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Last modified: December 31, 2003
XML Industry News: 2003 Q4

XML News

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

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

Search: [Indexed Search]

  • [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 optiona