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Last modified: February 02, 2002
XML Industry News: January - March 2001

XML News

This XML Industry News section consists mainly of links to company press releases announcing support for XML/XSL/XLink, January - March 2001. 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

Search: [Indexed Search]

  • [March 28, 2001] "Documentum Proves Viability of ebXML Standard as Part of ebXML Initiative. Proof-of-Concept Demonstrates Documentum's Corporate Vision to Standardize and Streamline Global B2B Messaging." - "Documentum, a leading provider of Internet-scale content management technology for powering e-business applications, has completed a proof of concept demonstration of the emerging ebXML global messaging standard. Proof-of-concept demonstrations are being presented by the ebXML Initiative starting this week at XML One in London. The ebXML Initiative was jointly established by both UN/CEFACT, a United Nations body focused on worldwide policy and technical developments in the area of trade and electronic business, and by OASIS, the international consortium that advances electronic business by promoting open, collaborative development of interoperability specifications. ebXML is a worldwide project to standardize the exchange of electronic business data using an XML-based infrastructure to enable consistent, secure, and interoperable message exchange. Una Kearns, XML Architect at Documentum and a member of the OASIS board of directors, explained: 'XML-based content management and collaboration, the core functions of Documentum 4i eBusiness Editions, are critical components of an e-business infrastructure. By providing support for e-business standards, such as ebXML, Documentum will enable our global customers to engage in consistent B2B collaboration with their trading partners.' Documentum will be participating in another ebXML proof of concept at XML DevCon in New York, April 9-10, and another in Vienna, Austria, May 7-11." See also the general announcement and "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)." [source]

  • [March 28, 2001] "Novell Submits Research to Facilitate Key eCommerce Standard. Provision of DirXML work to OASIS will help drive standards to integrate directory technology and XML, the language of eBusiness." - "Novell, a leading provider of Net services software, announced today that it will turn over significant directory-related research and intellectual property to a key standards body to help accelerate the development and adoption of an industry-wide approach to integrating directory technology into eBusiness. Novell, whose NDS eDirectory has led the directory market for the last nine years, will be contributing research on its DirXML, a data sharing and synchronization product, to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). OASIS will use Novell's expertise to help accelerate the development of the Directory Service Markup Language -- an initiative aimed at tying the network and identity management power of the directory with the transaction capabilities of XML, the language of eBusiness... Technology companies within the industry, recognizing the significant potential benefits of getting directories to effectively talk to one another, have turned to OASIS for a solution, establishing the DSML Technical Committee to work toward an industry-wide approach to leveraging the directory for eBusiness. DSML 1.0, launched in 1999 by directory vendor Bowstreet with the backing of Novell and others, was an important first step, providing a common way to describe what was in a directory." See (1) "Technical Submissions Facilitate Renewed Development of DSML Version 2.0", and (2) "DirXML." [source]

  • [March 27, 2001] "Microsoft Helps Turn Britain's E-Government Vision Into Reality. BizTalk Server 2000 and .NET Enterprise Servers Revolutionize the Way Citizens and Businesses Interact With Government." - "Today [March 27, 2001] at the fourth annual Microsoft Government Leaders Conference, more than 400 government officials from 80 nations around the world watched Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates demonstrate how the British government is using Microsoft's enterprise software to revolutionize the way its citizens and businesses experience and interact with government institutions via the Internet. Dubbed 'the Government Gateway,' the new Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server solution is an XML-based portal that acts as the centralized registration service for all e-government services in the United Kingdom. The government portal, part of Blair's new e-government initiative of having 100 percent of government transactions online by 2005, is designed to connect the 200 central and 482 local government institutions with the United Kingdom's 60 million citizens and 3 million businesses. This complex integration solution required an infrastructure that could utilize legacy IT investments and integrate and XML-enable a broad array of disparate applications and platforms while having the reliability and scalability to meet the growing demand of its users... The largest BizTalk Server solution to date, the Government Gateway project is a classic integration challenge, but on a massive scale. BizTalk Server 2000 acts as the primary integration hub for the legions of legacy back-end data and applications found within one of the world's largest government institutions. The flexible architecture provided by the BizTalk business process orchestration capabilities will allow government developers to quickly add or change applications, platforms or agencies as the system grows. The first phase of the Government Gateway project, which is live now, delivers three primary transactions: (1) End of year submissions for the Inland Revenue PAYE (Pay As You Earn). This system is similar to how the U.S. federal government withholds taxes from employee paychecks. (2) Customs and Excise VAT (Value Added Tax) return. This transaction is similar to how businesses submit their sales tax revenue in the United States. (3) Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, farmers' EU subsidy claims. This system enables U.K. farmers to submit claims for subsidy payments via the gateway. Building on the resounding success of phase one of the Government Gateway project, the U.K. government is on track to have all government transactions online by 2005. In the future, British citizens will experience government interactions much more seamlessly. For example, the purchase of an international plane ticket from a travel agency could automatically update an expired passport or submit an application for a travel visa in the destination country without the citizen ever having to explicitly interact with the government. Other examples of future online transactions include registering newborn children, applying for passports and visas, and registering automobiles. More information about the Government Gateway project is available at http://www.gateway.gov.uk/." See also [UK] e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF)."

  • [March 27, 2001] "Liquidation.com and InfoMat Bring Surplus Merchandise To the Apparel Industry Using XML Feeds." - "InfoMat, a premier online information source for the apparel and textile industry, has partnered with Liquidation.com, the leading solution for buying and selling business surplus, to offer surplus apparel merchandise to their users on InfoMat.com. The XML feeds will bring discounted apparel listings from the Liquidation.com network directly to InfoMat.com users. The partnership merges surplus listings and integrated fulfillment services from the Liquidation.com exchange directly with apparel industry users on InfoMat. Surplus merchandise or closeouts account for 7% of annual sales revenue in the apparel industry (AMR Research, 2000) and Liquidation.com serves as an important distribution channel for these goods. Liquidation.com has XML feeds of surplus listings available to their global network partners in apparel, construction, consumer goods, aerospace and many other industries. The listings are distributed to partners using Liquidation.com's DTD (Document Type Definition) for auction listings. The listings are updated daily and the XML format enables websites and portals to easily integrate the listings into their existing infrastructure. Liquidation.com currently lists over $500 million of business and government surplus on their exchange including extensive apparel and textile offerings and more across 27 different categories to their users base of over 100,000 qualified buyers in 107 countries."

  • [March 26, 2001] "MIB to Implement ACORD-Based XML Interface." - "MIB, the voluntary association of nearly 600 life insurance companies, has announced it that it has reached an agreement with ACORD, the insurance industry's non-profit standards developer, to promote industry adoption of ACORD's XML for Life Insurance Standards in IT architecture. MIB will implement three new ACORD-approved TXLife transactions designed for communication between MIB and its member companies. The approved transactions will initially cover the MIB Checking Service. 'We're adopting the ACORD Standards to provide our members with the highest quality of service,' said Fred Pritikin, chief marketing officer of MIB's e-Services Corporation. '"Response time will be just a fraction of that required with our dial-up network and carriers will be able to leverage the same Internet infrastructure they've implemented for other business processes. The carriers will be able to communicate with us using standard data formats and protocols. We expect that this will result in tighter integration of MIB processes with the carriers' internal business processes'. Pritikin said that MIB was completing a reengineering of all its business processes. The three ACORD-approved transactions were designed with these overall improvements in mind." As it begins the implementation of the XML interface, MIB is seeking vendors and carriers who are interested in being among the first to adopt the new technology. MIB plans to work with ACORD to develop additional transactions for business communications." See "ACORD - XML for the Insurance Industry."

  • [March 22, 2001] "Datachannel Co-Submits Web Services Description Language (WSDL) To World Wide Web Consortium. DataChannel Co-Submission of New Format Demonstrates Ongoing Leadership in Advancing Web Standards." - "DataChannel, a leader in enterprise portal solutions, today announced that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has acknowledged DataChannel's co-submission of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). DataChannel co-submitted the WSDL proposal with IBM, Microsoft, Allaire, Ariba, BEA, Bowstreet, Commerce One, Compaq Computer Corporation, Epicentric, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IONA Technologies, Jamcracker, Lotus Development Corporation, Oracle, Rogue Wave, SAP, TIBCO, VeriSign, Vitria, webMethods, XML Global Technologies and XMLSolutions. WSDL is an emerging XML technology that provides enterprise organizations with the ability to define the specific interface requirements needed to publish and consume Web Services. DataChannel's enterprise portal framework leverages the benefits of WSDL to deliver the new business desktop to Global 2000 enterprise customers. 'As WSDL continues to gain acceptance, DataChannel's Enterprise Portal will have the flexibility to integrate specific Web Services, making them accessible directly through the corporate desktop,' said Brian Eisenberg, program director for e-business technologies for DataChannel. 'By providing the flexibility to interface and interact with Web Services within the Enterprise, our customers can leverage their existing technologies and avoid huge add-on software packages. In a truly integrated enterprise, companies will be able to pick and choose only those services they need to perform specific business tasks.' The acceptance of WSDL is fueling the industry shift from delivering complex application logic in the form of monolithic software applications, to a distributed Web Services model that exposes similar functionality in the form of modular services. This model has the potential to reduce the amount of IT spending on software, while at the same time providing a simple and flexible mechanism for publishing, discovering, and invoking Web Services in a distributed network environment... As a recognized leader in web-based standards and technologies for the enterprise, DataChannel was invited to join the effort to advance WSDL in 2001. Eisenberg became involved in discussions about the future of WSDL in its early stages after recognizing that many prominent software companies were already building software based on WSDL, and that there was a need to transition the WSDL specification to a formal standards body to drive its acceptance. Today's acknowledgment of the WSDL by the W3C marks a significant step in the advancement, standardization and widespread adoption of WSDL. WSDL augments SOAP, enabling development tools and other infrastructure to easily integrate by engaging in automated 'conversations' with a Web Service. As communications standards emerge in the Web community, it becomes increasingly possible and important to be able to describe the communications in a common, structured way. WSDL addresses that need by defining an XML grammar for describing network services as collections of communication endpoints capable of exchanging messages.' See 'Web Services Description Language (WSDL)."

  • [March 22, 2001] "Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Siemens to further advance the development of personal mobile services through XHTML. Accenture, Adobe, AOL, CNN, Macromedia, Sabre, and Sun Microsystems also announce support for WAP/WEB convergence" - "Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and numerous other industry leaders in the mobile communications and content industries have today announced that they are supporting the XHTML markup language (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language) as the format for the future evolution of mobile services. The companies also expressed their intention to develop products, content, and services based on the XHTML language. XHTML is the natural evolution of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which brings the WAP- and fixed Internet (WWW) worlds together. The group is also working within the WAP forum to support this technology evolution process. In addition to handset manufacturers, a number of mobile operators have also announced support for XHTML. Vodafone Group, Orange, Radiolinja, Sonera, DNA, Telenor, Netcom, T-Mobil, TIM (Telecom Italia Group), RadioMobil and EuroTel Praha, have all announced plans to offer XHTML based services. XHTML is the language that will be used to create all content, regardless of whether it is for the fixed Internet or the mobile phone world. By narrowing the gap between wired and wireless content, this technology greatly accelerates the pace at which services can be created and improves the usability of wireless services for consumers. Another important component to enhance mobile browsing experience with XHTML markup language are the cascading style sheets that will offer significant advances to how content is presented to consumers. The style sheets themselves are a major advantage as they will make it possible to easily tailor content specifically for different handsets and offer many of the elements necessary to create a graphical user interface for services. In addition to handset manufacturers and mobile phone operators, a number of other companies have announced plans to launch XHTML services, application technology and content creation tools. Accenture, Adobe, AOL, CNN, Macromedia, Sabre, and Sun Microsystems and others are expected to support XHTML with their products and services."

  • [March 22, 2001] "Arbortext Expands Open Standards Support with Epic Editor 4.2. Version 4.2 will provide power of JavaScript, DOM and XSL standards. for software developers." - "Arbortext, Inc., global provider of XML-based software for single source publishing to multiple media types, including Web, print, CD-ROM and wireless, today announced the upcoming release of the next version of its Epic Editor software, Epic Editor 4.2, which will offer expanded support for software developers who require the openness and power of JavaScript, DOM and XSL. Through its long-standing leadership role in XML, Arbortext protects its customers' investments by developing standards-compliant software products. With the release of Epic Editor 4.2, Arbortext will deliver additional capability for software developers who desire to continue using the programming languages they are most comfortable with. Epic Editor 4.2 expands the ability of software developers to build on the company's Single Source Publishing Architecture to create customizations through the following enhancements: (1) JavaScript. Built in support for JavaScript, a key feature of Epic Editor 4.2, empowers software developers who are already familiar with this de facto industry standard. This JavaScript support is in addition to Epic Editor's existing support for compiled languages, including Java, C and C++, as well as any language that talks through COM, including Visual Basic. (2) GUI configuration. Epic Editor 4.2 provides a GUI-based configuration for associating scripts with events. This enhancement gives developers an easy way to add customizations to Epic Editor. (3) DOM. In addition to fully supporting the DOM Core, Epic Editor 4.2 expands that support to include dynamic DOM Ranges and most DOM Level 2 events. (4) XSL. Epic Editor's built-in GUI-based stylesheet development tool now uses Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) as its default native format, which extends Arbortext's support for this standard underneath its easy-to-use stylesheet design interface. (5) Extensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects (XSL-FO). Previously offered only as a technology preview, Arbortext has upgraded its support for XSL-FO to support the most recent XSL-FO specification and is now a standard part of Epic Editor 4.2, providing a robust way to apply style to content that's intended for paper publishing..."

  • [March 19, 2001] "World Wide Web Consortium Issues Canonical XML as a W3C Recommendation. New XML Specification Provides Foundation for Digital Signatures." - "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today announced the release of Canonical XML 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. This specification defines a method for serializing XML documents such that it eliminates incidental variances in their syntax as permitted by XML 1.0. This functionality is necessary to XML Signatures which requires documents to be consistently serialized for digital signature processing, so that these incidental variances do not invalidate the signature. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who are in favor of supporting its adoption by academic, industry, and research communities. Canonical XML Makes XML Digital Signatures Work: Digital signatures provide integrity, signature assurance and non-repudiatability over Web data. Such features are especially important for documents that represent commitments such as contracts, price lists, and manifests. XML Signatures have the potential to provide reliable XML-based signature technology. However, various processors may introduce incidental changes into a document over the course of its processing. Canonical XML 1.0 provides a method of serializing an XML document into its canonical form. If two documents have the same canonical form, then the two documents are logically equivalent within the context of this specification. This relationship combined with XML Signature is critical for electronic commerce because it ensures the integrity of documents and protocol messages that travel between multiple XML processors... Canonical XML adds another critical piece to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) family of technologies under development at W3C, which began with the XML 1.0 Recommendation, and includes Namespaces in XML, Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1.0, XML Path Language (XPath) 1.0, all of which are W3C Recommendations, and hosts of other essential components as well as applications of XML (such as MathML 2, XHTML 1.0 and XHTML Basic). Canonical XML provides the technology necessary for the successful completion of XML Signatures, which already has a host of supporting implementations. Cooperative Effort between W3C and IETF Delivers Results This is the first recommendation produced by the joint W3C/IETF XML Signature Working Group. Contributors include representatives from Ariba, Baltimore Technologies, Done360, IAIK TU Graz, IBM, Microsoft, PureEdge, Reuters, and the W3C technical team. The Working Group is still at work on XML Signatures, which already enjoys significant implementation, and will have more with the completion of the work on Canonical XML." PR also in French. See discussion.

  • [March 19, 2001] "OBOE - EDI/XML Translator Improves Run Time Speed." - "American Coders, Limited announces release 2.3.0 of its product Open Business Objects For EDI (OBOE). OBOE translates between several Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) document formats and EDI/XML files. This release provides new classes that improves the packages translator speed. OBOE is targeted classes that improves the packages translator speed. OBOE is targeted at legacy EDI users who want to integrate their systems with the Internet quickly and easily using standards-based technology to reach their small to medium size business partners. This release introduces two new classes TemplateTransactionSet and TemplateTables used to control multiple transaction sets in memory thereby improving load time for objects. Run time improvements will be noticed by applications acting as servers and applications parsing multiple transactions. See also (1) the DTD For Validating Transaction Set Rules, (2) the DTD For Validating EDI/XML, and (3) the DTD for Transmitting EDI/XML Message. [OBOE - formerly known as DEDIOUX - Dynamic EDI Objects Using XML]

  • [March 15, 2001] "Microsoft Co-Submits Another Web Services Specification to W3C. Continues Rigorous Open Standardization of XML and Web Services Technologies." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has acknowledged the submission of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) specification. Microsoft joined International Business Machines Corp., Allaire Corp., Ariba Technologies Inc., BEA Systems Inc., Bowstreet Inc., Commerce One Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., DataChannel Inc., Epicentric Inc., Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., IONA Technologies, Jamcracker Inc., Oracle Corp., Rogue Wave Software Inc., SAP AG, TIBCO Software Inc., VeriSign Inc., Vitria Technology Inc., webMethods Inc., XML Global Technologies and XMLSolutions Corp. in submitting the specification and proposing that the W3C's XML Protocol activity take on the work of standardizing it. WSDL is a key Web Services technology, implemented in the Microsoft .NET Framework, Visual Studio.NET, SOAP Toolkit and many other technologies. It provides an XML grammar for describing the capabilities of a Web Service. . . Today's news follows a sequence of initiatives by Microsoft to enable the widespread development and implementation of Web Services. Others include the Universal Description Design and Integration (UDDI) initiative that provides a comprehensive directory of businesses operating in the online world and the Web-based services they offer. Another is the submission of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1 to the W3C last May. SOAP is a technology that enables integration of applications over the Internet irrespective of operating system or platform. WSDL augments SOAP, enabling development tools and other infrastructure to easily integrate by engaging in automated "conversations" with a Web Service. As communications standards emerge in the Web community, it becomes increasingly possible and important to be able to describe the communications in a common, structured way. WSDL addresses that need by defining an XML grammar for describing network services as collections of communication endpoints capable of exchanging messages." See (1) details and (2) "Web Services Description Language (WSDL)."

  • [March 14, 2001] "Vendors Demonstrate ebXML at XML One London. Bowstreet, Btrade, Commerce One, Documentum, Fujitsu, IBM, IPNet, Killdara, Netfish/Iona, Sun Microsystems and XML Global Implement Latest ebXML Specifications in Proof-of-Concept Demo." - "Software vendors from around the world will come together to demonstrate the advanced progress of the ebXML specifications at the keynote session of the XML One conference in London on 21 March 2001. Bowstreet, Btrade, Commerce One, Documentum, Fujitsu, IBM, IPNet, Killdara, Netfish/Iona, Sun Microsystems and XML Global will together simulate a global, electronic business trading network using publicly available ebXML specifications for Messaging, Trading Partner Agreements and Registry Repository. According to the sponsors of ebXML, UN/CEFACT and OASIS, this proof-of-concept demonstration marks the final phase of ebXML development and heralds the beginning of ebXML product implementations. 'Vendors are coming forward, not only to support ebXML, but also to implement the specifications in their products,' stated Klaus-Dieter Naujok of Netfish Technologies, chair of ebXML and member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Group. 'The participation of vendors at XML One in London, many of whom are competitors, is a testimony to the stability and interoperability of ebXML specifications, and we applaud their cooperative efforts.' 'It is exciting to see the ebXML development work of the past year come to fruition,' added Dr. Robert S. Sutor of IBM, Vice-Chair of ebXML and a member of the OASIS Board of Directors. 'The companies who are represented in this proof-of-concept demonstration are leading the way for ebXML product developers and enablers around the globe.' At XML One, attendees will learn how they will be able to use ebXML to dynamically formulate trading partnerships through a registry service and exchange electronic business transactions with a consistent XML-based messaging infrastructure. Although many types of business transactions could be exchanged, the ebXML vendors in London will demonstrate ebXML functionality using payloads from the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG). In addition to the 11 vendors participating in the XML One conference, Interwoven and Cisco provided software for the ebXML demonstration. NTT Communications, Savvion, Sterling Commerce, TIE, Viquity and XMLSolutions also were instrumental in the proof-of-concept development. ebXML is an International Initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS in late 1999 with a mandate to undertake an 18-month program of work to research and identify the technical basis upon which the global implementation of XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be standardized. The goal of ebXML is to facilitate open trade between organizations regardless of size by enabling XML to be used in a consistent manner to exchange electronic business data."

  • [March 14, 2001] "World Wide Web Consortium Delivers Tutorials at CeBIT 2001. Meet Technologists from the birthplace of XML, XHTML and critical Web technologies." - "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is delivering its first series of tutorials at the CeBIT 2001 world business fair and exhibition which runs from 22 - 28 March in Hannover, Germany. Members of the W3C Team and the W3C Deutsches B|ro are available to meet with CeBIT attendees, show the latest W3C achievements in graphics, presentation, multimedia, privacy, and accessibility, and explain how W3C's over 500 members work together to create the technologies that serve as standards for the World Wide Web. Five W3C Team members will give tutorials: (1) Dr. Philipp Hoschka, the W3C Architecture Domain Leader, presents on Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) on 23 March 2001; (2) Dr. Daniel Dardailler, Technical Lead for the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) presents on Web Accessibility on 24 March 2001; (3) Rigo Wenning, W3C Privacy Activity Lead, presents on the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) on 25 March 2001; (4) Dr. Bert Bos, W3C Style Activity Lead, presents on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on 26 March 2001; (5) Dr. Ivan Herman, Head of W3C Offices, presents on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) on 27 March 2001... The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, over 500 organizations are Members of the Consortium. "

  • [March 14, 2001] "GML Version 2.0 On the Way to Adoption." - "Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that the Geography Markup Language (GML) Editing Committee completed its work on the GML 2.0 Recommendation Paper. This action paves the way for balloting to make the paper an official OpenGIS Implementation Specification. The recommendation paper is available at http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs.htm. GML, a structure for storing and sharing geographic data, is an encoding of the OGC Simple Feature geometry model using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Geographic data stored in GML includes both the geometry (location) and descriptive attributes of map features. Part of the allure of GML is that software vendors who choose to support it will be able to access data from any source that publishes data expressed in GML, and then manage, display and use this data as they like. GML 2.0 significantly expands the capabilities of GML 1.0. GML 2.0 is based on XML Schema, and enables the encoding of complex features and feature associations. GML was one of several technology ideas that evolved from OGC's Web Mapping Testbed, which began operation in 1999. Since it was unveiled in 2000, interest in GML has been widespread and active for the following reasons: the reliance of GML on widely used, standardized XML assures that tools and experience are available in the marketplace; GML is easily accessible, using almost any programming language, allowing software developers to display, query and manipulate the data, as they need; and GML's flexibility allows the same data to be used in different ways by different applications, on a variety of platforms - a compelling feature for the mapping, Internet and location-based services communities... The OGC Technical Committee has begun electronic balloting for approval of the recommendation paper as a specification, with final voting to be completed by early April. With a final specification, software vendors can begin to implement GML in their offerings, and take another significant step toward data and software interoperability. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that 'geo-enable' the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications." See: "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [March 13, 2001] "Planet 7's New XML Network Development System Helps Developers Accelerate E-business Integration Projects. - "Planet 7 Technologies Corp., the XML Network Company based in Bothell, Wash., announced today that the company has released the XML Network Development System, a special development version of Planet 7's XML Network Server software. Available immediately, the XML Network Development System is designed to help customers cost-effectively evaluate XML Networking technology and accelerate the deployment of e-business projects built with the XML Network. Intended for use with pre-production development projects, the XML Network Development System consists of a single server license of the XML Network Server 2.02 for Windows NT or Unix and XML Network Clients 2.02 software for Java or COM. It also includes a Software Development Kit with extensive documentation, tutorials and example code, and unlimited e-mail technical support. Planet 7's XML Network provides a hub-and-router architecture for content-based routing and real-time synchronization of shared XML data among enterprise applications. The architecture decouples business logic from integration technology, adding system flexibility and lowering ongoing development costs. In Planet 7's architecture, the XML Network Server (XNS) acts as a central hub, or integration server, where XML documents are hosted, and where XML information, such as purchase orders or bids in an online auction, can be exchanged. Multiple applications and systems distributed across a network can share and react to the same XML information contained on a hub. XNS acts as the processing point, hosting a real-time, many-to-many exchange of XML data. At the heart of XML Network technology is the real-time routing of XML data among networked applications, such as ERP modules or application servers connected to the Web. In an XML Network, all authorized clients can see the changes taking place on the hub simultaneously and respond immediately to the new data. This real-time data exchange supports automatic synchronization between hubs, and enables the kind of zero-latency performance that organizations are coming to demand in e-business networks."

  • [March 12, 2001] "OGC Seeks Input For Geographic Web Services Testbeds." - "The Open GIS Consortium, Inc (OGC) announced today its intent to release a Request for Technology (RFT) for a major Web Services Initiative. The RFT will be available on the OGC website by March 21, 2001. This set of six planned activities will extend OpenGIS standards, enabling freer access to web services that process geographic information. The Web Services Initiative is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's OpenGIS Specification Development Program. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative's sponsors. The Web Services Initiative will build on the results of previous OGC testbeds and pilot projects and the work of the OGC Technical Committee and other standards organizations. Major focus areas of the Web Services Initiative are: (1) Web Mapping Testbed, Phase 3 will consolidate the progress made in previous testbeds with work accomplished in OGC Web Services Initiative threads. This activity will also investigate future web services for visualization, feature and coverage data access, and other services. (2) 3D / 4D will extend OGC's GML (XML encoding of geospatial data), Simple Feature Access, and Web Feature Server specifications, with the goal of bringing time, topology, and more complex geometric representation capabilities into these OGC data access and manipulation services. (3) Geoanalysis and Decision Support will develop interoperable service chaining (common expression and execution) and service metadata extensions for complex spatial models (e.g., science models). Goals include extending the OGC Basic Services Model and exercising key concepts in ISO 19119. (4) Information Community Enablement will create a new technical standards approach to overcoming the problem of semantic differences in geospatial data and associated metadata. It will focus on supporting 'Information Communities' using OGC Web Services, fielding data models across communities, and building tools for application schema creation, mapping, and migration. Candidate Information Communities include Earth Observation, Natural Resources, Disaster Management and Public Safety, Telecommunications, Defense and Intelligence, and Location Based Services, each of which is represented by an OGC Special Interest Group. (5) Web Based Exploitation will focus on an open e-commerce architecture that dynamically connects earth imagery and other geospatial information providers, maintainers, and users in collaborating communities, providing users with interoperable Web-based exploitation capabilities. (6) Sensor Web Enablement will produce open standards for Web-optimized information gathering from distributed, heterogeneous, dynamic information sensors, and Web resources through common gateways and interfaces ('Ask it, task it, see it'). It will result in common interfaces (and an XML-based Sensor Markup Language) for managing sensor information and metadata independent of application. One goal is transparent integration of data from earth imaging platforms and ground collection systems (for water quality, GPS correction stations, dynamic attribution sensors on lakes and dams, etc.)...OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications." See: "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

  • [March 08, 2001] "Industry Leaders Publish Standard for Business Process Management. Release of BPML Specification Paves Way for Implementations." - "Marking a breakthrough development in the evolution of business process management, the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) announced at their member meeting today the public release of the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) specification. BPML is a meta-language for the modeling of business processes, just as XML is a meta-language for the modeling of business data. BPML provides an abstracted execution model for collaborative & transactional business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners, behind the firewall and over the Internet. By covering the multiple dimensions of business process management in the open enterprise, BPML will bridge the gap between legacy IT infrastructures and emerging business-to-business collaboration protocols such as RosettaNet, ebXML, and BizTalk. BPML empowers all participants involved in the process design, deployment, execution, maintenance, and optimization to manage business activities in a process-oriented fashion, while preserving the integrity of end-to-end business processes all over their lifecycle. BPML enables the collaboration of process participants in a reliable, scalable, and secure way, by supporting dynamic process topologies that allow the boundary between processes and participants to be determined on-the-fly by long-term and real-time business goals, while retaining synchronized public interfaces associated with trading partner agreements. Several BPMI.org members, ranging from software vendors to consulting firms, have expressed plans to incorporate BPML into their products and services. BPMI.org foresees BPML implementations in such enterprise software as process design tools, process repositories, process servers, process administration tools, process optimization tools, and many process-specific applications. Today's public release comes after several revisions and six months of collaboration between members of BPMI.org." See details and "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."

  • [March 08, 2001] CSC Outlines Business Process Vision for Next-Generation E-Business. As Founding Member of Business Process Standards Organization, CSC Helps Establish Language Specifications for Cross-Enterprise Collaboration." - "The next generation of e-business will be defined by unprecedented levels of networking among companies, and will be powered by shared business processes, according to executives of Computer Sciences Corporation attending the Global Internet Summit at George Mason University today. Commonly used terms such as 'collaborative commerce' typically refer only to enabling technologies such as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), or to a particular business process, such as supply chain. According to CSC, however, technology must be viewed in concert with all business processes -- such as procurement, product design and development, fulfillment, and customer relationship management (CRM) -- to create dynamic cross-company process networks that can compete in an ever-changing business environment... To standardize these processes and encourage the development of Networked Enterprises, CSC joined Intalio Inc. in August 2000 to found the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org), an independent organization of 75 members devoted to the development of open specifications for the management of e-business processes. BPMI.org defines open specifications, such as the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) and the Business Process Query Language (BPQL) that will enable the standards-based management of e-business processes spanning multiple applications, corporate departments and business partners, behind the firewall and over the Internet. BPMI.org will announce specifications for BPML on March 8, 2001. 'The initiatives undertaken by BPMI.org, including BPML, will allow cross-enterprise networks to really happen,' Smith said. 'We will have the foundation on which to build agile, collaborative networks that can evolve as technology and business dictates. It is very exciting to help develop and drive this initiative.' Computer Sciences Corporation, one of the world's leading consulting and information technology (IT) services firms, helps clients in industry and government achieve strategic and operational results through the use of technology. The company's success is based on its culture of working collaboratively with clients to develop innovative technology strategies and solutions that address specific business challenges..." See "Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)."

  • [March 07, 2001] "BEA Ships BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet. Additional Protocol Support Helps Companies Rapidly Automate Trading Partner Networks and Achieve Operational Efficiencies." - "BEA Systems, Inc., one of the world's leading e-business infrastructure software companies, today announced that its BEA WebLogic Collaborate business-to-business (B2B) platform now supports RosettaNet, an open process and message framework designed to standardize business operations between trading partners. BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet helps allow companies to rapidly build or participate in RosettaNet-based trading exchanges to bring products to market more quickly, increase operational efficiencies and achieve cost savings. BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet comes with packaged solutions to help companies build RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes (PIPs) for the RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF). This capability reduces B2B integration complexities by providing baseline rules and standard message formats for trading partner interaction... Real-world e-business is complex - involving frequently changing internal and partner business processes, multiple streams of interdependent activities, diverse interface applications and interface formats, and hosts of business decision-makers. With BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet, companies have a single, comprehensive platform for seamlessly interweaving enterprise and collaborative processes, programs and people. With BEA WebLogic Process Integrator - BEA's powerful, award-winning J2EE process engine - at its core, BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet supports the rapid development of new PIPs to accommodate additional or customized B2B processes. In addition, using a graphical modeling environment, business users can design intra- and inter-company business flows to invoke legacy applications and automate decision-maker participation. With full support for BEA's eXtended Open Collaboration Protocol, the foundation for OASIS' new Business Transaction Protocol (BTP) initiative, BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet manages complex trading partner interactions over the Internet. These transactions are managed as long-running and loosely coupled "conversations" among authenticated partners based on collaboration roles and agreements, and are tracked at a business level from the start of a B2B process to its completion. 'B2B integration is not just about sending XML documents, negotiating company touch-points, or even implementing standards, added [BEA VP Louise] Smith. 'It's about extending the virtual enterprise - including trading partners - to do the business that you do today more efficiently, effectively and profitably. That's the solution space we've targeted.' BEA WebLogic Collaborate for RosettaNet is available and can be downloaded today from www.bea.com." See "RosettaNet."

  • [March 07, 2001] "Sybase Announces Enterprise Portal 2.0 With Integration For Trading Partners And Mobile Users." - "Sybase, Inc., a leader in e-Business software, today announced Sybase. Enterprise Portal 2.0 (EP), a next-generation portal which extends portal functionality to mobile and wireless users, business partners and e-marketplaces. The new portal functionality uses Sybase's market-leading wireless technology along with new business-to-business application integration, XML/EDI transformations and globalization features to improve the productivity and efficiency of internal and external e-Business processes to help companies' improve their return on technology investments. Sybase EP 2.0 includes an extensible e-Business foundation for next generation e-Business applications and Web-enabled enterprise applications that is highly scalable, continuously available and globally deployable, supporting different languages and character sets. In addition, the extensible e-Business foundation included with EP 2.0 provides enterprise integration services to automate business processes by integrating mission critical applications within and beyond the enterprise. Key components of this global-class e-Business foundation include a J2EE-compliant application server, lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) directory support, an integrated security framework, concept-based searching and a powerful data server with data synchronization capabilities... Sybase EP uses extensible markup language (XML) to allow independent applications to communicate with each other over the Internet. XML/electronic data interchange (EDI) transformation enables non-EDI-enabled business partners to be quickly integrated into the enterprise's processes. Enterprise integration adapters allow collaborative data to be directly served into data management systems or applications. With Sybase EP 2.0, developers can quickly build applications to automate information sharing to improve the efficiency and accuracy of business-to-business transactions. Sybase EP's business-to-business capabilities extend to the growing number of e-marketplaces that often speak different dialects of XML and use slightly different conventions of communication. Sybase Enterprise Portal overcomes these compatibility problems to provide enterprise applications with a single point of access to multiple e-marketplaces, enabling full e-marketplace participation at a lower cost. Sybase Enterprise Portal 2.0 is a flagship e-Business solution that enables companies to extend their e-Business to business partners and e-Marketplaces, and expand their reach to mobile users. New technologies include: (1) Sybase's market-leading mobile and wireless technology to extend enterprise portal content and e-Business applications to mobile users; (2) Business-to-business application integration capability and XML/EDI transformations to expand the e-Business to trading partners and e-marketplaces; (3) Global-class e-Business foundation that provides a standards-based, extensible environment for developing and deploying new e-Business applications and integration for leveraging existing IT assets... Sybase eMarketLink provides the infrastructure to build portals and marketplaces to support the new generation of collaborative e-Business, and provides a single point of access to multiple e-marketplaces. Sybase Business Message Translation Options (BMTO ) simplifies business-to-business communications that may use different dialects of XML, or EDI to quickly leverage multiple e-marketplaces and to enable non-EDI enabled partners to be integrated easily into the enterprise."

  • [March 07, 2001] "Microsoft Unveils Visual Studio.NET Open Tools Platform. Core Technologies Combine to Provide Developers Unprecedented Extensibility, Flexibility and Integration With Third-Party Tools." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced the Visual Studio.NET Open Tools Platform, a set of three core technologies that enable developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and language vendors to use Microsoft Visual Studio.NET as a complete platform for developing and customizing next-generation Web Services and applications. The Open Tools Platform is designed to facilitate productivity, flexibility and tight integration, which in turn gives customers a more complete set of solutions tailored to their specific needs. At the core of the Open Tools Platform is Visual Studio.NET, Microsoft's flagship developer tool for building Windows- and Web-based applications and services while leveraging industry standards such as XML, SOAP and UDDI. Visual Studio.NET provides an open automation model, enabling developers to customize, extend and integrate the development environment right out of the box. With this capability, developers can tailor the environment to their specific needs, using macros, add-ins and wizards to maximize their productivity. For example, using macros a developer can build a macro for two-way synchronization with the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client that takes tasks from Outlook and adds them onto the Task List in the Visual Studio integrated development environment. In addition to this deep extensibility model for developers, the Open Tools Platform gives ISVs and language vendors deep integration and customization abilities through the Visual Studio Integration Program. The Visual Studio Integration Program enables ISVs and language vendors to integrate their products and services directly into the Visual Studio.NET development environment through a new software development kit (SDK), the Visual Studio Integration SDK. It also enables ISVs to give their customers the ability to easily customize and extend their applications to fit that specific customer's needs through the new Visual Studio for Applications SDK... '"The Open Tools Platform enables our customers to exploit the full power of XML and Web Services enabled by Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework,' said Diane Mueller, director, Productivity Solutions at ActiveState. 'ActiveState's Visual Perl and Visual Python IDEs allow programmers to leverage popular open source programming languages within the .NET Framework and offer support for Web Services'."

  • [March 07, 2001] Semio Corporation Releases New Integration Toolkit. Semio Integration Toolkit Lets Software Developers Incorporate Patented Content Categorization Technology into Their Enterprise Applications." - "Semio Corporation, a leading provider of content categorization software, today announced the availability of Semio Integration Toolkit. The toolkit is a software development kit and partnership program designed to support the integration of Semio's award-winning content categorization technology into corporate portals and customized applications - such as personalized content delivery or communities of interest. By using Semio's toolkit, partners and customers quickly build applications that can organize and manage virtually unlimited amounts of unstructured digital information... The Semio Integration Toolkit offers application interfaces to Semio's Tagger software, which organizes large amounts of corporate data by finding conceptual and practical relationships between any digital document stored on a server. These interfaces enable partners and customers to build solutions with automated cataloging and categorization of unstructured information, offering faster access to the right information in today's complex business environments... With the release of the Integration Toolkit, partners and customers have multiple possible integration points with the Semio categorization solution. Some partners use the XML generated by Semio Tagger as input for publication and syndication processes. The Application Programming Interface (API) published with the Integration Toolkit lets portal vendors and others create tightly integrated solutions leveraging Semio's automated categorization capabilities. Semio Tagger can be embedded directly in a portal or used in conjunction with Semio's viewers, Semio Map and Semio Taxonomy... Semio's customers include AT&T, Cisco, DuPont, Stanford HighWire Press, IDG, Procter & Gamble and USPS. Semio has partnerships with major portal vendors such as Epicentric, Plumtree and Sequoia." [Semio Taxonomy: "... combines unique linguistic analysis technology and statistical clustering with user-defined vocabulary requirements to create an intuitively browsable structure of categories that provides intelligent access to the global information space within a mass of formerly unstructured text Important phrases and keywords are extracted from a variety of text sources such as intranet/Internet sites, Lotus Notes, Documentum, ODBC-compliant databases, XML, etc. This process combines language detection, proximity analysis and stemming and normalization rules to produce the cleanest, most informative extraction technology available. These extracted concepts are then clustered using information theory techniques developed as the result of work over the past twenty years. Once this process has selected the truly relevant information from the original unstructured text, any number of top-level classification structures can be applied to it. These structures extract lexical derivatives from the network of clusters and place them into categories. The result: a browseable category structure that actually provides insights to the user about the search space without resorting to the 'hunt-and-peck' method of keyword searches."]

  • [March 07, 2001] "ActiveEducation Announces OASIS Support for XML Certification." - "ActiveEducation, provider of the new Certified XML Expert (CXE) exam, today announced support from OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium. OASIS, an international not-for-profit organization, advances electronic business by promoting open, collaborative development of interoperability specifications. The Consortium publicly recognizes the need for XML certification as a means of nurturing and verifying skills in the fast-growing field of structured information standards. ActiveEducation's CXE program provides a vendor-neutral, performance-based exam in which students create working XML documents... The demand for XML technology budgets will increase 86 percent over last year, according to a study by IDG Research Services Group. ActiveEducation believes this growth in spending for XML-based solutions will create an urgent need for individuals with XML skills. ActiveEducation, a private, venture-backed firm, was named Colorado's 26th fastest growing technology company as ranked by Deloitte and Touche in their 1999 and 2000 Colorado Fast 50 award program. ActiveEducation has clients ranging from universities to Fortune 500 corporations."

  • [March 07, 2001] "Ipedo Inc. Announces the Ipedo XML Database. Industry's First Dynamic XML Database Accelerates Performance of Web and Wireless Applications." - "Ipedo, Inc., a leading provider of dynamic content delivery acceleration products, today announced beta availability of its new Ipedo XML Database. Designed to speed data delivery and transformation in Web and wireless applications, the Ipedo XML Database combines advanced XML query processing with a high-speed native XML database engine. The all-Java server includes advanced XSLT and XPath processing features. 'The Ipedo XML database offers several integration and performance advantages over conventional relational databases,' said Nick Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Ipedo. 'It enables faster Web download time, allowing instant customization of Web portals, and reducing the cost of redesigning large Web sites, while easily integrating with companies existing systems.' The Ipedo XML Database will be available in the second quarter of 2001. Ipedo develops a range of high-performance dynamic content delivery products to accelerate Internet and wireless applications. Based on its Active Edge performance technology, Ipedo's product line offers caching for a range of user profile and XML data. Ipedo's products can be used to provide rapid personalization, instant delivery, and scalable data access to very large user populations in ASPs, ISPs, Web portals, B2B exchanges, wireless services and next-generation Internet telephony." See: "XML and Databases."

  • [March 03, 2001] "NewsEdge Announces Electronic Publishing Technology; Leader in Content Syndication Licenses Proprietary Indexing and Editorial Refinery Technology to Publishers of Original Content." - "NewsEdge Corporation, a global provider of syndicated content services and electronic publishing technologies for business, today announced the availability of its Electronic Publishing Technology. The offering enables traditional and new media publishers and other organizations creating original content to license NewsEdge's unique and proprietary indexing and editorial refinery technology to process their original content. NewsEdge Electronic Publishing Technology enables content creators and information providers to collect and standardize content from disparate sources, classify that content with NewsEdge's patented NewsEdge Refinery and taxonomy, and deliver that content to the Web in real-time XML format... NewsEdge Electronic Publishing Technology enables publishers and organizations that create or manage vast amounts of original content to take advantage of NewsEdge's industry expertise in refining, tagging, prioritizing and distributing news content. Organized content from NewsEdge is highly relevant, industry-specific and serves the needs of content creators, distributors and consumers. The technology enables the collection and normalization of content from multiple sources, classification using NewsEdge business information taxonomy expertise, and delivery in an industry standard XML format. It enhances the value of the original content, makes it more accessible and easy to use for the end-user, and creates a more compelling Web site for the information provider. NewsEdge Electronic Publishing Technology enables original content publishers and producers to use the NewsEdge Refinery process to instantly translate their content into a standard XML format, index it into over 2,000 industry-specific or customized tags pre-defined by NewsEdge, and store the resulting information in an Oracle database. The Electronic Publishing Technology will then deliver the story headlines, in real time, to the publishers' subscribing customers via Internet as a streaming or episodic feed, or as syndicated content to other NewsEdge hosted services. NewsEdge Electronic Publishing Technology offers the following benefits to publishers and other content creators: (1) With information normalized into XML, publishers and other content creators can easily and cost-effectively distribute their content to a wider electronic audience; (2) Adding tags or XML meta codes that organize content into a proven taxonomy of business information, publishers and other content creators increase the value of their content for more effective search, presentation or contextual-based commerce; (3) With real-time or episodic delivery of industry-standard XML feeds, publishers and other content creators gain time-to-market advantage in electronic publishing or syndication of their content; (4) Integration with all major Web content management systems through XML standards leverages and enhances investment in existing technology." [from February 20, 2001]

  • [March 02, 2001] "Microsoft Delivers First XML-Based Protocol for Cross-Platform Analytics." - "Microsoft Corp. has opened the doors for application developers to begin taking advantage of a protocol that will allow the deployment of sophisticated analytical database solutions across multiple computer platforms. Today Microsoft made available a beta version of the XML for Analysis software development kit and an updated XML for Analysis protocol specification. This is the first online analytical processing protocol that enables the transfer of information between analytical databases and client applications, regardless of the computer language used to write the application. Leveraging open Internet standards -- such as XML, SOAP and HTTP -- XML for Analysis is a new protocol that is designed to standardize the data access interaction between a client application and an analytical data provider (OLAP and data mining). With input from more than 50 industry-leading vendors, XML for Analysis is a vendor- and platform-independent extension to Microsoft's OLEDB for OLAP and OLEDB for Data Mining protocols. Developers are now able to provide analytic capabilities to any client on any device or platform using any programming language, such as the Microsoft Visual Basic development system, C++, C# and Java. Microsoft is a leader in the development of XML-based technologies that simplify the development, deployment and integration of enterprise information systems. A beta version of XML for Analysis is available for download at the Microsoft web site."

  • [March 01, 2001] "Industri-Matematik Announces Support for Open Applications Group Standard. Industri-Matematik Supply Chain and Customer Service Software Leverages XML Standards to Connect with Web and Legacy Business Applications." - "Industri-Matematik International Corp. today announced that it has joined the Open Applications Group, Inc. and that its Vivaldi software supports the Open Applications Group Interface Specification (OAGIS). By incorporating OAGIS, Industri-Matematik applications provide integration of supply chain and customer service capabilities to web-based trading communities, digital marketplaces and legacy applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP). The business process-based OAGIS specification contains the largest set of Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Type Definition (DTD) files in the world and simplifies the connection of disparate e-business, supply chain, customer relationship management (CRM), ERP and financials applications. Leveraging an Internet-based, object-oriented design, Industri-Matematik applications can be integrated easily with legacy applications, web sales systems, and private and public trading communities. Industri-Matematik VIVALDI software provides CRM, fulfillment, replenishment and supply chain event management capabilities for retail, wholesale/distribution, logistics service providers and manufacturing companies. VIVALDI offers total visibility of e-business transactions across a trading community to manage high-volume fulfillment with increased reliability and velocity. It integrates contact center and logistics operations to provide customers and suppliers with real-time web access to all aspects of orders across the supply chain." See "Open Applications Group."

  • [February 27, 2001] "ebXML Technical Architecture Specification Approved. Record Numbers of Organizations Convene in Vancouver as ebXML Nears Completion." - "Organizations from around the world came together in Vancouver, Canada to overwhelmingly approve the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification. Serving as a roadmap to ebXML, the Technical Architecture Specification provides the foundation for all other ebXML specifications. This announcement from the UN/CEFACT and OASIS marks the deliverable stage of ebXML, as the initiative nears its goal of delivering a complete suite of specifications in May 2001. 'Interest in ebXML continues to build at a phenomenal rate,' said Robert S. Sutor, Ph.D., of IBM, vice chair of ebXML and member of the OASIS Board of Directors. 'The ebXML Technical Architecture Specification gives implementers a clear understanding of the entire initiative and how the various ebXML specifications relate to one another.' The ebXML Technical Architecture Specification defines the relationships, interactions and basic functionality of ebXML specifications including those involving core components, business processes, registry & repository, messaging services, trading partner agreements and security. In addition, the Technical Architecture Specification provides an ebXML use case scenario and conformance guidelines... More than 350 participants from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America approved the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification. The group, which gathered in Vancouver to advance the initiative, remains open to all interested organizations and individuals. Developers and all interested parties are encouraged to review the ebXML Technical Architecture Specification at http://www.ebxml.org/specdrafts/approved_specs.htm." See: "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [February 27, 2001] "Sun Microsystems Announces The Beta Availability Of The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2Ee) Connector Architecture. Empowering the Industry with Uniform Connectivity to Back-End EIS Applications." - "Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced the immediate availability of the beta version for Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector Architecture, a key component of J2EE 1.3 Reference Implementation. The J2EE Connector Architecture adds a whole new dimension to the J2EE platform by providing a standard architecture for back-end applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Resource Management (CRM) systems to 'plug-and-play' with any J2EE 1.3 compatible application server. Currently, there are over 25 licensees of the J2EE platform. The specification of the 1.0 version of J2EE Connector Architecture is presently in a proposed final draft stage as part of the Java Community Process Program (JCP)... J2EE Connector rchitecture solves many of the hurdles faced today by software developers and application server vendors in the integration of the J2EE platform based enterprise applications with existing heterogeneous Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) such as ERP, CRM and legacy databases. The J2EE Connector Architecture addresses the integration issues under the scope of the J2EE platform by defining a standard architecture and a uniform interface that enables existing EISs to 'plug-and-play' with any J2EE compatible application servers. Application servers that support the J2EE Connector Architecture will be able to simply '"plug in' a J2EE Connector Architecture based resource adapter for a particular EIS... J2EE technology has swiftly become the de-facto industry standard for developers of enterprise solutions. J2EE 1.3, currently available in beta at http://java.sun.com/j2ee/, builds upon the same value proposition as J2EE 1.2 and offers a rich set of new and enhanced features built to help businesses in today's networked economy. J2EE 1.3 beta offers faster solution delivery time to market, freedom of choice, and simplified connectivity by leveraging XML, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 2.0 architecture, JavaServer Pages (JSP) 1.2 technology and Servlets 2.3, J2EE blueprints, the J2EE Connector Architecture, and Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP)..."

  • [February 26, 2001] "Tcl finds a home. ActiveState supports open source programming language." - "ActiveState, a leader in open source programming languages, announced today the addition of Tcl to the languages they support. In addition to providing supported versions of Tcl, core Tcl consulting and Tcl development tools, ActiveState will also soon be hosting the primary Tcl community website. Tcl (Tool Command Language, pronounced 'tickle') is a high level programming language that is cross-platform, open source, easy to use, embeddable and extensible. As a scripting language it excels at automating routine chores and extending applications. Tcl is also well suited for creating simple, yet powerful, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) with the Tk toolkit. Tcl has approximately 500,000 users. Tcl's flexibility, ease of use, and power has made it popular amongst numerous blue chip companies such as: AOL, Cisco, Newbridge Networks, and Healtheon... As part of this initiative, prominent Tcl developer, Jeff Hobbs, has joined ActiveState as the Tcl technical lead. Jeff is the maintainer of the Tk Usage FAQ and is a program committee member for the USENIX Tcl/Tk Conference. Previously Jeff was with Scriptics, where he was the Tcl ambassador, responsible for liaising with the Tcl community and managing development of the Tcl core. ActiveState is at the forefront of open source software, providing Internet programming products and services for all popular operating systems and platforms. ActiveState's key technologies are: Perl, the Internet's most popular programming language; Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language. ActiveState solutions provide enterprise-wide deployment of open source programming languages, improved programmer productivity, and seamless integration with other technologies."

  • [February 26, 2001] "B-Bop Announces Easy-to-use Xfinity Author wX to Create XML Content Flexible add-in module simplifies publishing structured documents in XML using Microsoft Word." - "B-Bop Associates, Inc., a leading provider of XML software and services for e-business solutions, announces the release of Xfinity Author wX, a powerful XML creation tool. Using Xfinity Author wX, authors can easily produce structured documents in XML from within the familiar Microsoft Word environment. Customers today demand real-time access to information through multiple electronic channels. To meet these demands, organizations must now publish their business critical information in more structured forms. Manual tagging and reformatting of documents for different channels is not a viable solution. Retraining business users to use new tools and processes is not cost-effective. Xfinity Author wX allows organizations to meet these demands for real-time publishing and re-usable content without the significant cost of manual conversion or extensive user re-training. Implemented as a fully integrated add-on to Microsoft Word, Xfinity Author wX is designed for business users and content experts. Users such as editors, research analysts and product managers are under constant pressure to meet publishing deadlines. Xfinity Author wX enables these users to generate well-formed XML documents without having to learn the specifics of XML syntax or tagging, by simply using the built-in Save As menu option. Authors can continue to use their own Word templates to create documents and incorporate all the rich word-processing functionality provided by Word such as styles, bookmarks and graphics objects. Xfinity Author wX automatically identifies document components and tags them as re-usable XML elements. The tagged components may be mapped to any industry standard or user-defined DTD (Document Type Definition) or Schemas using platform-independent XSL stylesheets. Organizations can now easily customize and re-package business critical information created by their content experts automate business processes and rapidly deliver new product information to improve customer satisfaction..."

  • [February 20, 2001] "DISA's Show Features First Demonstration in 2001 of New ebXML Specifications. March 7-9, 2001, Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco." - "The 14th annual E-Business and Internet Conference & Exhibition, sponsored by the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA), features a live demonstration of the emerging Electronic Business Extensible Markup Language (ebXML) specifications on March 8, 2001. This demonstration of ebXML is the first of its kind this year and shows a simulated supply chain, involving small-to-midsize companies, sending and receiving messages in standard formats. The ebXML demo that takes place at the DISA show involves business content never before exchanged in any previous ebXML tests. The business content in the messages is based on specifications of the Papinet Consortium, an international paper and printing group developing business messages based on XML, and made available from the Graphic Communications Association. Several companies take part in the ebXML demonstration including Extol Inc., Viquity Corp., and TIE Commerce. The demo, part of a larger session on ebXML (Thursday, March 8 at 8:30 am), features presentations by ebXML project team leaders Rachel Foerster and Rik Drummond, and is led by David Webber of XML Global Technologies. In the demonstration, a small printing company orders paper for a print job, gets confirmation of the order from a local wholesaler, receives a ship notice when the shipment is dispatched, and then sends a receipt upon delivery. The wholesaler - using a pre-arranged inventory management scheme with a paper mill - gets its stock replaced and documented through another set of electronic messages. Most printing companies and paper wholesalers today cannot afford to use electronic business for inventory control, which ebXML can now make available. The DISA conference also features a keynote address by Kevin Kail, President of XML Solutions, an Executive Forum of industry leaders, panel of top industry analysts, 64 concurrent track sessions featuring the latest developments and applications in business data exchange, and 10 pre-conference tutorials. The conference also features the presentation of the first Electronic Business Enterprise (EBE) Award and this year's Edward A. Guilbert Award. See the conference web site for more details and online registration. The ebXML initiative will soon complete work on a set of specifications that together enable a modular electronic business framework where enterprises of any size and in any geographical location can meet and conduct business with each other through the exchange of XML-based messages. EbXML is a joint initiative of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), developed with global participation for global usage. DISA, the accredited standards community for e-business, is home for the development of cross-industry e-business standards that provide the foundation enabling individuals and organizations to participate in global e-business." See ebXML reference page.

  • [February 20, 2001] "HR-XML Consortium Elects 2001 Board Members. New Board to Increase Consortium's International Presence." - "The HR-XML Consortium, a non-profit organization dedicated to human resources (HR) data exchange, held its annual Board of Directors elections. The Consortium elected six new directors to join three returning directors to the 2001 board. In keeping with the Consortium's bylaws, the board consists of nine member volunteers. The new board will include the additional influence of two European companies. The European board members add geographic diversity and insight to this proactive board. 'The election of two directors who work in Europe and represent the needs of the European HR domain shows the Consortium's continued efforts to establish universal XML standards,' said Chuck Allen, Director of the HR-XML Consortium. 'The geographic diversity of our 2001 board strengthens the Consortium's commitment to represent the needs of all HR management and technical professionals.' The following HR-XML Consortium members were elected to the 2001 HR-XML Board of Directors: [see text]... HR-XML (http://www.hr-xml.org) 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 work force management." See: "HR-XML Consortium." [source]

  • [February 19, 2001] "Intelligent Compression Technologies Releases XML Compressor, XML-Xpress." - "Intelligent Compression Technologies, Inc. (ICT) announced [January 30, 2001] the release of their newest compression software, XML-Xpress. When run head-to-head, XML-Xpress compression software can radically reduce file size over other competing XML compression schemes. As an example, XML-Xpress software achieved lossless compression as high as 34:1 at throughputs up to 9 Mbytes/sec on a test database. In comparison to competitive systems on this same database, XML-Xpress achieved about 81% greater compression than XMill (AT&T's XML Compression solution) and 3.14 times Zip, while obtaining throughputs 3% faster than Zip and 55% faster than Xmill. XML-Xpress is the premier solution for software developers and companies who are distributing information over the Internet via XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XML is rapidly becoming the industry standard format for the exchange and sorting of data between different software applications and platforms. XML uses tags to identify data items. These tags allow users to search, sort, identify and extract data as desired. While the XML format makes the use and interchange of data easier and more user configurable, XML substantially increases the size of these files over the size when the same data is represented in its raw format. This increase in file size or 'bloat' can represent an average size increase of 400%. This inherent inflation of the file sizes is a critical problem when data has to be transmitted quickly or stored compactly. Bill Sebastian, ICT's President, stated, 'We began this project at the request of an application service provider who wanted their on-line service to operate as if it resided on the clients local disk drive. While their decision to implement XML within their application increased the size of their raw files, it actually made the underlying data more compressible and, as a result of using XML-Xpress, made the overall throughput faster. The same solution is applicable to many other situations. By inserting a transparent compressor between the server and client, you can support the rich feature set of XML in your applications and still achieve a higher transfer rate than if XML were not implemented'." See: "XML and Compression."

  • [February 17, 2001] Iona Acquires Netfish Technologies. Acquisition Completes Total Business Integration Strategy by Enhancing IONA's Standards-Based, End-to-End, e-Business Platform." - "IONA Technologies, a leading e-business platform provider for Total Business Integration, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Netfish Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of XML-based, business-to-business integration solutions. The total consideration is 5.5 million shares of IONA common stock, approximately $270 million, based on IONA's closing price of $49.0625 per share on February 14, 2001. This acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase. The transaction is subject to the approval of shareholders of both companies, as well as customary regulatory and other closing conditions, and is expected to close in the second quarter. The acquisition of Netfish plays a critical role in IONA's Total Business Integration strategy. IONA's leading enterprise integration offerings enable companies to develop and integrate software applications from the mainframe to the Web. Netfish Technologies' award-winning XML-based B2Bi solutions enable companies to extend enterprise applications and business processes securely over the Internet to establish B2B connections with partners, customers and suppliers. The incorporation of Netfish into IONA establishes the IONA Suite as the industry's most complete e-business platform for Total Business Integration. For additional details on IONA's Total Business Integration strategy, please see the accompanying press release, which was also issued today... Netfish's flagship product offering is the Netfish XDI Product Suite, a B2B integration platform that tightly integrates diverse business systems and controls to manage cross-enterprise information exchange. The XDI Product Suite automates shared business processes in a workflow-driven, collaborative, real-time fashion, and provides services such as security, exception handling and acknowledgements. Netfish's XDI system has been built from the ground up using open standards such as Java and XML. It is complementary to, and will be further integrated into the IONA Suite to extend the IONA Suite's integration and development capabilities across the Internet, helping organizations create truly-integrated trading alliance connections. The benefits of B2B process integration range from reduced inventories, cycle times and product costs, to increased data accuracy and customer satisfaction... IONA is a leading e-business platform provider for Total Business Integration. IONA supports a diversity of languages, including Java and C++ and distributed computing technologies, including XML, SOAP, UDDI, EJB, J2EE, CORBA, Microsoft's Windows DNA 2000, IBM OS/390, CICS and IMS."

  • [February 17, 2001] "Organizations Join OASIS in Record Numbers to Advance Specifications for XML Interoperability. Aventail, Access360, Baltimore Technologies, Critical Path, Deutsche Post AG, Hewlett-Packard, Innodata, Jamcracker, Mediaplex, Netegrity, Netscape/AOL, Planet 7 Technologies, Popkin Software, Securant Technologies, SilverStream Software, Sterling Commerce, Tamalpais Group, U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency and Virtual Access Networks Sponsor OASIS." - "Collaboration with the XML community soared as 19 companies from around the globe became the newest sponsors of OASIS, the international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to the application of XML. New sponsors include Aventail, Access360, Baltimore Technologies, Critical Path, Deutsche Post AG, Hewlett-Packard Company, Innodata, Jamcracker, Mediaplex, Netegrity, Netscape/AOL, Planet 7 Technologies, Popkin Software, Securant Technologies, SilverStream Software, Sterling Commerce, Tamalpais Group, U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency and Virtual Access Networks. The Consortium also announced 26 new Contributors and 29 new individual members. 'These new OASIS members -- small and large companies, users and vendors, partners and competitors, from the public and private sectors -- all have one thing in common,' noted Laura Walker, executive director of OASIS. 'They share a strong commitment to enabling interoperability through the use of public, open standards such as XML. We look forward to the contributions these new members will make to the OASIS standards portfolio and applaud their commitment to interoperability.' 'The open, inclusive OASIS technical process is driving this surge in membership,' added Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS. 'Companies appreciate the advantage of influencing the development of XML vocabularies and schemas for critical applications such as security services and business transactions. These members come to OASIS to collaborate on new XML applications or to unify fragmented development efforts already underway'. The new sponsors join more than 140 OASIS member companies that collaborate to advance industry-standard specifications for interoperability. In addition to the new XML Security Services Technical Committee, OASIS members build and maintain XML schemas for Business Transactions, Customer Information Quality, Entity Resolution, Directory Services, DocBook, Registries and Repositories, XML Conformance and ebXML- the Electronic Business XML Initiative cosponsored by OASIS and the United Nations/CEFACT..." [source]

  • [February 16, 2001] "Sun Announces Sun ONE: New Generation of Software for Open, Smart, Web Services. Complete Open Architecture, Roadmap and Product Portfolio Fulfills a Seven Year Sun Vision and Operational Plan." - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) -- a new generation of software for open, smart, web services. Sun ONE provides a complete open architecture, roadmap and product portfolio fulfilling Sun's seven-year Service Driven Network vision and an operational plan for simplifying the way in which open web services are created, assembled and deployed across and beyond the Internet. Sun ONE will result in greater productivity and lower costs for businesses, faster time-to-service and increased market opportunity for developers, and an enriched user experience for consumers... The Sun ONE infrastructure product portfolio is based on some of the most widely-adopted products and technologies in the industry that are truly suitable to provide the quality of service, portability, security, openness and dynamic provisioning required to safely migrate to the web services and new smart services model. These products and technologies include the following: (1) eXtensible Markup Language (XML), co-invented by Sun engineer, Jon Bosak, has become the de-facto open document and data exchange format for the web services age. (2) The Java platform, which after five years has proven itself the de-facto standard for developing and deploying applications and services to any network-connected device. EJB components are the 'service container' for creating web services while JavaServer Pages software provides web authors the ability to easily extend that business logic to any device. (3) All three editions of the Java platform and all iPlanet products support XML and Sun is committed to its integration in future releases. Together, the Java platform and XML form the heart of web services. The iPlanet[tm] Directory Server is one of the undisputed leaders for scalable, reliable and secure Internet and enterprise user management services, with more than 330 million seats sold today. In beta today, version 5.0 has been deployed at some of the world's largest customer sites and will be available in general release later this quarter. Customers will have virtually unlimited scalability through a new architecture, improved read/write performance, through transaction based applications and services and improved service availability through multi-master replication. (4) iPlanet Application and Web Server products were recently recognized by Forrester Research as the industry's highest performing and most reliable in their class. They support delivery of smart web services via open interfaces built on top of J2EE and XML technologies, while leveraging existing investments in information assets. By embracing open standards provided through our products, customers are assured of interoperability with third-party technologies and systems, thereby decreasing time-to-market and improving IT flexibility. (5) Open interfaces, J2EE, XML and LDAP (Lightweight Access Directory Protocol), leverage existing investments made in various information assets. By embracing open standards provided through the entire line of Sun ONE products, customers are assured of interoperability with third-party technologies and systems, thereby minimizing switching costs, decreasing time-to-market and improving IT flexibility..."

  • [February 12, 2001] "XyEnterprise Acquires Publishing and Services Firm, Lightbinders, Inc. Acquisition expands the XyEnterprise Professional Services organization to meet the growing demand for XML solutions." - "Xyvision Enterprise Solutions, Inc. (XyEnterprise), a leading innovator and developer of XML content management and publishing software, announced today that it has acquired Lightbinders, Inc. of San Francisco, CA. Lightbinders is a publishing systems integrator and publisher of SGML/XML based CD-ROMs, Web, print documentation and journals. Founded in 1989 and the former North American reseller of Advent 3B2 publishing software, Lightbinders brings to XyEnterprise an extensive knowledge base in the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing market, SGML/XML publishing tools and services, and legacy systems integration. To fully leverage this extensive expertise, XyEnterprise will merge Lightbinders with its professional services organization to provide a vast variety of new support and custom training options in addition to a broad array of consulting services for XyEnterprise's global client base. Kevin Duffy, president and CEO of XyEnterprise added, 'The Lightbinders acquisition enables us to realize immediate operational efficiencies within our professional services organization while providing room for further expansion of our overall service offerings. This represents another major step forward in our organizational expansion to meet the growing global demand for XML and SGML content management, publishing and consulting services.' Peter Goldie, Ph.D., president of Lightbinders said, We are extremely excited about joining our team with the XyEnterprise organization and we look forward to continuing to provide support for the West coast operations while becoming more involved with XyEnterprise's expanded product and service offerings, particularly in the XML arena. I believe that XyEnterprise is the only company with both the technical resources and managerial understanding needed to deliver end-to-end SGML/XML solutions. We are delighted to be a part of this organization'."

  • [February 12, 2001] "Planet 7 Technologies Joins OASIS to Promote the Adoption of XML as the Foundation of e-Business." - "Planet 7 Technologies Corp., an XML Network Company based in Bothell, Wash., announced today it has become a sponsor of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). As a new sponsor and participant in OASIS, Planet 7 plans to contribute to the organization's efforts to spur the adoption of XML and related technologies as the common foundation of e-business. As a pioneering developer of technology that enables the real-time, concurrent exchange of XML messaging, Planet 7 anticipates that its technical contribution to OASIS will focus on the XML messaging and transport work found within OASIS' ebXML initiative. Planet 7's XML Network provides a hub-and-router architecture for content-based routing and real-time synchronization of shared XML data among enterprise applications. This architecture decouples business logic from integration technology, adding system flexibility and lowering ongoing development costs. 'OASIS is the driving element behind the conversations taking place between vendors and users that will make the promise of XML-based interoperability a reality,' said Jason Anderson, director of engineering at Planet 7. 'We're excited about the opportunity to support OASIS and to contribute to the great work already being done to create standards for XML messaging.' Planet 7 Technologies, the XML Network Company, creates integration and messaging software for organizations implementing their e-business strategies. The company's XML Network is an advanced messaging platform that routes XML data based on its content, offers many-to-many interaction and real-time information exchange, and simplifies integration, making it the ideal choice for e-business... Planet 7 has recently released XML Network Server 2.0, the building block in its native XML Network architecture that simplifies e-business integration, routes XML data based on content, and enables real-time, many-to-many XML data exchange."

  • [February 02, 2001] "BEA Leads New OASIS Technical Committee to Develop Open Industry Standards For Business Transaction Management. Sun Microsystems, Interwoven and Bowstreet Join OASIS Committee to Help Facilitate Deployment of Business-to-Business E-Marketplaces Worldwide." - "BEA Systems, Inc. , one of the world's leading e-business infrastructure software companies, today announced that Sun Microsystems, Interwoven, Bowstreet and BEA have formed a Technical Committee on Business Transactions through the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Sun Microsystems, Interwoven, Bowstreet and BEA are all current members of OASIS. BEA has offered its Business Transaction Protocol (BTP) to accelerate the adoption of open industry standards and facilitate large-scale business-to-business (B2B) deployments worldwide. BTP is already delivered as a key enabling technology for BEA WebLogic Collaborate -- B2B software for linking trading partners, integrating e-business processes, and building e-marketplaces -- and is the basis for this standardization initiative. Officially recognized standards can support real-time collaborative commerce and help to establish a widely accepted protocol for B2B transactions over the Internet. The new OASIS Technical Committee is chartered with evaluating the requirements for long-running B2B transactions on the Internet and the suitability of BTP technology to meet those requirements. BTP is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based vocabulary protocol for representing and seamlessly managing complex, multi-step B2B transactions over the Internet. Today, BTP allows complex XML message exchanges to be managed as long-running, loosely coupled "conversations" among trading partners that are tracked from the start of a B2B process to its completion... Implemented as the eXtended Open Collaboration Protocol (XOCP) for BEA WebLogic Collaborate, BTP provides an open specification for XML message interfaces to support coordination of Web services from different Internet trading partners, as well as a model for defining and managing the status of complex B2B interactions to guarantee reliable messaging and completion of a business process, regardless of how long it takes to execute..." See also the announcment of 2001-01-18 for the formation of the OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee. [cache]

  • [January 25, 2001] "Microsoft Announces Java User Migration Path to Microsoft .NET. JUMP to .NET Facilitates Java Developers' Transition to Web Services On the Multi-Language .NET Platform." - "Microsoft Corp. today announced the Java User Migration Path to Microsoft .NET (JUMP to .NET), a set of independently-developed technologies and service offerings to enable programmers to preserve, enhance and migrate Java language projects onto the Microsoft .NET Platform. JUMP to .NET enables Microsoft Visual J++ customers and other programmers who use the Java language to take advantage of existing skills and code investments while fully exploiting the Microsoft platform today and into the future. JUMP to .NET provides the easiest transition for Java developers into the world of XML-based Web services and dramatically improves the interoperability of the Java language with software written in a variety of other programming languages. 'With JUMP to .NET, the Java language joins over twenty other programming languages from Microsoft and third party vendors supporting the .NET Platform,' said Sanjay Parthasarathy, vice president of platform strategy at Microsoft. 'The principle of integration is fundamental to Microsoft .NET. JUMP to .NET further underscores our commitment to interoperability and choice of programming language for building Web services.' JUMP to .NET gives customers a number of paths for migrating their Java language investments to the .NET Platform. Existing applications developed with Visual J++ can be easily modified to execute on the .NET Platform, interoperate with other .NET languages and applications and incorporate new .NET functionality. Further, developers familiar with the Java language syntax can use it to create new .NET applications or migrate existing code entirely to the C# language. JUMP to .NET consists of three sets of tools and a service offering: Interoperability support -- a set of tools that enables many existing applications built with Visual J++ to be easily and mechanically modified to work with the .NET Platform. Once modified, applications can be easily extended to take advantage of new .NET functionality, such as native Web Services support. Programming tools support -- a set of tools, hostable in the Visual Studio.NET integrated development environment, that allows developers to use the Java language syntax to directly target the .NET Platform. Automated conversion from Java source code to C# -- a tool that automatically converts existing Java source code into C#, migrating both language syntax and library calls. Any code that cannot be converted is flagged within the Visual Studio.NET integrated development environment to help developers easily find and quickly address any remaining conversion issues. Migration services -- paid consulting services offered by Microsoft to apply the JUMP to .NET technologies to specific customer projects. Microsoft will also support other consulting and integration organizations that wish to provide service offerings using JUMP to .NET..."

  • [January 24, 2001] "Cogitum Announces Pre-Release of New Language for Creating Descriptions of Internet Banner Products." - "Cogitum LC, a leading developer of software for personal Internet information capture (PIIC), announced today the pre-release of BannerML, a new language for creating user-friendly descriptions of products advertised in Internet banners. BannerML would allow advertisers to attach additional text information to banners. It is targeted to the end-user, and it describes recommended fields (tags) of information about the advertised product. Text marked using BannerML would be delivered directly to the user's computer without any serious changes in current banner delivery technology. BannerML is based on the XML format, so it is similar to many industries' mark-up languages. However, it is not intended for marking up banners, per se, but rather for marking up new text information associated with a banner. BannerML would provide significant benefits to advertisers and users alike. It increases business opportunities for all companies in the Internet advertisement business, yet it is technically extremely easy to support and handle, and it is ready for wide-scale use after just minor adaptations of existing software. Support of this language does not require any changes at the ad delivering sites, but full utilization of BannerML opportunities will require some software components on the end-user's side. Cogitum is developing BannerML in response to the challenges that face the Internet advertising market -- banner ads have a short life span, are generally intrusive (i.e., to click on an ad means the user must abandon whatever he was doing previously), and they provide extremely limited information. The quickly dropping click-though rate experienced by banner advertisers is only a symptom of these limitations..." See: "BannerML." [source]

  • [January 24, 2001] "XML Topic Maps (XTM) Comes of Age!" - "TopicMaps.Org is pleased to announce the appointment of Steve Pepper and Graham Moore as editorial chairmen for XTM, the XML Topic Map specification. They take over from Steve Newcomb and Michel Biezunski, who have led the XTM work since January 2000. The change is seen as an indication of the maturity of the topic map paradigm, which has achieved wide recognition during the past twelve months as a potential enabling technology for the Semantic Web. The concept of topic maps was first formalised as an international standard (ISO 13250) in January 2000. It describes a model for representing the knowledge structures found in information resources, with the goal of enabling easier and more powerful navigation, searching, and information management. TopicMaps.Org is an independent consortium of parties that seeks to enhance the applicability of topic mapping to the World Wide Web by leveraging the XML family of specifications. XTM, which is now in the process of finalisation, will be the first specification to come from this unit. One symptom of the speed of XTM take-up has been the opening of discussions with the W3C's RDF team. Tim Berners Lee stated at the recent XML 2000 conference in Washington that convergence of topic maps and RDF is a crucial part of making the Semantic Web project happen. 'Topic mapping and RDF address the same problem - that of findability in the Age of Infoglut - but come at it from different angles. Our goal as editors will be to finalise XTM as soon as possible and then move on to a rapid harmonisation with RDF," said Steve Pepper. "Public support from the W3C will accelerate the adoption of XTM as a mainstream technology, by software vendors as well as users, providing benefits for all of us..." Topicmaps.Org is "an independent consortium of parties interested in developing the applicability of the Topic Maps Paradigm to the World Wide Web, by leveraging the XML family of specifications as required." See: "(XML) Topic Maps."

  • [January 24, 2001] "XML Global to Host UN/CEFACT and OASIS ebXML Conference in February 2001." - "XML Global Technologies, Inc. (http://www.xmlglobal.com), a product focused, XML powered, e-business platform company, is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the upcoming ebXML conference scheduled to be held in Vancouver, BC on the 12th to 16th of February 2001. The conference, the first ebXML event to be held in Canada, will be co-hosted by DataChannel, NetFish Technologies and Cyclone Commerce. ebXML Vancouver (http://www.ebxmlvancouver.org) is a five-day conference focused on advancing ebXML as the accepted XML-based global infrastructure for electronic business. The conference is one of a series, the last one having been held in Tokyo in November 2000, with additional meetings scheduled for April and May of this year. The conference will attract CEOs, CTOs, software architects and developers from around the world, as well as members of the international press. XML Global has been an ardent supporter of ebXML since its inception in 1999 and is proud to have two of its management team as active members of the ebXML initiative. Duane Nickull, Founder and CTO of XML Global, is a member of the ebXML Steering Committee and co-editor, with Brian Eisenberg from DataChannel, of the Technical Architecture Specification. David Webber, Vice President of Business Development for XML Global, is involved with a wide variety of XML initiatives, including the ebXML interoperability standards project... ebXML (http://www.ebXML.org) is an international initiative established by UN/CEFACT and OASIS in late 1999 with a mandate to undertake an 18-month program of work to research and identify the technical basis upon which the global implementation of XML (Extensible Markup Language) can be standardized. The goal of ebXML is to facilitate open trade between organizations regardless of size by enabling XML to be used in a consistent manner to exchange electronic business data." See "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

  • [January 22, 2001] "Objectivity Delivers XML-Enabled Database Solution. Objectivity Broadens Support for Emerging Standards with Deployment of XML Interface Tool." - "Objectivity, Inc., a leading provider of higher performance database engines for the management of complex data for sophisticated applications, today announced the availability of the Objectivity XML Interface Tool. The interface supports the export of objects from Objectivity/DB 6.0(R) in XML format and the import of XML formatted data into Objectivity/DB 6.0. Objectivity will provide open source for the XML Interface Tool free of charge to its customer base. 'Companies in virtually every industry are incorporating XML technology into their eBusiness applications,' said Leon Guzenda, Chief Technology Officer for Objectivity. 'Consistent with Objectivity's support of emerging standards, there is now a link between objects stored in Objectivity/DB and any given XML representation.' The Objectivity XML Interface Tool addresses the challenges of enterprise business application developers to tie together and store gigabytes to terabytes of data generated by applications from different vendors and different application domains distributed across numerous platforms. With the deployment of the Objectivity XML Interface Tool, the requirement for third-party middleware to handle translation tasks is eliminated. Objectivity/DB delivers dramatically increased data throughput while utilizing existing customer hardware investments, and shortens time-to-market by reducing software overhead. Its fully distributed architecture allows for massive scalability and application availability. A 64-bit object identifier provides a single logical view of a database that may contain hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes of data, which may be distributed across numerous platforms..."

  • [January 22, 2001] "ALTOVA Releases XML Spy 3.5 - The First IDE With Full Repository And XML Schema Support." - "Today ALTOVA, a leading vendor of XML development environments, released version 3.5 of its highly acclaimed XML Spy tool suite. With over 20,000 licenses sold, XML Spy 3.5 is the best-selling industry-strength development environment to support the latest W3C XML Schema Candidate Recommendation. In addition the functionality of the award-winning tool is extended by the first integrated XML Schema Design View that allows in-place editing of all major aspects of the XML Schema language in its graphical representation. This makes it easy for both developers and analysts to visualize and manipulate the content model of any schema document, and unleashes the full potential of the new XML Schema language. With its new repository interface, XML Spy 3.5 allows teams, workgroups, and entire organizations to collectively manage and reuse digital assets, such as XML documents, Schemas, and Stylesheets using existing software configuration management tools or any WebDAV-compliant web server. At the same time, Altova introduces the XML Spy 3.5 Server Edition, which provides a COM-based API to developers for creating next-generation business portals and mission-critical applications. This further strengthens the position of XML Spy as the No.1 choice of the world's leading Fortune 500 and Global 1,000 companies for their e-Commerce and B2B solution development. XML Spy 3.5 is available for a retail price of US$ 199.00 per user with volume discounts offered to site licenses purchasers. The new XML Spy 3.5 Server Edition sells for US$ 1,990.00 per server. Existing customers of the XML Spy 3.0 Premium product can download and upgrade to XML Spy 3.5 for free. ALTOVA - the XML Spy Company, a member of the W3C, is a leading XML tools provider with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The privately held company was founded under the name of Icon Information-Systems in 1992 offering advanced retrieval software solutions for the telecom industry. Since 1998 Altova has been actively involved in XML software technologies. The first version of XML Spy was released in February 1999..."

  • [January 22, 2001] "Waybid Technologies Unveils Dynamic Commerce XML Standard For Online Auctions. XML Auction Standard Created to Simplify Exchange-to-Exchange Connectivity." - "WayBid Technologies, a dynamic commerce software and services provider, today announced support for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) in its Dynamic Pricing Network (DPN) technology. WayBid has introduced DPN-ML, a set of lightweight XML DTDs (Document Type Definitions) -- based on the World Wide Web Consortium's XML standard -- for online auctions and exchanges. This announcement further demonstrates WayBid's leadership in providing exchange-to-exchange (E2E) connectivity solutions that enable companies to transcend the limitations of trading in a single eMarketplace. WayBid's DPN-ML, Dynamic Pricing Network Markup Language, is poised to be the industry standard language for creating, participating in and managing B2B online auctions and exchanges. DPN-ML is a flexible messaging solution that streamlines the process of digitally exchanging front to back end auction and exchange information in real time - allowing a quick and easy way for Fortune 2000 companies, portals, and eMarketplaces to integrate into DPNs. DPN-ML will reduce online business costs and increase the quality and efficiency of online auctions and exchanges in Dynamic Pricing Networks... WayBid's DPN-ML allows partners and clients to create auctions, register users, validate users, post bids, monitor auction status in real time, change auction status in real time, and receive seller/buyer feedback, benefiting both the sellers and auction sites. Sellers can access all DPNs in which they are allowed to participate, as well as easily integrate their inventory and upload items for sale in compatible file formats. Auction sites can seamlessly integrate with other auction sites utilizing WayBid's DPN XML standard, while monitoring the auction status from their own single interface. WayBid's trading partners will begin using DPN-ML in February."

  • [January 17, 2001] "OASIS Unites Efforts to Develop XML Security Services Standard." - "Organizations supporting divergent security standards united in an effort to develop a common XML specification through the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. OASIS, the global XML interoperability consortium, hosted the first meeting of its new technical committee, which will define an XML framework for exchanging authentication and authorization information. Initially formed within OASIS to complete the S2ML security standard, the new committee agreed to accept submissions of other relevant technologies, including AuthXML. 'Our goal is to work together to advance a common security standard,' said Eve Maler of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. 'Everyone agrees that consensus is critical. Through its open technical process, OASIS provides the safe environment necessary for real collaboration.' 'The result of our work at OASIS will be a single security services standard that will be widely accepted in the industry,' predicted Marc Chanliau of Netegrity. 'We brought S2ML to OASIS with that objective in mind, and we're confident that the technical committee has the critical mass to achieve our goal.' 'Supporters of AuthXML welcome the opportunity to work within OASIS for the good of true interoperability and the XML community at large,' commented Eric Olden of Securant Technologies. 'By channeling the momentum of AuthXML into the committee, we look forward to advancing the development of a common, unified standard.' The OASIS Security Services Technical Committee includes representatives from Baltimore Technologies, Cisco, Commerce One, DataChannel, Entegrity, Entrust, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Jamcracker, Netegrity, Oblix, OpenNetwork, Securant, SilverStream, Sun Microsytems, Tivoli, Verisign, Vordel and WebMethods. Membership is expected to increase in the coming months. 'Interest in advancing this work is extremely high,' said Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS. He added that record numbers of companies and individuals have joined the Consortium specifically to participate in developing a common security standard. The technical committee plans to publish draft specifications by June 2001 and to submit a formal specification to the OASIS membership by September 2001. Norbert Mikula of DataChannel, member of the OASIS Board of Directors and chair of its technical advisory committee, characterized the development schedule as, 'very aggressive.' He advised, 'Any organization affected by the issue of security should get involved now." See also (1) "AuthXML Standard for Web Security" and (2) "Security Services Markup Language (S2ML)."

  • [January 17, 2001] "CIP4 Advisory Board Elected by Organization Membership. With leadership in place, CIP4 officially begins JDF administration." - "The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) announces the election of a distinguished international group of industry leaders to its Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is the highest authority in CIP4 and shapes the organization's direction and agenda. With the Advisory Board in place, CIP4 begins its role of administering the Job Definition Specification (JDF). JDF, an emerging standard administered by CIP4 in the print production market, is an XML-based print workflow specification. As an open standard, JDF will benefit print buyers and print service providers by simplifying the job specification process, insuring cross-vendor system communication, and by automating many of today's manual production processes with a flexible, universal Job Ticket (JDF). One of the Advisory Board's first tasks will be to put the finishing touches on Version 1.0 of the JDF specification itself. The Advisory Board has also begun to fill positions in the Board of Directors, the day-to-day executive group within CIP4. 'With the JDF specification poised to enable a new level of workflow integration in the print communications industry, CIP4 is now ready to fulfill its role as JDF administrator,' said Martin Bailey, CIP4 Interim CEO. 'We expect to publish the JDF 1.0 release shortly and be in position to begin the work of extending JDF's capabilities to broader segments within the industry.' Collaborative support for JDF by technology vendors, hardware manufacturers, e-procurement vendors, print production companies, and others involved in printed communication is expected to enable efficient end-to-end print supply chain workflow. JDF promises to integrate authoring, production, management, manufacturing, delivery and MIS control. This will allow system and software developers to extend existing high performance systems, to develop new, highly-configurable systems and to create a new level of process integration in the industry. E-procurement companies will be able to directly integrate this production workflow into print management systems, accessible via online web sites. End users can look forward to more cost-effective workflow automation. CIP4 is an organization bringing together vendors, consultants and end-users in the print communications, Graphic Arts industry and associated sectors, covering a variety of equipment, software, peripherals, and processes..." See: "Job Definition Format (JDF)."

  • [January 16, 2001] "W3C Acknowledges SOAP Extension Co-Submitted by WebMethods, Microsoft and HP. Extension of the SOAP 1.1 Specification Adds Functionality Needed for More Efficient B2B Transactions." - "webMethods, Inc., a leading provider of business-to-business integration (B2Bi) solutions, today announced that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has acknowledged the co-submission of an extension to the Simple Object Access Protocol 1.1 (SOAP 1.1) specification. The specification extension, SOAP Messages with Attachments, adds to the capabilities of SOAP 1.1 to allow non-textual data such as catalog images, handwritten signatures, blueprints and circuit diagrams, to be effectively included in and transferred with XML documents. 'We are pleased to be invited by Microsoft to participate in this submission as it reinforces our leadership position in the development and support of open standards and protocols that allow companies to overcome traditional integration challenges,' said Stewart Allen, vice president of Architecture and Technology for webMethods, Inc. 'SOAP 1.1 and this extension provide a sufficiently light-weight protocol that small and mid-sized companies can use to enable B2B operations. We will continue to track this standard in our product line as we believe it will play a significant role in accelerating the widespread adoption of B2B.' The SOAP 1.1 specification created by Microsoft, IBM, Lotus Development Corp., DevelopMentor, UserLand Software and other W3C members uses XML and HTTP to provide a common messaging protocol to link applications and services anywhere on the Internet. SOAP 1.1 facilitates the transfer of information by defining a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it. webMethods joined other W3C members Microsoft, IBM, Commerce One, Hewlett-Packard, and IONA Technologies in submitting the SOAP 1.1 extension. As a result of the specification extension, companies can use SOAP 1.1 to transfer more types of data from one application to another, eliminating steps and streamlining processes. The submitted extension does not require any changes to the SOAP 1.1 specification already acknowledged by the W3C. The acknowledgment of the extension from the W3C does not imply endorsement by the W3C... webMethods, Inc. is a leading provider of software solutions for business-to-business integration (B2Bi). As the only company providing seamless B2Bi across the Internet and throughout the extended enterprise, webMethods provides Global 2000 companies and B2B marketplaces with a complete, end-to-end solution for integrating customers, suppliers and partners into real-time B2B trading networks, while also increasing internal operational efficiencies. The webMethods product family allows companies to create new revenue opportunities, strengthen relationships with customers, substantially reduce supply chain inefficiencies, and streamline internal business processes." See: (1) SOAP Messages with Attachments [W3C Note 11 December 2000] and (2) "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."

  • [January 16, 2001] "Competitive Compatible Marketplace for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)(TM) Technology Grows to Nine Products From Leading Server Vendors. Leading J2EE Technology Licensees Are Shipping J2EE Compatible Solutions" - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced at its Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) press event in San Francisco that nine J2EE technology licensees are now shipping J2EE-technology compatible products. Each of these nine vendors has passed every test in the J2EE Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) and is certified to meet all the requirements for using the J2EE technology brand. There are 25 companies that currently license the J2EE platform, which represents 76% - 90% of the application server market. Today's media event includes demonstrations of shipping J2EE compatible solutions for enterprise applications from major industry vendors: Art Technology Group; BEA Systems, Inc.; Bluestone Software, Inc.; Borland Corporation; IONA Technologies; iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, a Sun-Netscape Alliance; SilverStream Software; and Sybase. This milestone confirms enterprise customer demand for and the software market's continued adoption of J2EE technology -- the industry standard for enterprise application development -- and reaffirms the J2EE platform's value proposition of faster solution delivery to market, interoperability and streamlined connectivity. Compatibility verifies that J2EE technology based configurations work across a heterogeneous network. It is the cornerstone of J2EE technology's success and a key benefit for end customers. By delivering J2EE compatible products, today's highlighted J2EE technology licensees give their customers the best the J2EE platform has to offer: (1) faster solution delivery time to market: with J2EE technology, enterprise development is simplified through re-usable components and the J2EE blueprints, best practice guides which help developers provide simpler, faster, and more efficient applications to customers; (2) freedom of choice: using J2EE technology makes it possible for J2EE technology based components and applications developed for one application server to run on another vendor's application server as well. For the customers of J2EE technology compatible vendors, this means solutions that are interoperable, portable, scalable, easy to adapt, and manage -- better value for their investment; (3) simplified connectivity to existing applications, with strong support for XML integration, customers achieve platform-independent, standards-based data interchange. Easy connections to existing applications streamline enterprise application integration securing enhanced interoperability and legacy investment protection."

  • [January 10, 2001] "LabBook Inc. Announces Release of XML Standard for Genomic Research." - "LabBook, Inc. announced the release of its XML data format to provide a common method for communicating genomic research information. This open XML data standard, called BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language), will allow life sciences researchers, suppliers, and content and service providers, to interact and exchange information through a universal data language. BSML enables the creation, delivery, integration, and storage of documents containing complex sequence information, features and annotations, plus the ability to describe how to visualize these elements. Researchers will be able to exchange information through an XML/BSML email, the Genogram, which is created and read by LabBook's Genomic XML Viewer and Genomic XML Browser. LabBook will support the standard by providing the language specification (BSML DTD Version 2.2) and Genomic XML Viewer to the life science community. LabBook will also develop 'XML converters' allowing the integration of disparate data in the life science community. Dr. Adel Mikhail, LabBook Vice President for Strategic Development, commented: 'Our clients and partners have come to us because they need an affordable robust XML-based solution for data integration, organization, and visualization that can be used effectively by all their end users, not just the bioinformatics specialists. Our technology is making genomic data more meaningful to biologists.' LabBook's solution is to format data and query results for delivery as a standardized XML representation that is persistent and reusable. A combination of XML data, XML converters, and XML-aware software can facilitate the discovery process by enabling the researcher to integrate and annotate complex data and query results within a highly visual and interactive environment. BSML facilitates integration of 'extragenomic' information (literature, images, documents) with bioinformatics data for improved knowledge management. According to LabBook Chief Science Officer, Dr. Jeffrey Spitzner: 'A major challenge in research today is accessing, organizing, and integrating information that is delivered in diverse, often incompatible formats from various sources distributed locally and over the Internet. For example, results of database queries delivered as database tables or HTML files are hard to manage and difficult to integrate. Yet, scientists must be able to share and work with their data and analytical results in order to apply their expertise and understand the underlying biology. A new era of discovery will be enabled by providing a standard XML data format that captures the richness of the underlying data itself, combined with interactive visual presentations that are meaningful to the life sciences community.' [...] BSML is an extensible language specification and container for bioinformatic data. BSML was created by LabBook developers under a 1997 grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) as an evolving public domain standard for the bioinformatics community. Improvements to BSML were made in collaboration with leaders in the field. The BSML data specification (DTD) is available for download at LabBook's web site www.labbook.com. LabBook will also provide an information management solution that combines the XML data standard BSML with a true XML browser, the Genomic XML Viewer, that can be freely downloaded from its website. Other XML based life sciences research tools, eLabBook', and XML converters will be available from LabBook, Inc. in February 2001... LabBook, Inc. is an XML-powered life science informatics and information provider for the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and academic life science researcher. LabBook's enabling software, such as the LabBook Genomic XML Browser' queries, manages, and visualizes heterogeneous genomic data types while retaining their underlying associations, and then LabBook's open XML format and unique browser capabilities deliver genomic data as 'live' reusable documents that integrate underlying bioinformatic content." See: "Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language (BSML)."

  • [January 09, 2001] "Public Draft Version 1.1 of the IMS Content Packaging Specification is Released." - "The IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. approved Public Draft Version 1.1 of the IMS Content Packaging Specification in December 2000. Learning materials described and packaged using the IMS Content Packaging XML format are portable between tools and systems that support the Specification. The Specification provides the functionality to describe and package learning materials, such as individual courses or collections of courses, into interchangeable, distributable packages. Content Packaging addresses the description, structure, and location of online learning materials and the definition of some particular content types. The ADL Co-Laboratory has plans to incorporate the IMS Content Packaging Specification into the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Version 1.2. Public Draft Version 1.1 of the IMS Content Packaging Specification contains several changes suggested by ADL to help integrate the SCORM Course Structure Format into the IMS Content Packaging Specification. This will allow ADL to deprecate the existing SCORM Course Structure Format. ADL will integrate the ability to test content packages into its SCORM Conformance Test Suite for SCORM 1.2. IMS Public Drafts are released to permit public review and implementation testing of specifications prior to their final release. ADL is looking forward to continuing its collaboration with IMS." See "IMS Metadata Specification" and "Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model Initiative (SCORM)."

  • [January 09, 2001] "Distinguished Faculty at XML DevCon Spring 2001 to Present Technical Program About ebXML, UDDI, WebServices, and Enterprise XML. More than 5,000 XML Enthusiasts Expected to Attend." - "Camelot Communications Corp. announced today the technical program for XML DevCon Spring 2001 will include a distinguished faculty and instruction about emerging technologies and eBusiness initiatives, including Web Services, ebXML, and UDDI. XML DevCon Spring 2001 will be held April 8-11, 2001 at the Marriott Marquis, New York City. Updates may be found at www.xmldevcon2001.com. The program includes tutorials, panel discussions and workshops about ebXML and UDDI, two maturing initiatives for defining a global eBusiness infrastructure. ebXML is a joint venture between the United Nations and Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). UDDI is an eBusiness registration initiative from IBM, Microsoft, Ariba and 80 partner organizations. XML DevCon Spring 2001 will feature 21 pre-conference tutorials and six tracks of classes, workshops, and panel discussions. The distinguished faculty includes Tim Bray (Seybold Fellow and Co-editor of the XML specification), Dr. Peter Chen (ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, invited W3C expert, and father of the Entity-Relationship Model), Paul Cotton (Chair of the W3C XML Query Working Group), Eve Maler (Co-editor of the W3C XLink specification), Jim Melton (Editor of the ISO SQL Specification), Norbert Mikula (author of the first validating XML parser), David Orchard (Co-editor of the XLink and XInclude specifications), Jonathan Robie (Co-designer of the Quilt query language), and James Tauber of the UDDI Advisory Board. Highlights of the program include keynote presentations by Tim Bray, Norbert Mikula, and Mark Colan, panel discussions and best practices workshops, and three days of classes for developers interested in XML APIs, specifications, and related technologies such as middleware, databases, and Java. The program begins on April 8 with 21 pre-conference tutorials. The agenda for April 9-11 includes 96 classes, workshops, and panel discussions organized in six tracks ('Developer Techniques', 'Java and Scripting', 'Applied XML, EAI, eBiz', 'Wireless and Messaging', 'Servers and Middleware', and 'Query, Schema, Database')..." See the events calendar.

  • [January 08, 2001] "New Breeze XML Studio Release 2.2 Available. The Breeze Factor Adds Complex Content-Model Handling and Enhanced Visual Interface to Leading Data Binding Solution." - "The Breeze Factor today announced the next release of its leading XML data binding product: Breeze XML Studio. Release 2.2 adds XML structure display, code generation and performance enhancements. Breeze XML Studio ('Breeze') converts XML structure to Java classes in a process called data binding. Initially Breeze provided a visual display for the object relationships that would exist in the resultant Java classes. The new version provides a more detailed view of the actual DTD structure giving the user a more complete view of the constructs specified by the DTD. With the associated editing functions of the visual environment, the user can edit default values, add typing information and add constraints that will be validated in the generated code. Release 2.2 also includes advanced code generation techniques for handling complicated content models including nested choices and sequences. 'Some DTDs are surprisingly complex when you stress the limits of the specification to include nested choice lists and optional sequences -- the newest Breeze XML Studio code generation system handles all constructs that we have seen in published XML vocabularies,' said Gregory Messner, CTO of The Breeze Factor. 'The 2.2 Release has been successfully utilized to provide data bindings for OFX, CXML, and a host of large and involved XML vocabularies.' Breeze XML Studio 2.2 now incorporates a SAX 2 compliant parser within its runtime framework which provides more robust and higher performance XML and DTD parsing for both the Studio and the toolkits. 'Using Breeze saved our staff time by allowing us to skip the time needed to figure out how SAX and DOM work,' said Andrew Chagnon, software engineer, Cisco Systems. 'We can make changes to our DTD files, import them into the Breeze Studio, and let Breeze create the Java classes needed to access the XML data without being exposed to the XML parsing classes. In the new release, changing the organizational structure of the data in Breeze to better match the DTD organization was a big plus.' Breeze XML Studio Release 2.2 is licensed for $495 USD for a single development seat that includes an internal deployment license. Seat licenses may be downloaded and purchased on the company's Web-site. Product deployment and OEM licensing is available directly from the company. The Breeze Factor is a leading provider of tools for e-business development using XML. The company accelerates e-business efforts by providing supporting frameworks for XML and XML-based protocols making it easier for developers to work with and extend the newest language of the Internet. The company's products include Breeze XML Studio, a visual development environment that binds XML data to Java classes and provides an alternative to the DOM for working with XML for application programming."

  • [January 08, 2001] "iPlanet Extends Leadership in XML-Based Solutions With iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 Software." - "iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, a Sun-Netscape Alliance, today announced the availability of iPlanet ECXpert 3.5, a server-side B2B software solution that routes and converts documents between designated senders and receivers. iPlanet ECXpert works across multiple protocols, partner types, and technology types, further enabling the rapid growth of these e-commerce networks, lowering transactions costs and improving collaboration with key business partners. With improved scalability and performance, iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 software boosts iPlanet integration offerings and enhances its position as a leading provider of XML-based products, while reinforcing its support for open standards. iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 software enhances the queuing of documents, minimizes information bottlenecks and efficiently processes rapidly-submitted data. With priority processing, iPlanet ECXpert now has the ability to handle translations based on specific rules and priorities. While some vendors force organizations to process documents on a first-in, first-out basis, iPlanet ECXpert provides organizational flexibility to process by priority type. High priority documents will be handled immediately and processed before lower priority documents. This minimizes companies' time to market based on expedient implementation of document processing. In conjunction with billing codes, this allows a service provider to offer different pricing for different levels of service. To accommodate the emerging role of XML as a universal data medium in B2B, iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 now offers full XML parsing support, full XML translation support, priority processing, billing code support, HTTP/SSL support, and support for the automotive standard -HTTP for AIAG. iPlanet ECXpert's XML capabilities allow XML to be sent and received from any business partner, irrespective of document type, thereby substantially increasing the information exchange capabilities within the trading network. This enables organizations to expand the reach of their trading networks by an order of magnitude, and iPlanet ECXpert provides the bridge between disparate systems, processes and technologies used by each partner in the network..."

  • [January 05, 2001] "Dow Jones Contributes XML Work to Market Data Project." - "Dow Jones & Company announced today that it is providing its Market Data Markup Language to a financial industry consortium as a starting point toward development of an XML-based global standard for market data delivery. The Market Data Markup Language (MDML), developed by Dow Jones is now posted at www.fisd.net, the web site of the Financial Information Services Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The FISD -- a forum for business and technical issues related to the distribution of financial information -- recently formed a working group to coordinate XML efforts in the market data industry. Dow Jones contributed its MDML to speed development of a common framework to publish market data. [See XML DTD.] 'We will jump-start the new FISD initiative by contributing a good portion of our XML expertise in this area,' said Kevin M. Roche, news systems manager and head of the XML group at Dow Jones. 'Our approach to the structural and content markup of financial statistics will provide a solid base for industry discussions.' The Dow Jones MDML has been in production for about two years at The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com. The language is used for posting text and statistical data on the web site, and as a system interchange format within Dow Jones and with entities such as Factiva, a joint venture of Dow Jones and Reuters. 'Timely market data is essential to all market participants,' said Bill Godfrey, chief technology officer of Dow Jones. 'Dow Jones is both a consumer and supplier of market information, and XML is a powerful new way of exchanging data within the industry. Creating a standard, open framework enabling data to stream across company boundaries and multiple platforms will benefit the entire financial industry, and Dow Jones is committed to taking an active role in that creation.' 'The market data industry is working together to solve the challenges of moving data from multiple sources into common desktop applications,' said Michael Atkin, vice president of the FISD. 'Dow Jones has provided a technological cornerstone for our XML project and we're grateful to them for their contribution to this initiative.' The FISD market data work will be done in coordination with other XML initiatives, including XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language. The XBRL consortium (www.xbrl.org) is developing XML vocabularies for corporate earnings and regulatory filings. Dow Jones, Reuters Group, and Reuters' Lipper subsidiary are all participants in XBRL. The FISD effort also dovetails with two XML standards developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council, of which Dow Jones, Associated Press, and Reuters are all members: NewsML is an XML model for packaging and managing news objects of any media type; the News Industry Text Format is an XML application for markup of news text." See: "Market Data Markup Language (MDML)." [alt URL]

  • [January 03, 2001] "Open Financial Exchange 2.0 Earning Broad Industry Support. XML Compliant OFX Specification Features Support for 401K, 1099 and W2 Statement Download." - "More than 1000 financial institutions around the world have already implemented the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) specification, enabling the seamless exchange of financial information over the Internet. The OFX consortium announced today that the latest version of OFX, XML-compliant OFX 2.0, is now earning support from financial institutions, technology solution providers and payroll companies. Version 2.0, which became available for public download at www.ofx.net this past July, has already won the support of leading financial services companies including Prudential, TD Waterhouse Group, Inc. and T. Rowe Price; payroll processing leader Ceridian; and leading technology solution providers including Corillian and Enterprise Engineering. 'TD Waterhouse is committed to making the financial lives of its customers easier,' said Stuart Rubinstein, senior vice president, Electronic Commerce, TD Waterhouse Group, Inc. 'OFX 2.0 enables our customers to download their TD Waterhouse 1099 information directly into their tax preparation software, including this year with Quicken TurboTax, significantly reducing a time consuming and tedious process.' It is this type of benefit that makes OFX the connectivity preference of financial services companies. OFX, the only financial specification widely adopted by both clients and servers, enables financial institutions, technology solution providers and financial software and Web services companies to create products and services that work together more effectively. With OFX, financial information can be efficiently transferred between financial services companies, their technology outsourcers and consumers who use Web and PC-based software. Enterprise Engineering, utilizing its leading technology platform, EnterpriseFTX, and OFX 2.0, recently enabled Prudential Retirement Services to deliver 401K to Personal Financial Management software over the Internet. 'Since it was first released, OFX 2.0 has continued to gain momentum as more and more financial institutions seek to implement a common communication infrastructure for the delivery of Web-based financial services,' said Anthony Piniella, vice president of Marketing and PR for Enterprise Engineering. 'With the added capabilities of retirement services and tax reporting, and support for XML, OFX can now enable financial institutions to deliver truly integrated financial services.' The XML-compliant version 2.0 includes new extensions to support functionality for 401(k), 1099 and W2 downloads. The new extensions allow financial services companies to offer new services and rich functionality to their customers, such as valuable new 401(k) account details. The 1099 extension facilitates the downloading of 1099 information directly to Web and PC tax software. The W2 extension facilitates the downloading of W2 information directly from payroll service providers into Web and desktop tax preparation software. The companies cited in this release said that they intend to continue recommending additions to the OFX specification that will enhance functionality and facilitate fully automated tax return preparation. Thousands of consumers are also enjoying the benefits of OFX-enabled electronic bill pay and presentment in products such as Microsoft Money and web services such as Quicken Bill Manager. Because XML is a widely accepted format for transmitting data over the Web, its inclusion in OFX 2.0 affords financial services companies an enhanced ability to interact with more Internet content and applications. Version 2.0 of the specification is also backward compatible with previous versions. The companies are working closely with more than 50 technology solution providers to ensure compatibility with existing implementations and to preserve the existing investment in OFX by financial services companies. Open Financial Exchange is a unified specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, business and consumers via the Internet. An open consortium created by CheckFree, Intuit, and Microsoft in early 1997, Open Financial Exchange supports a wide range of financial activities including consumer and small business banking; consumer and small business bill payment; bill presentment and investment download and tracking, including stocks, bonds and mutual funds." See: "Open Financial Exchange (OFX)."

  • [January 03, 2001] Microsoft Releases Updated SOAP Toolkit and Web Services Behavior Application. From a recent company announcement: "Microsoft Corporation today unveiled two SOAP-related technologies to help developers build and use Web Services -- applications made available over the Web via Internet-standard XML, SOAP and UDDI. The first tool is the beta release of the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit Version 2.0, which provides developers using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 with rapid Web Services development capabilities for production-ready applications. The second is Web Services Behavior for the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser software, enabling Web developers to aggregate Web Services from multiple Web pages. Both are key technologies for facilitating the creation and integration of Web Services, the programmable building blocks that form the next-generation applications of the Internet. To make it easy for developers to build and use Web Services without having to learn the intricacies of SOAP or XML, Microsoft last summer announced Version 1.0 of the SOAP Toolkit for Visual Studio 6.0. With Version 2.0, Microsoft is making significant usability and architectural enhancements to track to the latest Web Services standards including full support for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) and SOAP 1.1. By delivering greater development productivity and by supporting the latest versions of these standards, Microsoft is continuing its leadership in delivering development and runtime support for Web Services. The final release of Version 2.0 will provide developers with the tools and technologies that will enable them to deploy enterprise-scale applications with forward compatibility with the Microsoft .NET platform. The toolkit will work with additional operating systems, including Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows Me, and will be fully supported by Microsoft Product Support Services... Web Services support for Internet Explorer provides a transparent mechanism for developers to easily use Web Services from scripts in a Web page to improve many aspects of traditional database-drive Web page design. This support, compatible with all major SOAP implementations available today, enables developers to easily build unique applications from multiple Web Services that offer more personalized, more targeted user experiences such as improving the end-user browsing experience by minimizing time-consuming full page refreshes. By releasing this behavior, Microsoft is the first company to deliver Web Services capabilities directly to a Web browser, bringing the power of aggregating applications across the Internet to all users and developers. Both the beta release of the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit Version 2.0 and the Web Services Behavior for Internet Explorer 5.0 are available for free download." See the announcement for other particulars: "Microsoft Updates Tools for Building Web Services With Visual Studio and Internet Explorer. Updated SOAP Toolkit and Web Services Plug-In for Internet Explorer Offer More Ways to Build and Use Web Services." See also "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."

  • [January 03, 2001] "SourceTrack Authors Marketplace XML (mpXML). mpXML Is A Simple, Flexible Method Customized For Electronic Commerce Marketplaces And Suppliers To Quickly Exchange Catalog Data." - "SourceTrack, a Tampa-based, e-purchasing service for mid-sized companies and their suppliers, unveiled today Marketplace XML (mpXML), an open XML standard for the exchange of electronic commerce marketplace information. SourceTrack authored mpXML in response to its need for a simple, flexible, standard method to quickly exchange supplier data and import supplier catalogs into the SourceTrack marketplace. mpXML is a combination of SourceTrack authored rules and existing best-of-breed XML standards. The hybrid marketplace standard yields a simple, intuitive e-business solution for real-time ordering and tracking, marketplace-to-marketplace communication, and importing catalogs and updating existing ones into a B2B marketplace. XML standards are structured rules for designing text formats for data in a way that produces files that are easy to generate and read by a computer, are unambiguous and extensible, are supported for internationalization and localization, and are platform independent. [Don Bacon:] 'Although SourceTrack accepts suppliers' information in various forms, we found that XML provides clearer semantics for gathering and understanding the data exchanged. We developed mpXML because we needed a way to get volumes of catalog and contract information from various suppliers integrated into our marketplace very quickly. Our mpXML framework provides greater flexibility for extending its utility. By supporting the inclusion of new attributes, it also addresses performance optimization as well,' said Don Bacon, System Architect for SourceTrack. 'By providing our suppliers with access to mpXML, it improves our overall speed, flexibility, and value in working together on their e-Commerce initiatives.' mpXML uses elements from existing XML standard formats including: (1) Electronic Catalog XML (eCX); (2) Commerce XML (cXML); (3) Custom XML; (4) Open Catalog Format (OCF); (5) [SAP] Open Catalog Interface (OCI); (6) Rosetta Net Product Resource Update Guideline." URL for open XML standard DTD: <pending>. [cache]

  • [January 03, 2001] "CGM Open Enables Browsers to Use Web Graphics Standards." - "CGM Open, the OASIS-affiliated global consortium dedicated to standardized graphical information exchange, announced the release of a Browser Helper Object (BHO) that enables browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer to effectively use the WebCGM Web graphics standard. Designed in collaboration with Microsoft, the CGM Open BHO is an add-on software component that allows object-to-object linking of graphics in Web content. 'Microsoft is pleased to have supported CGM Open in its effort to deliver support for W3C recommendations to the Web community' explained Pablo Fernicola, Lead Program Manager for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corporation. 'The CGM Open BHO solution leverages the services provided by the Internet Explorer platform to enable object-level addressing and linking in graphics content.' 'Object-to-object linking is critical to the useful integration of graphics on the Web,' explained Lofton Henderson, Program Director of CGM Open. The BHO is a prime example of the contributions CGM Open provides for the Internet community. The Consortium's role as a vendor-neutral resource makes this accomplishment possible. No single Web graphics provider could have developed this solution alone.' CGM Open provides the Browser Helper Object as a public service to the community. Implementers may find more information and may request distribution of the BHO at http://www.cgmopen.org. Although the CGM Open BHO was designed specifically for WebCGM access, the solution can also be adapted for SVG, the Scalable Vector Graphics format, currently under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). According to Henderson, 'CGM Open considers WebCGM and SVG as complementary standards optimized for solving different Web vector graphics requirements. We trust that the CGM Open BHO can be leveraged by the SVG community to facilitate successful SVG products.' WebCGM is an application of the ISO-standard Computer Graphics Metafile for electronic documents. WebCGM was developed by CGM Open, in collaboration with the W3C, with support from the European Commission Esprit project. An 'intelligent graphics' profile, WebCGM includes both graphical and non-graphical content, allowing object hierarchies, link specifications and layer definitions. CGM Open is an international organization of vendors and users dedicated to open and interoperable standards for the exchange of graphical information. CGM Open is an affiliate member of OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium. The work of CGM Open complements that of standards bodies, focusing on making Web graphics standards easy to adopt and practical to use in real world, open systems applications."

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