The promise of the Internet is very much tied to interoperability. And the value proposition of e-business depends on the ability to truly collaborate with partners and customers in a meaningful and efficient way. This emerging XML Schema specification is a key enabler in turning these visions into reality. By establishing standards for managing XML data, W3C is meeting its mission of maximizing the potential of the Web. We at Calico Commerce are also dedicated to this mission, and we are committed to working with other industry leaders to make software more robust and systems more able to change and adapt to evolving situations. In this day when multi-vendor IT environments are the norm in most enterprises, it is critical that we continually find ways to speed application integration and improve data exchange between disparate platforms. It is for this reason that we're incorporating the XML Schema specification into the Calico eBusiness application suite." -- Mary Holstege, Distinguished Engineer, Calico Commerce
Commerce One recognized in 1997 that the next generation of XML-based applications cannot be built on the same old DTD technology. DTDs are insufficient to support the features required for B2B e-commerce. Since then, Commerce One has been the thought leader in XML schema development through its "Schema for Object-Oriented XML" (SOX). This introduced and implemented ideas such as inheritance, polymorphism, local scoping, a modern modularity mechanism, user-defined datatypes, attribute and model groups, and a multi-level architecture, among others, that are found in this Candidate Recommendation.
Commerce One is pleased to see the development of XML Schema move to the Candidate Recommendation phase and calls on the community to make this phase successful by providing implementation feedback to the Working Group. This will ensure a final Recommendation that truly addresses the community's needs and provides a solid foundation for electronic commerce in the 21st Century. We congratulate the Working Group on achieving this important milestone.
-- Dr. Matthew Fuchs, Senior Architect, Commerce One
Databases, ERP and EDI systems all know the difference between a date and a string of text, but before today, there was no standard way to teach your XML systems the difference. Now there is. Released today, W3C XML Schemas bring to XML the rich data descriptions that are common to other business systems but were missing from XML.
W3C XML Schemas have a strong data type system and improved information modeling features. Now, developers of XML eCommerce Systems can create standard XML applications that are far more sophisticated in how they describe, create, manage and validate the information that fuels B2B eCommerce.
-- Dave Hollander, CTO Contivo, Inc.
Health Level Seven (HL7) congratulates the W3C XML Schema WG on the advancement of the W3C XML Schema specification to Candidate Recommendation status. The XML Schema language will give HL7 a vendor neutral way to more accurately express the constraints of our models in our XML serializations than is currently possible with DTDs. In particular, the addition of datatypes, inheritance in the type system and locally-scoped element declarations are seen as concrete improvements in expressiveness over DTDs. The near-term stability offered by Candidate Recommendation will allow HL7 to begin actively developing the next version of our own standards based on the XML Schema Language.
-- Wesley Rishel, Vice Chair of the Technical Steering Committee, Health Level Seven
IBM applauds the W3C on this significant step forward, and notes the critical role of XML Schema in the continuing evolution of XML as the preferred vehicle for e-business applications. IBM is committed to open standards and has been involved with XML Schema from the beginning, both in terms of the development of the specification and implementations that have tracked the emerging standard.
-- Robert Sutor, Director of e-business Standards Strategy, IBM
XML Schemas supply the missing link for applying XML to a broad range of industrial strength e-business, collaborative and database applications. Lotus Development is pleased to have contributed to the development of the W3C XML Schemas Candidate Recommendation, and we congratulate the W3C on reaching this important milestone."
-- Nick Shelness, Chief Technology Officer, Lotus Development Corporation
XML Schemas will enable new levels of distributed functionality and interoperability among software products and computer services, and so we are greatly pleased by the advancement of the XML Schema specification to Candidate Recommendation. As one of the original proponents of this work, we have been active contributors to its development and are working to integrate XML Schema in our products. In addition to adding support to our XML parser, XML Schemas are at the foundation of the Microsoft .NET Framework and play an integral role in Visual Studio.Net.
-- Dave Reed, General Manager, Data Access and XML Technologies, Microsoft Corporation
The XML Schema Candidate Recommendation Release is a major milestone towards the overall adoption of XML, and we are very excited to announce its support as part of the Oracle XML Developers Kit. XML Schema is essential to B-to-B integration allowing information to be automatically and instantly exchanged among trading partners."
-- Jeremy Burton, Senior Vice President, Product and Services Marketing, Oracle Corporation
Progress Software is proud to have participated in the development of the XML Schema specification and its progressing to Candidate Recommendation. By standardizing the way in which the meaning, usage and relationships of XML constituent parts are defined, XML Schemas allow Progress to create a robust infrastructure for B2B. Combining the reliable, scalable and secure transport of business-critical data via the SonicMQ Messaging Server, with the XML Schema Mapping facility in Progress 9.1B, will enable the integration of the more than 5,000 Progress-based business applications, with each other as well as with non-Progress applications.
-- Pete Sliwkowski, Vice-President, Progress Software
SAP is pleased to see that XML Schema has become Candidate Recommendation. XML Schema will play an important role in enabling collaborative business scenarios among different application components. SAP is committed to embracing XML Schema throughout its e-business platform, mySAP.com, and to supporting this critical technology to be widely adopted.
-- Dr. Peter Barth, Director Corporate Marketing mySAP Technology and mySAP Workplace, SAP AG
Software AG believes that the W3C XML Schema Specification will be central to many software systems. the Candidate Recommendation phase is vital to provide real implementation experience, receive user feedback, and produce a formal model that provides a firm foundation for future work such as the W3C XML Query algebra. We believe this phase is essential to ensure that XML Schema is understandable and implementable, and that implementations that follow the specification are interoperable.
-- Jonathan Robie, R&D Fellow, Software AG
As a leading provider of XML schema solutions, TIBCO Extensibility enthusiastically and fully supports the Candidate Recommendation of the XML Schema Standard from the W3C. As a sign of our commitment we are currently integrating the candidate recommendation into the upcoming releases of our products, including the industry leading Turbo XML(tm) and our enterprise class solution XML Canon(tm). By agreeing upon a comprehensive worldwide schema standard, the W3C has provided the Internet its semantic foundation. By adopting XML Schema, business relationships can now be articulated, integrated, and automated via the Internet with unprecedented speed.
-- Leonard Buck - Chief Scientist and Vice President XML Technologies, TIBCO Software Inc.
We welcome the advance of the XML Schema W3C Working Drafts to Candidate Recommendation status. This event is important not only because of the practical benefits it will bring to the World Wide Web, but also because it represents a major success for collaboration between science and industry: The design of XML Schema depends on a not only on the practical experience of industry, but also on a unique confluence of scientific inputs, from disciplines as diverse as formal language theory, computational linguistics and type theory. We are pleased to have contributed to this work, and are committed to continuing to support it.
-- Henry S. Thompson, Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science,University of Edinburgh
webMethods continues to introduce open, innovative solutions that allow companies to overcome traditional B2Bi challenges and quickly create integrated trading networks. We are proud to have been an active member of the XML Schema Working Group and to have delivered support for the April draft. Our webMethods B2Bi Solution Suite will continue to track this emerging standard as we believe the W3C XML Schema will play a major role in streamlining the process of transacting business over the Internet by making the exchange of information between trading partners simpler and more interoperable.
-- Jim Green, CTO and Executive Vice President of Product Development, webMethods, Inc.
The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, reference code implementations to embody and promote standards, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, over 460 organizations are Members of the Consortium.
For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, see http://www.w3.org/