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

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[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, suppliers and customers over the Internet. By automating business processes traditionally performed manually, eXcelon solutions help an organization increase efficiency, provide more responsive customer service and provide live access to the current state of all enterprise transactions."
[August 29, 2000] "nCommand Completes Successful Pilot Test of XML-Based Mortgage Processing Service. Lenders Expect Digital Network to Slash Costs and Speed Closing Times." - " nCommand, creator of Internet-based electronic partner networks (EPNs) that automate and synchronize labor intensive inter-company business processes, today announced that it has completed a successful pilot test of its flagship service, the Mortgage EPN, and is moving forward with its plans to offer its service to additional lenders. Many lenders participated in the pilot test to learn how they might introduce their organizations to web-based loan processing. The Mortgage EPN is the first Web-based system that moves a loan from origination to close with just a browser. The enabling technology is an XML-based network that aggregates disparate documents from external service providers, consolidating them into an all-digital loan package. The Mortgage EPN reduces the labor component of loan processing, which, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA), accounts for 65 percent of loan production expenses. nCommand's Mortgage EPN is a complete electronic fulfillment solution for mortgage loan processing. It aggregates disparate documents from multiple external service providers and consolidates them into a complete digital loan package that includes credit analysis, automated underwriting, title and appraisal services, flood certification, mortgage insurance and loan document preparation. nCommand's XML-based architecture allows documents to be seamlessly integrated across multiple computing and communication platforms, including loan origination and desktop underwriting systems."
[August 28, 2000] "Upcoming OMG Meeting to Focus on Integration of Emerging Technologies Burlingame, CA USA." - "At the Object Management Group's (OMG) upcoming Technical Meeting Week in Burlingame, CA, USA, September 11-15, 2000, OMG members will apply the organization's open, vendor-neutral, consensus-building process to set industry standards integrating XML, SOAP, C# and other emerging technologies with the organization's established standards, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The OMG's UML specification is the industry standard for analysis and design. At this meeting, four Request for Papers (RFPs) will be issued to progress the language to a 2.0 release. Concentrating on language infrastructure, language superstructure, Object Constraint Language (OCL), and UML Diagram Interchange, these efforts will increase both the applicability and expressiveness of this already widely-used standard language. Task Forces of the OMG's Domain Technology Committee, standardizing CORBA facilities in many fields including telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, and many others, will also meet and advance their own standards work during the week. Sponsored by Fujitsu, Ltd., the meeting will be held at the Hyatt hotel in Burlingame, CA, USA. Tutorials during the week will cover UML, the OMG's Interface Definition Language, and Fault-tolerant CORBA. Guest speakers include Miguel de Icaza, project leader for the Linux desktop GNOME who will present GNOME's CORBA-based interoperability architecture. Outside organizations co-locating their meetings with the OMG include the NTCIP Center-to-Center standard for intelligent highways and transportation systems, and the CCAPI IEC working group, standardizing interoperable software for electric power transmission control systems. More than twenty companies will demonstrate CORBA and UML compliant software and tools."
[August 28, 2000] "New Visible Analyst 7.5 Supports UML, XML, Round-Trip, and Structured Software Engineering in One Integrated Toolset. The latest version of this popular application development tool gives companies 'push-button' transition from traditional to object-oriented software development." - "Visible Systems Corporation unveiled an enhanced version of its powerful software analysis and design tool that uniquely supports both structured and object-oriented development. By supporting both design methods, Visible Analyst 7.5 helps development teams effectively migrate structured applications into object-oriented applications, build new applications that incorporate enterprise data, and reduce maintenance headaches for all applications. Visible Analyst 7.5 supports Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams for analysis and design, as well as structured notations and XML and SQL schema descriptions. It performs 'push-button' translation of Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) into Class Diagrams and vice versa, saving developers significant time in building error-free models. In addition, Visible Analyst 7.5 expands the IntelliViews feature. Users can now reverse engineer data views from existing databases. The product also offers complete reverse/forward round-trip engineering for databases and data views. Visible Analyst 7.5 enables software engineers to model data, processes, entity relationships, and objects that can be shared for concurrent, multi-user application development throughout the organization. It gives corporations a way to control enterprise software for quality, consistency, and reusability in business applications through the managed sharing and reuse of meta-data. Visible Analyst 7.5's extensive reporting function provides a useful communications vehicle between developers and company managers. Graphic reports not only help better define the software being developed, they also raise the visibility of the project within an organization. Visible Analyst 7.5 supports Use Case Modeling, Sequence Modeling, Collaboration Modeling, and Activity Modeling, as well as Class and State Transition Modeling. It is part of the complete solution for building object-oriented and e-business programs. Visible Analyst 7.5 exchanges model information via XML with VB Mentor from 3tSoftware, which generates Visual Basic code. It also interfaces to Powerbuilder and other code-generation products for C, C++, and Java. The enhanced Intelliviews feature is especially helpful in application integration and database modification. Visible Analyst 7.5 lets developers extract database views from existing databases, import them into the Visible Analyst repository, and generate new data views. Visible Analyst support for XML schemas facilitates the integration of e-business applications with object and legacy systems. It generates an XML file containing meta-data descriptions that can be exported to eXcelon software and other XML-based server systems for quickly building dynamic business-to-business Web applications. Visible Analyst 7.5 also simplifies connection to databases through ODBC. When a database schema is generated or reverse engineered, connection information is maintained, eliminating the need to re-enter a data source selection."
[August 28, 2000] "B-Bop Associates Joins OASIS. XML Platform Provider Sponsors XML Interoperability Consortium." - "B-Bop Associates, Inc., provider of XML solutions for eBusiness content management and information exchange, became the newest sponsor member of OASIS, the international XML interoperability consortium. B-Bop joined OASIS to support the industry-wide organization and its efforts to ensure open technical standards for the Internet. B-Bop uses XML to deliver dynamic, personalized content to e-commerce, customer relationship management and information portal sites. B-Bop (www.b-bop.com) provides a standards-based XML platform that powers eBusiness processes centered on content management and information exchange. B-Bop products and services enable businesses to transform, store and re-purpose critical information between their sources, customers and business partners. Whether the data comes from internal, external or a combination of sources, the B-Bop Xfinity Server dynamically synchronizes the information specifically to the needs of each customer or application. As a result, B-Bop Xfinity delivers dynamic, personalized and up-to-date content." Note also the company announcement of June 14, 2000: "First Call and B-Bop Jointly Unveil XML Specification for Financial Research." Also: "FAML DTD for Financial Research Documents."
[August 24, 2000] "SoftQuad Software Advances XML Content Delivery to Mobile Users. Leading XML firm joins Wireless Application Protocol Forum." - "SoftQuad Software,, an internationally-recognized developer of XML enabling technologies and commerce solutions for e-business, today announced that it has joined the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum to advance the delivery of XML content to mobile users. The WAP Forum is an industry association that has developed the de-facto world standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile phones and other wireless terminals. 'With more than 100 million wireless users today, and that number growing daily, there's an enormous demand for content that can be delivered over WAP enabled devices,'said Roberto Drassinower, president and CEO of SoftQuad Software Ltd. 'XML is becoming the dominant format for exchanging content over wireless devices, and our experience in XML and XML content creation solutions will help content providers deliver entirely new services to mobile users.' Through an active membership in the WAP Forum, SoftQuad will join a growing number of industry leaders driving the universal enablement of fast and easy delivery of relevant information and services to mobile users. Members include: Alcatel, AT&T Wireless Services, Bell Mobility, Compaq, Ericsson Mobile Communications, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel Corporation, Nortel, Nokia, and many more. 'WAP is based on an XML platform and as such we recognize the demand for tools for developers and authors,' said Scott Goldman, CEO of the WAP Forum. 'SoftQuad provides an excellent solution for creating content that will be delivered to wireless devices and the WAP Forum is delighted to have them as members.' The WAP Forum is the industry association that has developed the de-facto world standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile phones and other wireless terminals. Their primary goal is to bring together companies from all segments of the wireless industry value chain to ensure product interoperability and growth of wireless market." See: "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification (WML)."
[August 23, 2000] "eXcelon Announces Support of Open Application Group's B2B Integration Specification. Provides First and Only Solution to Enable B2B Standard Interoperability. Enables organizations to build B2B trading networks based on multiple XML dialects." - "eXcelon Corporation, a leading provider of XML-based business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure solutions today announced full support for OAGIS, the Open Applications Group's standard for integration. By combining support for OAGIS with its unparalleled XML translation capabilities, eXcelon becomes the first vendor to enable organizations to build and deploy sophisticated B2B trading networks regardless of the type and number of different XML dialects used. With support for multiple XML dialects, eXcelon will speed the adoption of B2B commerce by enabling organizations to deploy B2B trading networks without forcing partners, suppliers and customers to adopt a specific XML standard. eXcelon has developed B2B infrastructure solutions that enable organizations and digital marketplaces to connect to and dynamically interact with thousands of their partners, suppliers and customers over the Internet. eXcelon technology is 100 percent standards based, featuring complete support for any XML-based B2B standard, including OAGIS, RosettaNet, cXML, xCBL and ACORD. The eXcelon B2B Integration Server features the industry's first business process interaction engine, which enables organizations to define and execute shared business processes of all types and complexities across multiple organizations. Business processes can be shared with any partner in the extranet community, regardless of their technical infrastructure or which B2B standards they support. By sharing automated business processes over the Internet, eXcelon removes a company's reliance on inefficient phone, fax and mail transactions, creating a more responsive, more efficient and more profitable company. The Open Applications Group (www.openapplications.org) 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 with over 120 published transaction XML-schemas for end-to-end (E2E) electronic commerce, covering all aspects of enterprise application integration and partner communications from catalog information exchange, supply chain execution (SCE), to collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). The Open Applications Group 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."
[August 23, 2000] "Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Launches XML Professional Publisher Version 7.0. The Latest Release of XyEnterprise's Leading XML and SGML Automated Publishing Solution." - "Xyvision Enterprise Solutions, Inc. (XyEnterprise), a leading developer of XML content management and publishing software, announced today the latest version of its flagship automated XML publishing product, XML Professional Publisher (formerly known as XyEnterprise Production Publisher). This latest version, XPP 7.0, offers intelligent XML and SGML processing capabilities including the ability to import and export well-formed and valid documents within the production and composition processes. In addition, this release features a more refined and user-friendly graphical interface to manage both documents and styles. Other key elements of the v7.0 release include: (1) Ability to directly employ XML structure and attributes during page composition; (2) An interactive and structured view of pages during the composition process; (3) Enhanced graphics file support that simplifies the production workflow; (4) Pagination refinements and extended macro programming features which provide unmatched levels of automation for complex document production. [Said Richard Pasewark, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for XyEnterprise:] 'XPP 7.0 will meet the requirements of a large number of new XML users who need to automatically create high quality Postscript and PDF output from XML and other data sources. These users include publishers in the financial markets, product manufacturers, reference and directory creators, and any organization that requires rapid or demand delivery of XML source to formatted deliverables.' XML Professional Publisher is a high performance content formatting and publishing application that composes pages from XML and SGML source data and outputs high quality results in XML, PDF, HTML and Postscript formats. XML Professional Publisher provides superior typographic support combined with a level of speed, power and throughput that is unattainable in other publishing systems. XPP is offered on Windows NT, Sun Solaris, and IBM AIX, and will be available for new customers in September 2000. With headquarters in Reading, Mass., Xyvision Enterprise Solutions, Inc. (XyEnterprise), provides organizations of all sizes with content and document management solutions that streamline the information creation and delivery process. XyEnterprise combines its own XML content management, workflow and publishing software with integration services to build enterprise wide solutions for the collaborative creation, management, assembly, and multi-channel distribution of information. Its customer base includes industry-leading companies in the aerospace, automotive, telecommunications, standards and publishing markets. These customers include Boeing, IBM, Gulfstream, Telcordia, Sun Microsystems, Lucent, ASTM, and many others."
[August 23, 2000] "webPLAN Unveils System-to-System eSupply-Chain Solution. New webPLAN Xtream Server uses the power of XML to accelerate supply chain and demand chain interaction." - "webPLAN Inc., a leading provider of e-Business solutions for manufacturers, today announced the availability of webPLAN Xtream Serverd, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) platform that allows manufacturers and their B2B customers and suppliers to automate data sharing for faster collaboration. With webPLAN Xtream Server systems at different sites can exchange information over the Internet; greatly reducing the need for time consuming and costly administrative support often required to enable interaction across the supply chain. Unlike expensive and complex proprietary Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems, webPLAN Xtream Server automates system-to-system data sharing using XML, which is rapidly gaining acceptance as the global standard for e-Commerce transactions. Given the incredibly large number of transactions required for e-Commerce and order fulfillment, this automation is essential for manufacturers to reduce time-to-market and lower administrative costs. webPLAN Xtream Server is a flexible, open solution that is easy to deploy and manage. Global XML standards are currently being developed by RosettaNet, a group of leading information technology and electronics companies dedicated to the development and deployment of standard electronic business interfaces. RosettaNet's XML Partner Interface Processes have been tested and implemented by several companies, demonstrating the enormous potential for XML to streamline system-to-system processes between trading partners."
[August 22, 2000] "Envera provides CIDX with key XML data tags for industry-wide application. Chemical industry establishes e-commerce transaction data standards." - "Envera, a member-driven service providing speed and efficiency for transactions in the petroleum and chemical industry through Web-enabled technology, is leading the effort by providing its expertise to the Chemicals Industry Data eXchange (CIDX)-the industry's e-commerce monitor-in implementing XML-based solutions for the chemical e-commerce market. Envera's unique application of XML technology, based on solid chemical industry supply chain experience, allows companies to link their enterprise resource planning (ERP) data systems and communicate data seamlessly to suppliers through the Internet-thus enhancing the efficiencies of a company's supply-chain partnerships. Envera is the first company within the chemical industry to move past the trend of online exchanges and online auctions to implement a neutral and transparent facilitator of business transactions. Through Envera, companies can communicate directly in real time using standard XML documents. Envera's focus is on strategic or direct transactions and on providing complete integration with a members' back-end ERP system. Envera's contribution of intellectual property -- including XML technical specifications of complete chemical order cycle transactions -- is helping CIDX to expand its role of supporting and promoting e-commerce through electronic data interchange (EDI), to the next step of establishing industry-wide XML transaction standards called 'CIDXml'. 'Our goal is to improve the value and quality of how our industry will do business now and in the future,' said Jacques Robitaille, chairman of CIDX's XML subcommittee. 'The order cycle transactions that we have received from Envera will greatly assist our work in establishing CIDXml as the standard for firms participating in the chemical e-marketplace. These combined with other efforts will provide a significant critical mass towards establishing a true industry standard.' Envera is in the process of connecting early implementers and beta-testing its business-for-business transaction engine. . . CIDX is a group of chemical companies and their trading partners that voluntarily joined together to foster Electronic Commerce through the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Auto ID and related technologies. The mission of CIDX is to provide the Chemical Industry with proven, cost effective, electronic commerce solutions that either lower the cost of existing, or enable new, commercial business processes to be employed within the Chemical Industry. CIDX is open to all chemical companies, their customers and suppliers."
[August 15, 2000] "Microsoft Announces Availability of BizTalk Server 2000 Beta. Revolutionary New Product Will Orchestrate the Next Generation Of Internet-Based Business Solutions." - "Microsoft Corporation today announced the public availability of the beta version of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000. A member of the .NET Enterprise Server family of products, BizTalk Server 2000 will make it fundamentally easier to orchestrate the next generation of Internet-based business solutions. Eagerly awaited by customers and industry partners, BizTalk Server 2000 will unite, in a single product, enterprise application integration (EAI), business-to-business integration and the much-anticipated BizTalk Orchestration technology to allow developers, IT professionals and business analysts to easily build dynamic business processes that span applications, platforms and businesses over the Internet. Based on industry standards for data exchange and security such as SOAP 1.1 (Simple Object Access Protocol), XML and S/MIME, the BizTalk Framework enables the secure and reliable exchange of business documents over the Internet. Development of the BizTalk Framework is overseen by the BizTalk Steering Committee, which is comprised of industry partners, consortiums and standards bodies. BizTalk Server 2000 customers can also take advantage of BizTalk.org, a community resource to accelerate the expression of business processes in XML. As the world's largest open XML business process schema repository with over 400 industry schema, BizTalk.org provides immediate access to XML schema from industry standards bodies like ACORD, BASDA, the HR-XML Consortium and OAG as well as popular applications vendors like Autodesk Inc., Clarus Corp., Commerce One Inc. and Great Plains. BizTalk Server 2000 will offer a broad set of tools and an infrastructure to simplify and speed the orchestration of applications and businesses together into next-generation solutions: (1) Rapid development of dynamic business processes. BizTalk Orchestration technology builds on the Visio diagramming platform to provide a familiar graphical environment for quickly building dynamic, distributed business processes, and an advanced orchestration engine for executing and managing those processes. (2) Easy application and business integration. BizTalk Server 2000 provides powerful tools to easily integrate applications and businesses both behind the firewall and across the Internet using industry standard XML. (3) Interoperability with industry standards. BizTalk Server 2000 supports a multitude of transports and protocols in addition to XML, including EDI (X12 and UN EDIFACT), HTTP, HTTPS, Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ), SMTP (e-mail), and flat file transfer. (4) Reliable document delivery over the Internet. Support for the BizTalk Framework ensures reliable, 'guaranteed once only' delivery of business documents, such as purchase orders or insurance claims, over the Internet. (5) Secure document exchange. BizTalk Server 2000 supports industry-standard security technologies such as public key encryption and digital signatures to ensure secure document exchange with trading partners. (6) XLANG support. XLANG is an XML-based language for describing business processes. The BizTalk Editor and the BizTalk Mapper are included for developing and transforming XML schema and business documents."
[August 15, 2000] "MISMO Appoints Ultraprise Corporation VP to XML Work Group. Gabriel Minton selected by standard-setting organization to help guide industry XML effort." - "In recognition of his outstanding leadership in the development of an XML-based Internet data exchange standard for the mortgage industry, the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) appointed Gabriel Minton, Ultraprise Corporation vice president of standards and alliances, chairman of the MISMO Architecture Work Group. David Barkley, director of industry support at Freddie Mac and chairman of the MISMO Governance Committee, said 'Gabe has been a leader and guiding force in the creation of MISMO's XML data exchange standard for the mortgage industry. His evangelistic zeal for XML has propelled the industry forward and we're excited to have him on board.' MISMO was created by MBA to coordinate efforts within the industry to develop an Internet-based standard for real estate finance transactions. MBA launched MISMO in October 1999, and the organization released a final version of the XML data standards (1.0) earlier this month. Ultraprise Corporation was one of eight founding companies of XML Mortgage Partners (XML-MP), a not-for-profit organization that helped spearhead the development of an Internet standard. XML-MP saw the need for wide mortgage industry participation in the standard-setting process and worked with MBA to combine the efforts of the two groups. In October 1999, XML-MP turned its work over to MISMO for future development. Dulles, Va.-based Ultraprise Corporation is a leader in Internet technology, the creator of ULTRAPRISE.COM, the secondary market mortgage exchange, and one of the 16 companies represented on the MISMO Governance Committee. The XML Architecture Work Group oversees the development of, and proposes changes to all XML-based transactions. The work group determines what data needs to be included in the standard, the tools and technology to be used in the standard-setting process, the form and specifications of the standard, as well as what the specific release will be. Ultraprise Corporation provides a framework for the accumulation and distribution of assets and information within the finance industry. The company's Web site, ULTRAPRISE.COM offers an open and neutral trading exchange that allows sellers of financial assets to transact with buyers securely using a standard Web browser. The XML-based services provide an industry-standard interchange format for machine-to-machine communications across the Internet." See "XML-MP: XML Mortgage Partners Framework."
[August 12, 2000] "XMLSolutions Provides Expertise to CMP Media. XML Boot Camp and Planet IT Enlist XMLSolutions' World Leading XML Experts." - "XMLSolutions Corporation, a leading worldwide provider of software for the development and deployment of XML-based applications, has been chosen to provide the XML expertise for two prominent CMP Media technology services, XML Boot Camp and Planet IT. CMP Media's XML Boot Camp is a comprehensive, hands-on training course on XML programming. Designed for web designers/developers, java programmers and application developers, the intense five-day courses cover the ground from theory to actual development of real world enterprise applications. XMLSolutions instructors include John Evdemon, Tom Gaven, Drew Munro and Jeff Ricker. XML Boot Camp's five-day training courses will be held in Boston 8/21-25, Chicago 9/11-15, Washington, D.C. 9/18-22, Austin TX 10/2-6, Santa Clara CA 10/9-13, and Bellevue WA 10/16-20. Please go to http://www.sdexpo.com/bootcamp or http://www.xmls.com/training for detailed information and online registration. . . XMLSolutions enables secure, real-time B2B data exchange of direct and indirect materials transactions over the Internet. By eliminating a company's XML dialect dependence, XMLSolutions removes trade barriers enabling uniform transaction among trading partners, customers, and exchanges. Included in this offering are XML-to-XML transformations, EDI-to-XML integration and over 3000 mission-critical, industry specific business documents."
[August 12, 2000] "Bluestone Software and XMLSolutions Team to Deliver Real-Time Exchange Between EDI and XML-Based Systems. Bluestone's B2B Platform Integrated with XMLSolutions' Translation and Schema Management to Enable Enterprises to Easily Exchange Data Between EDI and XML-based Systems." Recognizing the escalating demand for conducting business transactions over the Internet, Bluestone Software, Inc., a leader in business-to-Web and wireless technologies, and XMLSolutions Corporation, a leading provider of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based infrastructure software and services, today announced an alliance between the companies, as well as plans to integrate technologies that will enable their clients to more easily exchange real-time data between EDI and XML-based systems for buyers, sellers, and partners. The integrated Bluestone and XMLSolutions offering will specifically address the needs of large, Global 2000 enterprise customers who have invested in electronic data interchange (EDI) technology and now want to establish electronic trading relationships with business partners using XML for data exchange. This powerful combination will offer customers superior performance, reliability and scalability for bi-directional XML-to-XML and EDI-to-XML translation. With Bluestone's Total-e-B2B, the e-business Integration Server component of Bluestone's Total-e-Business platform, companies can rapidly and reliably establish a virtual corporation with seamless, any-to-any communications between its extraprise partners, suppliers and customers, as well as internal users and systems. Bluestone and XMLSolutions will integrate Total-e-B2B with XMLSolutions' XEDI Translator (EDI/XML translation), and Schema Central (schema management) software products, to create a robust e-business system for data exchange between EDI and XML-based systems. This will allow enterprises with EDI systems that previously only communicated with other EDI systems to more easily conduct business with partners using XML. XMLSolutions' XEDI Translator seamlessly integrates with existing EDI trading systems. This Java-based application uses completely open standards and provides support for both X12 and EDIFACT EDI document translations to XML. Every X12 transaction set and every EDIFACT message, including over 3,000 of the most widely used business documents, can be translated with XEDI Translator. As large companies deploy XML-based applications, they are recognizing the challenge created by the proliferation of various industry-based XML DTD and schema standards. Schema Central delivers support for XML DTDs and schemas from a variety of sources including industry standards groups, technology vendors, trading partners, as well as in-house projects allowing companies to become XML dialect independent."
[August 11, 2000] "OpenTravel Alliance Publishes Customer Profile Specifications and Submits them to ebXML." - "The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) published today its Version 1 specifications that gives the travel industry one universal format for collecting and exchanging customer preferences among airlines, hotels, car rental companies, tour operators, travel agencies, and related services. OTA has provided copies of the version to the ebXML meeting that is being held in San Jose, CA, this week. The OTA customer profile has innovative features to make life easier for travelers. The common format allows the travel industry and its web sites to collect information on identification and preferences only once and exchange it with suppliers of travel services as well as their intermediaries. The specification lets customers define collections of travel service in terms of their own varied needs, such as business travel or the annual church retreat. OTA Version 1 also contains comprehensive privacy features that enable the customer to control any transfer of personal data. The built-in controls allow only specified parts of the profile to be exchanged. The OTA specifications' use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) helps make e-business more accessible to a wider number of companies by defining common industry terms for Internet-based data exchange. The specifications include electronic XML validation rules, called document type definitions, as well as many sample OTA messages. The drafts of these that were issued in February 2000 generated comments from all over the world, from both inside and outside the travel industry. The final specifications released today incorporate these, which have significantly strengthened Version 1. They can be freely downloaded from www.opentravel.org. OTA participates in the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) initiative to develop a single XML message infrastructure to facilitate communication between different businesses and industries in different countries. ebXML used OTA's draft sample messages as part of its proof of concept tests at its May meeting in Brussels, Belgium. As a further contribution to ebXML, OTA is providing its Version 1 specifications. OTA is keen to align its specifications with those in other industries, including the work of the CPExchange initiative, and sees ebXML as an effective way of doing this. With over 150 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, including air, car, hotel, travel agencies, technology providers and other travel related suppliers, the Alliance is comprised of five work groups air, car, hotel, leisure supplier, and non-supplier. These groups, together with an interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts, are developing open Internet-compatible messages using XML data terms." See "OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)."
[August 09, 2000] "Netfish Technologies Allies itself With ebXML Initiative. ebXML Initiative Urges Adoption of Global Infrastructure for Electronic Information Exchange." - "The United Nations/CEFACT (UN's body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) have announced plans to sponsor a Proof of Concept demonstration at the ebXML meeting today in San Jose as part of the ebXML initiative. A joint effort, ebXML is an initiative to apply an open, XML-based infrastructure to electronic business to enable the use of secure, interoperable information by all parties. Netfish Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of XML-based business-to-business e-commerce solutions, will be among the participants at the ebXML demo. As a strong supporter of ebXML, Netfish has been actively involved in the Initiative from the beginning. Patrick Gannon, vice president of strategic programs at Netfish, is also on the Board of Directors at OASIS, and has been elected to the UN/ECE's team of specialists. Netfish's contribution to the demonstration will highlight ebXML's applicability in three models of business-to-business communication: point-to-point, hub-and-spoke and federated. The ebXML Initiative was formed to create an XML-based framework for electronic business globally. The data exchange technology currently available is electronic data exchange (EDI), which is expensive and difficult to implement, particularly for smaller companies with more limited resources. ebXML overcomes these obstacles by making the established conventions available to the public at a significantly lower cost. [...] Netfish Technologies is the leading provider of highly scalable XML-based B2B integration solutions used by the world's top internet-enabled companies, such as Cisco Systems, NTT Communications and Sun Microsystems to enable B2BeCommerce with their customers, suppliers and partners. Supporting all major XML protocols and EDI messaging standards and providing complete backend integration into ERP and legacy systems, Netfish products provide a complete end-to-end B2B solution. It enables automation of a wide spectrum of business processes ranging from procurement and order fulfillment to billing and payment. Netfish award winning products realize tremendous savings in cost for all corporations, e-marketplaces and public/private trading exchanges."
[August 09, 2000] "Viquity's Dynamic Commerce Network To Provide Hub Technology For Proof-of-Concept Of Emerging ebXML Standard. Viquity Joins World-Wide Standards Organizations and Industry Leaders to Support the Delivery of a Global Electronic Business Standard." - "Viquity, an emerging leader for outsourced eBusiness infrastructure to automate production procurement, today announced its participation in the proof-of-concept for ebXML, a standard which will provide an open XML-based infrastructure enabling the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure and consistent manner. Organized by The United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the proof-of-concept will help standardize XML business specifications and allow organizations of all sizes to conduct their business with their trading partners electronically. Viquity joins a host of industry leaders, including Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems, webMethods, Vitria and Netfish to help demonstrate the viability of the standard and demonstrate it in a business scenario that incorporates a supply chain model, including multiple roles and multiple vendors. This proof-of-concept is being demonstrated on Wednesday, August 9 at the ebXML meeting in San Jose, California. Specifically, the proof-of-concept will rely on Viquity's Dynamic Commerce Network (DCN) to act as the hub, routing documents between source and targets. The other vendors involved participate as requesters or responders of various business documents that are exchanged to run their businesses. Each company will demonstrate the ebXML standard by routing documents, such as purchase orders and purchase order acknowledgments through Viquity's DCN. The diverse combination of vendors demonstrates the horizontal nature of the ebXML standard and the benefits that it can provide for deployment among vertically focused industries."
[August 08, 2000] "PricewaterhouseCoopers to Develop Electronic Solution for Global Financial Institutions to Handle Changes in U.S. Withholding Tax Regulations. PricewaterhouseCoopers-Developed Communications Protocol, daliML, Will Be Backbone to New System." - "PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world's largest professional services organization, is creating an electronic communications system and central repository called Data Link for Intermediaries (DALI) at the request of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and a consortium of global financial institutions including Goldman, Sachs & Co., Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Salomon Smith Barney - a member of Citigroup. DALI, among other things, will be a global, Internet-based, real-time communications tool that will help financial institutions meet new reporting requirements by facilitating the interaction between U.S. withholding agents and their non-U.S. intermediary customers. In addition, PricewaterhouseCoopers has developed a communications protocol for DALI called daliML. The system will be piloted during the fourth quarter of 2000 and is scheduled to be fully operational by 2001. The Depository Trust Company, a subsidiary of DTCC, will host and operate the system. The protocol, daliML, is based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the emerging Internet standard for data sharing between applications. This specification is expected to set the standard within the withholding and reporting area of the financial services industry. DALI leverages the innovation and [XML] standardization work from the Internet community; it treamlines data transmission procedures and minimizes processing delays and creates a standardized set of data elements. DALI will serve as a central document and data repository for required tax documents and core account information between US financial institutions and foreign intermediaries as prescribed by the 1441 Tax Regulations." For other references, see: "Data Link for Intermediaries Markup Language (daliML)."
[August 08, 2000] "DataChannel Leads Industry with Launch of DCS 4.1 Mobile-Capable Enterprise Portal. Deloitte Consulting and Advantage Sales and Marketing Select DataChannel For Wireless Enterprise Solutions." - "DataChannel, Inc., a leader in XML 'Business-to-Anyone' (B2A) solutions, today announced the launch and general availability of DataChannel Server (DCS) 4.1, the latest version of its XML-based Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) solution. DataChannel, one of the first EIP vendors to successfully demonstrate the delivery of enterprise information to wireless devices, including cell phones, PDAs and two-way pagers, has strengthened its mobile device support and will exhibit DCS 4.1's mobile capability at the DCI Corporate Portals Conference, August 8-10, in Boston. The release of DCS 4.1 reinforces DataChannel's leadership in the EIP market with mobile device capabilities and easy integration of Web-based applications. With enhanced functionality over its previous release, DCS 4.1 allows enterprise customers to access corporate directories, navigate information folders and receive user notifications when content is changed. [Said Lucie J. Fjeldstad, president and CEO of DataChannel]: 'Information does not simply reside in the portals we build -- our XML-based portals connect information. We take an inside/out approach so that you don't have to worry where, in the back end, your data resides. Our portals are data and device independent, two-way, and come with the benefit of our seasoned professional services team and our certified partner integration firms, so that you make the most of your data.' By using XML and DCS, DataChannel provides a portal solution that separates enterprise data from display so information can be re-purposed and presented on multiple devices. Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), a W3C open standard, transforms XML data into a rendered, visual format for display in a Web browser. These Stylesheets can be modified to transform the same XML data into a mobile data format -- independent of size. In addition to delivering access to any Web browser, DCS 4.1 provides advanced capabilities to deliver critical business information -- regardless of device. You can see DataChannel's three tier approach online at http://www.datachannel.com/dcs/. Deloitte Consulting and Advantage Sales and Marketing have selected DataChannel's DCS 4.1 as a component of their wireless enterprise solutions. DCS 4.1's new product features include: (1) XpertLinX -- XpertLinx integrates Web content with other enterprise data and applications to provide direct access from a user's personalized start page to syndicated news, and stock quotes, as well as email, calendars, ERP, CRM, and othr enterprise applications. (2) Improved Performance and Scalability -- DCS 4.1 enables organizations to deploy DataChannel server in a distributed manner. Using common load balancing techniques, DCS can scale to support large numbers of users and large volumes of data. DCS 4.1 will support in excess of 10 times the amount of user's supported by previous versions. (3) Enhanced Personalization -- DCS 4.1's improvements in personalization make it easier for users to modify the look and feel of their portal. (4) Integrated Full-Text Search -- DCS 4.1 delivers full-text search integration. DCS 4.1's XpertSearch capability is an advanced, intelligent search and knowledge retrieval solution that includes spidering, categorization and indexing. (5) Enhanced Administration -- DCS 4.1 administration has been improved to make it easier to configure, manage and optimize the performance of the portal server. (6) Activity Tracking and Reporting -- Standard and custom administration reports are available to identify user behavior and traffic. DCS 4.1 integrates smoothly with an organization's existing environment and makes use of critical enterprise applications through external data connectivity and broad enterprise platform support. It meets changing business needs with a portal server flexible enough to take data from inside the enterprise and deliver it to any device. "Having access to information no matter where you are is critical to success today," said Kate Fessenden, research director for Aberdeen Group. "DataChannel is a catalyst for Business-2-Mobile applications and keeping people connected to business-critical information. It's now easy for organizations to give their employees access to the information they need to do their jobs with a device as convenient..."
[August 08, 2000] "Intalio Leads XML Initiative for Business Process Management. The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) Will Standardize Management of Mission-Critical Business Processes That Span Multiple Applications, Corporate Departments, and Business Partners." - "Intalio, the Business Process Management Company, with Aventail, Black Pearl, Blaze Software, Bowstreet, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Computer Sciences Corporation, Cyclone Commerce, DataChannel, Entricom, Ontology.Org, S1 Corporation, Versata, VerticalNet, Verve, and XMLFund announced today that they will form a group to define standards for the management of mission-critical business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners. The XML-based standards generated from the 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). 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." See: "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."
[August 08, 2000] "Entricom Joins Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI). Entricom to assist in the development of XML-based standard for the management of mission-critical business processes." - "Entricom, developer of the first XML-based Operation Support System (OSS) for next-generation Communication Service Providers, today announced they would be an active participant in the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org). BPMI intends to define standards for managing mission-critical business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners. The standards generated from the 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 BPMI will be the specification of the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML). BPML is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Schema that provides a standard way to model mission-critical business processes. XML 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. Entricom has developed the first XML-based Operations Support System (OSS) that enables business process automation and end-to-end integration for next-generation Communication Service Providers (CSPs). Entricom has built a flexible, scalable, and open XML framework and suite of software applications that answer next-generation CSPs need for fast service launch, flow-through provisioning, secure access, and agile response to market growth. Entricom's XML framework supports the integration of Entricom's software applications and other best-in-class OSS applications including those offered by companies such as Lucent, Nortel Networks, Architel, Cisco Systems, ADC Saville, Portal, Telecom Software, SCC, and Siebel Systems." See: "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."
[August 08, 2000] "Microsoft Brings eBooks to Windows Users With the Free Availability of Microsoft Reader. New Barnes & Noble.com eBookStore to Sell Titles. Major Publishers Offer Promotions For Microsoft's Innovative New eBook Software." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft Reader for desktop PCs and laptop computers is available free for immediate download at http://www.microsoft.com/reader/, delivering the promise of eBooks to users of the Microsoft Windows 95 or later operating system. Barnes & Noble.com and Microsoft also announced the opening of the Barnes & Noble.com eBookStore for Microsoft Reader, the first online retail bookstore to offer commercial content for Microsoft Reader. In addition, major publishers - including Simon & Schuster Inc., Time Warner Books and Random House Inc. - are making best-selling titles available in Microsoft Reader format through a variety of promotions." The MS Reader supports the XML-based OpenEbook standard; see the recent article "Microsoft Cranks Up Its Wide-Ranging E-Book Program. [Microsoft Discloses Ambitious E-Book Program.]" By Mike Letts and Mark Walter. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 11 (July 2000), pages 5-11.
[August 08, 2000] "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enters Production, Ships to Early Adopters. Customer Applications, Partners to Be Highlighted In September 26 Enterprise 2000 Launch." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced that following the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to manufacturing, over 100 enterprise customers will be going live on SQL Server 2000 over the next three months as part of a Rapid Deployment Program supported by Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft revealed that a select group of customers has been in production on SQL Server 2000 for up to six months as part of an Early Adopter Program. These customer applications will be among the many featured in the Enterprise 2000 launch on Sept. 26, 2000, which will unveil the first customer successes built on the recently announced .NET Platform. SQL Server 2000, the first .NET enterprise server product, is the data management and analysis backbone for the coming wave of .NET applications and services. It is tailored to rapidly deliver Web-enabled applications for e-commerce, data warehousing and line of business that are highly scalable and reliable. 'SQL Server 2000 has received unprecedented quality-assurance testing,' said Paul Flessner, vice president of .NET enterprise servers at Microsoft. 'We have worked with tens of thousands of beta customers; we have been running two of the top 10 Internet retailers in production for over three months; we have 20 other customers running their mission-critical business operations on SQL Server 2000; and Microsoft has been running all its own critical business operations on SQL Server 2000 for more than six months. This product is ready to go, and we will continue to invest resources to ensure that quality improves with every release of Microsoft SQL Server.' A comprehensive set of features in SQL Server 2000 ensures that organizations have the support they need to Web-enable existing systems as well as build new applications. Integrated XML support allows database and application developers to easily store XML in the database or retrieve data in XML format - enabling fast application-to-application integration and Web site flexibility. Additional self-management and tuning, improved programmability, and datacenter management capabilities help ensure that enterprises and dot-coms can deliver e-commerce applications to customers and partners quickly and reliably."
[August 05, 2000] "Sun Microsystems Delivers Tools to Help Developer Community Leverage XML Standards for Graphics. New Tools Enables Web Developers to Leverage Power of Java Technology and XML-based Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)." ['The announcement of the beta availability of the Graphics2D SVG Generator underscores Sun's commitment to provide the Java developer community with software that leverages the power of XML.'] "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the beta availability of the 2D graphics SVG generator software, downloadable for no charge at www.sun.com/xml. This easy-to-use tool, developed by Suns XML Technology Center, underscores Sun's commitment to provide the Java technology developer community with software that leverages the power and growing ubiquity of XML. XML's universal, standards-based syntax will play an important role in graphics rendering as well as data portability and usability, and Sun is progressive in meeting developer demand for the needed tools in these areas. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is in development at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is a file format that describes two-dimensional vector graphics in XML. The latest specification was released by the for Candidate Recommendation today. The Java platform and XML are complementary technologies that together serve as the foundation for network-centric computing. Taking advantage of these technologies' synergy, Sun's 2D graphics SVG generator software allows Java technology applications to export graphics to the XML-based SVG format. The SVG files can then be imported into the growing number of graphics editing/authoring tools and viewers that support SVG. 'As our networked world takes shape, developers will increasingly require rich graphics that work well on a range of devices, screen sizes, and printer resolutions. SVG meets these requirements and finally brings the full benefits of XML, such as interoperability and internationalization, to the graphics space,' said Bill Smith, engineering manager of Suns XML Technology Center. 'Once again, Sun is pleased to deliver to its developer community a powerful tool -- the 2D graphics SVG generator software -- based on two open, industry collaborative technologies: the Java 2 platform and the XML-based SVG format.' SVG has many advantages over graphics formats in use today, such as JPEG or GIF. Since SVG is a plain text format, its files are readable and generally smaller than comparable graphical images. SVG images are also "zoomable" or "scalable", meaning users can zoom in on a particular area of a graphic, such as a map, and not experience any image degradation. Because SVG is scalable, SVG images can be printed with high quality at any resolution. Text within an SVG-based image, such as a city name on a map, is both selectable and searchable. Applications written in SVG can be made accessible through means for describing the visual information in textual detail. Lastly, SVG supports scripting and animation, which enables unprecedented dynamic, interactive graphics." See the main news entry. [cache]
[August 04, 2000] "Travelers Insurance recognized as Early Adopter of XML Standards for Property and Casualty by ACORD." - "Travelers Insurance has been honored as an Early Adopter of XML for property and casualty insurance by ACORD. The award recognizes Travelers' leadership role in developing the ACORD XML standard and enabling SEMCI - single entry, multiple-company interface. Travelers announced in May that it was the first carrier to demonstrate real-time quoting capability directly from an agency management system using the ACORD XML standard. This new process assists the company's independent agents by eliminating redundant data entry, synchronizing information between the agent and carrier, and reducing agents' training and processing costs. It will be available to agents who use Applied System's WARP-enabled WinTAM software beginning in the third quarter of this year. ACORD presented the award to vendors and companies in the insurance industry who have demonstrated leadership roles in early adoption of XML standards at its Technology Conference 2000 in May in Orlando, Fla. Travelers Insurance, a member of Citigroup, is a leading provider of a full range of insurance products. Travelers is a principal source of homeowners and auto insurance for consumers, while also providing a broad range of insurance for commercial markets, including workers' compensation integrated disability, property, liability, specialty lines, surety bonds, inland/ocean marine, and boiler and machinery. Travelers also offers financial products focusing on solving consumers' asset-accumulation and income-protection needs through such vehicles as annuities, group annuities and life insurance. Travelers offers customers a full range of financial services, including retirement planning, estate planning, asset protection and death benefit protection through Citigroup distribution channels and a professional independent agency force." See "ACORD - XML for the Insurance Industry."
[August 04, 2000] "Acquisition of Next-Generation XML Software Company Will Simplify Business-To-Business E-Commerce." - "TIBCO Software Inc., a leading provider of real-time infrastructure software for e-business, today announced it has agreed to acquire Extensibility, Inc., a leader in Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology, in a stock transaction valued at approximately $100 million. Extensibility software is used to design and process XML schemas, computer 'vocabularies' that enable e-businesses to create and exchange complex digital documents and validate electronic commerce transactions. Combining TIBCO's current XML and schema management capabilities with Extensibility's leading technologies will allow customers to create entirely new types of software applications to more quickly and easily conduct business over the Internet. In addition to incorporating Extensibility's technologies into its own products, TIBCO will continue to market and enhance stand-alone Extensibility products. Current Extensibility customers and partners include Commerce One, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Software AG, Fidelity Investments, SmithKline Beecham, MetLife and WebMethods."
[August 03, 2000] "SpinCircuit Announces Availability of XML Symbols Mapped to 1 Million+ Parts Database. SpinCircuit Enables True Cross-Platform Design for PCB Designers." - "SpinCircuit Inc. today announced the availability of XML-based symbols mapped directly to its database of millions of electronic components. The availability of these XML (Extensible Markup Language) symbols means that printed circuit board (PCB) designers and design teams can now perform cross-platform design using electronic design automation (EDA) tools from a variety of vendors. SpinCircuit is the first-ever vendor-independent design gateway that bridges the gap between the design desktop and the electronics supply chain network by integrating directly into the schematic capture tools used by designers. The SpinCircuit symbols incorporate a wealth of information, including logical and physical pin association, part definitions, packaging information, and graphical representations. For every component available within the SpinCircuit database, there is an XML symbol associated with it. These symbols are ready to use, unlike other offerings that require engineers to complete the symbol generation. The SpinCircuit XML symbols are based on EdaXML, and are compliant with specifications developed by Electronic Tools Company (E-Tools) and with standards set by the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A suite of XML translators from E-Tools is now available for Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, Viewlogic/Innoveda, PADS Software, P-CAD, and Cadence/Orcad platforms at http://www.e-tools.com. Designers can now convert the SpinCircuit XML symbols to the native formats of all these EDA tools. They can also convert the symbols to the formats of any EDA tools for which companies or individuals have created their own XML translators. According to Antoine Bigirimana, president and CEO of E-Tools, 'As the Internet proliferates and design collaboration becomes a reality, it is increasingly necessary that designers have the tools they need to seamlessly use multiple EDA platforms and tools. Interoperability is now a requirement. E-Tools provides translators based on EdaXML, an EDA-specific version of XML, making this cross-platform design a reality. Our translators enable designers to use XML tools to publish EDA symbols and pc-board footprints in a Web-based, neutral format. We are pleased that SpinCircuit has also adopted EdaXML as the basis of its new symbols. Our companies share a vision of speeding and easing the design process by embracing standards and openness'." See: "XML and Electronic Design Automation (EDA)." [cache]
[August 03, 2000] "XBRL Committee Releases First Specification for Financial Statements. Leads to Significant Expansion of Corporate Membership. Committee to Form International Organization to Position for Rapid Global Expansion and Adoption." - "The XBRL Committee announced today that several new, leading companies and organizations have joined the XBRL initiative: ACCPAC International, Inc.; ACL Services Ltd; Bridge Information Systems; Dow Jones & Company, Inc.; e-Numerate Solutions Incorporated; eLedger.com, Inc.; Fidelity Investments; Financial Software Group; First Light Communications, Inc.; MIP, Inc.: Multex.com, Inc.; Oinke, Inc.; PeopleSoft, Inc.; U.S. Advisor, Inc.; Virtual Growth, Inc.; and XBRL Solutions, Inc. XBRL Committee membership now exceeds 50 companies and organizations from around the world and is expanding globally as industry sectors and foreign jurisdictions begin development of XBRL specifications. In addition, the XBRL Committee announced the on-time release of the first specification for U.S. companies, XBRL for Financial Statements. With the release of the first specification this month, both public and private companies can begin to incorporate XBRL into their financial reporting processes and immediately realize some of its major benefits: a streamlined financial reporting process, technology independence, full interoperability, and reliable extraction of financial information. In order to meet the rapidly increasing demand for XBRL specifications in other countries, the XBRL Committee announced today its intent to form XBRL.org, an international organization to facilitate the global expansion and adoption of XBRL. XBRL.org's mission will be to develop XBRL specifications on a global scale according to the accounting principles of individual geographies and jurisdictions. More than 80% of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. As a result, investors need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly over the Internet to help them make informed financial decisions. XBRL for Financial Reporting meets these needs and leverages efficiencies of the Internet as today's primary source of financial information. 'The AICPA has been working with major companies and international organizations for more than a year to develop the current XBRL specification and to determine the future development cycle of XBRL for other countries,'said Barry Melancon, president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. 'With the launch of XBRL for Financial Statements for U.S. companies, we see the need to create an international organization with jurisdiction beyond the United States. Its purpose would be to develop and launch specifications for other countries based on strong global demand from members of the financial information supply chain'." " [cache] For other references, see "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."
[August 03, 2000] "ACCPAC Lauds First U.S. Specification of XBRL Initiative; Urges Rapid Global Migration Hosts First Pacific Rim Meeting to Extend Internet-Focused Financial Reporting Specifications Internationally." - "ACCPAC International, Inc., a division of Computer Associates' interBiz group, today praised the release of the initial U.S. financial reporting specification of the XBRL Committee, an industry body creating a standards-based method of preparing, publishing, exchanging and analyzing financial statements in a variety of formats. At the same time, ACCPAC(R) urged the Committee to move quickly to push for adoption of XBRL specifications worldwide. ACCPAC, a member of the XBRL Steering Committee, has already begun to work closely with other committee members in developing Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) specifications that integrate well with the financial practices and taxonomies of other countries and regional entities. It is anticipated that this will facilitate rapid global adoption of specifications that parallel those being adopted in the U.S. The XBRL Committee's new international outreach arm -- XBRL.org -- held its first public Pacific Rim meeting at ACCPAC's Singapore offices yesterday. The just-released XBRL for Financial Statements specification for U.S. companies allows accountants, financial advisors, analysts and investors to receive financial information quickly, reliably and consistently via the Internet. Several languages, such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) have been created to facilitate transmission of data over the Internet. XBRL is a derivative of XML for companies that want to publish financial statements in a digital format. A key benefit of XBRL is that financial information is generated once, and then can be accessed in a variety of forms such as HTML documents for a company's Web site. Interested users of financial information, such as analysts and investors, will be able to retrieve and organize financial data in a Web browser. Potential applications include XBRL for taxes, regulatory filings, and accounting and business reports, as well as being used in literature produced by authoritative accounting organizations such as the AICPA." See "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."
[August 03, 2000] "EDGAR Online Endorses XBRL Committee Specification for Financial Statements." - "EDGAR Online today announced its endorsement of the XBRL for Financial Statements specification released yesterday by the XBRL committee. With the release of this specification, both public and private companies can begin to incorporate XBRL into their financial reporting processes and immediately realize some of its major benefits: a streamlined financial reporting process, technology independence, full interoperability, and reliable extraction of financial information. "XBRL helps companies, analysts, investors and other audiences to make better informed financial and management decisions and to leverage the power of the Internet to exchange financial information," said Tom Vos, President of EDGAR Online, Inc. "XBRL provides an efficient and reliable means of communicating financial information without changing existing accounting standards or requiring a company to disclose any additional information beyond that in its current financial statements." More than 80% of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. As a result, investors need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly over the Internet to help them make informed financial decisions. XBRL for Financial Reporting meets these needs and leverages efficiencies of the Internet as today's primary source of financial information. In order to meet the rapidly increasing demand for XBRL specifications in other countries, the XBRL Committee announced its intent to form XBRL.org, an international organization to facilitate the global expansion and adoption of XBRL. XBRL.org's mission will be to develop XBRL specifications on a global scale according to the accounting principles of individual geographies and jurisdictions." See "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."
[August 02, 2000] "World Wide Web Consortium Issues Scalable Vector Graphics as a Candidate Recommendation. Implementation testing the key to Interoperability." - "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. Advancement of the document to Candidate Recommendation is an invitation to the Web development community at large to make implementations of SVG and provide technical feedback. Web designers demand vendor-neutral, cross-platform interoperability. W3C's Extensible Markup Language (XML) has become the universal format for document and data interchange on the Web. SVG brings the advantages of XML to the world of vector graphics. It enables the textual content of graphics - from logos to diagrams - to be searched, indexed, and displayed in multiple languages. This is a significant benefit for both accessibility and internationalization. Related W3C specifications such as the Document Object Model (DOM) allow for easy server-side generation and dynamic, client-side modification of graphics and text. SVG also benefits from W3C technologies such as CSS and XSL style sheets, RDF metadata, SMIL Animation and XML Linking. In addition to being an excellent format for stand-alone graphics, the full power of SVG is seen when it is combined with other XML grammars; for example to deliver multimedia applications, hold business data, or render mathematical expressions. Bringing the XML advantage to vector graphics benefits all industries which depend on rich graphics delivery - advertising, electronic commerce, process control, mapping, financial services, and education all have immediate needs for SVG." See "W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)."
[August 02, 2000] "Navision Software Releases XBRL Solution; XML-Based Financial Reporting Language Now Available in Navision Financials 2.50." - "Navision Software, a leading worldwide provider of business management solutions to the middle market, announced today that it has released its XBRL solution, one day after the publication of the official XML-based taxonomy. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a free specification that first appeared on the financial and accounting scene in October of 1999. It uses a financial reporting specification, agreed upon by key members of the financial information supply chain, that allows an open exchange of financial reporting data across all software and technologies, including the Internet. The XBRL coding contained in Navision Financials 2.50 will enable customers to more easily and efficiently connect and communicate with both competing products in the ERP space and complementary products such as Caseware. For example, a set of subsidiary offices using Navision Financials can now more quickly collaborate with a parent office using a larger ERP system, while realizing significant time and cost savings. XBRL offers several key benefits: technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats, such as credit reports or loan documents. More than 80 percent of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. Investors and users of the Internet need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly to help them make informed financial decisions." See XBRL Taxonomy - "Taxonomy for the creation of XML-based instance documents for business and financial reporting of commercial and industrial companies according to US GAAP." See: "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."
[August 02, 2000] "ebXML Showcases Dynamic Trading Network." - "The United Nations/CEFACT and OASIS, sponsors of the Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML), announced plans to demonstrate the first phase of ebXML at the group's upcoming meeting in San Jose, California 7-11 August 2000. Working together, ebXML participants including Fujitsu, Netfish Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Viquity, Vitria and webMethods will simulate a dynamic trading network based on the ebXML Transport, Routing and Packaging Specification (publicly available on http://www.ebxml.org). With each vendor assuming the role of a trading partner, the demo will highlight the applicability of ebXML in three typical models of B2B communication-point-to-point, hub-and-spoke and federated. 'This is a big step forward in demonstrating to the world how ebXML will facilitate global trade,' said Klaus-Dieter Naujok of NextERA Interactive, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee. 'It shows without a doubt that critical aspects of ebXML are useable today.' Robert S. Sutor, Ph.D. of IBM, Vice Chair of ebXML and Chair of the OASIS Board of Directors, agreed, 'We're not just generating solutions on paper -- this cross-vendor effort proves that ebXML is based in reality and has the support of the industry. In addition to the companies involved in this proof-of-concept demonstration, we expect more than 130 organizations to be represented in San Jose.' As part of the ebXML transport demonstration, trading partners will initiate and respond to RosettaNet 'Manage Purchase Order' (PIP3A4) business processes, dynamically creating scenarios from a variety of industries using different payload types (e.g., OTA, GCI, etc.).
[August 01, 2000] "HoustonStreet Joins OASIS to Drive XML Standards for Wholesale Energy Trading Industry. Internationally recognized structured information standards consortium to provide open standards development expertise." - "In the industry's first move to bring open standards to wholesale energy trading, HoustonStreet Exchange today announced it has joined the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Through OASIS, HoustonStreet hopes to further boost energy industry trading efficiency with its use of XML (extensible markup language) to streamline online trading processes. 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 business-to-business data exchange that sets the stage for developing interoperable systems over the Web. By joining OASIS, HoustonStreet will share expertise with association members and apply those strategies in its efforts to develop and support open standards for online trading in the wholesale energy industry. HoustonStreet's use of XML facilitates information sharing between frontline traders and their mid- and back-offices, as well as between trading organizations. HoustonStreet designed the platform from the outset to utilize XML technology. By offering paperless data transfer through the use of XML, HoustonStreet intends to save its wholesale energy industry customers time and money and augment their risk management capabilities... Designed by traders for traders, HoustonStreet Exchange represents the first Web portal for the trading of wholesale energy products. HoustonStreet.com provides an online trading engine that allows traders to buy and sell their energy products faster, more efficiently and more easily than through conventional methods. HoustonStreet Exchange is headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with offices in Houston, Texas. HoustonStreet Exchange is a majority-owned subsidiary of BayCorp Holdings, Ltd." [See also "PetroXML Initiative" and "Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation (POSC) XML Related Projects."] [cache]
[August 01, 2000] "Sun Microsystems, other tech pioneers advance DSML in directory-enabled e-business products. Bowstreet, Critical Path, iPlanet, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and others embark on XML-based Directory Services Markup Language 2.0." - "Bowstreet, a leading provider of XML infrastructure for business-to-business (B2B) web marketplaces, today announced that eight new technology companies, including technology giant Sun Microsystems, have implemented Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) in their solutions. This vendor commitment to DSML, the Bowstreet-initiated XML standard that bridges the gap between directories and XML-based e-business applications, highlights the power of directory information in connecting multiple companies' business webs. Sun has introduced a technology preview of a DSML module for the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI). JNDI is part of the Java 2 platform, providing Java applications with seamless connectivity to heterogeneous enterprise naming and directory services. Using JNDI, developers can access data - including information about people and computing resources - from any vendor's directory. The DSML module fits beneath the JNDI API, allowing developers to manipulate and update directory contents and export them in DSML format, making it easier to customize and deploy B2B applications on a massive scale using a standard API. With the addition of the DSML module, JNDI will power highly customized B2B applications that employ rich data about people, machines, web services and other resources. Seven additional technology companies are also implementing DSML support. Novell has added DSML functionality in its DirXML, a product that allows organizations to distribute data ownership while centralizing information availability. IBM's Business Transformation and CIO organization is leveraging and exploiting DSML as part of its strategic initiative with XML; SLAPHAPI allows quick, easy access to LDAP directories from web applications written in any language. Critical Path places DSML in leading LDAP directory and meta-directory products. iPlanet recently released a DSML-enabled version of its LDAP software developer's kit, a tool that allows programmers to easily use the iPlanet Directory Server. Radiant Logic recently introduced DSML into its Virtual Directory Server software, a technology that enables directories to become central aggregation points for all key enterprise data. In addition to the directory, application and server vendors, DSML is also gaining strong momentum with XML companies like infoShark, which integrates DSML into its XML-based data interchange technology. Another XML company, Intalio, is planning to use DSML to enable process repositories that allow business partners to collaborate on the definition of Partner Interface Processes and manage their entire lifecycle." See "Directory Services Markup Language (DSML)."
[July 31, 2000] "Microsoft Announces Public Beta of Newest XML Parser. XML Parser Significantly Increases XML Standards Conformance, Includes Extension of SAX2 Programming Interface for Visual Basic." - "Furthering its commitment to the support and development of XML, Microsoft Corp. today announced the official beta release of its newest XML parser, which is available for immediate download from the MSDN XML Developer Center. An XML parser (or processor) is the programming component that implements the core XML standards and provides XML services to applications. This version of the parser, MSXML3, increases XML conformance over previous releases by achieving a pass rate of over 98 percent using the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structural Information Standards) XML Conformance Test Suite. It also extends support for the Simple API for XML (SAX2) programming interface, making SAX2 accessible from the Visual Basic development system. This version of the parser marks the transition from 'technology preview' to full beta, with general product availability scheduled for Web release in fall 2000. XML is a key technology of the Microsoft .Net Platform, and MSXML3 lays the groundwork for that vision by allowing developers to rapidly build and deliver XML-based Web services today. Interoperability is one of the primary benefits of using XML for communications and data exchange, but can only be achieved when producers and consumers of XML process the language in a consistent way. This does not require the use of the same software or programming language, or even the same operating system, but it does mean that both applications must conform to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML 1.0 Recommendation. To help ensure vendors support this recommendation in a consistent way, OASIS -- working with the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- has produced the XML Conformance Test Suite containing over 1,000 tests. Microsoft is committed to supporting and ensuring the interoperability of XML, as demonstrated by the significant advances in this beta release. . . Since the last release just two months ago, when SAX2 support was added, one of the most requested features was access to SAX2 from Visual Basic. Extending access to developers using Visual Basic is a reflection of Microsoft's commitment to delivering the features its customers demand in 'Internet time.' SAX2 is designed to enable fast and efficient processing of XML by allowing programs such as the Visual C++ development system, and now Visual Basic, to read, review and process XML files without having to load the entire document into memory." [cache]
[July 31, 2000] "TransZap Acquires Petrolis.com, Creates Formidable E-oil Knowledge Management Company, Internet Products and Solutions for the Global Energy Markets." - "TransZap, Inc., home to Oildex Connect, a Denver-based knowledge management company providing Internet connectivity and complementary workflow software for the global energy industry, today announced the acquisition of Petrolis.com of Oakland, Calif. The Petrolis.com configurable exchange systems integrate next-generation enterprise resource products (ERP) and Internet and client-server products with legacy standards such as EDI (electronic data interchange)... Curt Edmondson, President of Petrolis.com, said: 'TransZap's PetroXML is the leader in XML technology for the petroleum industry. Our joining forces will provide systems whereby over 10,000 oil and gas operators can electronically distribute payments to more than 4.5 million royalty owners. Customers will realize substantial improvement in wellsite and production information, fund management and cost savings for the oil operator.' Flanagan added: 'Curt Edmondson's addition to TransZap's world-class management team is an outstanding achievement for us. Curt's ability to understand a customer's point of pain, develop and successfully market a commercial product that provides value and benefits to the customer is indeed an asset.' Denver-based TransZap, an application service provider (ASP) and enterprise application integrator (EAI), provides a business-to-business e-commerce infrastructure platform to the oil industry. The XML-based application, Oildex Connect, automates oil industry B2B workflows, delivers secure Internet transactions, and is operated from a Web browser. Oildex Connect interconnects and interoperates with popular oil industry back office systems via the PetroXML standard." See "PetroXML Initiative" and the PetroXML site.
[July 31, 2000] "New Open Technical Standard to Help Charities Streamline Data Transfer." - "The Open Philanthropy eXchange (OPX) Consortium today announced the release of the initial specification for an open technical standard for use by the nonprofit community and organizations that provide services to that sector. Based in the programming language XML, these specifications are the first step in an evolving process to develop and maintain an open data exchange standard that benefits the entire sector. The OPX standard can be accessed at www.opxinfo.net. The development of open standards helps to speed the adoption of technology and Internet-based applications and services. OPX was founded to help the philanthropic community make effective use of the growing number of technology opportunities currently available. This initial release of the OPX specification facilitates the seamless transfer and importing of donor and gift information from e-commerce-enabled Web sites to nonprofits' database software, and other donor relationship management tools. Based on the input of OPX Consortium members, future releases will incorporate additional functionality, such as the ability to exchange member, volunteer, and event information. . . A number of leading technology companies that offer products and services to the philanthropic sector have already indicated their support of OPX, including ACCESS International, Araize, Charity.ca, Charity Reach, Convio, DonateTo.com, eContributor, eFundDrive.com, eTapestry, 4charity.com, FUND E-Z, Heller Consulting, MicroEdge, and TRAC, Inc. The founding members of OPX are Blackbaud, Charitableway, and MyAssociation.com. With OPX, all participating parties agree to speak the same technical language to expedite the exchange of information. When a participant sends or receives data, no translation is necessary. Participants do not need to create different interfaces for each partner with whom they interact. All transfers of information are conducted according to the privacy and security policies of the originating site. . . Open Philanthropy eXchange is an XML-based specification for data transfer between different technology systems and services for the philanthropic sector. OPX enables organizations in the nonprofit arena to communicate in a common language; it removes technical barriers through seamless transmission of data. OPX is maintained as an open standard by a coalition of diverse partners from the technology and nonprofit communities to ensure that OPX is a beneficial, industry-wide tool." See: "Open Philanthropy Exchange (OPX)."
[July 31, 2000] "MPS Joins aecXML Initiative to Create Open Standards for Online Project Management. Initiative Designed to Eliminate Ambiguities in Tracking Online Project Management for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industry." - "Meridian Project Systems (MPS) has joined the International Alliance for Interoperability, an organization dedicated to open standards for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. This long anticipated announcement insures MPS will continue playing a defining role in aecXML, one of the working domains of the International Alliance for Interoperability. aecXML is an open standard for the AEC industry based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the hottest new internet standard for data interchange. The initiative strives to develop an XML schema to describe information specific to the exchanges between participants involved in designing, constructing and operating buildings, plants, infrastructure and facilities. Meridian Project Systems (MPS) is a leading Internet solutions company for the architectural, engineering, and construction industry (AEC). MPS eBusiness solutions allow owners, architects, engineers, construction managers, and subcontractors to collaborate throughout the building process using the World Wide Web. In addition to Internet solutions, MPS also designs and develops software solutions that allows construction managers and building owners to manage the complex process of major construction projects including cost control, purchasing, engineering, document management and field supervision. MPS products are in use today in many Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, The Walt Disney Co., Marriott International Inc., Turner Construction Co., and Peter Kiewit and Sons Inc. Additionally, MPS products are used by 50 of the top 100 contractors in the United States. MPS, a Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider, was founded in 1993 and is a privately held company headquartered in Sacramento, with a Research and Development Center in Vancouver, B.C. Bentley Systems, Inc. began the aecXML initiative in August 1999. The initiative is now under the administrative umbrella of the International Alliance for Interoperability as the aecXML domain. Currently, there are seven working groups and over 600 interested participants involved in the development of this standard." See "aecXML Working Group - Architecture, Engineering and Construction."
[July 31, 2000] "OASIS Appoints New Members to Board of Directors. New Leadership Underscores Global E-Commerce Focus for XML Interoperability Consortium." - "OASIS, the world's largest XML interoperability consortium, today [July 19, 2000] announced the appointment of three new members to the organization's Board of Directors. Patrick J. Gannon of Netfish Technologies, Una Kearns of Documentum, and Amy Krane of Enigma will serve two-year terms as OASIS directors, providing business leadership to advance the Consortium's technical work. Norbert H. Mikula of DataChannel will begin his second consecutive term on the OASIS board as Chief Technical Officer. The OASIS board of directors also includes Eric Garcia of Sabre, Alan Hester of Xerox, Bill Smith of Sun Microsystems and Robert S. Sutor of IBM. . . OASIS is the world's largest independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the standardization of XML applications. In addition to its technical work on areas as varied as XML conformance and XML repository standards, OASIS hosts several independent initiatives. ebXML is a joint effort of the United Nations CEFACT and OASIS to establish a global framework that will enable XML to be used in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. CGM Open is a consortium within OASIS dedicated to advancing CGM and other web graphics standards. OASIS also hosts the XML.ORG Registry, the open community clearinghouse of XML application schemas." [cache]
[July 27, 2000] "Reuters to Pioneer New Multimedia News Delivery. Global News Delivery Standard To Allow Text, Pictures and Video To Be Delivered Through A Single Multimedia Channel." - "Reuters, the global information and news group, announced today it plans to pioneer the packaging and distribution of multimedia news using a new computer language, NewsML, that it expects will become a news industry standard. NewsML, a derivative of the Internet's eXtensible Markup Language (XML), lets journalists and other publishers produce and assemble stories in video, text, graphics, pictures and audio, in any language and for platforms ranging from financial service desktops to Web sites to mobile phones. It provides a standard framework to describe, package, store and deliver multimedia news. Reuters was a leader in the creation of NewsML and has contributed to its development via the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), the news industry's standards body, which this month approved a beta release and anticipates a final version in October. Thomas Glocer, CEO of Reuters Information commented, 'NewsML is at the heart of Reuters strategy to deploy leading technologies to create and deliver multimedia news content. Reuters was very active in the development of NewsML with the IPTC. We look forward to its formal designation as an open standard in October and expect to be the first organization to deploy it in our global news operations.' Reuters plans to demonstrate NewsML on www.reuters.com in September [2000] and at a number of XML and news industry events during the coming months. The demonstrations will highlight NewsML's multimedia, multilingual news capability to deliver a single package to suit diverse client needs. The variety of user benefits will include the ability to choose text in several different languages, photos in various resolutions or sizes and the facility to bypass current Internet bandwidth limitations. NewsML is an XML-based standard that describes and packages multimedia news in various formats for delivery to any platform. At the heart of NewsML is the concept of the NewsItem, which can contain various media, including text, pictures, graphics and video. NewsML is flexible and extensible and uses standard Internet naming conventions for identifying the news objects in a NewsItem. Content does not have to be embedded in a NewsItem; pointers can be inserted to content held on a publisher's website. This means subscribers retrieve the data only when they need to and makes NewsML bandwidth-efficient." See "NewsML and IPTC2000."
[July 27, 2000] "News Industry body announces the launch of NewsML v1.0 (beta)." - "The news industry's technical standards body has launched v1.0 (beta) of NewsML and has called for trial implementations. At its Annual General Meeting in Geneva, over 50 participating members of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), approved the public release of the first version of NewsML, an XML-based standard for the management of multimedia news. The news industry is now encouraged to start development implementations while final support documentation is prepared ahead of a planned ratification of the DTD at the IPTC's October meeting in Amsterdam. 'The launch of NewsML is a milestone achievement for the membership of the IPTC, the wider news community and the world of XML standards,' said Peter M|ller, Director of the Swiss News Agency and Chairman of the IPTC. 'It marks a major breakthrough in the area of standards for news management and interchange, and reflects the collaborative efforts of a large number of individuals from our membership. I am very proud to be able to announce this landmark news standard and would like to thank everyone involved for their invaluable contribution.' NewsML is the direct result of an IPTC initiative which started in October 1999, when the membership established a new work programme designated IPTC2000. The goal of IPTC2000 was to deliver an XML-based standard to represent and manage news through its life cycle, including production, interchange and consumer use. Basing their discussions on original working papers from both Reuters and Agence France Presse, and earlier research studies from dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur, the details of NewsML have been developed over the last nine months at a series of intense working group meetings held in Europe and America. Since April, the efforts of the membership have been supported by expert advice from Daniel Rivers-Moore of XML consultants, RivCom." See "NewsML and IPTC2000."
[July 27, 2000] "HR-XML Consortium Works to Standardize Payroll Transactions. Payroll Providers Invited to Participate in Standardization Effort." - "The HR-XML Consortium, a non-profit organization dedicated to human resources (HR) data exchange, announced the formation of a new workgroup to standardize payroll transactions using XML. The first priority of the workgroup will be to develop a set of XML schemas to standardize communications between HR and payroll systems and also between payroll systems and third-party (e.g., 401K plan) administrators. Payroll providers, employers and HR companies are all encouraged to take part in the development of the new standards. . . Membership in the HR-XML Consortium and participation in the Payroll Workgroup is open to anyone involved in the payroll and/or HR industries, employers and vendors alike. Since the announcement of the workgroup at the HR-XML members meeting in Chicago last week, more than 20 HR and payroll providers came forth to contribute to this effort. Organizations and individuals interested in joining the Consortium, should visit the HR-XML Consortium web site." See "HR-XML Consortium."
[July 12, 2000] "Bluestone Software Contributes Freeware To XML/Java Movement. XwingML Accelerates the Learning Curve for Early Adopters of XML/Java Tools. - "Bluestone Software, Inc., the independent leader in Enterprise Interaction Management with Sapphire/Web, today spearheaded the early adoption of XML (Extensible Markup Language)/Java by debuting XwingML (pronounced zwing-M-L). XwingML is a public domain contribution from Bluestone labs that accelerates the learning curve for early adopters of XML/Java tools. Available today, XwingML is provided free-of-charge by Bluestone and can be downloaded. Companies today are endeavoring to integrate legacy applications within the organization, as well as more efficiently exchange data with the external world. XML is emerging as the communications standard for the masses because of its simple English programming and self-documenting facility. The promise of XML will significantly facilitate application-to-application, business-to-business communication, and the integration of the virtual corporation. '1999 will be the year for experimenting and learning about the power of combining XML and Java,' stated John Capobianco, senior vice president of marketing at Bluestone. 'XwingML is an excellent practical example of XML and Java at work. We are contributing XwingML to the community to spread the knowledge, and in doing so, establish Bluestone as a leader in the XML/Java marketplace.' XwingML was developed by Bluestone labs as the framework for creating Bluestone's commercial dynamic XML products - Bluestone XML-Server, the industry's first dynamic XML server, and Bluestone Visual-XML, an approachable and easy-to-use toolkit for building XML applications. 'Using common English terminology, XwingML gives users an easy way to learn about XML and create a Java GUI without ever writing a line of Java code,' explained Capobianco. 'This will promote the use of XML and Java which will quickly capture the interest of senior managers looking for the next-generation solution to business-to-business and application-to-application data interchange.' XwingML version 1.0 is an innovative development platform for merging XML and Java code. XwingML comes with a standard Document Type Definition (DTD) that defines the entire Swing/Java Foundation Class (JFC) set of classes and properties, as well as providing support for all Swing/JFC Listeners. (Swing is the set of graphical components in Java 2 that allows users to do Java graphical programming.) Complete with sample templates for a wide variety of GUI interfaces (i.e., menus, frames, and dialogs), users easily author XML documents in simple English, which XwingML reads and dynamically creates the Java GUI. The end-result is the ability to easily create a Java GUI - without writing any Java code. XwingML provides a number of benefits to the developer community. . . "
[July 12, 2000] "STC Announces Support of Open Applications Group. Standards-Based XML Facilitates Rapid Integration of True eBusiness Solutions." - "STC, a leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBISM) solutions, today announced its membership and support of the Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGI), a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and process-based XML content for eBusiness and application integration. As a member of the consortium, STC will incorporate the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) into its eBusiness integration suite, enabling companies to quickly deploy true eBusiness solutions with the assurance of interoperability within and among their enterprises. STC will support the implementation of the OAGIS as part of its e*Xchange eBusiness Integration Suite. With its robust and comprehensive product offering for data, application, partner and process integration, STC's solutions take advantage of XML and Internet technologies allowing organizations to participate effectively in business-to-business exchanges. The Open Applications Group exists to promote fast, easy, and cost-effective eBusiness and application integration of software components for enterprise and supply chain functions. The Group does this by leveraging XML, best practices in integration technology and architecture, and by providing an impartial forum for all stakeholders to work together to accomplish their common goals. As a proponent of XML and standards-based integration, OAGIS is just one of many XML-based standards that STC supports. The Open Applications Group is a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and process-based XML content for eBusiness and application integration. It is the largest publisher of XML content for business software interoperability in the world. Open Applications Group, Inc. members must have over five years of extensive experience in building this industry consensus based framework for business software application interoperability and have developed a repeatable process for quickly developing high quality business content and XML representations of that content."
[July 12, 2000] "TeleKnowledge Joins Industry-leading Companies as Part of OSS Working Group. TeleKnowledge Facilitates Interoperability Among Diverse Third-party OSS Applications Under Microsoft's Windows Telecommunications Alliance Initiative." - "TeleKnowledge, Inc., a leading provider of value-based billing, customer care and e-partner revenue management solutions, today announced that it joined 36 other industry-leading independent software vendors to be part of the OSS Working Group. The OSS Working Group was formed to promote interoperability between a wide range of third-party OSS applications. Service providers including, application service providers (ASPs), broadband service providers and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) will benefit from having access to best-of-breed OSS solutions that can be quickly and easily integrated with each other. The OSS Working Group is part of the OSS/BSS (Business Support Systems) Industry Initiative within Microsoft's Windows Telecommunications Alliance, an industry program designed to support network equipment providers and ISVs currently engaged in developing Microsoft Windows operating systems-based telecommunications solutions for the corporate and service provider markets. The group is composed primarily of OSS software vendors and systems integrators and works towards providing a common architectural framework based on open technologies such as XML, SOAP and directory services, as a baseline for multi-vendor solutions. The OSS Working Group is also working collectively and closely with the service provider community to define an industry-standard OSS Markup Language (OSSML) that will enable interoperability between a wide range of third party OSS applications. OSSML will comprise XML schemas used for OSS application-to-application interoperability for service providers..."
[July 11, 2000] "Microsoft Publishes Key Specifications for Web Services. Adds to SOAP Technologies With SOAP Contract Language and Discovery Specifications." - "Today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2000, Microsoft Corp. published preliminary versions of two core specifications for creating and using Web services, adding to the SOAP group of Extensible Markup Language (XML) interoperability technologies. The two specifications, published on the MSDN developer program Web site, are the SOAP Contract Language (SCL), which describes the capabilities of Web services, and SOAP Discovery, which provides rules for locating Web services. Together, these additions strengthen the interoperability capabilities defined in the SOAP specification and provide the standards-based foundation underlying the entire Microsoft .NET Platform. 'These two additions to the SOAP technologies enhance developers' ability to build a Web services infrastructure,' said Andrew Layman, Web services architect at Microsoft. 'By publishing these specifications openly, Microsoft is demonstrating a continuing commitment to working with the development community to make Web services ubiquitous.' SOAP is an open standards-based interoperability protocol that uses XML to provide a common messaging format to link together applications and services anywhere on the Internet. Microsoft and industry partners submitted SOAP to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body earlier this year. The new SCL specification builds on SOAP to provide a mechanism to help developers describe the features of a Web service using XML. Developers will be able to use SCL to provide other developers and development tools with a description of the messages a Web service is expecting to send and receive. For example, they will be able to describe, in a standard way, that a stock quote Web service understands how to process messages that contain stock ticker symbols and return messages that contain the current stock price. The SOAP Discovery specification provides a set of rules for locating the SCL description of a Web service automatically; in other words, it enables the SCL description to be automatically discovered. For example, if a developer wanted to build the stock quote Web service into his application, a tool such as Visual Studio..NET would follow the rules defined in the SOAP Discovery specification to do so automatically. The SOAP specifications provide a common mechanism for integrating services on the Internet or intranet regardless of operating system, object model or programming language. Because they support Internet-standard XML and HTTP, the SOAP technologies enable new or existing applications to communicate with one another. By supporting the SOAP technologies, Web sites can become programmatically accessible Web services that don't require human initiation or intermediation. Because the SOAP technologies share an integration fabric that enables direct interaction between software connected to the Internet, new opportunities abound in aggregation, federation and integration of services and devices located anywhere on the Internet." See "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."
[July 11, 2000] "Microsoft Delivers Roadmap and Software for .NET Enterprise Servers. Details Industry's First Comprehensive Family of XML-Enabled Servers." - "Microsoft Corp. today detailed and delivered technology previews and beta releases of its comprehensive family of .NET enterprise servers -- the latest evolution of the Window DNA servers -- to attendees of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). The new .NET enterprise servers will deliver deep XML integration, pioneering software-scale support across all tiers, distributed business process orchestration, and interoperability with existing software and hardware investments, and also will provide the foundation for building a new generation of Web services with the .NET Platform. [...] Specifically, at the PDC Microsoft demonstrated XLANG, an XML-based language for building distributed business processes, which is the enabling technology in BizTalk Orchestration. BizTalk Server 2000 with XLANG allows business analysts, IT professionals and developers to rapidly build reliable, scalable business processes that span applications, platforms and organizations. XLANG is automatically generated by the BizTalk Application Designer, a rich graphical tool for visually designing business processes, and then executed at runtime by the BizTalk Orchestration Engine. In addition to demonstrating support for Web services built with the current generation of tools, Microsoft also demonstrated how the .NET enterprise servers will support Web services built with the .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET. Application Center 2000 was shown scaling out a Web Service built with the .NET Framework across a cluster of standard high-volume hardware. With the same Web service, BizTalk Orchestration and XLANG were used to define and execute a complex business process that included multiple legacy applications. This support for the .NET Framework in the .NET enterprise servers will ensure that customers have a solid foundation for Web services as Microsoft continues to deliver key components of the .NET Platform."
[July 05, 2000] "IAI Reaches Important Milestone as Industry Leaders Submit aecXML Schema. International Alliance for Interoperability Pledges Timely Delivery of Standards for the AEC Industry." - "AEC+FM professionals from throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe witnessed presentations and demonstrations of nine (9) proposed schema to help the commercial building market significantly improve its communications during the aecXML Mid-Year Working Meeting conducted by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) in Atlanta. Leading public and private sector firms presented their initial work on developing aecXML schema to sharply improve the exchange of information in areas such as pricing, soliciting and receiving quotes, specifications, classification, and e-commerce. Representatives from Bentley Systems, R.S. Means, Timberline Software Corporation, Architectural Computer Services (ARCOM), GeoPraxis, Dimensional Solutions, the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), Bidcom and the General Services Administration (GSA) participated in the workshop which attracted more than 130 attendees. Primavera Systems, Inc., scheduled to appear, submitted its presentation to the aecXML.org site. The IAI program was conducted in the Georgia World Congress Center, in downtown Atlanta, in conjunction with the Construction Specifications Institute annual trade show and exposition. CSI is a member of the IAI Board of Directors. [...] Schemas submitted last week will be evaluated by a team of independent reviewers and returned with comments in five days. Once submitters make required changes, the schema will be posted on the aecXML website for 21 days of peer review. After that time, comments will be considered and final schema will be approved by the aecXML domain and included in the existing standard. aecXML version .87 is currently posted and the IAI anticipates that Version 1 will be completed by the end of 2000. Young and Geissler repeatedly emphasized the Alliance's pledge to ensure that technically sound and commercially neutral schema will be forthcoming as soon as possible. The critical issue will be the Alliance's ability to blend overlapping and second-edition schema together to ensure the AEC+FM industry has a few robust schema as opposed to scores of overlapping schema. They also said the alliance has eight active affiliates throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim which are aggressively examining the potential of the aecXML schema. The GSA, one of the largest building owners in the world, in cooperation with Bidcom, Inc., a leading building and real estate e-business services provider, successfully demonstrated a proof of concept that allows data exchange between remote systems using aecXML over the Internet. GSA can query and retrieve updates of projects hosted by Bidcom and make the them available through its internal reporting system. IAI assumed responsibility for the aecXML initiative, inaugurated by Bentley Systems, Inc., last September, in order to ensure the development of schema would be a global, industry-wide activity. Keith Bentley, CEO and one of the founders of Bentley, is the aecXML Domain chairman and has been active in attracting industry support to the IAI program. The Alliance was incorporated in the U.S. in 1995; early the next year an IAI United Kingdom was established in London, quickly followed by an IAI German speaking organization headquartered in Munich. Since then there have been a total of nine independent IAI organizations registered throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim representing more than 600 public and private sector entities in 24 countries The Alliance exists to develop technical standards to facilitate interoperability -- the free exchange of information among software applications serving the AEC+FM community. It accomplishes this goal through the creation, promulgation and promotion of IFCs and aecXML schema." See "aecXML Working Group - Architecture, Engineering and Construction", and compare "Building Construction Extensible Markup Language (bcXML)."


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