security settings for each unique web application. In the constantly changing world of web applications, this can be time consuming, complicated and costly. Delays and mistakes in this process can also increase a company's risk of penalties for non-compliance with legislation such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the US Government Information Security Reform Act and California Senate Bill 1386. SPI Dynamics and NetContinuum have addressed this problem by delivering the following: (1) SPI Dynamics' WebInspect Enterprise Edition now exports the results of an application assessment in a substantially expanded XML format that depicts both the legitimate architecture of an application as well as a detailed description of all vulnerabilities. This output highlights important details of the application environment that are of critical value to other products responsible for protecting the target application. (2) NetContinuum's NC-1000 now directly reads and interprets the results of a WebInspect assessment via the new expanded XML format. This information is then used to automatically generate a recommended security policy specifically customized to the exact security needs of the target application. Recommended configuration changes can then be directly imported into the NC-1000 to immediately improve the security profile of the application..." See: (1) OASIS Application Vulnerability Description Language TC website; (2) "OASIS Forms TC for Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL)"; (3) general references in "Application Security."

• [July 29, 2003] "MPEG Approves Another MPEG-21 Technology." - "The vision of a multimedia framework took another giant leap forward with completion of Parts 5 and 6 of MPEG-21, the Rights Expression Language (REL) and its associated Rights Data Dictionary (RDD). The REL and the RDD, together form a powerful tool for managing the consumption rights of all forms of content. The REL can also be used independently, if desired. The REL provides industry with the means to create expressions that can then be associated with audio/video and other content to express what the consumer can do with that content. REL expressions can be as simple as 'play' and can also express the complex consumption models that can be devised. Along with MPEG-21 Parts 2 and 3 (Digital Item Declaration and Digital Item Identification) that are already completed, the addition of the REL/RDD moves the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework one step closer to fruition. Progress was also made on other MPEG-21 technology this week. The Digital Item Adaptation work advanced to the penultimate stage in Trondheim. DIA, as it is known, is important for being making it possible to successfully render multimedia content on a myriad of multifunction devices by taking into account the network and terminal characteristics of the multimedia consumption infrastructure..." [The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)working group of ISO/IEC is in charge of the development of standards for coded representation of digital audio and video.] References: (1) "MPEG Rights Expression Language"; (2) "Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML)"; (3) "XML and Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

• [July 29, 2003] "Global eXchange Services Announces the First Generation of Supply Chain Analytics and Visibility Services. Value-added Solutions Extend the Capabilities of the GXS Transaction Delivery Network." - "Global eXchange Services, Inc. (GXS) announced today the availability of a new set of services that give customers visibility, event management, and supply chain collaboration capabilities. The solutions are designed to offer proactive alerts, order status tracking and reporting functionality. In addition to providing the connectivity platform for the exchange of business documents, GXS can now provide critical information about the status of those documents, thereby maximizing the efficiency of the various applications. Solution benefits include: (1) Functional acknowledgement (FA) management services facilitates tracking, reporting, and event notification which maximizes operational efficiency by providing visibility and analysis of critical transaction information; (2) Intelligent collaboration and event management helps achieve a streamlined management of supply chain processes through improved inventory planning, lowered transportation costs and increased internal productivity; (3) Aggregated supply chain data and shared visibility spanning multiple trading partners, back-office systems and various data formats; (4) End-to-end order lifecycle management expedites document turnaround, allows for self-service status inquiries and the ability to manage by exception... Global eXchange Services (GXS) combines innovative Internet commerce technologies with Six Sigma process disciplines to create intelligence for business supply chains around the globe. The company enables global business-to-business Internet commerce by offering Interchange Solutions, including data formats such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML); Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software; catalog and content management services; and trading-partner ramping and exchanges. Global eXchange Services, Inc. (GXS) operates one of the largest B2B e-commerce networks in the world, with more than 100,000 trading partners. The network's 1 billion annual transactions account for $500 billion in goods and services. With more than 35 years experience, GXS provides supply chain services and software to 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies..."

• [July 29, 2003] "Nortel Networks Announces New Security Products and Security Partner Program. Enhanced Portfolio Offers Customers More Choices in Network Security." - "Nortel Networks today announced new products, product enhancements and a security partner program to provide enterprise customers more capability and choice in network security. Supporting Nortel Networks 'One network. A world of choice' enterprise vision, these product enhancements enable businesses of all sizes to better engage their customers, partners, suppliers and employees in a secure environment, regardless of how or where they access the network. "Nortel Networks continues to demonstrate expertise in identifying and protecting against security breaches and network abuse. We are providing new, high-performance products with inherent security -- what we call 'Security in the DNA' -- that allow businesses to manage applications securely and free up the network to serve the business as intended," said Oscar Rodriguez, president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel Networks. Nortel Networks new Alteon Operating System (AOS) 21.0 software release, currently available for Alteon Application Switch products, provides a number of features to identify and protect against network abuse and attacks. These innovative application layer security features include: Advanced Denial of Service (DoS) Protection that employs sophisticated pattern matching techniques to block a wide variety of attacks; Secure, fault-tolerant Web Services enabled by Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) inspection functionality making Alteon Application Switches the first to provide a specialized Web Services-aware traffic management feature that inspects, classifies and directs Web Services traffic; and intelligent peer-to-peer application management enabling companies to proactively control this traffic... In addition to the new AOS 21.0 and SSL VPN releases are enhancements to the Nortel Networks Alteon Application Switch portfolio. The Alteon Application Switch 2208 and 2216 provide the same broad feature set as the industry-proven Alteon Application Switch 2424, but do so with a lower port density, performance/capacity and price that makes this exceptional feature set available to small and medium sized businesses. These new products are optimized for critical and emerging business applications such as IP Telephony, streaming media, video teleconferencing, resource planning, e-mail, file transfer and financial activities." On Nortel's CCXML/SIP/VoiceXML support, see the white paper "Engage Your Customers: Move Beyond Loyalty"; this paper "discusses how Engaged Business provides exceptional levels of personalized service, and outlines the four key technologies that make it possible to build an engaged application: IP, SIP, Web applications middleware, and XML."

• [July 28, 2003] "Arjuna Enables Reliable Web Services-Based Business Applications with Arjuna XTS. Technology to Address the Reliable Coordination Issues Preventing the Early Adoption of Serious E-Business Solutions Through Web Services." - "Arjuna Technologies, one of the world's leading centers of expertise in standards-based distributed transactioning software, today announced the early-access availability of the Arjuna XML Transaction Service (XTS). XTS provides coordination infrastructure to support business transactions that span multiple Web services, ensuring that the consistency of the overall business transaction is maintained even in the event of occasional component failures. XTS is fully standards compliant -- the programming interfaces are based on the emerging Java API for XML Transactioning (JAXTX) and the architecture is based on the recently released WS Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF). XTS future-proofs transactional applications through an innovative pluggable coordination protocol architecture. Version 1.0 includes protocol support for WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction. 'Providing reliable transaction management is critical for Web Services based application integration,' says Patrick Vallaeys, VP of Marketing and Product Management at Infravio. 'We're excited about integrating ArjunaXTS as the transaction management plug-in function for our Ensemble product suite. This will allow our customers to build, deploy and manage Web Services for critical business processes, both within their company and for B2B solutions.' Transaction processing is at the core of commerce and classic ACID transactions are not suitable for loosely coupled environments such as Web services. Steve Caughey, CEO at Arjuna, said, 'Take, for example, a manufacturer that uses Web services to automate the ordering and delivery processes with their suppliers. The transaction between the manufacturer and its suppliers might only be considered completed once all parts are delivered to their final destination, which could be days or even weeks after an order is placed. Participants in a business-to-business transaction will likely be unwilling or unable to reserve any underlying resources exclusively for the duration as they'd have to do with traditional TP technologies. ArjunaXTS solves these overriding problems by providing a new type of extended transaction infrastructure designed to support the loosely-coupled Web services environment.' Dave Ingham, Arjuna's CTO said, 'XTS is constructed as a generic extended transaction framework that can support a variety of protocols. As a result, applications built using the standards-based programming interfaces can be isolated from the underlying protocol evolution. Implementers, therefore have the advantage of being able to migrate to the latest protocol specification as it becomes adopted by the industry without affecting their application development.' 'Arjuna has cut to the core of what is holding Web Services back from being adopted for mission critical applications,' said Bob Bickel, former General Manager of the HP Middleware Division and member of the Arjuna Technical Advisory Board. 'Not only have they provided a reliable mechanism to conduct business transactions, they have designed a unique architecture that allows pluggable protocols, embracing well-known standards like WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction backed by Microsoft and IBM as well as the new WS-CAF from Arjuna, Iona, Fujitsu, Sun and Oracle'..." See: (1) JSR 156: XML Transactioning API for Java (JAXTX); (2) "Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) for Transaction Coordination."

• [July 28, 2003] "Industry Leaders Drive Convergence, Publish Web Services Specifications to Coordinate Business Applications. Arjuna Technologies, Fujitsu Software, IONA, Oracle and Sun Microsystems Open Development with Imminent Standardization of Specification Framework." - "Arjuna Technologies Limited, Fujitsu Software, IONA Technologies PLC, Oracle Corp and Sun Microsystems today announced the publication of the Web Services Composite Applications Framework (WS-CAF). The Web Services Composite Application Framework is a collection of three specifications -- Web Service Context (WS-CTX), Web Service Coordination Framework (WS-CF), and Web Service Transaction Management (WS-TXM) -- designed to solve problems that arise when multiple Web services are used in combination ("composite applications") to support information sharing and transaction processing. Transaction processing (TP) is the core of commerce. Some transactions are very simple, such as purchasing a book or transferring funds, and can be processed immediately. Other transactions are more complex, such as fulfilling a purchase order or completing an insurance claim, and may take days or even years to process. All businesses rely on the concept of a transaction, but have built upon the concept through various architectures, which limits interoperability and creates multiple 'islands' of mutually incompatible TP networks. WS-CAF solves the TP information management and sharing problem by defining an open, multi-level framework for standard coordination of long-running business processes across multiple, incompatible transaction processing models and architectures. The authors plan to donate WS-CAF to a recognized industry standards organization soon under royalty-free licensing terms. This effort will lead the industry to converge on effective solutions through an open standards organization with proven development processes. Solutions developed this way are more likely to be reliable, interoperable and immediately useful to a large audience... The Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) is comprised of three specifications: (1) Web Service Context (WS-CTX), a lightweight framework for simple context management that helps enable all Web services participating in an activity share a common context and exchange information about a common outcome. (2) Web Service Coordination Framework (WS-CF), a sharable mechanism that manages context augmentation and lifecycle and provides the notification of outcome messages to Web services participating in a particular transaction. (3) Web Services Transaction Management (WS-TXM), is comprised of three distinct, interoperable transaction protocols that can be used across multiple transaction managers. WS-TXM supports multiple transaction models to help enable participants to negotiate outcomes with each other and make a common decision about how to behave, especially in the case of failure, regardless whether the execution environment is CORBA, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), .NET, Java Message Service (JMS), or some combination..." See details in "Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) for Transaction Coordination."

• [July 28, 2003] "Orbeon Ships Version 2.0 of Its Open XML Framework (OXF). Productivity, Flexibility, Reuse, and Web Services Are Not Buzzwords Anymore." - "Orbeon, Inc. today announced version 2.0 of the Open XML Framework (OXF). OXF is the most advanced XML transformation framework built on top of proven J2EE technologies. It stands out in a crowd of existing J2EE frameworks by fully leveraging the ubiquity and the flexibility of XML. This new version boosts enterprise XML-based integration, Web application development, and delivers standard Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications which run on any application server. Version 2.0 includes major enhancements that make OXF the most productive and elegant way to integrate disparate systems and build reliable enterprise Web applications. Orbeon enables organizations to reuse their existing assets, including Java components, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), and Web services through a standard XML-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). OXF promotes separation of concerns and component based development by providing an MVC infrastructure as well as a rich set of components out-of-the-box such as: (1) Data access through SQL, EJB, and Web services; (2) Data transformation with XSLT, XQuery, and XUpdate; (3) Document generation/management with support for XML, HTML, text, PDF, and Excel; (4) Notification through email and instant messaging. OXF is built with industry standard J2EE and XML technologies; it supports all the popular application servers, datasources, and browsers..." See also the Open XML Framework website.

• [July 28, 2003] "Sabre Travel Network Launches Web Services Capabilities for Agents. New Offering Provides Standard, Industry-Accepted, Easy-to-Use Technology to Access Sabre Global Distribution System Products and Capabilities." - "Sabre Travel Network, a Sabre Holdings company, today announced the roll out of its Sabre Web Services offering. This new offering provides travel agents easier, faster and more flexible access to the Sabre Global Distribution System (GDS) using industry-accepted OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) standards. It enables agencies to reduce development time for new and enhanced offerings, thereby cutting costs, speeding time to market for new sources of revenue, improving customer loyalty and assuring competitive advantage. In the past, customers gained access to the Sabre GDS and those of other travel providers in a variety of ways using multiple languages and forms of connectivity. Now Sabre Web Services (making use of leading-edge XML and SOAP technologies) streamlines that process, offering developers a single standards-based access to the GDS. This eliminates the need for agents and Web developers to understand proprietary codes and programming languages to connect their systems to the disparate data sources needed to create bookable Web-based travel offerings. 'We were able to link our dynamic packaging engine to the Sabre Web Services platform with ease,' said Rakesh Mishra, president of HyperTech Solutions, a Sabre Travel Network customer which provides dynamic packaging and remote connectivity technology to the travel industry. 'Sabre Web Services' features are fantastic, and the rapid development cycle brought our revised product to market 30 percent faster, while allowing us to price our products even more competitively. It's been 'win-win-win' -- for Sabre Travel Network, for HyperTech and for our tour operator customers!' HyperTech develops Internet booking engines and Web-based solutions for tour operators and air consolidators... An agency planning to build a Web site with travel booking capabilities can easily access the Sabre GDS via Sabre Web Services and select specific services to meet their individual business needs. For example, one agency may use geographic displays of available hotels, while another may opt for a more streamlined text view of available hotels. By selecting Sabre Web Services, rather than off-the-shelf booking tools, agencies gain maximum control over the creation of their customer-facing booking tools... Sabre Travel Network, a Sabre Holdings company, provides access to the world's leading global distribution system (GDS) and products and services enabling agents at more than 56,000 locations worldwide to be travel experts. About 35 percent of the world's travel is booked through the Sabre GDS. Originally developed in 1960, it was the first system to connect the buyers and sellers of travel. Today the system includes more than 400 airlines, approximately 60,000 hotels, 53 car rental companies, nine cruise lines, 36 railroads and 232 tour operators..." See also "OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)."

• [July 24, 2003] "Seybold San Francisco Transformed: Ten Key Conferences Include Enterprise Publishing and Digital Media. New Look, Vision for 22-Year-Old Gathering of 'All Things Publishing' Set for Sept. 8-12, 2003, at Moscone West." - "With a new look, new vision and year-round identity, Seybold Seminars, Publications & Consulting is reinventing itself as well as its flagship event, Seybold San Francisco 2003. Since 1981, the yearly summit of 'all things publishing' has grown beyond being just an annual conference. Seybold San Francisco -- and its sister events in New York and Amsterdam -- are widely recognized for providing the industry with a vibrant, creative community 365 days a year... To support such a vision, Seybold Seminars created www.Seybold365.com to serve as an online 'community center,' where anyone can find the latest on publishing, from news and trends to developments in publishing technology. The site also is meant to be a forum in which professionals can meet peers and discuss what matters in their particular arenas. 'We see Seybold365.com as a catalyst,' Smith said. 'It offers opportunities to work and play with creative tools and technologies to create compelling content for all technology-based media, including the Web, print, digital imaging and graphics.' Seybold San Francisco -- the 22-year-old annual technology conference of the professional publishing world -- will have a new format and focus when its latest edition opens Sept. 8 at Moscone West. To better support up-and-coming technologies, Seybold San Francisco 2003 has 10 new educational conferences to better equip attendees with the skills they need to 'Get to Work Creatively..." See also "Seybold Seminars, Publications and Consulting Announces New Mega-Event in San Francisco."

• [July 23, 2003] "HP Acquires PipeBeach to Strengthen Leadership in Growing VoiceXML Interactive Voice Market. Standards-based Products from PipeBeach Bolster HP OpenCall Portfolio and Enhance HP's Ability to Deliver Speech-based Solutions." - "HP today announced the acquisition of PipeBeach AB, a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of speech-based products and technology that enable the delivery of interactive voice solutions. HP plans to integrate PipeBeach's VoiceXML-based products into its OpenCall suite of enhanced telecommunications software. This acquisition significantly enhances HP's ability to help telecom service providers, network equipment providers and independent software vendors simplify the creation and deployment of VoiceXML-based applications. HP will be better able to provide these customers with the flexibility and agility they need to get to market faster, reduce costs and improve customer loyalty. PipeBeach's VoiceXML-based products and technology enable users to speak into their mobile phones and devices to obtain Web-based information such as news, stock prices and e-mail, as well as conduct transactions, such as online banking. The information and options are conveyed to the user through speech - instead of text or images. 'HP is committed to the interactive voice market, and we intend to help our customers grow by providing them with a full spectrum of development tools, products and solutions,' said Jean-Rene Bouvier, vice president and general manager, HP OpenCall Business Unit. 'When we combine the advanced PipeBeach technologies - and track record in VoiceXML -- with HP's OpenCall portfolio and unique combination of telecom and IT expertise, we can establish HP as a global provider of interactive voice solutions.' HP intends to build on its strong presence in the interactive voice market by leveraging the PipeBeach acquisition to accelerate the development of open standards for voice and multimodal technologies in three primary ways: (1) By helping to deliver a complete VoiceXML development and deployment environment that will enable service providers and mobile operators to accelerate rollout of new, revenue-generating voice-enabled services (2) By accelerating the growth of voice portals, which can help reduce customer service costs. As users increasingly opt for voice browsing versus calling a live operator for basic information and assistance, the cost per call has dropped from $5 for human-assisted service to about 50 cents for voice-automated service.(3) (3) By helping increase customer loyalty through improved service. Voice portals can reduce wait times significantly because they are equipped to handle unpredictable spikes in call volume and allow users to interact directly with Web-based information and systems... HP OpenCall speechWeb interacts between the telephone network and standard Web servers that host VoiceXML applications. It enables mobile users to interact with VoiceXML Web pages, using advanced speech recognition and text-to-speech or spoken prompts. Today, speechWeb supports approximately 40 languages..." General references in "VoiceXML Forum."

• [July 22, 2003] "Web Services Enable More Success for Digital Photography Printing Services. Lack of Interoperability Is Making It Difficult for Consumers to Use Digital Photo Services." - "The I3A has launched the Common Picture Exchange Environment (CPXe), which utilizes new Web services-based system architecture and interoperability specifications, and a new online directory of photo services -- Picture Services Network (PSN). The CPXe Initiative Group includes Eastman Kodak Company, Fujifilm, Hewlett-Packard, Konica, Olympus, Silverwire as well as other companies. Gartner analysts said this could lead to one of the most ambitious applications of Web services. 'The I3A's CPXe initiative can create an open environment in which imaging devices can exchange digital images or information, regardless of manufacturer, service provider or geography,' Smith said. 'This would allow consumers to get quality digital prints from their favorite retailer as conveniently as they can with film, but with the preview advantage of digital.' However, for CPXe to be successful, it must provide clear value and wide availability to the user. It also needs to get other large players that are not involved, such as Sony and Nikon, to participate, and get large retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and CVS to commit to the program. CPXe is taking advantage of existing standards, including Web services, for service directory, description, transport and environment. One of the standards includes Universal, Description, Discovery, Integration (UDDI). The use of UDDI is one of the first actual uses of the technology, and it essentially makes a private UDDI accessible to the public for read-only access. 'Web services, such as UDDI, enable businesses to reduce the cost of integration,' Smith said. 'Companies can benefit from implementing service-oriented architectures to provide a platform for innovation and lessen their need to focus on mundane IT tasks. Companies should begin to evaluate the role UDDI may play in their businesses and should consider becoming active in relevant standards activities, which can help further business goals'..." See: (1) the news story "Systinet to Provide UDDI Solution for PSN Global Directory of Digital Photography Services"; (2) general references in "Common Picture Exchange Environment (CPXe)."

• [July 21, 2003] "Intergraph Advances Open Data Exchange of Geospatial Information with New GML and WFS Interoperability Extensions. Free Desktop GeoMedia Viewer to Enable GML and WFS Query and Viewing Capabilities." - "Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions today announced that two free interoperability extensions are available for download: the OpenGIS Geographic Markup Language (GML) and the OpenGIS Web Feature Services (WFS) data servers, as well as the GML export command. These extensions are designed for any GeoMedia 5.1 product. Additionally, the OpenGIS Web Map Server (WMS) adapter kit for easy creation of a WMS server is now available for GeoMedia WebMap products. Users can query and view data accessed via the WFS interface through GeoMedia Viewer 5.1, Intergraph's free and easy-to-use GIS software application for desktop viewing and distribution of geospatial data. GeoMedia Viewer gives professionals access to geospatial vector and raster data in open formats or through open interfaces, including GML and WFS as well as previously available formats - Access, ArcView and MapInfo. By allowing data servers to be accessed simultaneously, GeoMedia Viewer offers the functionality to integrate and overlay spatial information while providing dynamic updates as the source information changes. With GeoMedia Viewer, organizations can maximize the value of their geospatial data by extending availability to novice users who otherwise would not have access... 'These free interoperability extensions further promote data sharing across different platforms, vendor brands and networks, thus increasing collaboration and communication between organizations and users,' said Fiona McKee, Global Program Manager Education and Interoperability, Intergraph Mapping and Geospatial Solutions. 'Intergraph continues to drive open data exchange to put virtually any geospatial information available via the Web at the user's fingertips.' Carl Reed, executive director of the OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) specification program, commented: 'The WFS and GML extensions to the GeoMedia product line once again demonstrate Intergraph's leadership and commitment to open standards and the vision of the OGC. Intergraph's endorsement of WFS will serve to accelerate the use and adoption of this important OpenGIS interface specification in the marketplace.'... From conception, Intergraph's GeoMedia solutions have been built with open interoperability principles in mind. Therefore, the WMS, WFS and GML data servers and other open functionality are smooth and complementary additions to the products' architecture. Intergraph also has established a number of initiatives to further advocate interoperability..." General references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

• [July 21, 2003] "Interwoven Releases TeamSite 6.0 - The New Benchmark in the Content Management Industry. New Release Empowers Enterprises to Boost Workforce Productivity and Enable Faster, Smarter Decision-Making with an All New, Easy, and Customizable User Experience." - "Interwoven, Inc., a world-leading provider of content management for the enterprise, today launches Interwoven TeamSite 6.0 Content Server, extending content management access to all business users, and enabling them to maintain control and distributed ownership of content across the enterprise. With more than 1000 customers in production with the current content management product, Interwoven introduces the latest version of its flagship product within the Interwoven 6 Platform, a new interface framework that features an intuitive, customizable user experience designed to lower the learning curve and improve user efficiency... TeamSite 6.0 now provides the FormsPublisher, an all-new templating user interface that's customizable on a per-form basis featuring in-context help capabilities, task shortcuts, content containers and enhanced XML format support. It also has a ContentServices User Interface Toolkit: an all-new toolkit that underpins ContentCenter allowing for rapid, easy and consistent user interface customizations as well as facilitating the creation of completely new customer interfaces. The Tooklit ensures that all customizations are preserved for future upgrades. The Toolkit is a core element of Interwoven's Services Oriented Architecture strategy... Validated through extensive testing and contributions from hundreds of customers, TeamSite 6.0 sets the new industry standard for ease-of-use in content management. With a unified user experience, TeamSite 6.0 ultimately extends the benefit of content management across the enterprise by enabling faster time to market, increased workforce productivity, and better decision-making. 'Creating a system that can be used by contributors at all technical skill levels has been a challenge for CMS vendors,' said Andy Warzecha, senior vice president, META Group, Inc. 'Business users in particular need an interface that's intuitive and doesn't force them to learn a new way of doing everyday business. Only by providing interfaces that serve business users can a CMS system rise to its full potential as an essential business tool that streamlines processes and ensures the rapid, accurate deployment of content to various eBusiness initiatives enterprise-wide'..."

• [July 21, 2003] "HP Fuels Industry-standard Approach to Web Services Management. HP to Submit Technology to Standards Consortium, Supported by Ascential Software, BEA Systems, Informatica, IONA, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO Software, and webMethods." - "Working with partners to help overcome barriers to full-scale Web services adoption, HP today announced its plans to submit its Web Services Management Framework for industry review to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a global consortium driving the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. With support from industry leaders such as Ascential Software, BEA Systems, Informatica, IONA, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO Software, Inc., and webMethods, among others, HP will make the framework specification available for public download and is delivering a call to action for other Web services-reliant companies to join the effort to create an industry standards-based solution for the management of, and through, Web services. Enterprises demanding reduced information technology (IT) complexity and increased agility need to control access, track and measure service levels, collect usage data and, most importantly, ensure return on their IT investments. This can be achieved through an intelligently managed adaptive infrastructure that incorporates 'built-in' Web services management within the design and deployment of their IT infrastructures. Developed by HP, with significant input from key partners, the Web Services Management Framework is a logical architecture for the management of resources, including Web services themselves, through Web services. 'HP is leading the development of open standards for Web services management by working with its partners to establish a management interface that is domain, platform and vendor neutral,' said Mark Linesch, vice president, HP Adaptive Enterprise Program. 'We're submitting this specification to OASIS to accelerate the adoption of common standards in Web services management and to simplify Web services development for our partners and customers today, while enabling them to plug into the adaptive enterprise of tomorrow.' The framework defines how all IT resources in an adaptive enterprise can expose management information about themselves and how they can be managed. A management interface communicates immediate knowledge about changes in business processes and IT infrastructure whenever application and infrastructure events occur, and it gives companies the choice and flexibility to adopt future innovations and advance the management of their adaptive enterprise. The framework also embraces standardization -- one of the four design principles in HP's Darwin Reference Architecture -- to provide customers and partners with a step-by-step approach to creating a business process-oriented IT environment that dynamically adjusts to business changes. The Darwin Reference architecture creates a tighter linkage between critical business processes and the supporting IT infrastructure and helps provide built-in manageability. Model and platform neutral, the Web Services Management Framework is designed to be applied to many different domains with varying management requirements and allows for management of J2EE, .NET and other platforms. This allows it to better support important IT domains such as enterprise application integration, enterprise resource planning, software configuration management and Web services..." See details in the news story "HP Contributes Web Services Management Framework Specification to OASIS TC."

• [July 18, 2003] "BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 Ships. New Products Offer Faster Time to Value by Converging the Development and Integration of Applications, Portals and Business Processes." - "Delivering further proof of its application infrastructure market leadership, BEA Systems, Inc. announced the general availability of BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1, BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1, BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 and BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 and each individual product, including the previously available BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 and BEA WebLogic JRockit 8.1, can be downloaded now from http://www.bea.com or customers can receive the development versions of the products at no charge for one year as part of the BEA dev2dev subscription program. BEA's new products are based on a unique software architecture developed by BEA, all based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), extensible mark-up language (XML) and emerging Web services standards. This architecture offers faster time to value by converging application development and application integration into a unified, simplified and extensible application infrastructure platform... BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 is based on a unified architecture that includes new versions of BEA's industry-leading application server and Java virtual machine, BEA's award-winning enterprise portal and application development framework, and BEA's innovative integration solution. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 includes application infrastructure technology from proven BEA products that are used by thousands of customers worldwide and combined to offer a single, unified, easy-to-use infrastructure platform for application development, integration, deployment, and management. BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 heralds a new era of business integration by changing the traditional approach to application integration and business process management. BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 is a single solution delivering application server, application integration, business process management, and trading partner integration functionality for the enterprise. BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 provides customers with a unified framework for business integration, simplified production and management, as well as a new architecture for the rapid assembly and integration of applications, business processes and partner trading networks. BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 provides a seamless production environment for integration specialists and application developers alike by leveraging BEA WebLogic Workshop development environment and a catalog of standards-based application integration adapters... BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1 can simplify the production and management of custom-fit portals and will be one of the first portals to support the new Java portlet standard, JSR 168, for portlet-level development, and the new Java content repository standard, JSR 170, for content management system integration..." On JSR 168, see "JSR 168 Portlet API Specification 1.0 Released for Public Review."

• [July 15, 2003] "Corel Smart Graphics Studio 1.1 Update Now Available." - "Corel Corporation announced that it has released an update to Corel Smart Graphics Studio, a development platform designed to speed and simplify the creation of SVG-based smart graphics. The new update was demonstrated at the Corel booth for the duration of the SVG Open conference. Corel Smart Graphics Studio 1.1 provides several enhancements to both the development and serving of SVG applications connected to databases and Web services including: (1) More control over assets and objects within Corel Developer SG; (2) Advanced debugging capabilities to simplify the development process; (3) Support for Oracle stored procedures improves Oracle interoperability and reduces development time; (4) More advanced caching capabilities on the server. 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... The Version 1.1 download enables all the developers who tried version 1.0 to test the new features of Corel Smart Graphics Studio with a new 30 day trial period..." See also: (1) the 2003-04-30 news story "Corel Smart Graphics Studio Uses SVG for Graphical Applications Development"; (2) SVG Open 2003 event notice [July 13 - 18, 2003, Second Annual Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics Vancouver, BC, Canada]; (3) SVG Open 2003 Online Proceedings; (4) general references in "W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)."

• [July 15, 2003] "Adobe Advances Intelligent Documents with New XML/PDF Form Design Software. New Software Takes Advantage of Adobe's XML Architecture to Enable Easy Creation and Deployment of Intelligent Electronic Documents in PDF and XDP." - "Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today announced new graphical design software for creating intelligent electronic documents. Leveraging the power of PDF for presenting information and XML for processing data, the new form design software will enable organizations to easily design and deploy intelligent forms in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or in an XML Data Package (XDP). Combined with Adobe's server solutions, now customers in industries such as financial services, manufacturing and governments worldwide can leverage their current infrastructure, knowledge and investment in applications to connect people and processes across the extended enterprise. The new XML/PDF form designer software builds on Adobe's XML architecture that supports end-to-end document processes. It provides all the capabilities needed to design forms with precision, including the ability to easily define business logic and incorporate existing or user-defined XML schemas. By enabling form designers to include user-defined XML schemas they can use XML vocabularies specific to particular verticals or cross-industry standards. Forms can be deployed in PDF and then processed as PDF is today, or delivered as an XML Data Package (XDP) to be processed as XML. XDP files are simply XML files that contain XML form data, XML form templates, PDF documents and other XML information. They can be easily integrated with enterprise applications via commonly available XML tools and web services... The new form designer, combined with the Adobe Form Server, Adobe Workflow Server, Adobe Document Server and the free Adobe Reader, will enable organizations to integrate enterprise applications with document workflows throughout an organization, improving document generation, collaboration and process management. For example, a financial institution can make loan applications available online. Anyone with the free Reader software can download the form, fill it in offline, and electronically submit the application back to the institution. Because the data in the application is submitted as XML, it can be integrated directly into the existing loan processing system. With more than half-a-billion copies of the Adobe Reader distributed to date, companies can more easily enable virtually anyone to participate in business processes across a wide variety of platforms, applications and devices... The new form designer will be available for beta testing during Q4 2003..." See details in the news story "Enhanced Adobe XML Architecture Supports XML/PDF Form Designer and XML Data Package (XDP)."

• [July 15, 2003] "Microsoft Releases Technology Preview of Web Services Enhancements Version 2.0. Company Adds New Security Capabilities for Developers Building Advanced Web Services." - "Continuing its commitment to providing developers with the latest Web services capabilities, Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of the technology preview for the next version of Microsoft Web Services Enhancements (WSE), which gives Visual Studio .NET developers support for designing and building advanced Web services. Available as a download on the MSDN Web site, WSE version 2.0 offers new security features that greatly simplify development of secure Web services which span company boundaries and trust domains, connecting and exchanging information with customer and partner systems. WSE 2.0 provides a messaging-based object model that supports multiple transports, including TCP and HTTP, and synchronous and asynchronous communications. Synchronous communications consist of messages in which the sender must wait for a reply. In contrast, with asynchronous messages, the sender can submit a request and can retrieve it at any time without having to wait for a reply. This asynchronous capability is particularly useful for long-running operations that may take hours to complete. WSE 2.0 builds on the security, routing and attachment capabilities of version 1.0 and adds a foundation for building applications based on Web services specifications published by Microsoft and industry partners including WS-Security, WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation and WS-Addressing. 'The new version of WSE takes Web services to the next level by expanding the experience for developers and enabling enterprises to quickly and easily connect their systems with partners, customers and suppliers using advanced Web services,' said Rebecca Dias, product manager for advanced Web services at Microsoft. 'Developers are now able to apply a set of security policies to Web services with minimal lines of code in a way that is interoperable across heterogeneous systems'..." See other details and references in the news story "Security Featured in Microsoft Web Services Enhancements Version 2.0 Technology Preview."

Earlier Press Releases

• XML Industry News July - September 2003
• XML Industry News April - June 2003
• XML Industry News January - March 2003
• XML Industry News October - December 2002
• XML Industry News July - Sepember 2002
• XML Industry News April - June 2002
• XML Industry News January - March 2002
• XML Industry News October - December 2001
• XML Industry News July - September 2001
• XML Industry News April - June 2001
• XML Industry News January - March 2001
• XML Industry News October - December 2000
• XML Industry News July - September 2000
• XML Industry News April - June 2000
• XML Industry News January - March 2000
• XML Industry News July - December 1999.
• XML Industry News January - June 1999.
• A separate reference collection is available for press releases issued in 1998.