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Last modified: December 21, 2004
XML Industry News: 2004 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 16, 2004] "EPCglobal Ratifies Royalty-Free UHF Generation 2 Standard. Announcement Marks Culmination of Collaborative Process. Opens Door for Proliferation of Standards-Based Hardware to Drive EPC Implementations Worldwide." - "EPCglobal Inc, a subsidiary of GS1 a not-for-profit standards organization entrusted with driving global adoption of Electronic Product Code (EPC) technology, today announced the ratification of the royalty-free EPCglobal UHF Generation 2 candidate specification. Today's announcement marks the much anticipated completion of the UHF Generation 2 air interface protocol as an EPCglobal standard. With the Generation 2 standard now in place, technology providers will create products that will meet the requirements of suppliers, manufacturers, and end users; and industries as a whole can drive EPC implementation with standards-based equipment. Today's announcement follows successful testing of prototypes from several technology providers, which illustrated that the ratified standard can meet the EPCglobal community end user requirements, as well as final determination that all intellectual property presented on a licensed basis during the standards development process was not necessary to the standard. Commercially available products are expected the first half of 2005. 'Today marks both an exciting culmination and a much anticipated beginning in the commercialization of RFID and EPC technology,' said Chris Adcock, president, EPCglobal Inc. 'Many of the world's leading technology companies collaborated to develop the UHF Generation 2 specification, and we celebrate and applaud their efforts as we launch the royalty-free UHF Generation 2 standard. With this standard in place, technology manufacturers and end users alike can begin exploring how to deploy the technology in such a way to make a significant impact in improving their own business.' The EPCglobal UHF Generation 2 protocol, a consensus standard built by more than 60 of the world's leading technology companies, describes the core capabilities required to meet the performance needs set by the end user community. The UHF Generation 2 standard will be used as a base platform upon which standards-based products and future improvements will be built. An EPCglobal standard ensures interoperability and sets minimum operational expectations for various components in the EPCglobal Network, including hardware components. While EPCglobal oversees interoperability and conformance testing of standards-based products, the actual development of these products comes from leading solution providers around the globe..." See also: (1) "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Resources and Readings"; (2) "Physical Markup Language (PML) for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)"; (3) "Patents and Open Standards."

  • [December 15, 2004] "WS-I Launches Advocates Program. WS-I Broadens Community Support with New Recognition Program. More Than 30 Companies Join WS-I as Advocates." - "The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) today announced the introduction of the WS-I Advocates Program, a newly launched recognition opportunity for companies that support the work of WS-I. More than 30 companies have already joined WS-I as Advocates. Although Advocates do not attend WS-I meetings or participate in the organization's technical working groups or committees, they do receive several benefits. Each Advocate's name, logo and testimonial are posted on WS-I's website. In turn, each Advocate may post a special 'WS-I Advocate' logo on its website. Advocates will also receive a subscription to WS-Insider, WS-I's informative newsletter that is published several times each year. The program is free, and any interested company may enroll by completing a registration form... The companies joining WS-I as Advocates, include Acucorp., Approva, AppsSwing Limited, ASD Software, Bestning Technologies, Bluespring Software, Brixlogic, CentrPort, Chip eServices, Dealogic, Docucorp International, EAI User Group, EpiSoftware, Eternet S.A.C., Exocore Consulting, FAMIS Software, Fintricity, FiveSight Technologies, gMorpher, Go Technology, GuruSoft Corporation, HCL Technologies, HTC, Infosys Technologies, Ministry of Finance, Northrop Grumman, Oncorp Direct, Pathlore, QuickTree, ReadiMinds, RezGateway, Softwaremaker.Net, Tata Consulting Services, UBS, vInsurance, WebCab Components, WRQ, XempleX, XWebServices.com and Yellow Pencil. 'The WS-I Advocates Program broadens the community of companies that can support the important work of WS-I and receive some of the many benefits we provide,' said Tom Glover, WS-I Chairman. 'Our organization, which includes Web services vendors, end-user companies, and standards development organizations, is pleased to welcome our new Advocate companies and is grateful for their support.' 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..." General references in "Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)."

  • [December 14, 2004] "Sleepycat Software Releases Berkeley DB XML 2.0. Major Upgrade of Native XML Database Adds New Support for Emerging XML Data Access Standard and Up To 10x Performance Increase." - "Sleepycat Software, makers of Berkeley DB XML, the leading open source, native XML database, today announced the general availability of Berkeley DB XML 2.0. The major new release includes support for XQuery 1.0, the emerging standard for XML data access, as well as significant performance and usability enhancements. 'This is a major upgrade of Berkeley DB XML and is a significant advancement in native XML database development,' said Mike Olson, CEO of Sleepycat Software. 'Our new XQuery support benefits customers that have been waiting for a standard for XML databases similar to the SQL standard for relational databases.' 'Berkeley DB XML combines the extremely reliable database engine of Berkeley DB with the tremendous ease-of-use of native XML storage,' said Steve Bishop, CTO at WildCard Systems, Inc., a leading developer of solutions for electronic payment systems using pre-paid smart cards. 'Sleepycat's new support of XQuery gives us greater confidence in moving critical financial transaction support infrastructure to Berkeley DB XML.' 'Since AllPeers is a consumer application, it was extremely important for us when choosing a database to find a system that is fast, lightweight, embeddable and needs zero administration,' said Matthew Gertner, CTO of AllPeers, developers of a peer-to-peer information sharing platform. 'Berkeley DB XML not only meets all of these requirements but also offers excellent native support for XML. The AllPeers platform supports a massive peer-to-peer network for the sharing of millions of files. By storing the XML metadata for each file in Berkeley DB XML, we have achieved much faster time-to-market and a cleaner, more consistent architecture.' New features in Berkeley DB XML 2.0 include: (1) XQuery 1.0 support that allows application portability through complying with the July 2004 draft of the XQuery standard. (2) XPath 2.0 support that allows the selection of a portion of an XML document. (3) PHP API support to easily enable developers using the popular PHP scripting languages to work with XML documents. (4) Improved query performance that can be up to 10 times faster for multi-megabyte XML documents. (5) Ability to control storage granularity of documents (whole documents or nodes) to optimize query performance. (6) XML document streaming into database dramatically simplifies how documents are stored. Documents can now be streamed in from an URI, memory, or file..." General references in "XML and Databases."

  • [December 13, 2004] "DMTF and OMG Announce Alliance Partnership. Collaboration Will Help Unify Toolsets for Users of DMTF's CIM and OMG's XMI/UML." - "The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF), the organization leading the development and adoption of management standards for enterprise and Internet environments, and the Object Management Group (OMG), which develops standards covering multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures and software development environments, today announced that they have entered into an Alliance Partnership. Under the agreement, the two organizations will work to represent and exchange the DMTF's Common Information Model (CIM) in OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML) and XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), enabling industry-wide standardized toolsets for application development, including those for distributed management, leveraging the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA). The work of the alliance partnership will first focus on developing a mechanism for mapping the CIM specification to XMI, with the ability to edit the resulting model in UML tools, which will provide developers and end users with the time savings associated with simplified processes. In addition, the organizations will develop a UML profile for CIM, making it easier for CIM developers to tap into the widely used UML for their modeling work when creating new CIM models. 'This partnership between two of the industry's leading standards bodies will result in significant usability enhancements for developers and end users,' said Winston Bumpus, president, DMTF. 'The ability to use standard UML tools will help drive further adoption of CIM, while spreading the use of UML to the developers of distributed management technologies. This notable progress toward convergence will provide significant benefits to the industry, allowing users to leverage existing application development tools when developing management applications.' 'This broad-based agreement strengthens industry support for both the Model Driven Architecture initiative and DMTF's critical management standards. By enabling the representation and interchange of the important CIM standard using OMG's UML, XMI and related standards, this liaison will allow those that design CIM-based models to exploit the broadly available UML tools from both open source and vendor providers,' said Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group. 'This will help reduce tooling costs for end users across the industry, and we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the DMTF on this important work'..." See: (1) "DMTF Common Information Model (CIM)"; (2) "OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA)"; (3) "XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)."

  • [November 19, 2004] "OASIS Interoperability Demos Showcase CAP, ebXML, WS-Reliability, WS-CAF, and WSRP at XML 2004. Anteon, BEA, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, IONA, NEC, NIST, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems, Vignette, and Others Demonstrate Interoperability of Open Standards." - "OASIS members from around the world collaborated on multiple interoperability demonstrations of various OASIS Standards and specifications at the XML 2004 conference this week. Implementations were shown of Web services standards for delivering messages reliably, aggregating content to portals, sharing customer data, and disseminating emergency event information in scenarios that ranged from a retail shopping experience to a chemical contamination event. 'The majority of these InterOps showcased work that has already attained the level of an approved OASIS Standard. Clearly, we're seeing exciting progress in the maturity of Web services,' noted Jamie Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. 'It's also significant to note that we're not just seeing implementations of standards being applied to broad, foundational challenges. We're also witnessing the development and application of XML standards to solve specific industry needs.' BEA, IBM, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems, Vignette, and others acted as both WSRP Producers and Consumers to demonstrate how WSRP can be used to define an interface and protocol for accessing remote aggregatable, interactive, presentationoriented content sources. In the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) InterOp, Anteon and other OASIS members simulated a chemical event utilizing plume modeling to demonstrate how CAP employs XML to communicate key emergency event data to a variety of systems. IONA, Oracle, and others each provided separate Web-based storefronts that used WSCAF to share customer information, such as such as username/password, credit card data, and shopping cart contents. Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, and NEC demonstrated the use of WS-Reliability to guarantee message delivery over the Internet, enabling companies to conduct reliable business-tobusiness trading or collaboration using Web services. Fujitsu and NIST demonstrated how the OASIS ebXML IIC Test Framework is used to conduct remote ebXML testing, either for conformance or interoperability. NIST's test driver implementation allowed test cases using XML markup to be scripted. An ebXML Registry was demonstrated in tandem with ebXML Message Service (ebMS), Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement (ebCPPA), Business Process Specification Schema (ebBPSS), and Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) specifications to manage a large community of participants in a typical e-Service and e- Business system, such as the DOD EMall..."

  • [November 18, 2004] "PeopleSoft Demonstrates WSRP Portal Interoperability at XML 2004. First Enterprise Application Vendor to Support the OASIS Standard for Application Content." - "At the XML Conference and Exposition 2004, PeopleSoft Inc. demonstrated that the PeopleSoft Community Portal and PeopleSoft applications seamlessly interoperate with other leading portal vendors by leveraging the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard. As part of the demonstration, PeopleSoft portal content was displayed in IBM WebSphere, BEA, Sun Microsystems and other leading portal solutions. PeopleSoft will be the first enterprise applications software vendor to integrate content from core business applications with third party portals using the WSRP standard. 'Companies increasingly need to aggregate data across multiple portal platforms and Web applications, and provide an intuitive user interface,' said Roy Satterthwaite, vice president of marketing, PeopleSoft Tools & Technology. 'PeopleSoft continues to embrace open standards such as WSRP to allow customers to effectively address their portal and Web services integration challenges.' As a founding member of the OASIS Technical Committee on WSRP, PeopleSoft is actively involved in refining the WSRP standard as well as collaborating with other vendors to help resolve the inability to interoperate across multiple portal platforms and applications. WSRP simplifies integration by allowing a portal administrator to select desired services from a list and integrate them into their portal. Like other Web service standards, WSRP provides seamless integration between disparate technologies such as .NET and Java. PeopleSoft Community Portal will provide support for WSRP in the 8.9 release scheduled for Q1 2005. PeopleSoft is the world's second largest provider of enterprise application software with 12,750 customers in more than 25 industries and 150 countries..." See general references in "Web Services for Remote Portals/Portlets (WSRP)."

  • [November 18, 2004] "New Astoria Version 4.3 Offers Enhanced Structured Document Management for Distributed Workgroups." - "Astoria Software, a leading provider of software for structured document management, today announced Astoria Version 4.3, a major upgrade which greatly enhances XML authoring for distributed workgroups. With Astoria Version 4.3, complex XML documents can now be securely authored by access through the Internet. Additionally, Astoria Version 4.3 delivers advanced features that make it easier for distributed workgroups to manage, review, assemble and publish complex documents. Astoria Version 4.3 is Astoria's second major software release in 30 days. Last month, the company announced Astoria for Aerospace, the world's first off-the-shelf structured document management system capable of handling the rigors of aerospace document publishing. Astoria Version 4.3 frees authors to work from any location accessible by the internet. Authors using Arbortext Enterprise Publishing Software version 5.1 now get secure, remote access to the Astoria Structured Document Management Server via a new, robust Bridge developed by Astoria Software. This new Bridge provides full access to all of Astoria application capabilities including flexible re-use of text and graphics, precise component versioning, access controls, component editing, annotations, version notes, and integration to Astoria Review for automated workflow processes such as content approval routing... Astoria Conflict Resolution automates the acceptance of these changes versus a manual, time-intensive process. New updates can be automatically accepted and merged within a document in Astoria. Incoming updates that conflict with existing content are routed via email to authors for easy point and click resolution. Content shared with other documents is automatically updated with new content as well... Astoria Filtered Publishing provides the ability to embed product configurations (effectivity) within documents then filter based on configuration-specific information or ranges when creating an Astoria Edition. Astoria Filtered Publishing combines single source content and product configurations to produce customized technical manuals which contain only the information relevant to each product configuration..."

  • [November 17, 2004] "Users and Vendors Demonstrate Support for UDDI OASIS Standard at Gartner Web Services Summit. Charles Schwab and The Hartford Present UDDI Implementations IBM, Oracle, SAP, Systinet, and Prove UDDI Interoperability." - "Implementations and interoperability of the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) OASIS Standard were featured at today's Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit. Representatives from The Hartford and Charles Schwab each presented details on their company's implementation of UDDI registries as core foundation components of their Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). Then, members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee staged a live demo incorporating UDDI product offerings from IBM, Oracle, SAP, Systinet, and others in a business scenario. 'Enterprise business analysts, architects, and developers fully understand that a business services registry is the foundation of the SOA infrastructure,' noted Tony Rogers of Computer Associates, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. 'The UDDI OASIS Standard has established itself as an important enabler of visibility, manageability, adaptability, and reusability of the service-oriented enterprise.' The OASIS UDDI InterOp at Gartner featured an inventory management scenario for a chain of book stores. Varying in size from mall kiosks to large retail outlets, each store maintained its own inventory management processes, which were not centrally controlled. By using UDDI to integrate suppliers and inventory management systems, corporate purchasers were able to monitor inventory levels, replenish stock, respond quickly to demand fluctuations, streamline procurement, and deliver useful information on product demand to publishers. 'Today we provided concrete, real-world examples of UDDI registries as the foundation of SOA,' said Luc Clement of Systinet, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. 'We demonstrated how enterprises can exploit a UDDI registry to deploy adaptive business services dealing with the realities of change within the enterprise by showing the benefits of location-independence. In the process, we showed how you can add new services without the need to do any configuration other than the act of publishing the new service. And finally, we demonstrated how UDDI brings an increase in visibility and reuse that dramatically reduces the cost of an SOA integration.' Participation in the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. End-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the adoption of this international standardization effort. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the uddi-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard..." See OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. General references in "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."

  • [November 17, 2004] "Commerce One Selling Intellectual Property Assets. Web Services Patents to Be Sold in Bankruptcy Auction." - "Commerce One, Inc., a provider of solutions for automating and integrating business processes across networks of customers, suppliers, and partners, has announced that it is conducting an auction to sell its patents and patent applications relating to Web services. On October 6, 2004, Commerce One, Inc. and Commerce One Operations, Inc., its wholly owned subsidiary, each filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the 'Bankruptcy Code') in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California ('Bankruptcy Court'), Case No. 04-32821-DM-11. Web services are programmatic interfaces that can seamlessly travel among diverse networks and diverse applications and languages. Web services provide a standard way to interoperate among diverse software applications that run on diverse platforms. According to Wintergreen Research, in 2003, the Web services market, excluding portals, accounted for $208 million in revenue and could have a compound average growth rate of as much as 52% from 2003 through 2008. The Company believes it has developed an important patent portfolio for the emerging Web services market. This portfolio includes seven issued U.S. patents and 30 U.S. patent applications... In connection with its Chapter 11 proceeding, Commerce One is conducting an auction to sell its existing business operations, and a separate auction to sell its Web services patents and applications. I|C|M|B Ocean Tomo, an intellectual capital merchant bank, has been retained by Commerce One, and approved by the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, as its strategic advisor in connection with the auctions..." See also: (1) "Auction of Internet Commerce Patents Draws Concern," by John Markoff, in The New York Times (November 16, 2004); (2) "Patents and Open Standards."

  • [November 17, 2004] "W3C Brings Leaders Together in 'Mobile Web Initiative' Workshop. Participants to Explore Current and Potential Applications, Identify Next Actions." - "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is hosting a 'Mobile Web Initiative' Workshop on 18-19 November in Barcelona, Spain that will discuss the current challenges of 'mobile Web' access, and how to address them. Being able to access the wealth of information available on the Web from a mobile device is valuable in many day-to-day situations, e.g., when checking timetables, looking for product information, checking e-mail, transferring money or accessing a corporate Internet while travelling. Mobile Web access is considered to be a key enabler for mobile Internet services. However, even though many of today's mobile phones include Web browsers, accessing the Web from a mobile device has not become as popular as expected. Users often find that their favorite Web sites are not accessible or not as easy to use on their mobile phone as on their desktop device. Content providers have difficulties building Web sites that work well on all types and configurations of mobile phones offering Web access. To address these and related issues, W3C is considering a new effort called the 'W3C Mobile Web Initiative'. The goal of this initiative is to make Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device. Initial ideas for achieving this goal include developing 'best practices' documents, providing support infrastructures for mobile developers, organizing training programs for Web content providers and creating validation and conformance testing services for Web-access from mobile devices. These activities would complement current W3C efforts in developing Web standards that support the expanding Web, including mobile devices (e.g. multimodal interaction, mobile profiles, device independence)... Sponsored by W3C members Hewlett-Packard, Orange, Vodafone and Volantis, and colocated with a meeting of OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), the workshop seeks industry and community input and feedback. Specifically, the workshop will look at the current issues with mobile Web access, and how they should be addressed. Over 40 position papers have been submitted by mobile and Web technology leaders from around the globe, including 3UK; ACCESS; Adamind; Adobe Systems; Argogroup; BT; Canon; CSP - ICT Innovation; Day Software; ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute); Expway; France Telecom; FUNDACION ONCE; Hewlett-Packard; IONA Technologies; MobileAware; mTLD ('Mobile Top-Level Domain') consortium; Nokia; Nordea; NTT DoCoMo; Obigo; Openwave Systems; Opera; Oracle; Orange; PalmSource; Research In Motion; Sony Ericsson; Streamezzo; Sun Microsystems; T-Mobile; Totalbrand; University of Southampton; Vodafone Group Services Ltd; Volantis; Yahoo! and ZoomOn..."

  • [November 16, 2004] "Blast Radius and IXIASOFT Team to Deliver DITA-Based Solution." - "Blast Radius, provider of the leading XML content authoring product XMetaL, and IXIASOFT, the developer of TEXTML Server, a native XML database and search engine, have partnered in creating a content lifecycle solution that integrates their products and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard. DITA, introduced by IBM, is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing and delivering technical information. The first implementation of the DITA-based solution is nearing completion at CEDROM-SNi, one of Canada's largest news content aggregator. Using an XML content authoring and management solution based on the DITA standard, CEDROM-SNi will be able to efficiently reduce production and maintenance costs, repurpose and customize content, and provide multi-language support for the online help mechanisms offered on each of its three Web sites: Eureka.cc (French Canada), Europresse.com (France) and Newscan.com (English Canada). The DITA architecture of the solution allows for topic specialization and enables flexible content organization for easy reuse. The combination of DITA, TEXTML Server and XMetaL makes it possible to organize content so that information pieces can be effectively reused in different contexts. The integration of TEXTML Server and XMetaL provides tremendous flexibility and performance for the DITA-based solution. While TEXTML Server's native XML support enables efficient management of XML content and advanced searching capabilities, XMetaL's XML authoring tool allows administrators to easily manage different interfaces for each product and to deliver content to multiple outputs. IXIASOFT and Blast Radius will showcase a demo of the DITA application, featuring the integration of XMetaL and TEXTML Server at XML Conference 2004, being held November 15-19 in Washington, D.C..." See: (1) Blast Radius web site; (2) XMetaL; (3) IXIASOFT web site; (4) TEXTML Server; (5) "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA XML)."

  • [November 16, 2004] "Justsystem Introduces New XML Management Architecture." - "Justsystem, a leading enterprise software company, today announced the availability of a preview version of xfy technology, a new platform for creating, integrating and expressing XML-based applications. The announcement was made at XML 2004, the world's largest XML trade conference, in Washington, D.C. 'We regard the widespread adoption of the XML standard as the most important paradigm shift in the information era,' says Kazunori Ukigawa, President and CEO, Justsystem. 'Our xfy technology will enable organizations to maximize the value of their documents and information.' xfy introduces an intension-oriented document handling paradigm that enables the re-use of functional modules among several applications. Specifically, xfy's basic architecture supports a direct relationship between source and presentation vocabularies, creating a true semantic basis for XML. This mapping is made possible by xfy's Vocabulary Connection technology — one of its most powerful features. The Vocabulary Connection technology also eliminates the need to develop application-specific modules for XML interpretation by supporting the use of easy-to-integrate plug-ins, thereby dramatically streamlining the overall application development process. Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems and a co-inventor of XML, says: 'xfy is interesting because of its unique approach to handling mixed XML vocabularies, and because it uses Java to combine high-performance interactivity with portability. I predict a bright future for this technology.' xfy's seamless architecture, which is able to process many different types of XML documents as true compound documents, is ideal for a sophisticated enterprise IT landscape. Furthermore, a user or developer can easily define and construct an optimal application environment for his or her own needs, further highlighting xfy's superior ability to customize..."

  • [November 16, 2004] "StrikeIron Announces Beta Release of OnDemand Web Services for Excel. First Drag and Drop Solution for Integrating Web Services Directly into Microsoft Excel." - "StrikeIron Inc., developer of the innovative StrikeIron Web Services Business Network (WSBizNet) to simplify working with Web services announced the beta release of StrikeIron OnDemand Web Services for Excel. This product connects Excel users to the on-demand world of Web services and begins the process of bridging software to the model of software-as-service. In a separate release today, StrikeIron also announced the addition of five financial management Web services to the WSBizNet. 'OnDemand Web Services for Excel is the first simple, easy to use, drag and drop add-in solution for integrating Web services directly into Excel spreadsheets,' said Richard Holcomb, CEO of StrikeIron. 'Users can now take advantage of building real-time, on-demand access to data utilizing Web services without any programming knowledge. By working with a familiar spreadsheet environment, OnDemand Web Services for Excel uses Web services to let you connect to real-time data and processes; a process that previously would have been extremely costly and require time consuming importing, exporting and formatting with each update. Technical issues such as finding, understanding, accessing and integrating Web Services into Excel are eliminated by OnDemand Web Services for Excel. The product takes advantage of the StrikeIron Web Services Business Network and StrikeIron's powerful underlying 'dynamic invocation' technology that requires no compiling, no programming and no additional software. Features: (1) Simply drag and drop Web services operations directly into cells in your spreadsheet; (2) Automatically drop operation labels into the spreadsheet or customize your own labels; (3) Flexibility to perform any Excel calculation or function on the output of the Web services; (4) Secure Invisible Link option that erases the data for security to prevent viewing by unauthorized users; (5) Simple 'word' search available with access to almost 1000 Web services through the StrikeIron Web Services Business Network to find the best Web service for your needs; (6) Direct access to WSDL locations in UDDI registries for internal development; (7) Integrated access to the StrikeIron Web Services Business Network for enhanced graphic Search services, Web Services Knowledge Base, Web Services Analyzer and the Premium Web Services..."

  • [November 16, 2004] "Jean Paoli of Microsoft, Robin Cover of OASIS Win XML Cup 2004 Awards. Annual Awards Honor Achievements, Contributions to XML Standard." - "IDEAlliance, a leading trade association dedicated to fostering information technology standards, today presented the XML Cup 2004 for contributions to the XML community to Jean Paoli of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Robin Cover of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and editor of The Cover Pages. The awards were presented November 16 during the opening session of the XML Conference and Exposition 2004. 'The XML Planning Committee and IDEAlliance introduced the XML Cup in 2001 to honor those who have contributed significantly to the XML community,' says Lauren Wood, XML 2004 Conference Chairperson. 'Robin created a comprehensive encyclopedia of SGML and XML-related technologies that is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand these often mystifying acronyms and technical terms, while Jean has furthered the vision of XML on the desktop that so many in the community share. Both have been effective evangelists for XML, and we congratulate them on being awarded the XML Cup.' 'Robin Cover and Jean Paoli have each played important roles in supporting the XML community, even before XML was created,' says David Steinhardt, president and CEO, IDEAlliance. 'We are honored by their involvement both in our industry and this event'... 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. Founded in 1966 as the Graphic Communications Association, IDEAlliance has been a leader in information technology — developing Document Markup Metalanguage (GENCODE), sponsoring the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and fostering eXtensible Markup Language (XML). IDEAlliance builds on these languages to create specifications that enhance efficiency and speed information in all aspects of publishing and content-related processes..." See also Previous IDEAlliance XML Cup Awards.

  • [November 15, 2004] WS-Reliability Ratified As OASIS Standard. Booz Allen Hamilton, Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, NEC, Novell, Oracle, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, and Others Produce Open Standard for Guaranteeing Message Delivery with Web Services." - "The OASIS international standards consortium today announced that its members have approved WS-Reliability version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed through an open process, WS-Reliability provides a method to guarantee message delivery over the Internet, enabling companies to conduct reliable business-to-business trading or collaboration using Web services. 'Reliable message delivery is one of the key issues to be addressed if there is to be widespread adoption of Web services, particularly in business-to-business scenarios,' said Neil Macehiter, research director at Ovum. 'Communications using Internet-based protocols, such as HTTP and SMTP, are inherently unreliable and do not support the assured or ordered delivery demanded by the applications on which businesses depend. WS-Reliability, being an approved OASIS Standard developed in open forum that addresses these limitations, is an important step on the path to realizing the promise of Web services.' WS-Reliability supports guaranteed delivery, which ensures the message is delivered at least once, duplication elimination, which certifies that the message is delivered at most once, and message delivery ordering, which guarantees messages in a sequence are delivered in the order sent. 'Financial transactions are just one example of the kind of applications that need WS-Reliability to meet quality-of-service standards. A message requesting a money withdrawal, for instance, must be received by an application once and only once,' noted Tom Rutt, chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM) Technical Committee. 'With the WS-Reliability OASIS Standard, information can be shared between software programs over the Internet as reliably as within a single application on a laptop.' Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, applauded the efforts of the technical committee members who produced the new standard, recalling, 'The genesis for WS-Reliability was submitted to OASIS in March 2003 by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software, and Sun Microsystems. These companies recognized the importance of advancing their work within an open process where the entire community of vendors, users, and governments could contribute. Today's approval of WS-Reliability as an OASIS Standard is proof positive that it is possible to garner broad input on the development of a standard and still meet time-to-market needs'..." See details in the news story "WS-Reliability Version 1.1 Approved as an OASIS Standard." General references in "Reliable Messaging."

  • [November 08, 2004] "Universal Business Language (UBL) Ratified As OASIS Standard. Royalty-Free, International Standard for XML-Based Electronic Business Documents Approved." - "The OASIS international standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Universal Business Language (UBL) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed through an open process, UBL defines a common XML library of business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, as well as reusable data components from which an unlimited number of other documents can be constructed. UBL is the first standard implementation of the ebXML Core Components Technical Specification. 'Agreement on a common set of business-to-business document standards is essential for successful electronic commerce,' explained Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and organizer of the working group that created XML. 'UBL provides the world with standard electronic versions of traditional business documents designed to integrate with established commercial and legal practices. Using UBL, businesses of all sizes can enjoy the benefits of electronic commerce.' Joanne Friedman, CEO of business-technology advisory, ConneKted Minds Inc., observed, 'The combination of a fixed tag set for electronic business (UBL) together with a transport protocol designed for the same purpose (ebXML messaging) is analogous to the foundations which built the World Wide Web. Where HTML provides consumers with information ubiquity, and HTTP a transfer protocol designed for the same purpose provides universal access, the UBL/ebXML combination will bring industry the boundary-less, barrier-free information needed to catalyze economic growth and foster inter-industry global trade. E-business didn't die, it just (quietly) got smarter.' 'With XML came a proliferation of industry-specific vocabularies for business documents. Unfortunately, no company does business in isolation. The very nature of the supply chain requires meaningful, cross-industry communication,' noted Mark Crawford of LMI Government Consulting, vice-chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee. 'Instead of being optimized for a particular vertical industry or application domain, UBL is designed for real-world businesses that work with partners across multiple industries.' UBL was developed in harmony with ebXML OASIS Standards and in light of recommendations and standards issued by ISO, IEC, ITU, UNECE, W3C, IETF, and other relevant standards bodies and organizations. Industry groups including ACORD (insurance), ARTS (retail sales), CompTIA EIDX Leadership Group (electronics), HL7 (health care), NACS (convenience stores), RosettaNet (supply chain), UIG (utilities), VCA (prescription eyewear), and XBRL (accounting) all provided input on UBL. 'The key to UBL is that it was built on consensus and collaboration,' said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'The new OASIS Standard is an exciting example of the benefit of bringing together users, vendors, industry associations and government agencies. By actively involving all parties affected by cross-industry standards in the requirements and development phases, the usability of UBL across a variety of trading contexts is assured. We congratulate OASIS UBL Technical Committee members on their achievement and encourage other organizations to join them in advancing this work'..." See details in the news story "Universal Business Language (UBL) Version 1.0 Approved as an OASIS Standard."

  • [November 08, 2004] "U.S. Department of Defense Launches Secure, Reliable Messaging for DOD EMALL Using BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1. ICF Consulting Incorporates ebXML to Strengthen Trading Partner Collaboration with Defense Department's Worldwide Procurement Application." - "BEA Systems, Inc., a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, and ICF Consulting today announced that development has been completed on the newest version of DOD EMALL, one of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) most successful online applications. DOD EMALL, which is built on BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 is the Defense Department's worldwide commerce portal, processing more than $188 million in transactions annually. Among the key enhancements in the new DOD EMALL is the use of the Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) standard for secure, reliable messaging between trading partners. DOD EMALL is one of the largest online operations ever to adopt ebXML, which is designed to allow the Web site to retry actions that are aborted or fail and confirm message receipt to ensure non-repudiation while helping to complete transactions faster. ebXML also helps facilitate the use of digital signatures to verify message authenticity and help to ensure message integrity. In addition, ebXML is protocol independent so that it can be used regardless of the means by which an interaction is taking place (e.g., email, FTP, http, Web services). 'It is imperative that DOD EMALL users are able to send and receive mission-critical order information among heterogeneous systems securely and reliably,' said Gabrielle Zimmerman, systems integration manager for DOD EMALL. Reliability of messaging became a significant concern as DOD EMALL's transaction volume grew from $13.7 million in 2002 to $188 million in 2003. Orders are expected to approach $300 million in 2005. DOD EMALL has evolved into much more than the standard 'shopping cart' idiom for electronic commerce. ICF Consulting and BEA Systems worked with the DOD to build a customized, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The SOA is designed to brings a high degree of adaptability to DOD EMALL, helping to enable the DOD to implement change rapidly as the department's needs evolve, and it presents a highly personalized screen to users based on their specific job responsibilities, security clearances, and other variables..." See also: (1) DoD EMALL; (2) "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [November 04, 2004] "Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.2." - "The Unicode Consortium announced today the release of new versions of the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR 1.2) and the Locale Data Markup Language specification (LDML 1.2), providing key building blocks for software to support the world's languages. This new release contains data for 232 locales, covering 72 languages and 108 territories. There are also 63 draft locales in the process of being developed, covering an additional 27 languages and 28 territories. To support users in different languages, programs must not only use translated text, but must also be adapted to local conventions. These conventions differ by language or region and include the formatting of numbers, dates, times, and currency values, as well as support for differences in measurement units or text sorting order. Most operating systems and many application programs currently maintain their own repositories of locale data to support these conventions. But such data are often incomplete, idiosyncratic, or gratuitously different from program to program. In the age of the internet, software components must work together seamlessly, without the problems caused by these discrepancies. The CLDR project provides a general XML format, LDML, for the exchange of locale information used in application and system software development, combined with a public repository for a common set of locale data in that format. In this release, there are major additions to the CLDR data, to the LDML specification, and in implementation support... The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Full members (the highest level) are: Adobe Systems, L'Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, AGFA Monotype, Apple Computer, Government of India - Ministry of Information Technology, Government of Pakistan - National Language Authority, HP, IBM, Justsystem, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, RLG, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and Sybase..." See: (1) "Unicode Consortium Hosts the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) Project"; (2) "OpenI18N Releases Locale Data Markup Language Specification (LDML) Version 1.0"; (3) "Markup and Multilingualism."

  • [November 03, 2004] "IESG Approves a Request to Register MIME Media Type application/samlassertion+xml." - On November 01, 2004 the IETF Secretariat announced the approval of two requests for registration of MIME media type in the standards tree as outlined in IETF's Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures: application/samlmetadata+xml and application/samlassertion+xml. Per their specification, samlassertion+xml typed objects do not contain executable content. However, SAML assertions are XML-based objects. As such, they have all of the general security considerations presented in section 10 of RFC 3023, as well as additional ones, since they are explicit security objects. For example, samlassertion+xml typed objects will often contain data that may identify or pertain to a natural person, and may be used as a basis for sessions and access control decisions. To counter potential issues, samlassertion+xml typed objects contain data that should be signed appropriately by the sender. Any such signature must be verified by the recipient of the data - both as a valid signature, and as being the signature of the sender. Issuers of samlassertion+xml objects containing SAMLv2 assertions may also encrypt all, or portions of, the assertions in SAML V2 Core... SAML assertions are explicitly versioned. Relying parties should ensure that they observe assertion version information and behave accordingly... Applications which use this media type include potentially any application implementing SAML, as well as those applications implementing specifications based on SAML, e.g., those available from the Liberty Alliance..." For some details on registration of media types, see draft-freed-media-type-reg-01.txt. Application Media-Types are listed on the IANA web site. See general references in "Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)."

  • [November 03, 2004] "AdsML Bookings Specification Released for Public Review. Comprehensive Specification for Newspapers, Magazines. Second Release for AdsML Framework is First in Suite of Standards to Address a Discrete, Advertising-Industry Business Process." - "The first process-specific standard in the AdsML Framework's suite of standards was released here today for public review and comment. The AdsML Bookings Specification, which is complete for the industry's print media, enables advertisers and publishers to query, make and confirm ad space reservations for ads appearing in newspapers and magazines... By implementing the AdsML Booking Specification, advertisers, publishers and others involved in the booking process will be able to request and receive quotations, make and confirm reservations, and change and cancel orders. Bookings and content can be linked, which will increase accuracy. The information necessary to place and produce an ad — including information on placed-by, insertion period, advertiser, booking party, publication, price and production details — can be nested in the AdsML Framework, sent electronically and read by the receiving party. All this will happen automatically, without high levels of human intervention or increased risk of human error... The 'AdsML Framework for E-commerce Business Standards for the Advertising Industry' is a group of intra-active standards, now in development, that will govern the discrete business processes associated with the beginning-to-end lifecycle of any advertisement. The specifications will, in time, set the rules by which all forms of advertising are exchanged electronically. The standards also will communicate with each other within the AdsML Envelope. The AdsML Envelope, which is the foundation standard of the AdsML Framework, is defined in AdsML 1.0, which was released for public review in October 2003 and approved in June 2004... The mission of the AdsML Consortium is to develop a global, XML-based (Extensible Markup Language) standard that will unify and extend existing advertising standards and automate advertising business processes — across all types of media, for all stages of the lifecycle of an advertisement, across all segments of the advertising industry. It is supported by Ifra, a leading international association for newspaper and media publishing, and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), which represents more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. The IDEAlliance, a membership organization advancing standards and best practices in publishing and content-driven enterprises, also is a Consortium supporter. The Consortium's strategic partners are Agfa, Associated Newspapers, Ltd., and Time, Inc..." General references in "AdsML Consortium."

  • [October 27, 2004] "New Members Join JAVA Business Integration Specification Effort." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc., the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, today joined with Java technology leaders to announce the availability of the Early Draft Review of the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification, Java Specification Request (JSR) 208. The group also announced that Apache Group, IONA and JBoss have joined the effort dedicated to developing an open standard for business integration on the Java platform. The specification extends the Java platform to incorporate standardized integration capabilities, and marks an important milestone in enabling Java technology use based on service-oriented architecture (SOA). The JSR 208 project, which is chaired by Sun, is being jointly developed through the Java Community Process (JCP) program by over 22 prominent vendors, and individual developers of Integration and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, including Novell, Oracle, SAP AG, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, Sybase Inc., TIBCO Software, and webMethods Inc. Today Apache, JBoss, and IONA announced they have joined the JSR 208 Expert group. 'The goal of the Java Business Integration initiative is to do for the integration space what J2EE did for the field of Java application development and deployment; namely, deliver the benefits of choice, flexibility, interoperability, code reuse, reduced complexity, and lower cost', said Mark Bauhaus, vice president of Java, Web Services at Sun. 'The Early Draft Review of JSR 208 shows our commitment to develop this technology in an open and standards-based way through the Java Community Process.' Implementations based on JBI will help to provide IT organizations with higher levels of portability and reuse of integration technologies not achievable with many of today's integration products. Java Business Integration components such as business process engines based on the BPEL specification, rules engines, and routing and transformation engines from multiple vendors can be easily combined into a single solution, reducing the cost of application integration and enabling best-of-breed solutions... The Early Draft of the JSR 208 specification is available today at http://www.jcp.org for industry comment. It defines a unified, pluggable architecture for building integration technology on the Java platform and specifies standard interfaces for integration components like BPEL engines, transformation engines, or routing engines, to be plugged seamlessly into an integration container. JBI gives customers the ability to assemble a best-of-breed solution, or to extend their integration solutions by adding new integration components..." See also: (1) JSR 208: Java Business Integration (JBI); (2) "Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)."

  • [October 27, 2004] "NTT DoCoMo, Intel and IBM Collaborate to Enhance Mobile Device Security. Companies Introduce 'Trusted Mobile Platform' Specification." - NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Intel, and IBM released a new security specification called 'Trusted Mobile Platform.' The specification can help make advanced mobile-commerce services such as electronic tickets and e-wallets for online purchases more secure and help protect against viruses and other software attacks. Trusted Mobile Platform has defined a set of hardware and software components that can be constructed to build devices offering different levels of security. Trusted Mobile Platform builds on well established, strong security techniques and applies them to the hardware and software architectures to define a trusted execution environment that protects the device both at boot time and during runtime. These components function together to limit the potential damage from malicious applications and to enable a rich set of security services. In addition, Trusted Mobile Platform has defined a protocol that allows the security state of a device to be shared with other devices in the network, enabling device level trust to be extended into the larger network. 'The Trusted Mobile Platform provides a new foundation for mobile devices,' said Takanori Utano, executive vice president and chief technology officer of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. 'The goal of our joint research was to provide an open and secure architecture, for future wireless data services.' 'This collaboration directly enhances handheld architectures to provide the trusted capabilities vital for widespread adoption of mobile commerce and enterprise usage,' said Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Communications Group. 'Mobile security is more than just protecting against new viruses, worms and attacks, it's about protecting critical business assets and information,' said Alistair Rennie, vice president, Sales and Marketing, IBM Pervasive Computing. 'IBM is working to bring security specifications, such as the Trusted Mobile Platform, to standards bodies, with the hope security will become more embedded across a broad range of business systems.' The Trusted Mobile Platform specification incorporates the latest security technologies and controls. Through tamper-resistant modules and by enabling domain separation, a trusted platform will be able to protect data from potential viruses spreading from one application to the next. In addition, the authorization and management protocols provide companies with higher levels of security for wireless delivery of new software to employees..." See other details in the news story "Trusted Mobile Platform Specifications Released for Industry Review." General references in "XML and Security."

  • [October 25, 2004] "Twelve Companies Earn Liberty Alliance Interoperable Logo at First Event to Test Identity Web Services Conformance." - "The Liberty Alliance, the global consortium developing an open federated identity standard and business tools for implementing identity-based services, today announced products and services from 12 companies have earned the Liberty Alliance Interoperable mark in the latest Liberty-sponsored conformance test — the first event to test against the Liberty Identity Web Services specification ID-WSF 1.0. The Liberty Alliance continues to be the only organization to offer more than simple specification interoperability testing and officially validate Liberty Federation and Identity Web Services implementations in products and services. Alcatel, Elios, IBM, NEC, Nokia, Novell, NTT, Oracle, Ping Identity, Sun Microsystems, Symlabs and Trustgenix have been awarded the 'Liberty Alliance Interoperable' mark. Following a rigorous testing process, conformant products may display the Liberty Alliance's highest stamp of quality, which offers buying assurances to end customers that products are truly interoperable out- of-the-box, shortening deployment cycles, increasing productivity and saving costs. 'Participants are responding to market demand for validation of quality and assurance of true interoperability,' said Roger Sullivan, vice-chair of the Liberty Alliance Conformance Expert Group. 'The conformance program offers vendors and service providers the opportunity to respond to the customer mandate for products and services that have earned the 'Liberty Alliance Interoperable' mark.' The Liberty conformance program requires that each company successfully complete tests against scripts and scenarios prepared by the Liberty Alliance Conformance Expert Group and published on the Liberty Alliance website. As part of the testing, companies must demonstrate interoperability with at least two other randomly selected participants. The program requires repeated operation of the Liberty specification's core features in many combinations and sequences and in different roles and contexts common to real-world deployments. The federation testing reviewed federation establishment and termination, single sign-on, opaque name registration, affiliation, identity proxying and anonymous login. The identity web services testing reviewed authentication, service registration and update, service lookup, service invocation and interaction. 'Liberty is pleased with the rapid adoption of its Identity Web Services specifications, and the response of both members and non-members who want to assure the market that their products will interoperate with these specifications out of the box,' said Donal O'Shea, Executive Director of Liberty Alliance. 'Companies who have earned the 'Liberty Alliance Interoperable' mark report that customers more easily create partnerships, in part because displaying the mark delivers instant market credibility and assures rapid deployment.' The conformance test event was held in Tokyo, Japan during the week of October 11-15, 2004..." General references in "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

  • [October 21, 2004] "OASIS Forms Technical Committees to Advance Data Center Markup Language (DCML)." - International standards consortium, OASIS, has formed four committees to continue work originated by the DCML Organization, which recently transitioned its development and operations to OASIS. The new OASIS DCML Framework Technical Committee, the OASIS DCML Server Technical Committee, the OASIS DCML Network Technical Committee, and the OASIS DCML Applications and Services Technical Committee will collaborate on a holistic set of standards for the automated management of the data center infrastructure. 'Today's complex IT environments are managed in silos of information and demand a data model and format to effectively exchange this information,' explained Dr. Tim Howes of Opsware, chair of the OASIS DCML Framework Technical Committee. 'Our goal is to enable the systems and people managing data centers to exchange crucial configuration, policy, and operating information in a reliable, standardized manner across all products, methods, and topologies.' Members of the OASIS DCML Framework Technical Committee will define the overall approach, concepts, and structures fundamental to DCML's description and manipulation of data center elements and the policies governing their management. The group's work will serve as the foundation for other OASIS DCML committees, which will develop sub-specifications to represent specific types of information. The OASIS DCML Applications and Services Technical Committee will define extensions to represent abstract application and services architectures and specific products. 'We will create a uniform, heterogeneous, and comprehensive data model and interchange format to allow applications, application components such as Web services, and IT services of all types to be referenced and managed,' said J. Darrel Thomas of EDS, chair of the OASIS DCML Applications and Services Technical Committee. The OASIS DCML Network Technical Committee will design a data model and XML-based format for the exchange of information about networking elements in the data center. 'Our focus will be on the specifics of network equipment and technology, but our scope is large, covering all types of networking components, from simple switching and routing elements to nodes that provide advanced processing at all layers of the protocol stack,' explained Dave Roberts of Inkra Networks, chair of the OASIS DCML Network Technical Committee. The OASIS DCML Server Technical Committee will facilitate the representation and management of information about logical or physical compute resource in the data center. 'This committee supports the larger DCML goals of facilitating the interchange of information between tools and devices, improving the data center environment, enabling increased automation, and leading the way for machine processing of descriptive and policy information,' stated Moshe Bar of Qlusters, chair of the OASIS DCML Server Technical Committee. Members of the OASIS DCML Technical Committees include representatives of BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Electronic Data Systems, Inkra Networks, Opsware, Tibco, and others. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals. The first meeting of the new committees will be held on 15-November-2004..." See details in the news story "OASIS Forms Four Technical Committees to Advance Data Center Markup Language (DCML)."

  • [October 18, 2004] Liberty Alliance Continues Aggressive Growth, Expands Membership Base With Seven New Members. Liberty Identity Web Services Specifications Attract Key Players in Digital Imaging and Document Technology, Security and Telecom Markets." - The Liberty Alliance, the global consortium developing an open federated identity standard and business tools for implementing federated identity and identity-based Web services, today announced that seven organizations have joined Liberty Alliance, including leading identity management, application security, mobile and wireless security, telecommunications and research companies, as well as the world-leading digital imaging, design and document technology company. Three companies joined the Liberty Alliance at the sponsor level, one at the affiliate level, one at the associate level, and two previous members have re-joined at the associate level. New members have expressed significant interest in the Liberty Alliance Identity Web Services specifications to solve existing business needs, and plan to use the specifications for applications that are new to the Liberty Alliance, such as Digital Rights Management. Adobe Systems has joined the Liberty Alliance as a sponsor member, and plans to bring Liberty's benefits down to the document level. Working with the Liberty Alliance, Adobe will strengthen document security by adding federated identities, making it easier for businesses to employ document services for meeting compliance and regulatory mandates to protect individual privacy. Additional new sponsor members include OpenNetwork Technologies, specializing in end-to-end identity management solutions, and Senforce Technologies, developing location-aware security software for mobile and wireless computers. OpenNetwork seeks to remedy the key pain points of today's enterprises while helping companies capitalize on existing technology investments. Senforce recognizes the importance of a standards-based approach to federated authentication and seeks to actively contribute to building global awareness of privacy and privacy-friendly approaches. These new members bring to the Liberty Alliance a wealth of expertise in the identity management and mobile security markets, and demonstrate the Alliance's continued ability to attract industry leaders at a sponsor level. As industry leaders continue to understand that federation is the foundation to meaningful Web services, they seek out the Liberty Alliance as a forum to come together to build identity into electronic communications and transactions..." See also the added information about IBM joining Liberty Alliance. See details in the news item "Liberty Alliance Federated Identity Consortium Gains Momentum with New Members." General references: "Liberty Alliance Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization."

  • [October 13, 2004] "World Wide Web Consortium to Celebrate Ten Year Anniversary with Special Event in December 2004." - "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will mark the ten year anniversary of its founding with a symposium on 1 December 2004, at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. The day-long event will feature presentations by and discussions with luminaries from around the world whose contributions have played a key role in creating the Web, ensuring that the Web is open and accessible to everyone worldwide, and helping the Web to reach its full potential. Although attendance to the event is limited to W3C Members and invited guests, plans are being made to make the content of the day's lectures and talks available to the public. Ten Year Anniversary Symposium Celebrates Founding of World Wide Web Consortium: The event will include talks, debates, and panel sessions focused on personal reflections about how the Web got started by the people who were there; why the World Wide Web Consortium was founded; its role today in leading the Web to its full potential; and presentations and projections about the future of the Web... The program will open with a welcome from MIT president Dr. Charles M. Vest, who was instrumental in encouraging the W3C to establish its residence at MIT, the first host university. Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, KBE, inventor of the World Wide Web and founder of the World Wide Web Consortium, will reunite with friends, former colleagues, and members of the technology community involved in the early stages of the Web to share personal reflections and stories about how it all got started. Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com Corporation, and currently General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners, will serve as event moderator throughout the day and introduce subsequent panels and speakers who will address the impact the Web has had on business, science, education, society and culture. Participants such as Jean-François Abramatic, Chief Product Officer, ILOG, and Michael Cosnard, Director of INRIA Sophia-Antipolis and Manager of ERCIM, will bring European insights to the impact of the Web and the founding of the W3C. Denis Lacroix, Director Product Development, Amadeus, Takeshi Natsuno, Head of Multimedia Services Department, NTT DoCoMo, Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media, and William (Bill) Ruh, Global Practice Director, Cisco Systems will provide perspectives from international business and industry. Additional speakers are expected to be confirmed shortly and will appear on the W3C10 Web page... Well-wishers may recognize and acknowledge the W3C's ten year anniversary by signing the public greeting card..."

  • [October 13, 2004] "Arbortext Acquires UK-Based Advent Publishing Systems, LTD. Extends Enterprise Publishing Leadership, Continues Aggressive Growth Plans." - "Arbortext, the leading provider of XML-based Enterprise Publishing Software, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Advent Publishing Systems, Ltd. (Advent3B2). Arbortext's acquisition of Advent3B2 combines two leading publishing software companies and continues its successful track record in expanding its leadership position in the Enterprise Publishing Software industry. Arbortext's Enterprise Publishing Software helps companies streamline and automate their information creation and publishing process to deliver information that is more accurate, relevant and timely. Through the acquisition of Advent3B2 and its product line, Arbortext extends the benefits of enterprise publishing to design-intensive and complex documents such as financial reports, marketing collateral, consumer catalogs, directories and journals. Using Arbortext Enterprise Publishing Software, organizations can automate the publishing process in order to deliver better information faster and at a lower cost. 'This acquisition underscores Arbortext's strategy to become a leader in Enterprise Publishing,' said Mark Walter, Senior Analyst, The Gilbane Report. 'The 3B2 software complements Arbortext's well-known XML editing tools and will enable Arbortext to target more typographically complex publishing applications in the corporate setting as well as make a more concerted effort to sell into commercial STM publishing, where many publishers are in the midst of migrating to XML.' Commenting on the acquisition, Ken Swanson, Senior Vice President of Operations at Bowne & Co., Inc. had this to say, 'This is exciting news. As a long-time customer of Advent3B2, we've been very successful with the development of the Advent3B2 composition engine for our future publishing initiatives. I am confident the combined companies will enable us to take advantage of a stronger product line to fulfill our plans for enterprise publishing. I expect the combined companies will take advantage of each other'engths, making for a stronger partnership that is built on custocus and teamwork for us.' With this acquisition, Arbortext will broaden its product offerings and grow its customer base with the inclusion of over 300 Advent3B2 customers. Arbortext will also expand its operations by combining the Advent3B2 development, professional services and sales and marketing capabilities through the integration of its Swindon, United Kingdom and Konstanz, Germany offices. Advent3B2 develops and markets a comprehensive suite of innovative publishing software based on the latest industry standards including XML. Its growing, global customer base includes The European Parliament, Boeing, GlaxoSmithKline, the US Patent and Trademark Office, Bertelsmann and the Canadian House of Commons. Arbortext is the leading provider of Enterprise Publishing Software that enables organizations to create and automatically publish large amounts of information, such as technical manuals, pharmaceutical product information, legal information and software documentation. Enterprises around the world use our software to publish in multiple languages to multiple audiences in multiple hardcopy and electronic output formats. Arbortext's software is installed at over 1,400 organizations worldwide..." See also ""Arbortext Buys Advent," By Mark Walter. In Seybold News & Views on Professional Publishing Tools Volume 10, Number 02 (October 13, 2004).

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

  • [October 4, 2004] "IETF Publishes XMPP RFCs Core Jabber Protocols Recognized As Internet-Grade Technologies." - "The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) today officially published the specifications for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) as RFCs within the Internet Standards Process. These documents, which formalize the XML streaming protocols first developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999, are the result of two years of work by the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Working Group and represent the state of the art in open instant messaging (IM) and presence technologies. The specifications published today are as follows: (1) RFC 3920: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core — The core XML streaming technology that powers Jabber applications, including advanced security and internationalization support. (2) RFC 3921: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging and Presence — Basic IM and presence extensions, including contact lists, presence subscriptions, and whitelisting/blacklisting. (3) RFC 3922: Mapping the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) to Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) — A mapping of XMPP to the IETF's abstract syntax for IM and presence. (4) RFC 3923: End-to-End Signing and Object Encryption for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) — An extension for interoperable, end-to-end security... "Combined with XMPP development and integration by the likes of Apple, HP, Oracle, and Sun, publication of these RFCs is yet another vote of confidence in the power of Jabber technologies," said Peter Saint-Andre, Executive Director of the Jabber Software Foundation and editor of the XMPP specifications. "We now have a stable, secure foundation for developing a wide range of presence and messaging applications and for building out the real-time Internet." In contributing XMPP to the Internet Standards Process, the JSF ceded change control over its core technologies to the IETF. Now that the protocols have passed through the IETF's rigorous cross-area and security review, attention turns to the enormous base of Jabber servers, clients, and code libraries, which are currently being upgraded to comply with the XMPP specifications. In addition, the JSF continues to develop many popular XMPP extensions through its JEP series, covering everything from advanced IM and extended presence, to real-time content syndication, to bindings for SOAP and other application protocols..." See: (1) "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)"; (2) "Jabber XML Protocol."


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