Cover Pages: XML Industry News

XML News

This XML Industry News section consists mainly of links to company press releases announcing support for XML/XSL/XLink, beginning with July 2000. An effort has been made to include representative items, but the collection is not exhaustive. Other documents with reference collections:

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

Site Search: [VMS Indexed Search]

[September 30, 2000] "Content Management Provider PyBiz Announces Strategic Partnership With BeOpen in Utilizing Python Programming Language." PyBiz Announces BeOpen.com as a Technology and Service Partner for co-promotion of products and services. BeOpen.com, the leader in Python technologies, employs the core Python development team, including Python's creator and open source luminary Guido van Rossum. PyBiz strongly evangelizes Python and believes in BeOpen's initiatives, which include sponsorship of the core Python team and PythonLabs Professional Services. BeOpen believes that PyBiz's products and services, particularly eContentMgr, and XDisect, can have a major impact on the market for next-generation XML-based web solutions. Upon seeing a demo of eContentMgr, BeOpen's CEO, Mark Kaleem noted. PyBiz solves customer problems in the areas of distributed content management and personalized web publishing. Our products, eContentMgr and XDisect, help customers address their evolving e-business requirements. eContentMgr provides an XML-based open solution for content management built on XDisect. XDisect is our next-generation XML repository and search engine technology." See: "XML and Python."
[September 28, 2000] "BPMI.org Gets Underway at Kick-Off Meeting. Members of Business Process Management Initiative Take Action." - "BPMI.org, the Business Process Management Initiative, announced the first meeting of the new organization was held on Thursday, Sept. 21 in Burlingame, Calif. Over 40 high tech professionals from around the world participated in the day-long session to meet fellow members, establish a foundation for the initiative, and discuss plans moving forward. Among the many issues discussed was the working draft of the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML). BPML is an XML Schema that provides a standard way to model mission-critical business processes. By covering the multiple dimensions of business process modeling in the open enterprise, BPML will bridge the gap between legacy IT infrastructures and emerging business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk, ebXML, and WSDL. An initial working draft of BPML was submitted to members on Aug. 15, 2000. 'The meeting has revealed a wide consensus from vendors, integrators, and customers on the needs and approaches for the Business Process Modeling Language,' said Jean-Jacques Dubray, chief architect at eXcelon Corporation. 'The first release of the BPML specification will establish a clear interface with business collaboration protocols, a complete model for process transactions across company boundaries, and a well defined link between the process flow and the data flow.' 'Last week's meeting was a fantastic beginning for BPMI.org,' noted Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of Intalio. 'It became instantly clear that the members are focused on achieving meaningful, lasting results that will benefit everyone involved in business process management.' Founded on Aug. 7, 2000, BPMI.org represents a host of companies formed to define specifications for the management of mission-critical business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners. The XML-based standards generated from this initiative will support and complement existing business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk, ebXML, and WSDL, and new service registration and discovery initiatives such as UDDI. Membership to the Business Process Management Initiative is open to any company, organization, or individual.' "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."
[September 28, 2000] "IFX Expands Working Groups to Include Loan Applications." - "The Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum announced today the addition of a new working group focusing on loan applications. This group will address the key issues and opportunities that lenders and businesses face in supporting credit evaluation and funding in an e-commerce environment, and is led by Dennis Warnke of Credit Online, Inc. The intent is to facilitate the movement of all types of credit transactions back and forth between originators and credit grantors by defining new transaction types for the IFX message handler and defining Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Type Definitions (DTDs) for data transport. 'The addition of a Loan Application Working Group opens the doors to faster transactions and better service,' said IFX chairman Mark Tiggas of Wells Fargo. 'IFX involvement in loan application standards will enable companies to significantly lower payment risk and decrease loan turnaround time from days to minutes.' The scope of the initial effort of this IFX working group will include automobile, mortgage and student lending. Subsequent efforts will focus on other loans and credit types, and documentation handling. By defining a standard set of semantic terms, the Loan Application Working Group will enable efficient communications related to credit evaluation and funding to those who implement the IFX standard. This working group will be responsible for defining enhancements to the established IFX Business Messages, as well as adding these changes to the IFX XML DTD for data transport. Three years ago, the standard method for forwarding loan applications to credit grantors was to fax a handwritten application to a credit processing center. The application was entered at the processing center during normal or extended work hours with a decision returned via facsimile, hours or even days, later. The emergence of the Internet as a distribution channel for goods and services is increasing the pressure on businesses to respond quickly to customer requests for goods and services. For high value goods, this often means either knowing the customer you are doing business with, or having the ability to evaluate the payment risk of prospective customers at the point of sale, or having the ability to transfer credit risk to an on-line lender. E-commerce is demanding that credit granting institutions receive credit applications electronically and respond within minutes, 24 hours per day, seven days a week. IFX standards using XML help make this kind of immediate customer service happen. The IFX Forum, open for worldwide participation, was founded to provide a variety of benefits for financial services companies and their customers, and focuses on promoting the development and adoption of the IFX specification. The IFX Forum members develop open and interoperable specifications that meet the Financial Services Industry business requirements for serving consumer and corporate customers. The mission of the IFX Forum's open membership is to expedite the development and implementation of the IFX specification, which defines the business message format for the electronic exchange of data." [...] "The IFX Forum, a non-profit organization that is open for worldwide participation, was founded to provide a wide variety of benefits for financial services companies, service providers, information technology companies and the customers of each. The IFX Forum focuses on providing leadership, structure, and process for the development, promotion, use and adoption of the IFX Specification, which defines the business message format and transmission protocol for the electronic exchange of data. The IFX Specification is intended to drive and accelerate the widespread adoption of an online financial services standard, providing a foundation upon which the financial services industry can exploit electronic delivery channels to rapidly deliver value added applications and financial services products to consumers. IFX 1.0 was based on the 'InteroperaBILL' initiative. Financial institutions, technology providers and billers participated in the effort to develop business-level technical requirements to build an interoperable, online bill presentment and payment solution. As part of the "InteroperaBILL" initiative, the National Automated Clearinghouse Association. s Council on Electronic Billing and Payment, created and published business guidelines for the developing online bill presentment and payment market." See "Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX)."
[September 28, 2000] "webMethods Announces Support For W3C XML Schema for Use Across Business-to-Business Integration (B2BI) Framework. First B2Bi Solution to Offer Complete and Detailed Descriptions of XML-based Documents to Automate Business Processes Between Trading Partners." - "webMethods, Inc., a leading provider of business-to-business integration (B2Bi) solutions, today announced support for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Schema, a model for describing the structure and content of XML documents. webMethods is the first B2Bi vendor to offer support for the April drafts of the W3C XML Schema, which provide users with enhanced capabilities when automating business processes. B2Bi requires rich data structures that convey the complete information necessary for both data integration and the automation of B2B business processes. The W3C XML Schema enables increased data integrity, enabling richer and faster business interactions. Introduced in 1998, webMethods B2B was the first product to deliver XML-based e-commerce solutions to quickly and securely integrate the diverse technology and business processes of companies and their trading partners. Today's announcement builds on this unmatched innovation by delivering expanded functionality to address the requirements for richer data integrity. Business processes that are improved with the W3C XML Schema include e-commerce, customer relationship management, strategic enterprise management and planning, business intelligence, supply chain management, human resources, logistics, manufacturing, financial services and knowledge management. 'webMethods continues to introduce open, innovative solutions that allow companies to overcome traditional B2Bi challenges and quickly create integrated trading networks,' said Jim Green, CTO and executive vice president of Product Development of webMethods, Inc. 'We are proud to be the first B2Bi vendor to support the April drafts of the W3C XML Schema and our product will continue to track this emerging standard. We believe it will play a major role in streamlining the process of transacting business over the Internet by making the exchange of information between trading partners simpler and more interoperable.' The webMethods implementation of the April drafts of the W3C XML Schema (Structures and Datatypes) also allows customers to leverage this rich data description capability for use with non-XML data structures, including EDI and proprietary formats such as SAP IDOC. This enables customers to leverage the W3C XML Schema as a single language for describing all data structures across the enterprise and extended trading networks, thereby shortening implementation times. webMethods provides a complete B2Bi solution that allows organizations to effectively realize their e-commerce strategies. The webMethods product family was designed to provide broad support for open standards and protocols, such as XML, RosettaNet, ebXML, FpML, cXML, xCBL, OBI, OAG, ACORD, BizTalk framework and UDDI. Through support of these standards, webMethods products provide seamless integration both within the enterprise and across the Internet to trading networks and B2B marketplaces." For schema description and references, see "XML Schemas."
[September 27, 2000] "New HR-XML Staffing Exchange Protocol Standardizes Web-Based Recruiting. Major HR Companies Team in Support of XML Standard for Job Postings on the Web." - "The new HR-XML Staffing Exchange Protocol (SEP) for standardizing job postings on the Internet was demonstrated by five major HR companies at the HR Technology Conference this week. The XML-based SEP, which is currently under review by HR-XML, provides a common method for posting employment opportunities to web-based recruiting sites and the return of resumes matching those positions. "Recruiting on the Internet just got a lot easier--for everyone," said Alan Sproat (jobs.com), leader of the HR-XML Recruiting and Staffing Workgroup. "Using HR-XML SEP, employers can submit their requisitions to more publishers, without multiple custom interfaces. Resumes can be retrieved, searched and evaluated much more easily when they conform to SEP's consistent format. Job seekers can access a targeted range of positions with better-defined requirements. Finally, application developers can offer their clients the benefits of SEP-compliant integration and automation tools." Participants in the HR Technology Conference demonstration included HR-XML members, eWork Exchange, Icarian, jobs.com, Novient and Peopleclick. The companies took on roles of job requisitioner, job board and job seeker. Using the HR-XML SEP schema and standard http technology, the participants not only created postings, they also updated and deleted requisitions, responded to openings and searched postings and resumes--all without the customized interchange mechanisms that would be required today. "We've demonstrated the first version of the HR-XML SEP," explained Lon Pilot, president of the HR-XML Consortium. "We encourage employers, HR service providers and all companies who are affected by the standardization of job postings to contribute to further development of this messaging format." Organizations and individuals interested in joining the HR-XML, should visit ww.hr-xml.org/channels/join.cfm. About HR-XML HR-XML is the independent, non-profit consortium dedicated to enabling e-commerce and inter-company exchange of human resources (HR) data worldwide. The work of the Consortium centers on the development and promotion of standardized XML vocabularies for HR. HR-XML's efforts are focused on standards for staffing and recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and workforce management." See: "HR-XML Consortium."
[September 27, 2000] "Wellogix Adds DrillTeam to Core Service. WellXML Data Standards to be Made Publicly Available to Oil and Gas Industry." Wellogix, Inc. announced today the addition of DrillTeam, an online project management and collaboration tool, to its core service package. Concurrently, the company announced the public availability of its WellXML data tag sets to the oil and gas industry. The addition of DrillTeam enhances the process efficiencies available through the company's standard service offering. DrillTeam allows oil and gas company engineering teams to jointly specify requirements for well drilling, completion and workover operations in conjunction with their main service providers, all online. The product allows different levels of information sharing among users, so that the owner of any single-well or multi-well project retains complete control over what information can be modified by different members of the project team. At the same time, the owner of a project can use DrillTeam to show or delegate project specifications to specialists in other areas of the company, and to external experts such as technical representatives of the company's service providers. WellXML is a subset of XML (extensible markup language) specific to the oil and gas industry, created to provide common data structures for the transfer of information between the back-office systems and well-planning/design software of oil companies and their service providers. Use of WellXML common data structures can alleviate the need for re-keying information that has been received from another company's software systems, greatly improving process efficiencies, increasing the value of personnel assets, and eliminating costly data re-entry errors. 'By providing WellXML free to the industry, we intend to facilitate the acceptance of common data structures to improve the speed and accuracy of information transfer in the industry,' said Bill Chikirivao, chief knowledge officer of Wellogix. 'WellXML allows companies to differentiate themselves by maintaining preferred graphical and organizational representation of information, while achieving standard communication tools for the transfer of data between software systems. A close analogy would be two car companies building cars with unique appearances, while using the same or similar engines and compatible parts under the hood. Wellogix was formed through the merger of WellBid, Inc. and eNersection, two leaders in workflow improvement and knowledge management in the oil and gas industry. The combined company now provides a single source for online tools and software infrastructure to streamline workflow, improve collaboration, expedite the inter-company exchange of enterprise data, and communicate complex engineered services via the Internet..." See: "Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation (POSC) XML Related Projects."
[September 25, 2000] "Competing Data Warehousing Standards to Merge in the OMG." - "Today, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) and the Object Management Group (OMG), two industry organizations with competing data warehousing standards, jointly announced that the MDC will merge into the OMG. As a result, the MDC will discontinue independent operations and work will continue in the OMG to integrate the two standards. Until this week, there were two major standards for metadata and modeling in the areas of data warehousing and component-based development. Data warehousing is a response to the enterprise need to integrate valuable data spread across organizations from multiple sources. Analysis of an enterprise's accumulated data not only allows sales and production to be tuned for maximum profitability, but also allows entirely new and profitable products to be discovered and exploited. However, it is difficult to merge data into a single warehouse when its sources are spread over a number of different databases, using different data models. The merger of MDC into the OMG marks an agreement of the major data warehousing and metadata vendors to converge on one standard, incorporating the best of the MDC's Open Information Model (OIM) with the best of the OMG's Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). When the work is complete, the resulting specification will be issued by the OMG as the next version of the CWM. A single standard will allow users to exchange metadata between different products from different vendors freely. . . Founded in 1995, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) is a not-for-profit consortium of 50 vendors and end-users, including BMC, Informatica, CA, NCR, Microsoft, and SAS, whose goal is to provide a tactical solution for metadata exchange. The Coalition developed the MDC OIM (Open Information Model), a technology-neutral and vendor-independent metadata standard that is comprised of the Meta Data Interchange Specification (MDIS) and the OIM, originally submitted by Microsoft. Since the MDC OIM 1.0 became available in July 1999, work has been under way to align the standard with the CWM developed by OMG. On August 31, MDC membership voted to formalize the decision to merge with OMG. The Object Management Group's Common Warehouse Metamodel builds on various standards, including OMG's UML (Unified Modeling Language), XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) and MOF (Meta Object Facility), and on the Coalition's OIM. The CWM was developed by a number of companies, including IBM, Oracle, Unisys, Hyperion, Genesis, NCR, UBS, and Dimension EDI, and is an adopted OMG standard." See "MDC Open Information Model (OIM)" and "OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) Specification."
[September 25, 2000] "Microsoft Releases Windows CE 3.0 Add-On Pack. Add-On Pack Provides the First Step in Enabling the .NET Platform for Devices." - "Today at the 11th annual Embedded Systems Conference (ESC), the world's largest exhibition of embedded products and services, Microsoft Corp. announced the release of the Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 Add-On Pack. The Add-On Pack adds new operating system components to the rich set of technology building blocks already available in the Windows CE 3.0 operating system. The Windows CE 3.0 Add-On Pack provides embedded developers not only with new networking and communication technologies, but also more advanced system analysis tools and new extensibility software development kits (SDKs), enabling quick and easy development of a wide range of rich 32-bit connected Windows Powered devices. In addition, the Windows CE 3.0 Add-On Pack includes support for XML, marking the first step toward enabling the Microsoft .NET Platform for devices. These new operating system components and tools will be integrated directly into Platform Builder 3.0, the development tool that is used to create a Windows CE operating system image, and are available at no charge to current Platform Builder 3.0 customers. Because of the highly componentized architecture of Windows CE 3.0, developers can immediately utilize the new components and tools in their new or existing designs...The Windows CE 3.0 Add-On Pack adds to the more than 200 operating system components and modules available to developers for Windows CE 3.0. New components include the following: (1) The XML Parser implements an interface that allows for convenient validating, parsing and modifying of XML data. (2) Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) enables a Windows CE-based device to share its Internet connection among one or more devices running on the same network. (3) Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) enables remote users to access corporate networks securely across the Internet. (4) Crypto API 2.0 provides enhanced security through certificate-based functionality and support for smart cards. (5) Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 5.0 enables footprint-sensitive Windows CE 3.0-based devices, such as Windows-based terminals, to access the Windows line of business applications running on a Windows 2000-based terminal server."
[September 25, 2000] "SoftQuad Announces the Availability of MarketAgility, A Supply-Side Solution for B2B E-commerce. An end-to-end XML solution that gives suppliers total control over their e-market presence." - "SoftQuad Software Ltd., an internationally recognized developer of XML enabling technologies and commerce solutions for e-business, today announced the availability of SoftQuad MarketAgility, an end-to-end technology and services solution that gives suppliers total control over the creation, management and delivery of customized e-catalogs to multiple e-marketplaces and e-procurement systems. MarketAgility is a complete solution, built from the ground up around XML, the new language of e-commerce and a technology SoftQuad helped develop. It combines SoftQuad's XML enabling technologies with the expertise of SoftQuad's Product Solutions Services Group to provide suppliers with an automated catalog management solution tailored to their existing technology infrastructure, business processes and e-catalog requirements. A server-based solution built on industry standard databases and administered through a unified Web interface, MarketAgility provides both system and catalog administrators with an easy-to-use, secure and reliable platform for creating customized e-market catalogs. It automates the collection, normalization and incremental updating of structured product information from wherever it resides in an enterprise 'content management systems, electronic resource planning systems, enterprise databases, and more' into an XML-based master catalog. To transfer unstructured information into the master catalog and supplement raw product data with rich content such as descriptive marketing text, images and Web pages, suppliers use the MarketAgility Workbench, a powerful, yet easy to use XML composition and viewing tool based on SoftQuad's award-winning XMetaL technology. Customized catalogs with buyer specific prices can easily be created, reviewed, updated and approved using MarketAgility's Web-based catalog management tools. Because information is stored in XML, catalogs are easily transformed into the specific dialect of XML used by each targeted e-marketplace. MarketAgility supports data formats for Ariba, Commerce One, e-procurement systems, content aggregators and syndicators, Web publishing systems, and wireless applications."
[September 21, 2000] "eWork and Novient Announce Partnership Creating a Powerful Way for Services Organizations to Access External Talent. Agreement Links Professional Services Automation Provider with Cutting-Edge Contingent Workforce Procurement Solution." - "Novient Inc., a global provider of Internet infrastructure for the services industry, and eWork Exchange, the Internet`s leading global project-work marketplace and B2B services company, today announced a partnership that creates a powerful way for services organizations to seamlessly identify and manage external talent. The alliance leverages Novient's PSA software application and the Novient iServerNet infrastructure with eWork's world-wide pool of independent contractors and consultants, resulting in a customizable contingent workforce procurement and management solution designed with the customer's unique business processes and needs in mind... This integration of offerings allows Novient solutions customers, such as Andersen Consulting, Siemens Business Services, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and SAP AG, to easily search for and hire qualified independent professionals through eWork Exchange's global public marketplace, which includes contractors and consultants from over 130 nations worldwide. Tuesday, Sept. 26th [2000], eWork Exchange and Novient will collaborate in a demonstration of cutting-edge HR-XML technology at the HR Technology Conference and Exposition at the Long Beach, CA Convention Center. The demonstration will show how the integrated eWork/Novient partnership will provide service organizations with a way to effectively and cost-efficiently leverage both internal and external human resources, using XML 'tagged-data' to easily access, transfer, index, search for and secure information/content based on a shared XML vocabulary. This represents the first XML integration between a PSA application and an Internet services marketplace..." See also "HR-XML Consortium."
[September 21, 2000] "Jabber Surpasses 10,000 Instant Messaging Server Downloads And More Than 1,000 Instant Messaging Servers Deployed." - "Jabber, the only open source, extensible instant messaging platform, today surpassed 10,000 server downloads with more than 1,000 of these servers now actively deployed on the Internet. This marks a 100 percent increase in the number of downloaded servers in the last two months and an increase of more than ten times the number of servers in active deployment in the same period. Jabber is the only open source, XML-based platform for extensible instant messaging applications. Open source means the source code may be freely shared and improved upon. XML is an extensible markup language similar to HTML, the language used for producing most Web pages. Unlike HTML however, XML is much more structured, flexible and functional, allowing Web documents to be displayed and processed on a greater variety of Web browsers and Web-enabled devices such as handheld and palmtop computers. Jabber's open source platform delivers complete control to enterprises, while its' XML-based approach provides an ideal model for integrating and embedding Jabber into key customer service, commerce and exchange service applications. Jabber also provides interoperability with key messaging services through gateways which bridge Jabber to AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), ICQ, Yahoo and MSN (Microsoft Network) and through bridges to IRC chat and SMTP e-mail." See: "Jabber XML Protocol."
[September 21, 2000] "Oracle Backs New XML Standard to 'Mindmeld'." - "Soon, data mining software from different companies will be able to "mindmeld" by exchanging information and the context of that information with each other. Today, information in one data mining application is locked away from others because there is no standard way of exchanging it. In order to eliminate the roadblock, Oracle is backing a new, vendor-independent XML-based standard called PMML (Predictive Model Markup Language). PMML joins several other important standards Oracle is backing to drive more cohesive, real-time e-business intelligence - so that companies can live long and prosper..." See "Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML)."
[September 21, 2000] "Leading Energy Exchanges and Solutions Providers Establish XML Standards Consortium for Web-Based Energy Trading Industry. Open Communication Standards to Facilitate Trade Information Exchange, Streamline Trade Data Management and Boost Energy Trading Efficiency." - "The energy trading industry's leading exchanges and technology companies announced today the formation of the Energy Trading Standards Group (ETSG), an open consortium that will develop standards to automate the sale of wholesale energy and improve information sharing between energy trading companies. Consortium members to date include ABB Energy Information Systems, Automated Power Exchange (APX), Caminus Corporation, HoustonStreet Exchange, Open Link Energy, RedMeteor.com, Inc., Triple Point Technology Inc., GFInet, and Sapient. The consortium, initiated by Caminus and HoustonStreet, is open to all interested industry participants. ETSG will develop open standards based upon XML (Extensible Markup Language) technology, the lingua franca of business-to-business Internet commerce. The companies will initially create standards for exchanging data between online trading platforms and transaction/risk management systems used by wholesale electricity and natural gas trading companies. 'XML is rapidly becoming the key data interchange standard for time-critical, high-volume information sharing on the Web, and is a step towards improving operational efficiency in trading systems,' said Amin Rawji, vice president, TransCanada Energy, a company active in the energy markets. 'The ETSG consortium is to be commended for taking the initiative in effectively administering the XML standard for Internet-based B-to-B transactions and applications interoperability in the energy trading industry.' The ETSG consortium will streamline the deal capture process by creating open standards to automate the internal data exchange between frontline traders and their company's mid- and back-office transaction management systems. This automation will save energy trading companies time and expense by eliminating the errors associated with trade ticket generation and data entry, providing real-time access to trade data and eliminating the cost of building and managing proprietary systems and connectors. The consortium intends to develop standards to improve the often-fragmented external exchange of transaction and related data among energy trading partners. Open information exchange standards will allow wholesale energy buyers and sellers to benefit from nearly instantaneous electronic trade confirmations and 'down-stream' scheduling. The ETSG consortium will freely publish the standards so that energy companies can apply them to their own business processes. The consortium will develop XML-enabled connectors to allow energy trading companies to easily integrate their systems with service providers adopting these standards. For more information about joining the ETSG consortium, contact David Markowitz at Caminus Corporation at (212) 515-3600, or Rob Armstrong at HoustonStreet Exchange, at (603) 766-8613." See: "Energy Trading Standards Group (ETSG)."
[September 21, 2000] "ObjectSpace Serves as Advisor on UDDI Specification to Speed Interoperability and Adoption of Web Services. Specification Validates ObjectSpace's Long-Held Position and Practice of Open Integration for Creating and Deploying Web Services." - "ObjectSpace, Inc., a leading provider of web service-enabled business-to-business integration, or B2Bi, software products and services, announced today the company has assumed an advisor role in the support and rollout of the UDDI (Universal Descriptions, Discovery and Integration) specification, announced last week by Microsoft, IBM and Ariba. ObjectSpace will also incorporate UDDI in its OpenBusiness software this year. As providers of web services-based B2B integration solutions, ObjectSpace has long recognized the need for a standard way to describe a business and how that business wants to interact with other businesses, as key in the next chapter of the Internet story. To provide this functionality, ObjectSpace delivered its OpenBusiness Portal module earlier this year, which allows businesses to publish, catalog and find web services. By bringing its real-world experience in building and deploying web services to the UDDI working groups, ObjectSpace can help ensure the specification delivers real world value to the market. UDDI is an initiative to create a global, platform-independent, open framework to enable businesses to 1) discover each other; 2) define how they will interact over the Internet; and 3) share information in a global registry that will rapidly accelerate the global adoption of B2B eCommerce. Until now, there has been no central way to easily get information about what standards different companies support and no single point of access to all markets of opportunity, allowing them to seamlessly connect with all possible partners. The UDDI specification leverages industry standards such as HTTP, XML and SOAP, further demonstrating the openness of the approach and the platform-independent commitment..." See: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."
[September 21, 2000] "Wolfram Research To Host First MathML Conference." - "Wolfram Research, Inc. is the host of the first MathML and Math on the Web conference, to be held October 20-21, 2000, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This conference brings together those interested or involved in the future of math on the web. The conference is sponsored by Wolfram Research, the AMS (American Mathematical Society), Compaq, IBM, Netscape, the University of Illinois Grainger Engineering Library, Waterloo Maple, and the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). This conference provides a forum for presenting and discussing current research and applications involving MathML, an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and its content. MathML is the W3C-endorsed standard for displaying math on the web. The conference embraces all areas of MathML technologies, including rendering, authoring, converting, and archiving. Scheduled events include an opening video address by Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web and director of the W3C, as well as keynote addresses by Robert Sutor, IBM Program Director for XML Technology, and Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of Mathematica. More information about the conference, including the schedule of events and presentation abstracts, is available on the MathML conference web site at http://www.mathmlconference.org." See also the W3C MathML web site and "Mathematical Markup Language (MathML)."
[September 20, 2000] "OMG Members Meet to Advance Integration Standards. New Standards Effort Will Integrate CORBA, SOAP Technologies." - "The latest Object Management Group (OMG) Technical Meeting Week, sponsored by Fujitsu, Ltd., attracted over 500 OMG members and guests to Burlingame, CA, USA from September 11 to 15, 2000 where they advanced the organization's standards efforts and participated in many other related activities. Four tutorials covered CORBA, the Object Management Architecture (OMA), fault-tolerant CORBA, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Two other standards organizations - the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), an electrical power standards organization; and the NTCIP, working on a standard protocol for Intelligent Transportation Systems - met jointly with the OMG during the week. Members viewed live demonstrations of twenty CORBA-based products including two showing multi-vendor interoperability: One, sponsored by The Open Group, highlighted that organization's testing program by networking six Object Request Brokers (ORBs): Interstage from Fujitsu, OmniORB from AT&T, Visibroker from Inprise, ORBacus from OOC, MICO from the MICO project was entered by Puder Consulting, and TAO from the University of Washington was entered by GMD Fokus. The other, sponsored by the Distributed Object Promotion Group (DOPG), a Japanese consortium, went beyond ORBs to also show interoperability of OTS (Object Transaction Service) implementations from Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC. Platform Technology Committee (PTC) Standards Efforts: OMG's PTC works on standards that affect the CORBA infrastructure, and on object-oriented analysis and design. At this meeting, the PTC initiated work on a standard that will integrate the new protocol SOAP with OMG's CORBA architecture. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) transmits business data expressed in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) over the widely-used web protocol HTTP. In order to take full advantage of this new protocol, enterprises need to integrate it with their existing computing infrastructure. When complete less than a year from now, the new standard will enable this integration by allowing SOAP clients to invoke CORBA servers, and CORBA clients and servers to interoperate using SOAP. Also in the infrastructure arena, the PTC initiated efforts to standardize methods to transmit CORBA network packets through firewalls, and to adapt Real-Time Object Request Brokers to emit alternative protocols needed for, e.g., telecommunications or other Real-Time applications. The PTC also initiated efforts to standardize a mapping from OMG IDL (Interface Definition Language) to WMLscript, a scripting language based on the Wireless Markup Language, and to standardize an activation framework for persistent CORBA servers. Two PTC standardization efforts completed their evaluation phase and started the final series of votes that will promote them to official OMG specification status: CSIv2 (Common Secure Interoperability, version 2), a protocol supporting secure interoperability between different vendors' CORBA products, and Additional Structuring Mechanisms for the Object Transaction Service, supporting long-lived distributed transactions that occur, for example, when arranging a meeting on many people's schedules, or making travel reservations involving an airline, hotel, and rental car company. . . UML, one of the OMG's most widely-used standards, supports object-oriented analysis and design and forms a basis for OMG's other modeling standards including the CWM (Common Warehouse Metamodel). Issuance of three RFPs (Request For Proposal) started the process of defining a new major release of the UML standard. The three RFPs cover UML Infrastructure, UML Superstructure, and Object Constraint Language (OCL)."
[September 12, 2000] "XMLGlobal Technologies Inc. Joins the UDDI e-Commerce Standards Initiative." - "XMLGlobal Technologies, a provider of XML based e-business software solutions, today announced it has joined the UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) project. The UDDI initiative is being developed through a collaboration of Ariba, IBM and Microsoft. As a member of the UDDI team XMLGlobal Technologies will participate in the development of a standard registry of services to help companies rapidly and efficiently extend their B2B marketplaces. UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) is a web services registry and standard created to lower the barriers to entry and costs of doing business on the web. As businesses migrate directly to the internet they will register their various web-based applications such as procurement, supply chain and marketplace as services in UDDI, making it simpler for other businesses to discover and integrate with them. This will allow the many SMEs (small to medium enterprise) who are migrating to the internet, a standard way of being discovered and integrated into net marketplaces and online applications. At the same time the UDDI project will provide a forum for large corporations to improve their e-business initiatives with the rapidly growing number of online suppliers and customers. 'As a recognized provider of XML based e-business software solutions XMLGlobal Technologies will make significant contributions to the UDDI project,' said Peter Shandro, CEO of XMLGlobal Technologies. 'The fundamental conceptual thinking behind our flagship products, www.goxml.com, the world's premier context based XML search system, and ExpressXCHG, a patented native XML transformation software solution, has been a commitment to break down the technology and cost barriers preventing many companies from migrating to the internet. With the UDDI initiative and XMLGlobal's proven technology we believe we have a powerful end to end solution for the many companies looking to make the B2B move and participate in the fastest growing segment of the e-business market today.' In addition to its support for UDDI, XMLGlobal Technologies is actively involved with ebXML (the Electronic Business XML Initiative), a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of electronic business data. ebXML is sponsored by the UN/CEFACT and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and is currently supported by hundreds of industry consortia, standards bodies and corporations from around the globe. Members of the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) recently announced plans to use ebXML as the backbone of their new data exchange standard for business-to-business trade in the consumer goods industry. GCI members include 40 major manufacturers and retailers as well as eight trade associations, which in total represent 850,000 companies around the world." See: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."
[September 12, 2000] "E-Standards for Global Data Interchange Proposed for Chemical Industry. Joint Press Release from BASF, Dow and DuPont." - "To facilitate generally accepted standards in the chemical industry and to realize the inherent benefits of standardization, BASF, Dow and DuPont have been working to develop open, non-proprietary e-standards for company-to-company, company-to-marketplace and marketplace-to-marketplace data exchange. The result of this effort is a broad set of Extensible Markup Language (XML) standards that is capable of supporting many different business models. The first phase of this effort focused on the development of e-standards to support order, catalog and customer information. These standards were presented to the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX) yesterday [2000-09-11] for review and development of a more formalized plan. Phase two is characterized by a focus on logistics, multinational, invoicing, forecasting and exchange interactions. Additionally, participation will be expanded to include a broader range of suppliers, marketplaces and technology providers. During this phase, the intent will be for CIDX to expand its mission and transform to a robust standards association and eventually assume responsibility for ongoing maintenance, further development and support of these industry standards. 'Without a standard approach to data exchange, the industry runs the risk of creating multiple solutions that will result in e-marketplace inefficiencies for both suppliers and customers,' said David Kepler, vice president of electronic business and commerce and CIO of Dow. 'This XML standards work will serve as a foundation for a broader-based method of supporting new and evolving business-to-business (B2B) and e-marketplace activities within the chemical industry.' While the initial development of these e-standards was the result of the combined efforts of BASF, Dow and DuPont, at the same time, Envera was also developing XML standards for their business model which have been integrated into this initial set of standards. 'CIDX is excited about the body of work that has been submitted by the chemical industry suppliers, as well as Envera. We are encouraged to see the to convergence of the two efforts into a single broad-based set of global standards to benefit the entire industry,' said Kathy MacRae, board chairperson for CIDX. 'Open, non-proprietary XML standards will provide a framework for suppliers and their customers to speed implementation and reduce costs associated with B2B integration. Standards will provide a common method for the new electronic marketplaces and I/T suppliers to develop capability to serve the industry, ' added MacRae. The XML standards presented to CIDX can be found on the Internet at www.cidx.org. See: "XML-Based 'eStandard' for the Chemical Industry."
[September 12, 2000] "Whitehill Technologies Announces New Product. Whitehill <xsl>Composer replaces the need to hand code XSL." - "Canadian software firm, Whitehill Technologies Inc., leader in Document Transformation software solutions, has launched an exciting new software product - Whitehill <xsl>Composer - at the XML World 2000 show in Boston, Massachusetts. Whitehill <xsl>Composer is the next generation of webPenabling software. Whitehill <xsl>Composer can quickly be deployed as part of a development process that requires the generation of XSL. Using existing XML (extensible markup language), Whitehill Composer automatically creates XSL/CSS (cascading style sheets), which can be used to render electronic bills, statements and reports. 'We are proud to be able to offer such a powerful and unique tool to the XSL/XML development marketplace,' says Bob Rybak, President and CTO of Whitehill Technologies, Inc. 'Whitehill Composer was created to fill a void in the development industry where the hand-coding of XSL (extensible style sheet language), is still the standard. A true WYSIWYG type environment that automatically creates XSL from existing XML code is very much anticipated by the industry.' Electronic commerce has changed the way companies around the world compete for business. XML has emerged as the standard for efficient web based communications. Until now, the creation of XSL to render XML electronically has been an entirely manual process. Whitehill Composer facilitates e-commerce by making aspects of an e-commerce system work more effectively." See related tools in "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[September 12, 2000] "Paperhub and printCafe Integrate XML Offerings. printCafe Extends the Integration of the Printing Process to Paper Fulfillment." - "Paperhub and printCafe today announced their intent to coordinate their XML product offerings to enable paper fulfillment integration across the printing and publishing supply chain. Paperhub provides a neutral common ground for the paper industry where mills, merchants, printers, publishers and the graphic arts community access critical online resources and services across the supply chain. This integration is enabled by PML, a new Web-based XML specification, design tool and delivery engine developed by Paperhub in support of paper industry business collaboration. 'PML allows the paper industry supply chain to run more efficiently and effectively by enabling seamless integration from buyer to seller,' said Mike Ehlenz, Director of E-Commerce for Paperhub. 'This integration will allow companies to reduce costs and errors, ultimately delivering improved customer service.' printCafe is a leading internet software infrastructure provider for the printing industry. printCafe's Internet-based software is designed to integrate supplier products and services with buyer infrastructure software solutions. printCafe PCX is the integration framework for interfacing external systems and services with printCafe business management solutions. In anticipation of the initiative, printCafe has been working with Paperhub to extend its PML transaction sets to include specifications required to interface with printCafe's suite of applications. In accordance with printCafe's PCX framework, Paperhub has offered PML transaction sets to the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) Business-to-Business Standards committee to aid the development work in this area. 'printCafe anticipates using the PML paper transaction sets as its preferred method/transaction sets for achieving the integration,' said Paul Gaboury, Director of Consulting Services and Manager of printCafe's PCX integration program. 'We're very excited about improving the paper industry value chain by supporting a consolidated, industry communication standard,' said Gaboury. 'As proof of our joint commitment, Mike Ehlenz from Paperhub and Kate Moore from printCafe will be contributors to this GCA committee.' 'By broadening PML participation and supporting open standards, such as the GCA XML paper standards, Paperhub and printCafe are working together to accelerate the paper industry's technology adoption rate,' said Ehlenz. 'We know that standardization through PML will correct many of the industry's supply chain inefficiencies. printCafe has valued print industry expertise that will enhance this capability. Use of PML by printCafe will strengthen both companies' product offerings. We're looking forward to a rewarding relationship'." See: "PML: Markup Language for Paper and Printing."
[September 12, 2000] "Infoteria Corporation Announces iCONNECTOR 2.0. New version provides better performance and easier integration with Visual Basic and Java. Multi-database support is expanded." - "Infoteria Corporation, the XML software company, announced today at XML World 2000 in Boston general availability of iCONNECTOR Version 2.0. iCONNECTOR 2.0, which provides bi-directional XML transformation, now includes enhanced features that improve performance and simplify development. The new version will support IBM's DB2 in addition to Oracle, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Access, and Lotus Notes. iCONNECTOR 2.0 extracts existing data in the form of XML and then stores XML data in any given database. A graphical user interface (iRuleGenerator) supports mapping between any XML structure and database fields specifying the XML import/export rules. The product is ideal for multiple database environments; the same user interface can be used for a variety of platforms, therefore the developer needs only to become familiar with a single family of tools rather than disparate tools from multiple vendors. Version 2.0 of iCONNECTOR includes several enhancements to improve execution and increase flexibility and ease-of-use. In addition to being able to call iCONNECTOR as an executable with CGI scripts, iCONNECTOR 2.0 includes application programming interfaces (APIs) to support Java and Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM). Using the iCONNECTOR COM component, Visual Basic applications and Active Server Pages can take advantage of iCONNECTOR 2.0 functionality. By running as a service in the Windows environment, iCONNECTOR 2.0 will provide improved performance in high-volume applications. The rule file syntax of iCONNECTOR 2.0 is now fully compliant with the W3C XSLT 1.0 recommendation. In addition, iRuleGenerator has been improved to make it easier to specify SQL queries for XML-RDB definition mappings..."
[September 12, 2000] "NewWorld Commerce Joins Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) Network. Key E-Commerce Standard Initiative to Facilitate Exchange of Customer Information Across Disparate Enterprise Systems." - "NewWorld Commerce, a Seattle-based provider of e-marketing campaign generation and management solutions, today announced its participation in the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) network. CPEX offers a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating the privacy-enabled exchange of customer information across disparate enterprise applications and systems. NewWorld Commerce has joined others in the CPEX network to address the need to maintain a singular, holistic view of their customers. The CPEX standard integrates online and offline data with an XML-based description of customer information for use within various enterprise applications both on and off the Web. The result is a networked, customer-focused environment that allows e-businesses to leverage a unified view of their customers into more compelling e-relationships. 'The benefits of a single customer view and the ability to track all customer interactions are extremely important in today's competitive environment,' said Dr. Canice Lambe, CTO of NewWorld Commerce. 'By integrating CPEX into our NewWorld Direct solution, disparate systems can talk to each other enabling our clients to have a unified view of their customers' identity, behavior, needs and privacy concerns. We are excited to be part of an organization that is helping to shape industry standards for more open and flexible e-business solutions.' NewWorld Commerce is designing for the CPEX standard in its NewWorld Direct solution. NewWorld Direct offers sophisticated e-mail functionality and enables non-technical marketers to create a micro-Web site for each marketing campaign without any technical assistance -- in a matter of hours. It is the only Web-centric permission-based marketing platform that enables marketers to create truly global marketing campaigns on the Internet through customized Web sites, persistent Web messaging and one-to-one relationship development capabilities. It delivers this using a combination of campaign-specific Web action sites, closed-loop campaign reporting on a named-visitor basis, and permission e-mail. Each campaign is created and built directly from the marketer's desktop... Open to any vendor that wishes to contribute to the standard, the CPEX working group is chaired by Siebel Systems, the Marketing Committee is co-chaired by net.Genesis and Vignette Corporation, and Andromedia/Macromedia chairs the Technical Committee. The CPEX working group is hosted by IDEAlliance.org, a neutral, non-profit organization that also hosts ICE, PRISM and several other XML working groups. CPEX solutions are focused upon real-world implementations in real-world time. Formed by Vignette Corporation in September of 1999, CPEX was chartered and launched in November of 1999. The first CPEX specifications are expected to be available for public review in the first half of 2000, with interoperability demos scheduled to begin in the second half of 2000." See "Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) Working Group."
[September 11, 2000] "Global Manufacturers and Retailers Adopt ebXML. 850,000 Companies Select ebXML for New Global Commerce Internet Protocol." - "Members of the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) announced plans to use ebXML as the backbone of their new data exchange standard for business-to-business trade in the consumer goods industry. ebXML, an initiative of the United Nations CEFACT and OASIS, will provide the technical infrastructure for the Global Commerce Internet Protocol, a set of recommendations governing the management of data for Internet communication and other B2B interactions. GCI members include 40 major manufacturers and retailers as well as eight trade associations, which in total represent 850,000 companies around the world. Exchanges such as Transora, the WorldWide Retail Exchange, GlobalNetXchange, and CPGmarket.com are taking active roles in the GCI development. 'It is clear to us that ebXML will soon become the standard for all global trade,' said Peter Jordan, director of European systems for Kraft Foods and member of the GCI Board of Directors. 'By implementing ebXML as part of our infrastructure, GCI takes advantage of the excellent development work that's being accomplished to streamline many EDI processes and remove waste and redundancy from supply chains.' EAN and the UCC have made a major contribution to GCI's effort to quickly standardize Internet trading in the consumer products industry with the first in a series of electronic commerce standards. In order to support the GCI Internet Protocol, the UCC and EAN undertook an ambitious effort to provide GCI with a series of electronic commerce standards for the following processes: Item Synchronization, Party, Simple Purchase Order and Dispatch (Advance Ship Notice). This project encompassed the creation of business models, global data dictionaries, and XML schemas. GCI proof-of-concept trials are underway and the organization plans to demonstrate its protocol at the upcoming ebXML meeting in Tokyo, November 6, 2000. . . Founded in October 1999, the Global Commerce Initiative is the result of joint industry efforts in North and South America, Europe and Asia where, since the early-nineties, strategic collaborations have been developing between stakeholders of all sizes across the complex supply chain for consumer goods. Made possible by some of the world's best-known companies, they include the Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) movements in Europe, North and South America and Asia, together with the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards Association (VICS) in North America, EAN International and UCC, CIES, The Food Business Forum, FMI, AIM, the European Brands Association, and GMA." See: "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."
[September 08, 2000] "OneChem Joins DuPont, Dow and Others to Lead Creation of XML Standards for Chemical Industry." - "OneChem, Ltd., the first operational application service provider to the chemical industry, today announced its support and collaboration for the creation of XML standards in the chemical e-business marketplace. OneChem joins Envera and major chemical producers such as BASF, Dow and DuPont, in supporting the initiatives of the Chemical Industry Data eXchange (CIDX) to coordinate XML standardization efforts in the industry. Many of OneChem's customers have been involved in developing XML schema out of necessity and welcome participation in a coordinated process. 'We have been involved in the limited development of the XML standards due to the lack of tried and true standards readily available. However, on an ongoing basis, we realize that XML standards will be an evolving process of change which will make it a challenge to effectively integrate with our partners. By working with OneChem, we hope to speed our progress toward integration, and have an impact on setting the XML standards,' said Bill Steiner, Director of Information Services, Vulcan Chemicals. 'As the landscape of e-business evolves in our industry, it will be critical for businesses to partner with technology providers that believe in and actively pursue open connectivity standards,' said Rafael Labarta, executive vice president of technology, OneChem. 'By actively establishing communication with e-business leaders in the industry and supporting standards organizations as they evolve, we guarantee that our customers can make connections to those inside and outside OneChem's domain.' Although no clear standard for XML based chemical industry transactions has had the transactional volume associated with it to be established as a clear standard, lessons learned from EDI initiatives are pushing industry players to move forward with the establishment of standards upfront. Mike Giesler, chief technology officer and executive vice president of Envera states, 'We are pleased to have OneChem join the efforts of Envera and the leading major chemical producers in supporting CIDX and the CIDXml XML standard in the chemicals and related industries. It is only with support of leaders in the eBusiness world that CIDX can successfully maintain XML standards that will ultimately benefit everyone in the industry'.' See (1) "Envera provides CIDX with key XML data tags for industry-wide application. Chemical industry establishes e-commerce transaction data standards." and (2) "New XML Variant Targets Chemical Industry." For project description, see: "XML-Based 'eStandard' for the Chemical Industry."
[September 08, 2000] "eXcelon Joins BPMI.org to Aid in the Development of New Business Process Integration Standard. New XML Standard Will Speed the Adoption of B2B Partner Networks." - "eXcelon Corporation, a leading provider of XML-based business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure solutions, today announced that it has joined the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org), a new organization that will define standards that enable the integration of cross-company business processes over the Internet. 'B2B commerce is about extending your business processes outside your organization, to be shared with all of you partners, suppliers and customers,' said Jean-Jacques Dubray, chief architect at eXcelon Corp. 'For the past year, eXcelon has been developing an XML-based language for defining and executing business processes as part of our B2B Integration Server. We look forward to being able to share what we have learned to further advance B2B commerce.' 'BPMI.org will help the Global 2000 further embrace the opportunities offered by e-Business,' said Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of Intalio, one of BPMI.org's founding members. 'By delivering a standard language for the modeling of business processes that will be deployed on forthcoming Business Process Management Systems, BPMI.org will bring the industry a step closer to the process-managed enterprise.' The first deliverable of the Business Process Management Initiative will be the specification of the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML). BPML is an XML Schema that provides a standard way to model business processes. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is the new Internet standard for marking up data to facilitate exchanges of information between businesses, independently of applications and platforms. By covering many dimensions of business process modeling that are specific to processes deployed internally to the enterprise, including business rules, security roles, distributed transactions, compensating transactions, and exception handling, BPML will bridge the gap between legacy IT infrastructures and emerging business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk and ebXML. The Business Process Modeling Language will enable the enterprise to model, deploy, and manage business processes such as order management, customer care, demand planning, product development, and strategic sourcing. This will allow the IT infrastructure to provide greater adaptability to the business of the enterprise and easier manageability of constantly evolving business processes, eventually leading to higher levels of profitability. The XML-based standards generated from BPMI.org will support and complement existing business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk, and ebXML, as well as technology integration standards including J2EE and SOAP." "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."
[September 07, 2000] "HP, Mercator, Sterling Commerce, Seven Others Join BPMI.org as Initiative Gains Momentum." - "Intalio, the Business Process Management Company, announced today the addition of 10 new members to the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org). Attunity, bTrade.com, BusinessThreads, CASEwise, Enterworks, eXcelon, Hewlett-Packard, Mercator, Sterling Commerce, and Sunguard Business Integration are the newest in a growing list of companies to join BPMI.org, which was officially founded back on August 7. Together, these firms will join the 16 initial members in defining standards for the management of mission-critical business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners. The XML-based standards generated from this initiative will support and complement existing business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk, and ebXML, as well as technology integration standards including J2EE and SOAP. The first deliverable of the Business Process Management Initiative will be the specification of the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML). On August 15 [2000], Intalio delivered to members a working draft of BPML as an initial platform for discussion. BPML is an XML Schema that provides a standard way to model mission-critical business processes. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is the new Internet standard for marking up data to facilitate exchanges of information between businesses, independently of applications and platforms. By covering many dimensions of business process modeling that are specific to processes deployed internally to the enterprise, including business rules, security roles, distributed transactions, compensating transactions, and exception handling, BPML will bridge the gap between legacy IT infrastructures and emerging business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, BizTalk, and ebXML. The Business Process Modeling Language will enable the enterprise to model, deploy, and manage business processes such as order management, customer care, demand planning, product development, and strategic sourcing. This will allow the IT infrastructure to provide greater adaptability to the business of the enterprise and easier manageability of constantly evolving business processes, eventually leading to higher levels of profitability. Membership to the Business Process Management Initiative is open to any company, organization, or individual." See: "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."
[September 07, 2000] "Industry Leaders Join to Accelerate Business Integration And Commerce on the Internet Thirty-Six Companies Cooperate to Further the Growth of Internet Commerce Via Standards for Web Services." - "... Growth of business-to-business commerce on the Internet faces challenges in scaling to universal adoption due to the multitude of technologies and standards used by businesses and e-marketplaces. UDDI will address these challenges by providing two things: First, UDDI defines a platform-neutral set of specifications to enable businesses to describe themselves and indicate their preferred means of conducting e-commerce transactions. Second, UDDI includes the shared operation of a globally distributed UDDI Business Registry. Through the UDDI Business Registry, companies publish information describing how they conduct commerce and search for other businesses that provide the capabilities, Web services or products they need. The goal of the UDDI Project is to offer the basic infrastructure for dynamic, automated integration of all e-commerce transactions and Web services. The UDDI Business Registry provides an implementation of the UDDI specification. Any company can access the registry on the Internet, enter the description of its business, reach a UDDI site, or search through all business services listed in the UDDI registry. There is no cost to access information in the registry. Although based on XML, the registry can also describe services implemented using HTML, Java, CORBA, Microsoft Windows DNA, or any other type of programming model or language. The registry is implemented as a Web service and thus can be discovered, integrated and programmatically invoked using XML like any other Web service. Beta implementations of the UDDI Business Registry will be available from Ariba, IBM and Microsoft within 30 days. These implementations will interoperate with each other, ensuring that information registered at one site is shared with all other operator registries. Other interoperable implementations are expected in the future."
[September 07, 2000] "Microsoft and Industry Partners Announce Next-Generation Windows-Powered Handheld PCs. Handheld PC 2000 Includes an Integrated Windows 2000 Terminal Services Client And Updated Web Browser, Giving Enterprise Customers Access to Full-Function Desktop Applications in a Wireless-Ready Mobile Device." - "Today at DEMOMobile 2000 in Pasadena, Microsoft Corp. announced Handheld PC 2000, the fourth generation of software for Windows- powered Handheld PCs. Hardware partners Hewlett-Packard Co., NEC Computers Inc. and MainStreet Networks' Client Devices Group joined Microsoft in support of this latest version, announcing their plans to bring new Handheld PCs to market. The latest devices are based on the Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 operating system and include such features as an integrated client for Windows 2000 Terminal Services, a Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0-compatible browser, Windows Media Player for digital music, an e-mail client, personal information manager (PIM) functionality, and pocket versions of desktop Office applications. This release further illustrates Microsoft's commitment to supporting a range of devices to meet the needs of customers. Handheld PC 2000 features include the following: Productivity tools, including Pocket Outlook applications such as e-mail, calendar, contacts and tasks as well as Pocket versions of Office applications like Word, Excel, the PowerPoint presentation graphics program and Access An integrated client for Windows 2000 Terminal Services to give users access to their full-function desktop applications over wired and wireless connections An Internet Explorer 4.0-compatible browser with support for HTML 4.0, XML and XSL, DHTML, Jscript development software and GIF animation, frames, cookies, SSL, and certificates Windows Media Player for Handheld PC, which supports both the Windows Media and MP3 digital audio file formats, and enables users to easily transfer their personal music collection from their Windows-based PC with the new Windows Media Player 7."
[September 07, 2000] "STC Announces Out-of-the-Box Support for Microsoft BizTalk Framework. STC Solutions Take Full Advantage of XML-Based Framework, Enabling Customers To Effortlessly Participate In B2B Exchanges." - "STC, a leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBI) solutions, today announced that its flagship business-to-business solution, e*Xchange Integrator, provides out-of-the-box support for Microsoft BizTalk Framework. This enhanced functionality provides a cross-enterprise eBusiness framework that makes it easier for organizations to integrate applications and conduct business over the Internet with trading partners and customers. Addressing complex business-to-business (B2B) interoperability challenges, this framework has been developed with guidance and input from leading service and solution providers, customers, and standards organizations. The Microsoft BizTalk Framework provides specifications for the design and development of Extensible Markup Language (XML) based solutions to facilitate open communication between applications and organizations. With pre-packaged BizTalk Framework processing capabilities in the ePartner Manager component, STC's e*Xchange Integrator will promote streamlined, accelerated and easy-to-use business processes while providing a platform and technology-neutral solution. STC allows companies to address key eBusiness challenges with the real-time management and automation of trading partner relationships in an aggressive, competitive manner... STC is a leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBI) solutions enabling the seamless flow of information within and among enterprises. With its flagship solution, e*Xchange eBusiness Integration Suite, STC provides the industry's premier comprehensive strategic infrastructure to unlock the true potential of eBusiness with superior performance and reliability. Since shipping its first product in 1991, STC has successfully integrated systems at nearly 1,300 organizations worldwide, including Barnes & Noble.com, Fluor Corporation, Hewlett Packard, HypoVereinsbank, PETsMART and Warner Lambert."
[September 07, 2000] "OpenCon Communication Systems Announces Industry Breakthrough, Offering Industry's Only Billing Mediation Solution with XML Support." - "OpenCon Communication Systems, Inc. announced today that it has achieved another industry first, by adding Extensible Markup Language (XML) support to its Billing Mediation Platform (BMP). The OpenCon BMP provides support for XML in both input and output formats in addition to AMA, EMI, CDR, and IPDR. 'Utilizing the OpenCon BMP's flexible support of XML in combination with OpenCon BMP's support of other formats, service providers can link various legacy switches as well as the new soft switches with new OSS applications that accept XML. Because the OpenCon BMP can parse and format diverse call detail record encoding formats including binary, EBCDIC, ASCII, and now XML, service providers can more efficiently integrate network usage data with billing processes, reducing the cost and time associated with these integrations,' said SungJae Yi, General Manager of the MetaTechnologies Business Unit (MTBU) at OpenCon Communication Systems. 'This allows providers to make better use of this information in their OSS/BSS/DSS applications, without having to update those systems.' The OpenCon BMP is a data mediation platform for billing applications. It provides all of the PSTN billing mediation capabilities including CDR collection, mediation, and distribution, as well as IP billing mediation capabilities. The OpenCon BMP's unique architecture and design provide many features to end users. It can parse and format various data stream, whether binary or ASCII, translate data from one application to many other applications, and support the addition and/or change of new application data streams without service interruption. The combined features of the OpenCon BMP enable service providers to maximize usage data from converged networks."
[September 06, 2000] "Industry Leaders Join to Accelerate Business Integration and Commerce On the Internet." - "A broad coalition of business and technology leaders today announced the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) Project, a cross-industry initiative designed to accelerate and broaden business-to-business integration and commerce on the Internet. Growth of business-to-business commerce on the Internet faces challenges in scaling to universal adoption due to the multitude of technologies and standards used by businesses and e-marketplaces. UDDI will address these challenges by providing two things: First, UDDI defines a platform-neutral set of specifications to enable businesses to describe themselves and indicate their preferred means of conducting e-commerce transactions. Second, UDDI includes the shared operation of a globally distributed UDDI Business Registry. Through the UDDI Business Registry, companies publish information describing how they conduct commerce and search for other businesses that provide the capabilities, Web services or products they need. The goal of the UDDI Project is to offer the basic infrastructure for dynamic, automated integration of all e-commerce transactions and Web services. Similar to the impact HTML had for consumers on the Internet by providing a common Web site publishing format that fueled the Internet explosion, UDDI aims to make business-to-business commerce adoption universal by providing businesses with a common mechanism to publish Web services on the Internet. Marketplaces, application service providers (ASPs) and individual businesses can use UDDI-enabled applications to dynamically define the services they offer over the Web, publish those services in the UDDI Business Registry and utilize the registry to scalably connect with millions of other businesses globally. The UDDI Project is an open industry initiative in which any organization can participate and implement the specifications. The specifications build on core Internet standards -- including TCP/IP, HTML and XML -- and are independent of any underlying platform, language, object model, business application or marketplace. It is the intention of the UDDI members to transition the specifications to an industry standards body in the next 18 months." See: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)." [alt URL]
[September 06, 2000] "webMethods Joins the UDDI Project to Contribute B2B Integration Expertise to New E-Commerce Standard. Collaboration enables dynamic, automated, integration to help companies rapidly build out their B2B e-commerce initiatives." - "webMethods, Inc., a leading provider of business-to-business integration (B2Bi) solutions, today announced the company has joined the UDDI Project. The UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) Business Registry and Project were developed through a collaboration of Ariba, IBM, and Microsoft. As a member of this industry leadership team, webMethods will participate in the development of a standard registry of services to help companies rapidly extend their B2B trading networks. As customers move their procurement, supply chain, marketplace and other business applications directly on the Internet, they will register these web-based applications as services in UDDI, making it easier for other businesses to discover and integrate with them. This will help large corporations ramp up to supporting tens of thousands of suppliers and customers online, while providing small businesses a standard way to be discovered and integrated into marketplaces and online applications. The UDDI Business Registry is platform- and implementation-neutral and has interfaces based on XML and SOAP. Although the registry is based on XML, the services it describes can be implemented using HTML, XML, Java, CORBA, Windows DNA or any other type of programming model or language. webMethods provides a complete B2Bi solution that allows organizations to effectively realize their e-commerce strategies. The webMethods product family was designed to provide broad support for open standards and protocols, such as XML, RosettaNet, ebXML, FpML, cXML, xCBL, OBI, OAG, ACORD, BizTalk framework and EDI. Through support of these standards, webMethods products provide seamless integration both within the enterprise and across the Internet to trading networks and B2B marketplaces." See: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."
[September 06, 2000] "Bowstreet and Its Customers Embrace New UDDI E-Commerce Standards Initiative; Bowstreet Announces Support for UDDI Across Company's Product Line." - "Bowstreet, a leading provider of business web automation solutions for plug-and-play e-commerce, today announced that it will serve as a founding advisor to UDDI, the new e-commerce standards initiative announced today by Ariba, IBM, and Microsoft, and will integrate support for UDDI into the Bowstreet Business Web Factory and businessweb.com within 90 days of the availability of the specification. Bowstreet customers, who are already leveraging web services using the Business Web Factory to expand into new markets and create scalable new e-business models, also welcomed UDDI. UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) is a web-services registry and standard designed to make it easier for businesses to create partnerships and business models using web services. Bowstreet will enable the Business Web Factory 2 to use UDDI-registered services in creating business webs. The company will provide a set of parametric business web 'Builders' in the Business Web Factory that automate the interactions among UDDI registries and set up the service calls to the actual web services stored in the registries. Bowstreet's Builders will go beyond their current understanding of low-level element type definitions (SOAP and other 'web service plumbing' issues), to understanding categorizations, cross-service workflow issues, binding policies and other business-level processes - all critical in assembling business webs. Additionally, businessweb.com, a Bowstreet-sponsored online community, educational site and industry exchange for web services that goes online today, will include UDDI registries of web services as they become available. Access to businessweb.com is free of charge. Today, the Business Web Factory provides builders for constructing XML-based service calls to web services whose interfaces support SOAP and W3C Schema. Bowstreet customers don't have to know the intricacies of these XML standards in order to construct business webs that make use of this new breed of web services. With the development of UDDI and Bowstreet's planned set of UDDI Interaction Builders, customers will be able to take business web construction and maintenance to the next level of automation. UDDI will complement DSML (Directory Services Markup Language) - the directory services standard launched last year by Bowstreet, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and the Sun-Netscape Alliance - by encouraging the availability of an inventory of interoperable business-level web services to expedite e-commerce. DSML bridges the gap between directories and XML-based e-business applications, so that businesses can leverage their directory information in connecting multiple companies' business webs. DSML has already gained widespread support in the industry, with vendors such as IBM, Sun, Novell, iPlanet, Critical Path, Radiant Logic and InfoShark incorporating the standard into their e-business product lines. Bowstreet's Business Web Factory enables companies to dramatically accelerate B2B e-commerce using business webs, or collections of high-level web services that come together dynamically on the web to create new business models. This revolutionary approach of interconnecting companies in dynamic business webs is based on the Business Web Factory's foundation in Extensible Markup Language (XML), the lingua franca of Internet commerce, and on Bowstreet's dynamic automation technology, which enables companies to create mass-customized, high-level B2B and B2C web services using parametrically driven, dynamic assembly of core web services. The Bowstreet platform additionally enables companies to maintain their own directories of web services and to provide managed access to these web services through firewalls." See: "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."
[September 06, 2000] "Sierra Systems Consortium to e-Enable Canadian House of Commons." - "Sierra Systems Group Inc. has signed a contract with the House of Commons as systems integrator for PRISM, a customer-focused, eBusiness capable system ensuring 24-hour online access to House of Commons documents and publications for Members of Parliament, the public and the media year-round. PRISM is an integrated information management system, based on the XML programming language, to be developed by a skilled consortium partnering Sierra Systems, Microsoft Canada and JourneyXi. The House of Commons will spend $8.8 million on the PRISM project, providing a suite of integrated applications to support the capture, recording and publication of events and proceedings related to the business of the House of Commons Chamber and its Committees. 'The improvement will be dramatic,' said Government Whip and board spokesperson Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh, Ont.), as quoted in The Hill Times. 'Over the last fifteen years, we've had a hodgepodge of different systems. We're trying to get up to speed for the year 2000, and replace the existing outdated infrastructure with support for all kinds of record-keeping and publishing.' Preparing existing data for a new use is typically the single most expensive component of an information system, making it critical to use standard formats for data. The XML standard will facilitate the integration of legislative information, reducing the time and costs involved in making information available to Members of Parliament and the public. Using XML, the same piece of information can be viewed online using an Internet browser, published to CD-ROM, and digitized to voice or Braille formats. 'XML will become the underlying format for all information,' says Alexander Foote, vice president of Sierra Systems. 'For the House of Commons, XML will allow information that was once printed on paper to be produced in alternative formats without incurring additional costs or time delays.' By creating a modern, integrated information management environment based on current standards and technology, PRISM is sustainable well into the future. With Sierra Systems' assistance, the Canadian Parliament ensures that its systems support the work of Members of Parliament and the House of Commons-to help them provide information and service excellence to the Canadian public and beyond."
[September 05, 2000] "ebXML Sets Standard for Electronic Trading Partner Agreements." - "ebXML, a joint initiative of the United Nations/CEFACT and OASIS, announced plans to standardize electronic contracts and trading partnerships using XML. The newly formed ebXML Trading-Partners Project Team will develop a specification to define the technical parameters of trading partner profiles and agreements (TPA). The Trading-Partners team will complement other ebXML> project teams working to develop an open XML-based infrastructure that will enable business information to be exchanged consistently on a global basis. 'Standardizing on a specification for the electronic trading partner agreement is essential to widespread e-commerce,' said Klaus-Dieter Naujok of NextERA Interactive, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee. 'TPAs capture critical information upon which organizations must agree in order for their applications and business processes to communicate. TPA will be a key element for interoperability among B2B server implementations.' Martin W. Sachs of IBM, leader of the ebXML Trading-Partners Project Team, defines an electronic TPA as an XML document that records specific technology parameters for conducting electronic business. Partner identification, communications protocol, security for message exchanges (including encryption, authentication, and non-repudiation), definition of requests and responses are all part of a typical TPA. Much of the new project team's initial focus will be based on previously proposed OASIS technical work surrounding tpaML (the Trading Partners Agreement Markup Language). tpaML was originally developed by IBM. The Electronic Business XML Initiative is a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of electronic business data. Sponsored by the UN/CEFACT and OASIS, ebXML will lower the barrier-of-entry to electronic business and facilitate trade, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and developing nations. ebXML is supported by hundreds of industry consortia, standards bodies and companies from around the world." See "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)" and "Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language (tpaML)."
"BroadVision, H&Q Asia Pacific, Access, CTC, and Itochu join forces to deliver B2B Wireless Internet Applications. Leading Global Players Join Forces to Deliver M-Commerce Solutions to Japan, the Largest Digital Wireless Market in the World." - "BroadVision, Inc., a leading provider of personalized e-business applications, and H&Q Asia Pacific, a leading private equity investor in Asia, today announced the formation of a new company, a Business Services Provider (BSP) to deliver B2B mobile commerce (m-commerce) services to the worldwide wireless market. The joint venture is the first initiative to integrate the explosive wireless market with the global enterprise B2B market. The new company will develop and rapidly deliver a new generation of 'small but smart' e-business applications and services that will integrate an enterprise with its mobile workforce and its mobile business end-users. The new company is a joint venture between BroadVision, H&Q Asia Pacific, ACCESS Co. Ltd., the leading supplier of browser technology for non-PC devices, including NTT DoCoMo's i-mode phones, and ITOCHU TECHNO-SCIENCE Corporation (CTC), a leading system integrator and services company, and ITOCHU Corporation, the global company that promotes positive business development in the B2B and wireless fields from a worldwide viewpoint. The venture will base its offerings on BroadVision One-To-One e-business applications and the company's next-generation XML content management and XSL device-independent rendering technologies."
[August 31, 2000] "Digital Imaging Group (DIG) Announces the Completion of DIG35, the Digital Imaging Metadata Standard. New Specification Available for Public Download on DIG Web Site For Developers of Imaging Products and Services." - "The Digital Imaging Group (DIG) today released the final DIG35 Metadata Specification providing a cohesive and consistent set of metadata definitions to the imaging industry. DIG35 provides the first persistent way for digital images to become rich, completely self-contained sources of information, regardless of where they travel on the global network. With millions of digital images now produced yearly, this capability is critical for enabling users to effectively organize, find, retrieve and share their images instantly. The specification also includes a reference encoding method using the current industry standard language XML. Using the XML DTD and schema provided, developers can easily implement the DIG35 Metadata Specification in their own imaging applications. Additionally, DIG35 can be used as a single standard interchange format between existing applications that each use different proprietary metadata formats, allowing users to greatly extend and leverage their existing intellectual capital investments. The DIG35 Metadata Specification has been reviewed by the public, by several universities, and by organizations such as the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) JPEG2000 Working Group. The relevant portions of the specification have been submitted to the JPEG2000 file format subgroup and have been incorporated into the JPEG2000 Part 2 specification committee draft. The DIG35 Metadata Specification, including the XML DTD and schema, is available today for public download on the DIG Web site. See: "DIG35: Metadata Standard for Digital Images."
[August 31, 2000] "SoftQuad and Openpages Partner to Power Web Content. Knight Ridder Gains Enhanced Content Management Power and Versatility Through Integration of XMetaL and ContentWare." - "SoftQuad Software, Ltd., an internationally recognized developer of XML-enabling technologies and commerce solutions for e-business, and Openpages, Inc., a leading provider of content management software solutions for e-business, today announced a technology partnership. Under the agreement, the two companies will integrate SoftQuad's XMetaL, the premier enabler for XML content applications, into Openpages ContentWare Suite to provide an enhanced XML-based content management solution. The integration enhances an organization's ability to create and manage large amounts of e-content by giving everyone within the organization the ability to create and work with XML documents in a real-world production environment. XML has become the accepted format for information interchange over the Web because it separates presentation from content, and allows for automated document processing. An XMetaL-powered ContentWare solution is already in use by KnightRidder.com and its RealCities.com, the nation's largest network of regional Internet content providers, accelerating their ability to distribute online news to millions of users. XMetaL makes it easy for staff at all levels of the writing, review and deployment process to create and work with XML documents directly. For example, a writer covering a story in California can write an article using XMetaL and send it to a reviewer in Virginia for approval, who will then send it to the Web production department. Because the article is in XML format throughout the process, it doesn't need to be converted or re-keyed and can be processed and delivered to the Web, and the reader, more quickly and efficiently."
[August 29, 2000] "SyncML Initiative Brings Universal Synchronization One Step Closer To The Public. SyncML Version 1.0 Alpha Specifications Available To Supporters." - "SyncML, the initiative sponsored by mobile technology industry leaders Ericsson, IBM, Lotus, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Psion, Palm, Inc. and Starfish Software, today provided further evidence that the world is one step closer to universal data synchronization of remote data and personal information across multiple networks, platforms and devices. SyncML Version 1.0 Alpha, a release candidate, is now available to SyncML Supporters in addition to new updates to the SyncML Reference Toolkit, which was made available to Supporters in May. Delivered ahead of schedule, the Version 1.0 Alpha Specifications and the updated Reference Toolkit source code will be made available on August 31 in the Supporters area of the SyncML Website. With the release of SyncML v1.0 Alpha, Supporters will have the opportunity to review and provide feedback to the specification standard prior to the public release of SyncML 1.0 in Q4 2000. The updated toolkit now includes information for generating SyncML messages for the PalmOS, EPOC operating systems and Win 32 Server operating systems, as well as a full description of the XML based SyncML format. Information on SyncML messaging for the Linux operating system will also be available in Q4 2000. The new technology will be demonstrated to Supporters at the upcoming SyncML Supporter Summit, Dublin, on September 29, 2000. Since the announcement of its formation in February 2000, over 350 companies have announced their support for SyncML. The goals of the initiative are to develop a universal synchronization standard for the mobile computing industry. SyncML compliant products will be able to exchange information seamlessly across a wide range of operating platforms and communications technologies. Supporters of the initiative now include the founding eight companies, all leaders in their fields, and organizations such as Symbian, Excite@Home, PUMATECH, fusionOne, Xircom, and BT Cellnet." See "The SyncML Initiative."
[August 29, 2000] "Next Version of Microsoft Office to Deliver Innovative New Communication And Productivity Solutions to Individuals, Teams, Organizations. Beta 1 Delivered to Select Customers for Early Product Testing." - "Microsoft Corporation today announced the next version of its best-selling Office suite and confirmed that the new product's first technical beta has been sent to a select group of customers. The next version of Microsoft Office will be a major product release that will deliver breakthrough productivity and communication solutions to empower individuals to experience and control the full functionality of the product, improve team communication and collaboration, and expand solution opportunities for organizations on the Office platform. It will also be the first Office suite to begin delivering on the Office.NET vision by integrating Internet-based services, enabling users to be more productive using Office with the Web. The next version of Office will provide organizations with a rich platform for creating Web-based business solutions that improve the accessing and reporting of critical business data, enable tight integration between Office and other applications, and deliver tools to build collaboration and workflow solutions that help teams work together more effectively. Examples of innovations that enable Web-based solutions include the following: (1) Native XML support. Excel and Access now support XML as a file format and can easily import and export XML data. This enables organizations to build solutions that integrate Excel or Access as the front end to XML-based data structures to improve corporate reporting and analysis. (2) Extensible Smart Tag architecture. Smart Tags are built on an extensible architecture so that developers can create new Smart Tags to help Office users gather information from the Web, such as accessing real-time sales or inventory data while working in Excel. (3) New tools for workflow and collaboration. A new visual development tool that creates Web-based and collaborative solutions is also included with the next version of Office. This tool targets Exchange 2000's Web Storage System and works with Office and the document management server currently code-named "Tahoe." (4) Web Components. Improved Web Components enable Excel users to easily publish interactive Web pages that have data contained in spreadsheets, pivot tables and pivot charts..."
[August 29, 2000] "Ford, Lockheed Martin, Lucent Technologies to Experience 'Off-the-Shelf' e-Commerce Using OAGI XML-Based Standards." - "The Vendor Challenge [November 2, 2000, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Cambridge, MA], sponsored by the Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI) and hosted by Canopy International, will demonstrate live, real-time 'off the shelf' e-procurement scenarios that are totally automated from point of order to shipment, receipt, invoicing and payment. Over 20 major business technology providers will participate in the live demonstrations of actual 'hands-free' commerce chains for purchasing indirect materials. The list of confirmed participants includes: Canopy International, eXcelon, Extricity, Glotech Solutions, irista, J.D. Edwards, Kildara, Mercator, Netfish Technologies, Oracle, PeopleSoft, PSDI, Requisite Technology, Robocom Systems, SAGA Software, STC, StreamServe, SupplierMarket.com, Teklogix, Tilion, webMethods, and Wonderware. Large manufacturing organizations have identified accelerated procurement as an enabler for reducing time to market. The OAGI standards used to enable these business transactions will allow commerce chains to be easily and quickly implemented among trading partners whose internal applications and computing platforms may differ dramatically. The Vendor Challenge was issued by Ford, Lockheed Martin, Lucent and other major manufacturing companies in order to demonstrate automated e-procurement using the OAGI standards..." See the earlier announcement. On OAG: see "Open Applications Group."
[August 29, 2000] "ObjectSpace to Adopt SOAP Specification for B2B Interoperability. Leading B2B Provider to Incorporate Latest XML Communications Protocol Into Its OpenBusiness Software Solutions." - "ObjectSpace, a leading provider of web service-enabled business-to-business infrastructure software products and services, announced today its support of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) by incorporating it into their OpenBusiness product line of B2B software solutions. SOAP is a communications protocol that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) to link applications and services over the Internet and allows business software programs to communicate regardless of the programming model on which they are based. OpenBusiness is a comprehensive set of integrated products and professional services to help companies realize business-to-business integration. OpenBusiness provides an easy-to-configure platform that enables B2B partners to build integration solutions rapidly without the need for alterations to existing software applications and enables the use of different business applications across all operating systems. ObjectSpace will integrate SOAP in the release of OpenBusiness 2.0 this year. SOAP was created in late 1999, by developers DevelopMentor, Inc., Microsoft and UserLand Software as a standard to bridge both XML and HTTP technologies to facilitate interoperability. Most recently, those companies, along with IBM and Lotus, developed SOAP version 1.1 and submitted that specification to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for standardization." See "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."
[August 29, 2000] "Mongoose Technology Joins OASIS to Drive XML Standards for Next Generation Portal Development Solutions." - "Mongoose Technology, Inc. today announced that it has joined OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. OASIS is a leading XML interoperability consortium. Through its support for OASIS and other leading industry standards groups, Mongoose Technology is poised to become the premier provider of next generation integrated eBusiness solutions that enable rapid development of high quality business-to-business (B2B) portals. OASIS is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating XML and other structured information standards to simplify how businesses exchange data. XML offers users an open format for B2B data exchange that sets the stage for developing interoperable systems over the Web. XML is critical to Mongoose Technology's eBusiness portal solutions strategy. Next month, the company will begin shipping the Mongoose PortalStudio product suite, which is expected to be one of the first portal development solutions to fully leverage the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and XML standards. Mongoose PortalStudio is an out-of-the-box portal development solution for rapidly designing, developing, deploying and managing B2B as well as B2E (business-to-employee) eBusiness portals...Mongoose Technology, Inc. is a premier provider of integrated eBusiness portal products and services. The company's products include the Mongoose PortalStudio visual portal authoring toolset, a development environment for the rapid development of J2EE-based eBusiness Portals; and the Mongoose PortalStudio Server, which combines an XML-based portal server with B2B integration services. The company is headquartered in Houston, and was founded in 1999."
[August 29, 2000] "Liaison Content Exchange 2.0 Powers Electronic Catalogs with Content that Accelerates Commerce. New Software Delivers Supplier Content for Electronic Catalogs, Providing Buyers with Broad Range of Information Necessary to Make Purchasing Decisions." - "Liaison, a provider of software products that aggregate and deliver supplier catalog content for eMarketplaces and large manufacturers, announced today the availability of Liaison Content Exchange 2.0. Liaison Content Exchange automatically extracts, aggregates and rationalizes data, providing B2B exchanges with the descriptive content necessary to drive purchasing decisions. Liaison Content Exchange software is used by eMarketplaces and large manufacturers. eMarketplaces (trading exchanges) use Content Exchange to automate the process of building and maintaining substantial electronic catalogs consisting of thousands of suppliers and millions of products. Large manufacturers use Content Exchange software to automatically structure product content for e-procurement applications used by their customers, as well as private and third-party eMarketplaces and commerce portals. Liaison Content Exchange customers can engage and interact with more business partners, suppliers and customers, regardless of their data interchange standards. The software supports multiple data interchange standards, including HTML, XML, cXML, CBL, DSML, BizTalk, WML, WAP and others. Liaison Content Exchange 2.0 will be available in September directly from Liaison and solution partners. The software is licensed on an annual licensing basis, starting at $140,000."
[August 29, 2000] "Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Unveils Content@XML Content Management Software. New Software Package Provides Dynamic Content Editing, Re-use, Assembly, and Multi-Channel Delivery." - "Xyvision Enterprise Solutions, Inc. (XyEnterprise), a leading developer of XML content management and publishing software announced today a new version of its leading content management software. This offering, known as Content@XML (pronounced 'contenta XML') is designed for the growing number of organizations creating XML content for re-use in the high tech, financial, product manufacturing, and publishing industries. This new product offering, built on the proven capabilities of XyEnterprise's Parlance Content Manager, provides organizations with editorial, re-use, workflow, assembly and delivery capabilities for XML and other data types. Content@XML provides out of the box integration with popular XML editing tools and, via its re-use and assembly capabilities, is an ideal compliment to web content delivery applications and application server products. The Content@ and Content@XML solutions enable organizations to migrate to an XML environment while leveraging their existing desktop applications. Content@ XML is designed to enable the creation of single source repositories to meet the growing demand for dynamic content re-use, staging of content collections for web delivery, and automation of traditional document publishing. This new package enables organizations to create and capture critical information assets for re-use across a broad range of deliverables. Typical users of Content@XML create, re-use, and dynamically publish XML content and content collections including marketing materials, technical manuals, product documentation, and financial publications in an efficient and automated manner. Content@ is a powerful entry-level content and document management application that manages source data in a structured environment while providing users the ability to continue using common desktop applications such as Microsoft Word. Content@ seamlessly manages document objects or entire files, while providing a secure and flexible workflow environment. Content@ provides a quick and cost-effective method of employing a structured content management and workflow solution that remains scalable to meet the growing and changing needs of organizations. Content@XML employs the same powerful content management engine as Content@ but harnesses the power and flexibility of XML in a comprehensive data management, re-use, and workflow application. Supporting many popular XML editing applications, Content@XML manages structured XML and SGML source data at varying levels of granularity from individual objects to entire collections of content. It also provides data management support for graphics, text, audio, and visual content. Content@XML offers extensive project-centric workflow and supports metadata from a wide variety of sources. This powerful and scalable content management solution is designed for organizations that require an efficient and effective method of creating, managing, assembling, and delivering XML and SGML content in a multi-channel publishing environment."
[August 29, 2000] "irista Showcases XML Technology for Information Exchange At Ford Motor Company's E2K Event." - "irista is proud to announce its participation in Ford Motor Company's E2K event, an event designed to showcase the latest advances in technology, integration and collaboration products. irista, a board member of the Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI), develops and markets industry leading Supply Chain Execution and Event Management products, which enable its clients to gain competitive advantage through improvements across their supply chain. Ford Motor Company's E2K Process Leadership Exposition, held in Detroit, featured the latest OAGI vendor challenge involving eight of the leading business-to-business (B2B) technology companies demonstrating a multi-vendor, multi-platform automotive maintenance repair operations (MRO) supply chain scenario. The solution demonstrated how complex and dynamic supply chains can be implemented using the XML standards being defined by the OAGI. At Ford's E2K event, irista demonstrated how its Warehouse Management System (WMS), iristaFulfull, which has been designed based upon the open standards of the OAGI, can be used to efficiently receive and transmit product information through the use of OAGI based Business Object Documents (BOD). In irista's demonstration its WMS acted as a Third Party Logistics (3PL) provider Efficient Logistics to receive and transmit purchase order information via the internet through its use of its advanced eXtensible mark-up language (XML) and BOD technology. This demonstration allowed Ford to visualize how irista's product line can be used in the sharing of information with other technology systems through the use of the BOD standards provided by the OAGI. . . The Open Applications Group is a non-profit consortium focusing on dramatically easier business software interoperability for eBusiness and application interoperability. It is the largest publisher of XML content for business software interoperability in the world. OAGI also builds and publishes the detail specifications necessary to use the XML content as well as publishing a common middleware API specification that has been endorsed by several major middleware vendors." See "Open Applications Group - OAGIS 6."
[August 29, 2000] "ClearTrust SecureControl Adds Direct XML Support to Secure t+1 Financial Transactions. Securant Technologies Delivers Straight Through Processing for Authorizing Server to Server XML-Based Equity Transactions." - "Securant Technologies, the access management company that secures e-business, today announced that its award-winning ClearTrust SecureControl product will support and secure XML-based transactions required for next day settlement of equity transactions known as Trade Date + 1, or t+1. The Securities and Exchange Commission is urging financial firms to implement a t+1 settlement cycle in 2002 in order to reduce the risk in stock and equities trades, free up capital, and decrease transaction costs. The investment community currently has three days to complete financial trades. By providing Straight Through Processing (STP) of server to server security and authorization requests for XML equity transactions, ClearTrust SecureControl will enable financial institutions to reduce settlement process redundancies and automatically verify, authorize, audit and notarize individual transactions. ClearTrust SecureControl delivers an integrated solution that unifies transaction security and user access under one policy management infrastructure for protecting all electronic transactions including Web, wireless and XML. With direct support for XML, and industry specific versions of XML, ClearTrust SecureControl enables enterprises to verify, authorize, audit and notarize financial transactions and prevent fraud. ClearTrust SecureControl provides a single point of control for managing and enforcing security policies that govern user authentication, authorization and single sign-on for all XML-based applications and resources running in an enterprise or service provider environment. ClearTrust SecureControl delivers a centralized, unified, and automated infrastructure for securing XML-based transactions including: (1) Single sign-on across multi-domains for XML-based transactions that span multiple applications, resources and Web sites within one company, affiliate sites, between trading partners, and in Application Service Provider (ASP) environments; (2) Smart Rules that allow customers to use natural language business rules to centralize and automate the authorization of XML transactions based on a machine's profile and content in the XML message; (3) Delegated administration using Virtual Business Units that allows time-consuming user administration workloads to be distributed to suppliers and customers; (4) Fraud/threat detection that monitors user and machine behavior at the application level for violations of business rules and takes countermeasures to proactively prevent application misuse and fraud."
[August 29, 2000] "eXcelon Launches Mobile Commerce Initiative to Provide Information Convergence Platform for Communications Providers. Information convergence platform enables service providers to offer new revenue-generating services to the wireless market." - "eXcelon Corporation, a leading provider of XML-based business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure solutions, today unveiled a mobile commerce initiative that allows telecommunications operators and Internet service providers to successfully transition their businesses to the Mobile Internet. A combination of its leading B2B infrastructure products and services, the eXcelon m-commerce initiative provides an information convergence platform that enables service providers to move up the supply chain rapidly, creating new revenue-generating services that will attract and retain today's demanding customers. By converging information from disparate systems and managing the flow of information through logical, automated business processes, service providers can provide new levels of customer service, while reducing overall service costs. Information convergence enables organizations to create proactive customer care, personalized value-added services and rich content services - all which help attract new customers while retaining existing customers. Additionally, information convergence enables organizations to identify additional revenue-generating services, such as content delivery, advertising and transaction processing. The foundation of the eXcelon m-commerce initiative is its leading XML-based B2B infrastructure products and services. eXcelon technology enables an organization to collaborate with thousands of partners,


SEARCH \| ABOUT \| INDEX \| NEWS \| CORE STANDARDS \| TECHNOLOGY REPORTS \| EVENTS \| LIBRARY