March 2000

• [March 31, 2000] "DSML is the glue for future directories. Language addresses the shortcomings of other protocols." By Rawn Shah. In SunWorld Online (March 2000). ['To support a truly enterprise-scale directory service, products from major vendors such as Microsoft, Novell, Sun, and others must speak the same language. The Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) might just be the key. This month Rawn Shah reviews DSML.'] "Although there have been numerous directory services products over the years, Microsoft's recent release of Active Directory, which is bundled with Windows 2000, promises to make itself mandatory in medium- to large-scale Windows-centric networks. It may not be the most versatile system in the world, but it can improve the management of hundreds or thousands of Windows desktops and servers. Although Active Directory implements version 3 of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), it also extends it and adds some Windows specific features. Microsoft isn't alone in adding to LDAPv3, which does have its limitations. For example, Novell's NetWare Directory Services (NDS) also enhances the LDAPv3 protocol to add their own features. One important missing feature is object-level access control. Each entry object in the directory should have its own access control list that indicates which users are allowed access to the data contents of the entry and which aren't. Both NDS and Active Directory have this, albeit in different forms. Such enhancements alter the way directory entries may be accessed from an application, thus making, for example, a NetWare-based application incompatible with some of the data stored in Active Directory. . . . Like XML, DSML has platform-independent syntax that can be implemented on practically any platform available today. It separates the context-specific semantics of the document contents from the platform-specific semantics, which makes an entry in one directory understood as an entry in all directories. Some entries may have additional attributes that others don't, so DSML provides a way to translate an entry from one directory format to another. Each directory accepts the attributes it can store and creates default values or queries for additional information on missing entries. DSML is language that describes the structure of directories (schema), and the contents of directory entries. In other words, it's a structured form that describes another structured form. Because both directories and XML commonly use terms such as attributes, schema, objects, etc., it's important to distinguish the difference when talking about DSML. A directory schema thus refers to the structure of the data elements contained within the directory, as opposed to the DSML schema that refers to the ruleset of how to translate between directories..." See "Directory Services Markup Language (DSML)."

• [March 31, 2000] "Increase Web-Page Performance with Server-Side XSL." By Paul Enfield. MSDN Online Magazine. April, 2000. ['This MSDN Magazine article shows how to boost performance and reduce database load by using server-side XSL to generate data-driven Web pages in advance of page requests. Dynamic data-driven pages have become the basis of many cutting-edge Web sites. Early render systems can provide better performance and maintainability for data-driven Web sites by generating frequently accessed pages that contain less-volatile information ahead of time. We'll show you an example of a server-side solution that uses Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to merge data and layout information into HTML that is compatible with just about any modern Web browser. Using these techniques to render Web pages early can reduce the load on your database back end and increase performance for your users.'] "Web content has evolved from primarily static information to data-driven pages and now to dynamic data-driven content. However, a common belief that has taken hold among Web developers is that if the content is data-driven, it must be rendered dynamically. If you are using Microsoft tools to develop Web content, this probably leads you to believe that your site must rely on ASP. But there is another way to build a data-driven site. Early render systems provide better performance, maintainability, and cross-browser compatibility by allowing you to render often-accessed data-driven pages in advance. What is an Early Render System? An early render system is a process of building Web content incrementally prior to demand. This means that a given dynamic page might not be rendered completely on the fly as it is in ASP. Instead, parts of the page can be built prior to the first page request. The build might include merging data with static content or conditionally building ASP script sections based on some criteria. . . XSL as a Rendering Solution The Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) makes a great solution for merging the data with the layout to provide content. Through the nature of XML, XSL allows you to separate the data from the layout. As long as you can provide the data in XML format, you can use XSL to produce content. Another benefit of XSL is that it allows you to produce cross-browser-compatible HTML. Because building the pages takes place long before they are delivered, the product of the build process can be cross-browser-compatible HTML. Additionally, because the result of an XML/XSL merge is text, you can use XSL to build both ASP pages and the build script itself. In this article, XSL is used as a server-side solution. This means that the merging or transformation of the XML/XSL to HTML or ASP occurs on the server. By contrast, you could also build a client-side solution based on the XML Document Object Model (DOM) in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Using this method, Web site content would be provided separately through XML data, using XSL for layout. For the sake of cross-browser support, however, I will concentrate on the server-side solution."

• [March 31, 2000] "Microsoft to give a sneak peek at its XML server. Early BizTalk Server 2000 code won't include key process development technology." By John Fontana. In Network World Volume 17, Number 13 (March 27, 2000), page 10. "Microsoft will soon publicly release the first test code for its XML-based e-commerce software, but the product will be missing technology that is key to its evolution. BizTalk Server 2000 is a gateway that uses XML to support the exchange of business documents, such as purchase orders, between applications using different data formats. Microsoft intends for the server to become a cornerstone of its business-to-business e-commerce platform along with the just-released Windows 2000. BizTalk will make its debut in early April when Microsoft releases what it calls technical review code. But the software will be missing technology that will allow users to develop executable code that runs on the server. BizTalk in its current form takes in data and transforms it from its native format to XML and vice versa, and routes the documents between systems. This summer Microsoft will launch its first official public beta of BizTalk that will include a business process automation modeling and execution engine. The new engine is key because it lets developers build processes that support business-to-business e-commerce, execute those processes on the server and combine documents into a single process... The new engine will help BizTalk move forward and may allow Microsoft to move XML translation features from BizTalk into Win 2000...Microsoft is building XML into everything it does from the Exchange messaging platform to the SQL Server database. BizTalk's transformation and routing technologies could be combined with Win 2000, much the same way load balancing was added to the server, according to observers."

• [March 31, 2000] "Exchanging Data Over the Internet Using XML. [Cutting Edge.]" By Dino Esposito. MSDN Online Magazine. April, 2000. "In the last two installments of this column, I've discussed various techniques and technologies that allow you to exchange data over the Web in a traditional, client/server-oriented fashion. I've discussed the principles and the tools you need to work with Remote Scripting (RS) and the whole set of objects that Remote Data Services (RDS) part of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.x makes available. In this column, I'll introduce a fourth possibility that is based on COM and specializes in handling XML data. This component, called XMLHttpRequest, is part of the built-in XML support provided by Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Before going any further in describing the features and the capabilities of XMLHttpRequest, let me recap a few key points about using XML as a sort of universal glue that lets heterogeneous systems interoperate and collaborate. In doing so, I'll touch on a couple of topics that will have a significant impact on the Web applications of the near future -- BizTalk and Web services -- which address the two more prominent perspectives in Windows DNA 2000: business and data integration. . . The major strength of XML is also, today, its main weakness. XML is too generic to be used without fixing at the outset the exact syntax of a document and how each piece of exchanged data can be retrieved and located. Such standardization is simpler to achieve within a single corporate app, even if it spans various heterogeneous hardware and software platforms. Getting the same result in a wider context requires a tremendous effort to arrive at some standard definitions. This process may take years to complete. Unfortunately, when it comes to integrating systems from different organizations, especially in an open way, XML shows some limitations. XML is about data description, but it's only useful when people agree on how data should be described. An invoice, for example, is logically the same type of document for any process that manipulates it. But different subjects may render it through different binary formats. Despite the physical storage format, the document needs to be transmitted and received in a commonly recognized format available on all platforms. Of course, XML can be used as this format. BizTalk is a worldwide initiative that aims to create a database of XML-based document formats. More than 100 companies have already adhered to BizTalk, which offers more than 30 different XML schemas to which interested companies can refer. A BizTalk-based document is an XML file that deploys the tags from a certain vocabulary and follows the rules that the organization has defined for that type of document. A BizTalk-based document is actually exchanged by two BizTalk servers across a network. . ."

• [March 31, 2000] "XTech 2000 Offers View into XML Crystal Ball." By Stephen Swoyer. In ent Magazine Volume 5, Number 5 (March 22, 2000), page 24. "Last year was a breakout year for XML. And with major doings on the horizon, it could become an overwhelming task to keep track of XML-related matters in 2000 and beyond. XML's rise is evidenced by the popularity of a recent conference devoted solely to the standard. XTech 2000, an XML software developer conference sponsored by the Graphic Communications Association (GCA, www.gca.org) and cosponsored by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS, www.oasis-open.org). Industry leaders such as Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com), Sun Microsystems Inc. (www.sun.com) and IBM Corp. (www.ibm.com) lent support to the conference. Hot topics at this year's XTech 2000 conference included the Trading Partner Agreement Mark-Up Language (tpaML) that IBM recently submitted to OASIS, in addition to a number of emerging technologies and trends that hadn't been formally introduced by either OASIS or the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3, www.w3.org) prior to the conference. One area is the phenomenon of XML linking, which has the potential to expand HTML's limited support for resource linking. Eve Maler, staff engineer at Sun and co-editor of a proposed XML linking specification, presented a tutorial track on XML linking, which is composed of three related components: XLink, XPointer, and XML Base. Maler says the XLink component, in particular, will create additional options for developers by allowing them to link from a greater number of elements. As a matter of fact, XLink can turn any element into a link..."

• [March 31, 2000] "Industry Players Use XSL to Make Data Ubiquitous." By Michael Lattig and Stephanie Sanborn [with Ed Scannell]. In InfoWorld Volume 22, Issue 13 (March 24, 2000), page 8. "As the industry coos over XML's potential as the data interchange mechanism for e-commerce, XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), may be overlooked, even though it could prove a valuable asset in paring down development costs and targeting myriad devices. For that reason, many companies are beginning to complement their XML support with XSL support in their core products. One such adopter is the Sun-Netscape Alliance, whose application services CTO, Larry Cable, said the company will provide a full-featured set of XML and XSL technologies in its iPlanet Application Server 6.0, now in beta testing. That support, Cable said, will allow iPlanet to take advantage of XSL's main benefits, such as taking information from a single source, transforming it to another XML-based language, such as HDML (Handheld Devices Markup Language), and delivering that content to a broad variety of devices, a capability that could greatly reduce development costs. 'XSL is a very expressive programming language, so you could basically perform any transformation from one XML [variant] to another,' Cable said. Industry titans IBM and Microsoft are also looking at XSL as an important technology for presenting content on a variety of devices. IBM has made a commitment to the technology across a number of its key middleware products, and views the technology as an important supplementary piece to its XML and transcoding initiatives."

• [March 31, 2000] "XML shifts power to users, but can they handle it?" By David Moschella. In ComputerWorld (March 27, 2000), page 37. "It has only been in the last year or so, with the sharply rising interest in XML, that the significance of this customer-driven revolution has become clear. If users want to exploit the power of common metatags, shared ontologies, communicating applications and a more databaselike Web, they will have to do most of the work themselves. IT vendors will certainly have a vested interest in helping, but even today's market leaders will find it difficult to drive the necessary setting of standards. And standards are what the XML movement is all about. Although much has been written about today's confusing mix of industry-specific initiatives and overlapping associations and institutions, I'm much more intrigued by a larger question. For more than 30 years, IT professionals and their corporate bosses have told IT vendors that they want interoperability and standards. But now that the standards burden has shifted to IT users themselves, will they be up to the task? There are already many new companies trying to develop shared ontologies for specific markets and industries, and software giants such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft will influence XML usage in a number of important ways. But the big changes will have to happen at the customer level. In fact, many IT user organizations will soon find themselves in some very vendorlike predicaments, juggling the desire for interoperability with their own competitive interests..."

• [March 31, 2000] "Sparkling Display of E-books." By Mark Walter. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 7 (March 2000), pages 4-13. ['One of the top attractions on the expo floor was the inaugural e-book showcase, which featured dedicated devices, PC-based readers and Web-based services. We review the rise of the Open E-Book (OEB) standard, the status of PDF and the issues still unresolved in the e-book space. Among the vendors, alliances and acquisitions affected Glassbook, netLibrary, NuvoMedia and Softbook. New entrants included Ansyr, ibooks.com, and ebrary.com. The showcase of vendors proved an opportune time to present our third overview of this rapidly evolving market. OEB is coming on strong, but PDF has been strengthened by recent alliances. We cover the debate and check out the latest hand-held and PC-based e-book viewers and sites.'] "Today, the e-book pioneers of 1999 are already working on their second- and third-generation products. Some firms have already been acquired by larger companies; the behemoth Microsoft has entered the game, joined by a flock of young start-ups; the leading booksellers have begun peddling e-books to the public; and the scramble to test these new media is in high gear. . . More changes are in store later this year, with Microsoft due to release its first-generation e-book reader, Adobe planning to counter ClearType with CoolType; and the OEB and EBX working groups striving to consolidate vendors' interests in standards for packaging e-books and managing rights and permissions online. The groundswell building behind the Open E-Book (OEB) format was very palpable at the Boston event, much more so than six months ago when the initial OEB specification was released. Already, virtually every vendor in the e-book space can, or will soon be able to, accept OEB files as inputs to their proprietary reader formats. . . Though the data formats of the books themselves are settling down, the packaging of the books remains. The Open E-Book group, now receiving assistance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is close to finalizing a proposed standard for packaging e-book files into a single container object as a secure MIME object. The fly in the ointment is Microsoft, which has gone ahead and developed its own container format, planning to use it in its forthcoming reader for Windows and CE." See "Open Ebook Initiative."

• [March 31, 2000] "Content Management: Giving Them What They Need. [Maturity in Web content management.]" By Luke Cavanagh. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 7 (March 2000), pages 14-17. ['With more businesses looking for prebuilt solutions to fill their needs, vendors in content management have gained some steam of late. XML support is becoming more widespread in this space, and workflow components are becoming more sophisticated, as evidenced by the new workfow toolkit Inso introduced for its Dynabase system. Despite the absence of some major high-end players in this space, Web content management was a major topic of discussion among attendees. Web publishing systems are filling out, adding workflow, XML support, wireless output and links to syndication, e-commerce and other business systems. We review progress from two American and two European vendors.'] "A speaker at the Web Publishing Conference noted that the relatively infant term 'cross-media' is even starting to evolve in meaning. Originally, it meant taking content from print to the Web, often as simple as converting from Quark Xpress into a flat HTML file that could be posted online. Now, though, cross-media has grown to imply the ability not only to output to print and PC-based Web browsers, but also to cell phones, Palm Pilots, PDAs, e-books, refrigerators, toasters and the kitchen sink. This level of publishing is really where the help of XML is going to be needed. As for now, XML is a good way to separate form and content, handle metadata, and go cross-media. But it isn't necessarily the only way, and for many operations presents a huge financial and implementation challenge. But for those taking the step to this next level of cross-media, rich XML support is going to be much more important. At Seybold Boston 2000, we saw something new from several different vendors in different market segments. Each gives an idea of the types of ways in which people are looking to solve their Web content management problems, from the rich XML support of Inso to the print-to-HTML automation of TurboPress. Despite the conspicuous absences of such high-end players as Vignette, FutureTense, and Interwoven, we did see some key announcements in content management at Seybold. Inso added some key features to try to maintain its high-level market position and WorldWeb.net, more of a mid-level vendor, continued to try to make that up-market push. . . . Inso's eBusiness Technologies division last month announced a series of enhancements to its DynaBase product, which was one of the first XML-based content management systems and still sits in limited company at the high end of the market despite corporate turmoil over the past few years. . . WorldWeb.net's Expressroom 6 was targeted squarely at publishers looking to take print titles online. It offered separation of form and content, a Java-based client, and authoring modules all built on top of an XML database. . . The difficult problem of extracting content from Quark XPress documents into some other useful form, namely XML, has plagued the industry for years. Quark is finally addressing the problem itself, with Avenue, but in the meantime, a few QPS resellers have developed their own routines. . ."

• [March 31, 2000] "Catalog Systems: Quark Joins the Fray As XML Enters the Picture. [XML, cross-media in catalog systems.]" By George Alexander. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 7 (March 2000), pages 23-26. ['Quark introduced eStage, a data server in step with this year's theme of employing XML in catalog publishing. Cascade's merger with Pindar fell through; Banta, DeskNet and OpenPages moved forward.]' "They may not have generated the buzz that other booths did, but there were plenty of catalog systems to see at Seybold Boston. Last year, the catalog vendors were scurrying to finish up their web-browser interfaces. This year, web browsers were a given and the new thing you really had to have was XML. The change was striking from a year ago, when a number of the vendors were talking about XML, but it was hard to tell if it was just lip service. This year, they are actually using it. The most prominent new entrant into the catalog market is Quark, which unveiled its eStage system at the Boston event. This is part of Quark's movement into selected vertical markets (packaging will be another). Quark is now among the XML faithful, and Tim Gill sang XML's praises in his keynote address. Quark's eStage Content Builder interface. At left are content sets being developed for specific catalogs and promotions. At right are the elements for page 1 of the Milan promotion. The other new vendor was OpenPages, hitherto exclusively a newspaper system supplier, which jumped into the catalog market at this show. . . Quark has picked catalogs as one of the vertical industries it wants to target with its software. The eStage server has its own data store (based on SQL server), but it can also function as a virtual product database, a central gathering of metadata that points to external systems for the source files. EStage provides access to QuarkDMS, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, DB2, SyBase, and any other ODBC-compatible data source, including flat text files. EStage also provides utilities to collect data from XML data sources..."

• [March 31, 2000] "Web publishers ease searching task with MondoSearch. Interesting technology, innovative pricing from Danish software house." By Mark Walter. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 7 (March 2000), page 37. "MondoSearch's innovation is in the way it filters search results into categories, which make it much easier for the searcher to figure out where to go when a search results in dozens or even hundreds of results. MondoSearch creates its categories from directories or metadata. In the former, a tool is provided that enables administrators to assign directories of the Web site to user-defined categories. Specific files within the directory can be made exceptions and assigned to other categories. The other method, metadata, reads HTML metatags or XML or SGML attributes to ascertain a file's category. . ."

• [March 31, 2000] "Metacode Introduces Tools for Enriching Content." By Mark Walter. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 7 (March 2000), page 40. ['It's well known that adding contextual metadata adds value to content, but few tools on the market today help automate this laborious process. Hoping to fill this void is Metacode, which recently introduced Metatagger, a set of libraries for enriching documents.'] ". . . so far, are three products, two of which have just been released. The first, Metatagger, adds metadata to documents; its complement Metafind applies Metacode's techniques to the searching process. The third product, Metasage, is still under development. Part of the metatagger installation process involves Metacode coming out to help you load your schema (it takes classifications as XML DTDs) and integrating it with others from outside sources. Typically, the software is fed a training set of sample documents that help hone the software to the subject domain of the material. The libaries can emit output in various formats; RDF-compliant XML records are the default."

• [March 31, 2000] "Unicode, XML, TEI, Omega and Scholarly Documents." By Yannis Haralambous - Atelier Fluxus Virus. Presented at the Sixteenth International Unicode Conference (IUC16), March 29, 2000. "This talk will give an overview of well-established tools like Unicode, XML and TEI and less known ones, like Omega, applied to the preparation (and further transformation into books, online publications, etc.) of scholarly documents, in particular those involving scholarly languages: Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, etc. We will study (and give concrete examples of) different cases, ranging from simple texts to dictionaries, parallel texts, critical editions. In each case and for each language we will discuss the encoding and structure involved, as well as the necessary linguistic transformations like uppercasing and hyphenation, and different strata of the document like accents, short vowels, diacritics, editorial marks, etc. In particular we will discuss grammatical phenomena like the hamza rules in Arabic or the subscript iota in Greek and the choices they involve. Finally we will introduce typographical typesetting like yet another transformation of the document, and will discuss issues of macro- and micro-typography related to language and script properties. Our aim is to show how encoding, structuring, typesetting and linguistic transformations are intimately related to each other, illustrated by concrete examples in the above mentioned tools."

• [March 31, 2000] "Localisation Considerations for DTD Design." By Richard Ishida (Global Design Consultant, Xerox, United Kingdom). Presented at the Sixteenth International Unicode Conference (IUC16), March 30, 2000. "If you are creating XML documents that will be translated, there are things you should have built into your DTD to enable localisation to go smoothly and efficiently. This paper looks at some of the key issues. The paper refers to standard topics such as character encoding and locale declarations, but also covers topics such as implementation of emphasis and style conventions, handling of text fragments, use of text in attribute values, and the need for an element like HTML's SPAN. In addition, other topics which have traditionally been associated with translation of user interface messages become applicable due to the nature of XML documents. These include the provision of designer's notes, identification of non-translatable text, and use of element ids for automatic translation of elements. The paper assumes familiarity with XML and DTD concepts."

• [March 31, 2000] "Publishing with XML and the Open eBook Specification." By David Goldstein, Chief Technical Officer, Versaware, Inc. PowerPoint slides. Presented at XTech 2000. "Sparked by the growth in WEB access and the availability of low cost, hand-held reading devices, the electronic publication industry is on the verge of redefining our relationship with the "printed" word. We are witnessing a revolution in the way we read, access, search and purchase "books". However, there are several obstacles to overcome. These include the plethora of word processing and publishing formats, the interoperability gap separating traditional and electronic publishing, the representation and encoding of a myriad of languages and alphabets, and the high cost of re-processing content for various target media. The Open eBook (OEB) Specification is part of an industry-sponsored initiative to resolve many of these issues. The specification seeks to have an immediate and direct impact on the creation, advancement, and growth of a flourishing eBook industry. Fully XML and Unicode compliant, this specification supports feature-rich and media-enhanced electronic publication. Content providers can now feel confident that their documents can be delivered on a wide range of reading devices without the need to reprocess. Any OEB-compliant reading system will display these publications in a manner that most faithfully represents the original content, even in consideration of limitations of a particular reading device. This presentation will introduce the goals and design principles of the Open eBook Specification and will detail its features, limitations and relationship to other industry standards. Current tools for producing and displaying OEB publications will be demonstrated and future directions of the OEB authoring committee's work will be described..." See "Open Ebook Initiative."

• [March 31, 2000] "XSLT in Document Indexing. [An XML-Based Approach to the Control of XML Document Indexing.]" By Jacek Ambroziak (Sun Microsystems). Presented at XTech 2000. ['This presentation discusses and demonstrates an easily modifiable, XML-based approach to the control of full-text indexing operations performed on XML documents... Jacek Ambroziak joined Sun Microsystems' XML Technology Center in 1999, where he's been applying his extensive background in natural language technologies, Java, Jini, and XML to the problems of XML document search and retrieval. Jacek has been with Sun Microsystems since 1992, when he became a Research Scientist in the Knowledge Technology Group of Sun Laboratories. While in this position, Jacek worked on an approach to text search called "conceptual indexing," which combines techniques from knowledge representation and natural language processing to enable a computer to systematically organize relationships among concepts. Jacek architected and implemented modular semantic lexicons, co-developed a modular text processing pipeline, and built a highly efficient conceptual database and search engine. Subsequent to this work he designed and implemented in Java a full-text search engine that became part of Sun's JavaHelp facility.']

• [March 31, 2000] "Tutorials: On Display: XML Web Pages with Mozilla." By Simon St.Laurent. From XML.com. March 30, 2000. ['Widespread support for XML in browsers is finally on the horizon. In the first of a series covering Mozilla, IE, and Opera, Simon St.Laurent looks at formatting XML with CSS2 inside Mozilla.'] "Although Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 provides a solid set of tools for presenting XML documents in web browsers, web developers have been waiting a very long time for an implementation that lets them really use their CSS skills with XML. Internet Explorer 5.0 took some credible first steps toward XML+CSS, but the latest work from Mozilla goes beyond first steps to a usable set of tools. The solid XML+CSS core and the underlying DOM support suggests that Mozilla will be a useful platform for building applications, not just web pages. Add to that a dash of XLink support, and it looks like Mozilla may be leading the pack. Mozilla's emphasis on standards-orientation makes its implementation of XML a real pleasure to work with. Developers used to working with CSS in an HTML context have a bit of extra learning to do, as a CSS property called display is critical to presenting XML documents. This property doesn't generally receive much use in HTML. Fortunately, finding information on display isn't difficult. For the most part, I've relied on the W3C specs as documentation for writing this article, a real change from my usual practice of combing through vendor documentation and creating test cases to see if they're accurate. (In particular, I used the CSS2 Recommendation.) There are, of course, a few bugs yet to iron out -- this isn't even beta software yet -- though it should be quite soon. We'll start by exploring the XML+CSS support, building some test pages that will show off what's possible, and then connecting them together with some basic links. By the end of this article, we'll have a very capable set of tools for building simple web sites, and a solid foundation for building web applications..."

• [March 31, 2000] "XML-Deviant: Unifying XSLT Extensions." By Leigh Dodds. From XML.com. March 30, 2000. ['XSLT processors each have a different way of implementing extension functions. Developers in the XML community have stumbled upon this problem, and want to do something about it. Leigh Dodds analyzes the arguments and suggests a way forward.'] "Use any programming language for long enough and you'll quickly learn both its features and its limitations. XML developers working with XSLT are going through this learning process, and are beginning to identify some limitations. XSLT provides a well-defined extension mechanism, allowing developers to include custom processing in their style sheets. . . So what happens next? The problem seems to be clearly defined: XSLT doesn't have a standard API against which extension functions can be implemented. Contributors to both XSL-List and XML-DEV have suggested steps that need to be taken..."

• [March 31, 2000] "Keep it Simple...." By Edd Dumbill. From XML.com. March 30, 2000. ['The popularity of Sean McGrath's PYX notation has highlighted the value of simple syntax-based XML processing. Why stack layer upon layer of processing when you don't need it?'] "Don't despise XML's syntax. Programmers without a document-focused heritage may get the urge to put the XML syntax out of sight as soon as possible. Once the data is inside your program, why bother passing it around as XML? So, we're seeing (Java-)serialized DOMs passed between applications and other uses. However, that's just not XML. Serialized objects have been around for ages, very useful thank you, but they don't have the advantages of XML. . . PYX reminds us that a large amount of useful work can be done without any semantic interpretation of an XML document at all. The revolution that XML is bringing about on the Web isn't about object technology, but about an interoperable syntax. It's not about shoveling XML into your application to gain buzzword karma, but about exploring the new avenues of distributed information processing offered by XML."

• [March 30, 2000] "XML Protocol Comparisons." By Eric Prud'hommeaux. Updated March 29, 2000. "I put together a comparison of a bunch of XML protocols -- SOAP [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#SOAP]; ICE [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#ICE]; WDDX [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#WDDX]; BizTalk [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#BizTalk]; IOTP [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#IOTP]; TIP [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#TIP]; WfXML [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#WfXML]; ebXML [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#ebXML]; XMI [http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix#XMI] -- for everyone to discuss/dispute. It is said that the best way to get a question answered on usenet is to post an incorrect answer. Persuant to that, I have not done extensive readings of some of the protocol papers during my characterizations, but at least they're all there in a forum where we can compare apples and fruit baskets. I'll be adding more dimensions and would like feedback on what people wish to compare. Also, I'd like to have anchor-rich HTML versions of the documents so I can point to specific parts of the spec as supporting evidence..."

• [March 30, 2000] "XML Schemas: Setting Rules for XML Documents." By Simon St.Laurent. March 2000. Slideset presentation (24 slides). "Why schemas? (1) Common Vocabularies: Establishing common vocabularies makes it easy to build software that processes information according to a clearly defined set of rules. The larger the audience using the same vocabulary, the larger the audience. (2) Formal Sets of Rules: Because machines (computers) will be doing most of the XML processing, expressing those vocabularies in a form that computers can understand is important. The formal description must be regular, unambiguous, and relatively easy to process. (3) Building Contracts: On the human side of the information interchange equation, formal descriptions of vocabularies can provide a core set of rules for all participants in a series of transactions. Schemas can make it clear which kinds of information are required or optional for which kinds of transactions. . . ...it only covers what I could say in 90 minutes." For other resources on XML schema design and development, see "XML Schemas."

• [March 29, 2000] Perl and XML: A Review of Perl-XML Modules." By Michel Rodriguez (Senior Programmer-Analyst, Electronic Services, IEEE Standards Activities). 2000-03-21 (v1.8). "Perl is without a doubt [and of course Python fans don't agree here ;--) ] the most powerful, and, and even the most devout Python zealots will agree here, the most widely used text processing language. It is especially in widespread use in the web world. It is then easy to understand why a whole bunch of Modules have been developed so the power of Perl, especially it's regular expression language, can be applied to XML data/documents (let's not start a religious war here on what XML files contain)... [we] review the main Perl XML modules, from the venerable XML::Parser to an interface with DBI, and DOM, XQL, XSLT XPath implementations and more, [identifying] the main characteristics of each module..." For related resources, see references in "XML and Perl."

• [March 28, 2000] "IBM unveils challenger to Microsoft's BizTalk." By Antone Gonsalves. In PC Week (March 27, 2000). "Hoping to capture mind share from rival Microsoft Corp., IBM today announced a new product that leverages Extensible Markup Language in connecting trading partners for electronic commerce. The WebSphere B2B Integrator is a competitor to Microsoft's BizTalk Server, which was announced a year ago. Both products are scheduled to ship in the summer and will compete in the growing market for XML technology, a favorite among corporations for linking applications with trading partners. Even though Microsoft hasn't shipped a product, a recent survey of IT managers by Zona Research Inc. found the Redmond, Wash., company was the most influential vendor driving deployment of XML. Running a half grade behind Microsoft were Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM and Oracle Corp. Looking to bump Microsoft from the lead position, IBM plans a big marketing push this week at its WebSphere 2000 developer conference in Miami, where the company will unveil the B2B Integrator and VisualAge Application Rules, a new development tool for building e-commerce applications. The new XML server is the first implementation of IBM's Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language, a set of extensions that take XML beyond a simple data transport protocol to include capabilities that enable companies to integrate business processes, workflow, security and other services into a B2B transaction. IBM has submitted tpaML to the international standards body OASIS. tpaML is a key technology in IBM's Business-to-Business Protocol Framework, or BPF, a blueprint for electronic commerce and a competitor to Microsoft's BizTalk initiative, a standardization effort that has collected more than 130 schemas by which companies in vertical markets can implement XML-based applications."

• [March 28, 2000] "Novell to debut directory tool at BrainShare." By Scott Berinato and Mary Jo Foley. In PC Week (March 24, 2000). "Novell Inc. next week will use its user conference to test the efficacy of recent efforts to simplify its marketing message and attract a new generation of customers to buy into its directory-centric e-business strategy. A key piece of that strategy is the DirXML metadirectory, which Novell will debut in beta form at its BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, sources said. The Provo, Utah, company also is preparing to create an e-Business Group, though it may not be ready to announce the group next week, other sources said. DirXML enables Novell's NDS eDirectory to inherit information from the many legacy directories in an enterprise and display it to an administrator, who can then manipulate and manage that information from the eDirectory interface. DirXML uses LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to connect to other directories and XML (Extensible Markup Language) to communicate between directories..." See the list of announcements.

• [March 28, 2000] "WebMethods adds CommerceOne to partner portfolio." By Geneva Sapp. In InfoWorld (March 28, 2000). "webMethods on Monday added a Commerce One partnership to its B2B Exchange portfolio that already includes Ariba, MySAP.com, chemconnect, and VerticalNet. 'WebMethods is the bridge between applications like Commerce One, Ariba, and others, and companies' back-end legacy systems,' said Anna Kerr, senior analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. "There is a gap in between, and WebMethods has very intelligently developed that bridge to put the two together.' Phillip Merrick, president and CEO of WebMethods, said the partnership with Commerce One goes beyond marketing to joint development. 'This is not just a joint-marketing, or a joint-selling kind of partnership. We're also involved in joint development around this XML Common Business Library,' Merrick said. CommerceOne's XML Commerce Business Library (xCBL) is yet another play for an XML standard in procurement, like Ariba's cXML, officials said. '[xCBL] is Commerce One's set of XML definitions for procurement -- things like purchase orders, catalog data, payment notices, and shipping notices. xCBL provides the definitions for all those business documents,' Merrick said. WebMethods also supports other XML formats such as RosettaNet, the high-tech industry-specific XML repository for documents and shared business processes..."

• [March 28, 2000] "IBM to offer e-commerce integration software." By Wylie Wong. In CNet News.com (March 27, 2000). "IBM is moving further into the fast-growing software integration business. IBM today announced plans for new e-commerce software that allows companies to link their different computing systems so they can exchange data and conduct business over the Web. With today's move, IBM jumps further into a market where smaller players, such as Tibco, Neon Software, TSI and Vitria, have taken an early lead over bigger rivals Oracle, Microsoft and Sun, who are just entering the market. IBM today said it will ship in the late summer new software, called WebSphere B2B Integrator, that will let businesses use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to tie their computing systems together to do e-commerce. As for the other giant software makers, Microsoft plans to enter the market later this year with a product called BizTalk Server, while Oracle has recently released its own product, called XML Integration Server. Sun recently acquired Forte Software, which makes software integration technology. IBM, however, isn't new to software integration. Its popular MQSeries software is widely used by companies to allow their internal business applications, such as mainframe, financial and human resources software, to communicate. Like its rivals' products, IBM's forthcoming B2B Integration Server relies heavily on XML, a Web standard for exchanging data. The product features IBM's newly-created XML specification that details a common way for companies to define and execute business contracts over the Web. It will also include IBM's WebSphere application server, technology that runs transactions, and MQSeries messaging software, which is designed to ensure that information sent from a business application is delivered to its intended target. An insurance company, for example, can build a system that automatically routes claims to the appropriate department..."

• [March 25, 2000] "Search Middleware and the Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol." By Andreas Paepcke (Stanford University), Robert Brandriff (California Digital Library), Greg Janee (University of California at Santa Barbara), Ray Larson (University of California at Berkeley), Bertram Ludaescher (San Diego Supercomputer Center), Sergey Melnik (Stanford University), and Sriram Raghavan (Stanford University). In D-Lib Magazine Volume 6 Number 3 (March 2000) [ISSN: 1082-9873]. Abstract: "We describe our Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol (SDLIP), which allows clients to query information sources in a uniform syntax. The protocol was developed in a collaboration between Stanford, the Universities of California at Berkeley, and Santa Barbara, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the California Digital Library. In addition to introducing the protocol, we describe several of our design choices, and compare them with the choices made in other search middleware approaches. The protocol allows for both stateful and stateless operation, supports multiple query languages, and defines a simple XML-based return format. A default query language that is included in SDLIP follows the evolving IETF DASL 'basicsearch'. This is an XML-encoded language reminiscent of SQL, but adjusted for use in full-text environments. SDLIP can be used with CORBA or HTTP." See the main news entry.

• [March 24, 2000] "Grass Roots XML." By Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems). Slides from the XTech 2000 presentation, in three parts: "Back to Basics; XML Standardization; Who Will Control Electronic Commerce?" ['Jon Bosak gives Keynote Address at Xtech 2000. His Presentation "Grass Roots XML" speaks to the importance of the democratic process and the work of OASIS in the future of XML development.']

• [March 24, 2000] "The Blocks eXtensible eXchange Protocol." By Marshall T. Rose (Invisible Worlds, Inc.). IETF Internet-Draft 'draft-mrose-blocks-protocol-01'. Network Working Group. March 9, 2000. Abstract: "This memo describes the Blocks eXtensible eXchange Protocol (BXXP), a generic application protocol framework for connection-oriented, asynchronous request-response interactions. BXXP permits multiplexing of independent request/response streams over a single transport connection, supporting both textual and binary messages." Description: BXXP provides a generic application protocol framework for connection-oriented, asynchronous request-response interactions over TCP. At the core of BXXP is a framing mechanism that allows for peer-to-peer exchanges of requests and responses. The framing mechanism permits multiplexing multiple, simultaneous, and independent exchanges over a single transport connection with flow control and segmentation. Requests and responses are either textual (structured using XML) or arbitrary (structured using MIME). Frames are exchanged in the context of a 'channel'. Each channel has an associated "profile" that defines the syntax and semantics of the messages exchanged. Implicit in the operation of BXXP is the notion of channel management. In addition to defining BXXP's channel management profile, this document defines two core profiles: (1) the TLS transport security profile; and, (2) the SAS family of user authentication profiles. Other profiles, such as those used for data exchange, are defined by an application protocol designer. A registration template is provided for this purpose." Section 6.2: BXXP Channel Management DTD; Section 6.4: TLS Transport Security Profile DTD; Section 6.8: SASL Family of User Authentication Profiles DTD.

• [March 24, 2000] "Transcoding on the fly for the Web." By Nancy E. Dunn and Chris Rumble. IBM developerWorks Staff. [Published November 1999, Updated March 2000.] "The IBM WebSphere Transcoding Publisher provides a Web intermediary platform for XML and graphics conversions on the fly. A demonstration application shows how intermediary-based transcoding makes it possible to convert Web pages (or other files) from one format to another in real time -- without changing the original pages on the Web server. Content providers or conversion service providers can use the Transcoding Publisher for adapting Web pages for handheld devices, for transforming XML data, and for dozens of other applications. In this interview, two IBM researchers explain how Web intermediary technology supports such conversions and provides a rich vein for more Web and XML conversion on the fly."

• [March 24, 2000] "Pinacor opens XML based reseller channel." By Dan Neel. In InfoWorld (March 23, 2000). "Technology resellers working through Pinacor, a distributor of technology products and services, will now have real-time access to inventory and shipping status through Pinacor Connect, an XML-based order management platform that went online Wednesday. For no additional charge above Pinacor's normal logistic and delivery fees, resellers can now link their own internal order management systems to Pinacor over the Internet. Those resellers then construct a valid XML request document, which includes customer log-in information, to receive real-time pricing, including information on the availability of products not housed in Pinacor's warehouse. Order entry, order correction, and tracking requests are also made in real-time using the Pinacor Connect system. 'We needed to develop a real-time feed from our suppliers,' said Sonia Bovio, a representative for Pinacor. 'XML proved the most flexible; now we're taking that technology and giving it to our resellers.' One of those resellers, Unicom, manages the procurement of computer hardware with a specialty in the health care industry. 'With XML, we're able to do business in real-time rather than in batches,' said Bob Davis, the CTO at Unicom. 'Now, when we want to check order status, we post this XML query, which is like an HTML tag, send it to Pinacor's URL, and they send the response right back to us in XML, parse out what we want, and put it on the screen. The information doesn't require a browser: as with XML, the definition of the data is in the data.' See the announcement "Pinacor Launches Seamless Business-to-Business Reseller Platform for the Digital Marketplace. Distributor delivers Pinacor Connect -- first XML-based e-business platform for real-time order management systems."

• [March 24, 2000] "Sun criticized for delays on Apache project." By Wylie Wong. In CNet News.com (March 23, 2000). "Sun Microsystems is feeling the heat after failing to deliver Web technology to a nonprofit group as promised. The company earlier this year pledged to donate Extensible Markup Language (XML) development tools to the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation, as part of a plan, along with other software makers, to promote adoption of the technology by making free tools available to developers. Sun even trumpeted the gesture in print advertisements and marketing brochures. Now, four months later, angry officials at Apache said the tools have still not been delivered. Sun representatives said the delay is the result of a legal snafu. Still, Sun has angered some within Apache for trying to take credit for work it hasn't done, said a person at Apache who requested anonymity. Sun ran an ad promoting its donation to Apache at an Apache convention two weeks ago. The source also said a Sun executive touted the donation in a speech at the convention. Apache in November announced plans to develop new XML (Extensible Markup Language) tools with technology donated by about half a dozen software companies, including Sun, IBM and DataChannel. Its goal is to further drive the adoption of XML, a Web standard for exchanging information, by building open-source software tools. The plan is for IBM, Sun and a start-up called Exoffice to donate technology called XML parsers to Apache, so the organization could take the best features of each and meld them into one product. A parser dissects and reads XML text, much like a Web browser reads HTML to generate Web pages on a computer. XML allows businesses to easily and cheaply conduct online transactions with their customers. It also delivers sound, video and other data across the Web and allows for better Internet searching. Davidson said Sun's attorneys are still hammering out a licensing agreement to give the technology to Apache. The delay forced the other software makers in the project to tackle it on their own, and they have already built a first version of an XML tool without Sun's help, according to a source close to Apache. Sun's contribution is necessary to upgrade an XML tool that Apache is working on, and the delay is hampering the group's effort to give software developers the improved product Apache promoted when it launched the effort, the source at Apache said. Once Sun contributes its technology, Apache will quickly integrate Sun's parser into Apache's parser, then start work on a second version of the product, Davidson said. Sun and IBM expect to incorporate the new parser into their company's software products... Sun -- which previously contributed Java programming language technology to Apache -- hopes to work out a licensing agreement soon and give away its XML technology to Apache within a month. All the other companies who promised to donate XML technology to Apache's effort have contributed. Lotus and two independent software developers are giving away their Extensible StyleSheet Language (XSL) technology, which lets users define how a document is presented. DataChannel and BowStreet have also donated technology."

• [March 24, 2000] "TeX and XML-related news." By Michel Goossens, IT/ASD. "Xpath and XSLT together are powerful tools to build XML to HTML and TeX converters (in fact XSLT allows you to transform XML sources into a whole set of target formats). As explained in the Letter from the Editor part at the beginning of this CNL, we have used this technology to produce the present CNL by writing two stylesheets, one to translate the XHTML to HTML (in fact the tricky part is getting the tree structure of documents on the Web in place) and one for going from XHTML to LaTeX, which is much more complicated, since the XHTML model maps very poorly onto LaTeX . This is especially true if one has to translate pages optimized for viewing on the Web (i.e., using color, visual effects, forms, etc.), which have no equivalent in LaTeX , that emphasizes structure rather than visual appearance. For those interested in how this technique can be used, the following two URLs provide more information: (1) Tutorial presented at the UKTUG Conference (Oxford University, 12-13 September 1999): "XML, XSL, two of a family of extensible languages" (http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/asdoc/WWW/publications/oxford99/oxford99main.html). (2) Presentation of PassiveTeX at the XML Developers' Conference (Montreal, 19-20 August 1999): "PassiveTeX: XML and TeX , doing it together..." (http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/asdoc/WWW/publications/xmldev99/passivetex.html). A series of lectures on XML (not only in the text-processing area, but also for databases, visualization, etc.) is planned for the third term (April-June 2000) of the Academic Training..." See also the reference page "SGML/XML and (La)TeX."

• [March 23, 2000] "Inside MSXML3 Performance." By Chris Lovett. MSDN Extreme XML (March 20, 2000). "I promised to write more about the new Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) features, as several of you requested. This month's column coincides with the March 2000 Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) Technology Preview release -- called MSXML3. Naturally, I couldn't resist the temptation to use this newest version of the DLL while writing this article. In the last column, I described several performance metrics that interest most of you as you develop your XML-based Web applications. The first two, working set and megabytes per second, were covered in some detail. In this article, we'll discuss a typical business-to-business scenario, and how MSXML3 can improve performance in the areas of the third and fourth metrics, requests per second and scaling. I'll continue using JScript for the examples because of its brevity, but I'll include some real C++ code in the downloadable zip -- as I did last time. All measurements in this article were taken from computers running Microsoft Windows 2000. All the charts and numbers below were measured using the C++ program, because that is the best way to get reliable numbers. In a scenario where a lot of small XML documents and style sheets are being pumped through a processing pipeline, the raw megabytes per second of the parser can be overshadowed by the setup and tear down costs of creating XML document objects and compiling XSL style sheets. Performance in such a scenario can also be hindered by contention problems on shared resources, which will actually show up as poor scaling on multi-processor computers. The good news is that MSXML3 can deliver a lot of performance improvements in this area, especially in multi-threaded scenarios..." Includes source code. See also the previous column, "Inside MSXML Performance" (February 21, 2000).

• [March 23, 2000] "How to Encode XML Data." By Chris Lovett. MSDN Web Workshop (March 17, 2000). Technical article. ['Many questions arise about how to make XML files transfer data properly between different platforms. Most of these questions stem from a lack of understanding of how XML encoding works. This article describes how it works and gives specific tips on how to use MSXML to encode XML correctly.'] "This article explains how character encoding works and specifically how it works in XML and the MSXML DOM. A lot of people have been asking me questions lately about how to make their XML files transfer data properly between different platforms. They create an XML document, type in data, stick a few tags around it, make the tags well-formed, and even put the <?xml version="1.0"?> declaration in for good measure. Then they try and load it up but get an unexpected error message from the Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) saying that there's something wrong with their data. This can be frustrating to the new XML author. Shouldn't it just work? Well, not quite. It's likely that when you receive the unexpected error message from MSXML, the platform that is receiving your data stores it differently than the platform from which you sent it, resulting in character encoding problems. I'll discuss character encoding and standard character sets, Unicode, the HTML Content-Type header, the HTML Content-Type metatags, and character entities. . ."

• [March 23, 2000] "Industry Defrag: Here Comes XML. Is the introduction of XML in SQL Server a good thing? By Stephen Wynkoop. In SQL Server Magazine January 2000. "Microsoft has recently started embracing Extensible Markup Language (XML), but embracing XML is different from putting it natively into a product. SQL Server administrators and database developers haven't missed full integration of XML in SQL Server, but they've now come to realize that they needed XML all along. In the next version of SQL Server, XML output will be a standard option, letting you create a channel of information -- including information pulled directly from the SQL Server -- that you can pass to other systems. If you combine XML and Data Transformation Services (DTS), bulk copy program (bcp) will continue to slip out of use, to the delight of most database developers and administrators. XML is available today only in a manner of speaking. You can use the language today with extensions that Microsoft released for use with SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0. These extensions are more workarounds than real solutions. The real strength of XML will come with the next release of SQL Server. But you can use the tools available today to begin working with XML, if you haven't already, and to start understanding what you can and can't do with it..."

• [March 23, 2000] "Style Matters: Integration by Parts: XSLT, XLink and SVG." By Didier Martin. From XML.com. March 22, 2000. ['Didier Martin gives us a practical demonstration of the power of XSLT, XLink and SVG, bringing them together to generate interactive, illustrated, technical documentation.'] "The example demonstrates building an interactive illustrated parts catalog with XML technologies. The example shows how we separate the data model from the presentation, how the model is transformed into a presentation language (HTML, SVG), and finally, how scripting and CSS properties are used to implement XLink behavior and user interactivity.... Unfortunately, current reality is that browsers do not support X-Linking to elements contained in different documents. And in fact, with the exception of Mozilla (Milestone 14) and Hybrick, none support XLink constructs at all. To compensate for this weakness, scripting could be used to link elements together, to provide XLink interpretation and, more particularly, the kind of XLink behavior that you require. As you can see by viewing the result of the XSLT transformation, the elements contained in the HTML table are linked to the elements in the SVG document and vice versa. The parts catalog document can be rendered in a browser IE5 with MSXML3.DLL installed. This will properly render the XML document by transforming it to HTML. Notice here that we used XSLT constructs that are compliant to the W3C Recommendation. You can also process the XSLT style sheet without any modifications either with XT or SAXON. (I didn't test it with Xalan or the Oracle XSLT engine but I expect that the style sheet will work with these engines too.) For more sophisticated presentation, it seems that the combination of CSS, scripting, and XSLT is required. By modifying the CSS properties dynamically at run time, we can provide a particular XLink interpretation and behavior. If a future XSLT Recommendation includes a standard way to output multiple documents from a single style sheet, then the XLink interpretation could be provided by the XSLT style sheet."

• [March 23, 2000] "XML-Deviant: Good Things Come In Small Packages." By Leigh Dodds. From XML.com. March 22, 2000. [This article has to do with compression and efficient storage/transmission of XML.] "One of XML's strengths is its human-readability. But the consequent verbosity is also one of its weaknesses, according to a growing number of XML developers. . . Like any textual markup language, XML is verbose. There is a lot of 'redundant' data in an XML document, including white space, and element and attribute names. XML documents are therefore a prime candidate for compression. [...] However tiny XML-based traffic is today, if the current rate of adoption continues, XML transmission will be ubiquitous before long. Now may be the best time to consider some wider architectural problems: perhaps it's time to take a break from producing the unceasing flow of new standards. Considering how these standards fit together will reinforce our efforts toward the holy grail of Interoperability. Experiences from organizations like MITRE, as well as feedback from developers "on the factory floor," will be vital."

• [March 23, 2000] "Pyxie Perfect." By Edd Dumbill. From XML.com. March 22, 2000. "Pyxie now has Java and Perl implementations."

• [March 22, 2000] "SAX or Python EasySAX: SAX made Pythonic." By Paul Prescod. Presented at XTech 2000. Abstract: "EasySAX is a high level SAX-based API for working with XML event streams in Python. Where SAX was specifically designed as a low-level API, EasySAX is designed first and foremost to be easy to use, convenient and flexible. EasySAX has dynamic event handler dispatch mechanisms that make XML processing convenient by building on Python's dynamism. Where SAX users typically dispatch events using switch statements or hand-coded dispatch table, EasySAX builds a dispatch table automatically based upon method names and metadata. EasySAX also combines some of the best features of tree-based and event-based interfaces by allowing trees to built 'on-demand' from portions of parse streams. This allows the performance degredation of tree building to be minimized. EasySAX is currently in testing and the final release is expected [later]..." Work continues on this proposed 'unification API' EventDOM, presented initially under the name 'EasySAX' by Paul Prescod (ISOGEN/DataChannel) at the Spring XTech conference. "The package called EasySAX has been renamed EventDOM. It may be renamed again. I haven't put in time to think about names properly yet. The current status is that I've developed the idea and I have 90% of the code written. I will hopefully get a chance to finish the code in a few weeks but anyone who is brave and interested can ask me for it in the current state and try and make it work. There is a couple of days work there... the package isn't available yet but I have some slides on it that I gave at XTech 2000 when I was still calling it EasySAX: XML, PowerPoint, and PDF formats. Some discussion about the package has taken place on the Python XML-SIG mailing list." Note also: (1) Python Interface Declaration Language. [ Python Extension Proposal January-2000.]; (2) "Why I Promote Python." [local archive copy]

• [March 22, 2000] "Moving Home: Portable Site Information." By Lynn C. Rees. From XML.com (March 22, 2000). ['Web development frameworks are many and varied, but why should you have to rebuild your site structure for each one? XML comes to the rescue, in the form of the Portable Site Information project.'] "One common use of XML is to provide data for template-based web pages created with XSLT. However, XML can be used to model the actual structure of a web site too. Portable Site Information is a project to develop an XML abstraction for template-based web sites, to allow their migration between site development frameworks such as NetObjects or Cocoon... [Rees concludes:] "Work on PSI is ongoing. Currently, PSI uses a standard DTD to define its syntax but we plan on migrating it to an RDF schema. This will allow us to exploit PSI with more tools, as well as use it with other RDF formats (like Dublin Core and RSS) to create even more powerful site models. We're cleaning up our current code into an LGPL library called psilib and then releasing it through psilib.sourceforge.net. It's turning into a useful tool for us and may benefit others, which only makes our jobs as web developers easier, especially if we get future site projects already laid out in PSI. XML is proven in modeling complex hierarchies for open exchange. Sites are no exception. Developing PSI has helped us glimpse the underlying patterns of the Web. More connects than divides site structures. We hope to see a standard reflecting this evolve so that any pain from future site evolution comes as a side effect of creation, not transportation. PSI may contribute to this. It may just dimly light the way. The end of portable site information is more important than the means." For links and description, see: "Portable Site Information (PSI)."

• [March 21, 2000] Big-name chemical firms join business e-commerce trend." By Erich Luening. In CNet News.com (March 21, 2000). "A group of big chemical and petroleum companies today said they are teaming to form an electronic marketplace, becoming the latest industrial firms to join the business e-commerce trend. Expected to be in operation by the third quarter, the new marketplace, dubbed Envera, is designed to connect and automate chemical and petroleum process companies, as well as handle spot auctions and purchases, the companies said. Some of the big-name backers of the venture include BF Goodrich, Eastman Chemical, Sunoco Chemicals, Castrol, and Rohm and Hass. Several members of the group will join the new marketplace while maintaining their own e-business exchanges for their suppliers and partners. For instance, last week Eastman Chemical announced it was partnering with exchange broker VerticalNet to build an online marketplace for the paint and coating industry. The consortium follows similar moves in the auto industry where car manufacturers have teamed to build unified marketplaces for their suppliers and common business partners. Last month, General Motors and Ford Motor announced plans to merge their Internet-based supply exchanges. The Envera marketplace is still in its preliminary stages. It is based on XML and the consortium said it is in discussions with leading business-to-business technology providers including IBM, Oracle, XML Solutions, and WebMethods to provide the software and services needed to get the project underway." See Industry News for press releases.

• [March 21, 2000] "Simplified DocBk XML on the Web. Introduction to DocBook." By Jonathan Eisenzopf, WebReference.com. In LinuxToday (March 19, 2000). "DocBook is an SGML format for writing structured documents. Until recently, it was maintained by the Davenport Group hosted at O'Reilly. Recently, it's been moved into the care of the OASIS group at XML.org. It's been used extensively by technical writers and publishers. The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is one notable project that's used DocBook extensively. O'Reilly is a company that uses DocBook internally quite a bit. In fact, I'm writing my Perl XML book entirely in DocBook. If you've never used SGML or XML before and are really fond of WYSIWYG editors, you're really going to hate DocBook at first. That's ok, because after you publish a few articles with it, you'll wonder why you've been using HTML this long. It's particularly useful when you need to make global changes, like copyrights :) DocBook is also widely supported by commercial and many non-commercial tools. In fact, once you have articles in DocBook format, you can convert them to formats like RTF, Postscript, and HTML. . . Recently, Norman Walsh created an XML version of DocBook called DocBk XML. Fortunately for us, he also created a simplified subset for writing articles called the Simplified DocBK XML DTD. The SDocBk homepage is http://www.nwalsh.com/docbook/simple/. The DTD and a CSS style sheet that will work in IE 5 is available. Norman has also written a set of XSL style-sheets that will work with DocBk XML and Simplified DocBk XML..." See also "DocBook XML DTD."

• [March 20, 2000] "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About DTDs, But Were Afraid to Ask." By Arnaud Sahuguet (University of Pennsylvania). "For the last two years, XML has become an increasingly popular data-format embraced by a lot of different communities. XML is extremely attractive because it offers a simple, intuitive and uniform text-based syntax and is extensible. One can find today XML proposals for messages, text content delivery and presentation, data content, documents, software components, scientific data, real-estate ads, financial products, cooking recipes, etc. Unfortunately this also means that XML is far too general and if people plan to use it in serious applications (mainly for Electronic Document Interchange, in a broad sense), they will need to provide a specification (i.e., structure, constraints, etc.) for their XML, which XML itself cannot offer. In order to specify and enforce this structure, people have been using Document Type Definitions (DTDs), inherited from SGML. In this paper, we present some preliminary results that explore how DTDs are being used for specifying the structure of XML documents. By looking at some publicly available DTDs, we look at how people are actually (mis)using DTDs, show some shortcomings, list some requirements and discuss possible replacements. [...] Conclusion: By its extensible nature, the XML language imperatively needs a constraint structure that is represented today by DTDs. Unfortunately, DTDs have been designed for a specific domain (text processing applications) which represents a small part of the scope of XML. As a specification tool for XML, DTDs are simply inadequate. In this paper we have presented the preliminary results of a survey we have started in Fall 1999. Its primary motivation was to better understand DTDs by looking at how they are actually being used to describe the structure of XML documents. Surprisingly, not unlike living organisms, XML DTDs have mutated from SGML DTDs into something that tries to fit the requirements of XML (both text and data processing). Because of their inherited shortcomings, XML DTDs have been hacked by users, in order to resolve serious issues such as tuple encoding and modularity. Other issues such as reference typing and versioning have simply been postponed, for lack of immediate workarounds. However, in this survey we have onlyscratched the surface of the problem: we not only need a better way to capture the structures of XML documents, but also tools and methodologies to define them properly. It is encouraging though to note that the current proposals to replace DTDs are taking some of these issues into account and offer cleaner constructs to capture what is needed by XML applications. Finally, even though DTDs are ourishing, the corresponding XML documents are still nowhere to be found. The next interesting question will be to see how XML documents are being instantiated for a given DTD. This will be of special interest to the database community who will be 'responsible' for efficiently storing, indexing, querying, mediating and transforming such documents. But this is another story..." See also The XML Trial: FINDING of FACTS" (PowerPoint slides, 44x). Abstract; local archive copy.

• [March 20, 2000] "XML Protocol Viewpoints List - XTech 2000 XML Protocol BOF Notes." By Eric Prud'hommeaux (W3C). "The purpose of this page is to track the various viewpoints in the XML protocol area. The statements reflected here are attributed to people without benifit of supporting quotations from them. In other words, these are my best guess at stating their issues. If you have corrections or enhancements, I encourage you to contact me (Eric Prud'hommeaux)... Before the XTech2000 XML Protocol BOF, I encountered many folks who were interested in XML protocol standardization. I conferred with Henrik Nielson (Microsoft), Don Box (Delovopmentor), Gopol K (Microsoft), Glen Daniels (Allaire), Rob Weltman (Netscape), and someone else from Netscape who's name I don't remember. We discussed a multilayer architecture where the core consisted of a serialization protocol and an extensibility mechanism. This example shows some higher-level protocols stacked on the core serialization and extensibility... [and some dissents:] Dan Winer - XML-RPC as an interim reccomendation; Eric Prud'hommeaux - Transfer Adapters; Glen Daniels - Messaging Over RPC; Ken MacLeod - Keeping it Skinny; Eric Prud'hommeaux - Required Namespaces; Henry Thompson - contextual serialization."

• [March 18, 2000] "XWRAP: An XML-Enabled Wrapper Construction System for Web Information Sources." [Session 28: Web-Based Systems] By Ling Liu, Calton Pu, and Wei Han (Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0280). Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering. February 29 - March 3, 2000, Holiday Inn on the Bay, San Diego, CA, USA. [Proceedings] "This paper describes the methodology and the software development of XWRAP, an XML-enabled wrapper construction system for semi-automatic generation of wrapper programs. By XML-enabled we mean that the metadata about information content that are implicit in the original web pages will be extracted and encoded explicitly as XML tags in the wrapped documents. In addition, the query-based content filtering process is performed against the XML documents. The XWRAP wrapper generation framework has three distinct features. First, it explicitly separates tasks of building wrappers that are specific to a Web source from the tasks that are repetitive for any source, and uses a component library to provide basic building blocks for wrapper programs. Second, it provides a user-friendly interface program to allow wrapper developers to generate their wrapper code with a few mouse clicks. Third and most importantly, we introduce and develop a two-phase code generation framework. The first phase utilizes an interactive interface facility to encode the source-specific metadata knowledge identified by individual wrapper developers as declarative information extraction rules. The second phase combines the information extraction rules generated at the first phase with the XWRAP component library to construct an executable wrapper program for the given web source. We report the initial experiments on performance of the XWRAP code generation system and the wrapper programs generated by XWRAP. [...] We have presented the XWRAP approach to semiautomatically generating wrappers for Web information sources and reported our initial experiments on performance of the XWRAP code generation system and the wrapper programs generated by XWRAP. Our wrapper generation framework has three distinct features. First, it explicitly separates tasks of building wrappers that are specific to a Web source from the tasks that are repetitive for any source, and uses a component library to provide basic building blocks for wrapper programs. Second, it provides a user-friendly interface program to allow wrapper developers to generate their wrapper code with a few mouse clicks. Third and most importantly, we introduce and develop a two-phase code generation framework. The first phase utilizes an interactive interface facility to encode the source-specific metadata knowledge identified by individual wrapper developers as declarative information extraction rules. The second phase combines the information extraction rules generated at the first phase with the XWRAP component library to construct an executable wrapper program for the given web source. Our work continues along three dimensions. The first aspect focuses on providing better tools to incorporate various machine learning algorithms to enhance the robustness of information extraction rules. The second aspect is to enrich the XWRAP information extraction rule language and the component library with enhanced pattern discovery capability and various optimization considerations. The third aspect concerns the incorporation of Microsoft repository technology to handle and manage the versioning issue and the metadata of the XWRAP wrappers. Furthermore, we are interested in investigating issues such as whether the ability of following hyperlinks should be a wrapper functionality at the level of information extraction or a mediator functionality at the level of information integration." See (subscription) the full text in PDF format.

• [March 18, 2000] "Efficient Storage of XML Data." By Carl-Christian Kanne and Guido Moerkotte (Lehrstuhl für Praktische Informatik III, Universität Mannheim, Germany). Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering. February 29 - March 3, 2000, Holiday Inn on the Bay, San Diego, CA, USA. [Proceedings] "NATIX is an efficient, native repository for storing, retrieving and managing XML documents. Other systems map XML data into structures maintainable by traditional DBMS. This introduces additional layers between the logical data and its physical storage, slowing down both updates and query processing. NATIX is native in the sense that it supports tree-structured objects like XML documents at low architecture levels. One example for this low-level support of tree-structured large objects is our parameterizable split algorithm. It dynamically maintains physical records of size smaller than a page which contain sets of connected tree nodes. This not only improves efficiency by clustering sub-trees but also facilitates their compact representation. [...] Our XML repository NATIX has an integrated tree stor-age manager that manages clustered groups of document tree nodes that are treated as atomic by the underlying record manager. As subtrees of the document are changed, clustered nodes can become records of their own or again be merged into clusters. In contrast to traditional large object (LOB) managers or file systems, the decisions which parts of a document reside on the same page are based on the semantics of the data. Additionally, to satisfy special application requirements, clustering of certain node types can be enforced or forbidden by a configuration matrix." See (subscription) the full text in PDF format.

• [March 18, 2000] "Oracle8i -- The XML Enabled Data Management System." [Session 26: XML and Databases] By Sandeepan Banerjee, Vishu Krishnamurthy, Muralidhar Krishnaprasad and Ravi Murthy (Oracle Corporation). Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering. February 29 - March 3, 2000, Holiday Inn on the Bay, San Diego, CA, USA. [Proceedings] "XML is here as the internet standard for information exchange among e-businesses and applications. With its dramatic adoption and its ability to model structured, unstructured and semi-structured data, XML has the potential of becoming the data model for internet data. In the recent years, Oracle has evolved its DBMS to support complex, structured, and un-structured data. Oracle has now extended that technology to enable the storage and querying of XML data by evolving its DBMS to an XML enabled DBMS - Oracle8i. In this paper, we will present Oracle's XML-enabling database technology. In particular, we will discuss how XML data can be stored, managed, and queried in the Oracle8i database. [...] XML is emerging as the standard for data inter-change on the web. Oracle8i is XML-enabled to handle the current needs of the market. Oracle8i is capable of storing structured XML data as object-relational data, and unstructured XML document as interMedia Text data. Correspondingly, Oracle8i also provides the ability to automatically extract object-relational data as XML. In Oracle8i, effi-cient querying of XML data is facilitated using standard SQL. Oracle8i also provides the ability to access XML documents using the DOM (Document Object Model) API. Oracle8i will continue to evolve to meet the needs of the web. Oracle8i's highly scalable, robust, database platform will be evolved to become a leading XML server providing efficient and seamless XML support using standard APIs, languages and protocols." See (subscription) the full text in PDF format.

• [March 18, 2000] "XML and DB2." [Session 26: XML and Databases] By Josephine Cheng and Jane Xu (IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory). Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering. February 29 - March 3, 2000, Holiday Inn on the Bay, San Diego, CA, USA. [Proceedings] "The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a key technology that facilitates both information exchange and e-business transactions. Starting with DB2 UDB Net. Data V1, an application can generate XML documents from SQL queries against DB2 or any ODBC compliant databases. Today DB2 UDB XML Extender not only serves as a repository for both XML documents and their Document Type Definitions (DTDs), but also provides data management functionalities such as data integrity, security, recoverability and manageability. User has the option to store the entire document as an XML user-defined column or to decompose the document into multiple tables and columns. Fast search via indices is provided for both XML elements and attributes. Section search can be done against the content of the document. Query syntax adheres to W3C standards such as Extensive Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) and XML Path Language (XPath) specifications. User can retrieve the entire document or extract XML elements and attributes dynamically in an SQL query. In addition, XML Extender provides stored procedure to generate XML documents from existing data. Together with Net.Data, one can browse the content of the XML documents via the Internet. [...] An end-to-end solution for storing and retrieving XML documents for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer (via browser) processing using DB2 UDB XML Extender and DB2 UDB Net.Data has been described in this paper. In particular, it has been shown that an XML document can be stored as an XML column or decomposed into multiple DB2 tables and columns. In addition, XML document can be generated from existing DB2 data. Readers interested in experimenting with XML Extender and DB2 UDB Net.Data can download the resources: (1) http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/db2/extenders/xmlext and (2) http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/net.data. ['DB2's XML Extender provides new data types that let you store XML documents in DB2 databases and new functions that assist you in working with these structured documents. Entire XML documents can be stored in DB2 databases as character data or stored as external files but still managed by DB2. Retrieval functions allow you to retrieve either the entire XML document or individual elements or attibutes.'] See (subscription) the full text in PDF format.

• [March 18, 2000] "XML Database Products." By Ronald Bourret. [Updated] (March 14, 2000). "In this Web page, I have tried to capture the current state of the market, gathered from Web sites, product reviews, XML webzines, and other XML resource guides. Although complete description of how to use XML with databases is beyond the scope of this page (see instead 'XML and Databases), a brief review will help you choose what product is right for you. XML documents fall into two broad categories: data-centric and document-centric. Data-centric documents are those were XML is used as a data transport. They include sales orders, patient records, and scientific data and their physical structure -- the order of sibling elements, whether data is stored in attributes or PCDATA-only elements, whether entities are used -- is often unimportant. A special case of data-centric documents is dynamic Web pages, such as online catalogs and address lists, which are constructed from known, regular sets of data. Document-centric documents are those in which XML is used for its SGML-like capabilities, such as in user's manuals, static Web pages, and marketing brochures. They are characterized by irregular structure and mixed content and their physical structure is important..." [Related XML-DEV post: 'I have spent the last week trolling the Web for new database products that you can use with XML. Perhaps I've simply gotten better at finding things, but it appears the the number of products has exploded since I last updated the list three months ago. For one thing, almost all of the major database companies have released XML extensions or are in beta. But there are also a number of native XML databases coming to market (particularly intriguing was IceBreaker, which has a footprint of < 50K), as well as several persistent DOM implementations. On top of this are an ever-growing number of middleware products, XML-enabled Web servers, and XML servers -- platforms for deploying XML-based e-commerce systems. I can't help but wonder if, in a year, the interaction between XML and databases will be so pervasive that the list won't even be necessary..."]

• [March 18, 2000] "The XML Revolution: Technologies for the future Web." By Anders Møller and Michael I. Schwartzbach (BRICS Research Center, University of Aarhus, Denmark). "This 130+ page slide collection provides an introduction and overview of XML, Namespaces, XLink, XPointer, XPath, DSD, XSLT, and XML-QL, including selected links to more information about each topic... The tutorial gives a thorough tour of: XML, both a concrete and a conceptual description; Namespaces, about avoiding nameclashes in markup; XLink, generalizing the HTML link model; XPointer, for fine-grained addressing in documents; XPath, used extensively in both XPointer and XSLT; DSD, a simple but powerful schema language; XSLT, for making transformations of XML documents; XML-QL, query languages generalizing SQL to XML. Furthermore, the tutorial contains selected links for more information about each topic. The slides are designed with concrete motivation and technical contents in focus, for the reader who wishes to understand and actually use these technologies."

• [March 18, 2000] "Shrink-wrapped XML: Firm to provide laptops with new listing technology." By Warren Lutz. In Inman News [Features] (March 16, 2000). "The XML Web data language might seem like heady stuff, but it could be yours for $2,500. That's the starting price Tahoe City, California-based OpenMLS has set for what it calls a 'shrink wrapped' XML listing management system for brokers. The product, called PureXML, comes installed in laptop computers running on the Windows 2000 operating system. PureXML also acts as a Web server, allowing consumers to search the listings brokers choose to make available on the Internet... Some Web experts believe XML will revolutionize the way business is conducted on the Internet and how consumers find products and services, including real estate. At least two XML specifications have been developed for residential property listings: RELML, drafted through collaboration with OpenMLS, 4thWorldTelecom and HomeSeekers.com; and RETS, developed by the National Association of Realtors and several MLS and technology firms."

• [March 18, 2000] "New XML standards: MBAA works with Data Interchange Standards Group for April Release." In Inman News [Features] (March 1, 2000). "The Mortgage Banker's Association of America is working on standards for XML, or extensible markup language -- a more comprehensive version of HTML -- and has contracted with an e-commerce to provide such services. Data Interchange Standards Association, which has partnered with several XML standards groups, will provide collaborative services to MBAA's Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization. The organization is trying to consolidate an array of independent XML initiatives. DISA will develop a Mortgage Data Dictionary in XML, representing mortgage data, a mortgage data model and repository tools. At the top of the list are unifying proprietary XML formats and a creating a core data set for establishing the dictionary, which will serve as a single source for XML document definitions. The first specifications may be released as early as April." See: "Mortgage Bankers Association of America XML Workgroup."

• [March 18, 2000] "Data Junction Releases XML-Enabling Product." By Amy Newman. In Internet News.com (March 10, 2000). "Data transformation software vendor Data Junction Corp. this week released XML Junction. XML Junction aims to provide e-commerce and business integration professionals with the ability to XML-enable virtually any application or data source for a full range of e-commerce integration, application integration, and business-to-business data exchange projects. XML Junction features the automated creation of Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and XML documents, as well as a myriad data-mapping and data-manipulation capabilities. The product leverages Data Junction's proven drag-and-drop interface and integration engine to rapidly map and transform more than 100 application and data formats to XML. DTDs and XML documents are automatically created. This enables data stored in any format (e.g., EDI, XML, SQL, Cobol, HL7 and SAP) to be published to the Web or exchanged with any external application. In addition, data stored in XML documents and traditional applications can be manipulated to ensure compliance with any standard, such as those used by BizTalk, Schema.net, Ariba's Commerce XML and Financial Products Markup Language (FpML), as well as non-XML business-to-business standards, such as Open Buying on the Internet and RosettaNet."

• [March 18, 2000] "X-traWeb Releases Wireless Markup Language X-Node." By Amy Newman (Managing Editor, ServerWatch). In Internet News.com (March 17, 2000). "X-traWeb Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of World Wireless Communications Inc. Friday unveiled its new Wireless Markup Language (WML) X-Node. The WML X-Node provides connectivity between Web-enabled devices and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled personal communicators. WAP facilitates access to Internet content from wireless telephones and mobile computing devices that employ micro-browsers. According to the WAP Forum, by 2001 there will be more than 530 million wireless subscribers. This version of X-Node enables customers to monitor and control virtually any device using the Internet and a standard wireless platform, David Singer, World Wireless chairman, chief executive officer and president said..." See "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification (WML)."

• [March 17, 2000] "Mobile users' new voice. AT&T and Lucent tap VoiceXML spec for new services." By Grant Du Bois. In PC Week [Online] Volume 17, Number 11 (March 10, 2000), page 16. " An Internet standard for voice communications is beginning to spawn new services for mobile professionals. Forthcoming services from AT&T Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. are part of a trend to use VoiceXML (Extensible Markup Language) to provide standardized speech platforms, applications, services and development tools to increase access to Internet content and services by voice. Version 1.0 of the VoiceXML specification, which the VoiceXML Forum released last week at the Computer Telephony Expo in Los Angeles, simplifies the creation of Web-based interactive voice response services; enables voice access by phone to Web sites, company intranets and call center databases; and provides a platform for new devices and appliances. AT&T, of Basking Ridge, N.J., is using VoiceXML in a service it is testing for its WorldNet Internet service. Called Unified Alerting, the service uses VoiceXML to act as a bridge between the public phone network and the Internet..." For description and references, see "VoiceXML Forum."

• [March 17, 2000] "How XML Enables Dynamic Content." By Jeffrey Vogel. In Network World Volume 17 Number 11 (March 13, 2000), page 39. ['Update: Almost every Web site offers some form of dynamic content. Whether it's stock quotes, personalized account information or movie show times, users expect customized information to be delivered quickly and accurately.] "As more firms build dynamic Web sites, they are turning to XML-based Web content management and delivery systems to help manage, integrate and communicate information to constituents in real time. The key to the systems is their XML base. XML enables the separation of content from business logic and presentation. By defining the content of a document separately from its formatting, XML makes it easier to reuse the content in other applications or presentation environments. To understand XML's role in dynamic Web content delivery, one must first understand the concept of tags. Like HTML, XML uses elements and attributes, which are indicated in a document using tags. But unlike HTML - which only can describe how to display content, not what the content is - XML enables tagging of information in a document that describes what that content is about, in explicit terminology and implicit nesting structure. XML's tag structure lets users define and index sets of data however they wish - that is, to structure documents according to their needs... finding a content management system that has the ability to transform XML to HTML on the server level, before it is sent to the user's browser, is critical. Some systems do this by "walking" the tree of an XML document, scanning each tag and building an HTML file by combining the tags and a template, which incorporates the business logic that has been scripted. The result is a dynamic document that changes in response to changes in content, logic and/or presentation."

• [March 17, 2000] "Bowstreet boosts B2B software. Business Web Factory package gets improved performance and Linux support." By Carolyn D. Marsan. In Network World Volume 17 Number 11 (March 13, 2000), pages 33-34. "Users looking to develop business-to-business e-commerce Web sites may be interested in two new products Bowstreet announced today. The start-up in Portsmouth, N.H., is upgrading its flagship product, Bowstreet Business Web Factory 2.0, with enhanced performance, support for Linux and a new name. The software, previously known as Bowstreet Business Automation Factory, automates the development of business-to-business Web sites, allowing business executives, rather than IT specialists, to update and customize sites for partners and customers. The software relies on an automation engine that assembles Web sites using XML-based user profiles, templates and software components stored in a directory."

• [March 17, 2000] "Hype aside, WAP has worries." By Carmen Nobel. In PC Week [Online] Volume 17, Number 11 (March 10, 2000), page 10. "The running joke in the wireless industry is that WAP doesn't stand for Wireless Application Protocol, but rather 'Where are the phones'. Although the initial version of the WAP specification -- which essentially describes how to display Internet data on mobile phones -- has been ratified, few WAP products are available in the market. Serious issues involving the protocol, such as security holes, intellectual property rights, competitive interim solutions and slow product cycles, could impede delivery of more browsers and devices that support the spec. In light of the recent hacking scares in the industry, security may be the biggest concern at the moment for WAP. While the current spec includes some security, there is a notable holes... As for intellectual property, several companies claim to have invented parts of the specification. Most public among the claims is one made by Geoworks Corp., of Alameda, Calif. Geoworks has a 1994 patent on some of its wireless technology that it says is part of the WAP standard. 'If Geoworks does have a claim, it could be a death knell for the standard', said Jon Oakes, president and CEO of ThinAirApps." See "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification (WML)."

• [March 17, 2000] "New Standard Tames Paperwork Beast." By Joseph McKendrick. In ent - The Independent Newspaper for Windows NT Enterprise Computing [Online] Volume 5 Number 4 (March 08, 2000), pages 23, 27. "For years, traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) agreements were forged on paper. Companies signed off on agreed upon specifications for connections, protocols, and types of documents to be passed back and forth. With the Web opening up electronic trading relationships to tens of thousands of new companies, the stacks of agreements going back and forth could wipe out entire forests. Now, a proposed new standard may help companies cement Web trading relationships online, before they start online transactions. IBM Corp. (www.ibm.com), which originated the proposal, calls the XML-based initiative Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language (tpaML). Recently, IBM submitted tpaML specs to the XML standards consortium OASIS (www.oasis-open.org). Developed at IBM's Advanced Commerce Institute, the tpaML specification uses XML to define and implement electronic contracts, such as general contract terms and conditions, participant roles, communication and security protocols, and business processes. The tpaML standard defines how trading partners will interact at the transport, document exchange, and business protocol layers. TpaML is a complementary technology to ebXML, the Electronic Business XML initiative, which is a joint effort of the United Nations/CEFACT and OASIS to establish a global framework for the exchange of electronic business data. Vendors that have endorsed tpaML for potential use with their customers include CommerceQuest, DataChannel, Extricity, Geac/JBA, Harbinger, JDA, Infinium, Intelisys, Mincom, PeopleSoft, Sterling Commerce, and Synquest. It is unclear whether Microsoft -- also a member of OASIS -- will buy into the standard or adopt its own variation." See "Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language (tpaML)."

• [March 17, 2000] "Microsoft spins off HomeAdvisor." By Mary Jo Foley. In ZDNN (March 16, 2000). ['Microsoft's march into the home has another connotation. MSN real estate site will stand alone and jump into the mortgage business.'] "Microsoft is continuing to slowly but surely divest itself of its online content properties. Its latest move: On Thursday, the company announced plans to spin off its MSN HomeAdvisor real-estate site as a separate business. Microsoft has spun off a number of verticals over the past couple of years, including its MSNBC news site, Expedia travel site, and CarPoint car dealer site. A few of these, like Expedia, have gone on to become standalone public companies. CarPoint, a Microsoft-Ford Motor Co. joint venture, likewise could be poised to go public, as Microsoft officials have hinted as of late. . . While Microsoft talks up HomeAdvisor's 750,000 home listings and 2.5 million unique visitors per month to the HomeAdvisor.com site on MSN, it's the underlying transaction platform that Microsoft is hoping will make the new company successful. This platform, to which Microsoft refers internally as 'Mortgage ATM,' is one of Microsoft's first implementations of its BizTalk technology. The platform basically provides an XML-based infrastructure that links home buyers and sellers. HomeAdvisor Technologies plans to customize the transaction platform and distribute it, through partners, to banks, lenders and real estate professionals In the coming weeks, Microsoft also is adding an automated loan/credit-approval platform to the HomeAdvisor site, as well."

• [March 17, 2000] "Invest in both content management and XML to strengthen your site." By Laura Wonnacott. In InfoWorld (March 10, 2000). "[InfoWorld Web] Site Savvy -- I've spent little time flexing our savvy muscles. To date, I've revealed many of our mistakes. In recognizing that even worst-case experiences carry a golden foundation, we did make two savvy decisions that will play in our favor: our investments in content management and XML solutions. We were looking for not only a content management system, but also for a solution that supported XML. We saw through the hype surrounding XML and recognized its true strengths. We knew a key ingredient in our future success would be our ability to separate content, format, and business logic. Our pursuit revealed one vendor and product of choice -- Inso's Dynabase. Our decision to use XML was not only forward-thinking, but probably the best technology choice for InfoWorld.com in the long haul. Sure, HTML is the foundation of the Web as far as a publishing medium. But despite its fame, a lot of meaningful information remains obscured. With XML, meaning can be determined by the data stored in elements, rather than by a less intelligent technique, such as the number of times a word occurs in the document. Unlike HTML, XML is focused on document structure vs. document formatting. XML enhances the information in documents. For example, stories on our site include both a category tag and an audience tag. This data goes along with the story in a very structured way. It is then easy to aggregate meaningful data. For example, from our Home Page you can access both our subject indexes and our sections. Here, we effortlessly aggregate content based on subject..."

• [March 17, 2000] "Coming Soon: Raven." By Sebastian Rupley. In PC Magazine (March 14, 2000). "Lotus, a company that has scored long-term success with its Notes product for workgroup collaboration and messaging, is seeking to mine the same territory with new knowledge management software code-named Raven. As Lotus prepares to test Raven in several enterprises, Microsoft is planning to move its Exchange technology in the direction of knowledge management, and several smaller players, such as Cognos, are shaping up as competitors as well...Raven is positioned to provide a single portal -- accessible via a browser -- that will allow users in an enterprise to access information and applications on a given subject or track down the right knowledgeable person within an organization on a given topic. The technology, which is designed to take advantage of Lotus's Domino messaging and groupware platform and Notes technology, as well as IBM's DB2 database technology, will include groupware-like features designed to organize related tasks, teams, and projects. The most direct competition for Lotus's Raven, though, may end up coming from Microsoft's upcoming Exchange 2000 technology. Microsoft has been positioning Exchange 2000, due to ship midyear, as a 'collaboration server' functioning as the core building block within a company's knowledge infrastructure. By taking advantage of Internet standards such as HTML and XML to help organizations integrate Exchange with their IT infrastructures, and by working with all kinds of external databases, Microsoft aims to change common perceptions of Exchange. Microsoft wants organizations to stop thinking of Exchange as simply an e-mail platform and start thinking of it as a company-wide groupware and knowledge-sharing platform..."

• [March 17, 2000] "Taking To The Air: The Race is On." By Ben Elgin. In ZDNet DevHead (March 15, 2000). "Test-driving its new talent, 300-person C-bridge just polished off a pilot deployment, taking data from a company's enterprise-resource-planning system, converting it into XML and translating it into a wireless markup language. Employees then access the company data via cell phone and other devices. Meanwhile, front-end experts like LDS are betting that plenty of corporations will need help translating traditional HTML content to fit tiny device screens. LDS, a 170-person, New Jersey-based integrator, is quickly trying to extend its expertise in mark-up languages to the wireless arena..."

• [March 16, 2000] "Shaping a CBR View with XML." By Conor Hayes and P. Cunningham (Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin). Pages 468-481 (with 11 references) in Case-Based Reasoning Research and Development. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, ICCBR-99. [Seeon Monastery, Germany, 27-30 July 1999.] Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 1650. Edited by K.-D. Althoff, R. Bergmann, and L.K. Branting. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, 1999. "Abstract: Case based reasoning has found increasing application on the Internet as an assistant in Internet commerce stores and as a reasoning agent for online technical support. The strength of CBR in this area stems from its reuse of the knowledge base associated with a particular application, thus providing an ideal way to make personalised configuration or technical information available to the Internet user. Since case data may be one aspect of a company's entire corporate knowledge system, it is important to integrate case data easily within a company's IT infrastructure, using industry specific vocabulary. We suggest XML as the likely candidate to provide such integration. Some applications have already begun to use XML as a case representation language. We review these and present the idea of a standard case view in XML that can work with the vocabularies or namespaces being developed by specific industries. Earlier research has produced version 1.0 of a Case Based Markup Language which attempts to mark up cases in XML to enable distributed computing. The drawbacks of this implementation are outlined, as well as the developments in XML that allow us to produce an XML 'View' of a company's knowledge system. We detail the benefits of our system for industry in general in terms of extensibility, ease of reuse and interoperability." See the outline and abstract of the related paper, "Distributed CBR Using XML." [local copies: paper/Postscript, abstract/HTML] See: "Case Based Markup Language (CBML)."

• [March 16, 2000] "Enhancing XSL. An in-depth look at the new XSLT support in t