Oracle Corp., said 8i, its latest database program, designed to work seamlessly with the Internet, was now available from dealers. In January, they postponed shipment of 8i to allow more time for integrating other software and development tools with the product. It was originally slated to ship by the end of 1998. 8i has tools such as a built-in Java Virtual Machine, an “Internet file system,” which will store and manage Web pages, multimedia data, word processing files and spreadsheets, and XML support. The database runs on Windows NT, Solaris and Hewlett-Packard’s Unix, among others. www.oracle.com
Day: March 1, 1999
Adobe Systems officially unveiled their new page layout software, Adobe InDesign, at the Seybold conference. It is based on a new, open, object-oriented architecture that is extensible. InDesign had been known as “K2” while under development, and is the first real threat to Quark in the graphic design market since Quark became almost a de facto standard there years ago. Adobe also demonstrated some tight integration between the recently acquired GoLive web publishing tool and PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat 4.0 and other Adobe products. www.adobe.com
Mortice Kern Systems Inc. (MKS) announced a new release of Web Integrity, the company’s cross-platform Web object management solution. Web Integrity allows individual content authors to own, manage and change their own content while automating processes for approving, publishing and tracking change to Web pages. Web Integrity 2.4 is now available direct from MKS. Pricing starts at $25,000US for a single server license of Web Integrity (NT or UNIX) and 25 client licenses. Web Integrity supports Web browsers and Web servers on a variety of platforms. www.mks.com
IntraNet Solutions, Inc.,announced that its Intra.doc! Web-based document and content management system now supports the MrSID (Multiresolution Seamless Image Database) Portable Image Format developed by LizardTech, Inc. LizardTech provides imaging technology and solutions to allow instant access to massive high-resolution digital images and multimedia content. This partnership enhances Intra.doc!’s ability to easily, publish, access and manage all of an organization’s corporate information, including complex images from sophisticated engineering drawings to four-color photos on intranets/extranets and the Internet.The MrSID Portable Image Format enables Intra.doc! users to reduce massive high-resolution images down to at least 3 percent of the original image size without any visual image degradation. This capability lets Intra.doc! customers import, export, manipulate, transmit and store reproduction quality images — even within Adobe PDF-based documents — while preserving the entire image’s integrity.Since the MrSID files are a mere fraction of the original size, transmission times and storage requirements are decreased dramatically. www.intranetsol.com, www.lizardtech.com
Ricoh Silicon Valley (RSV) announced an open source release of its Platform for Information Applications (PIA), a framework for the development of flexible and dynamic information applications for small to medium-sized offices and workgroups. Designed specifically for light-weight, task-specific information applications, the PIA framework is distinguished by its ability to embed intelligence and action into collections of active pages without the need to learn a programming language. PIA will be available for download under the Ricoh Source Code Public License from www.RiSource.org, a site dedicated to providing open source support to developers of information applications for workgroups and small offices. PIA defines document-oriented information applications with its unique use of XML to specify processing. The PIA framework separates an application into a core processing engine (called an agency) and task specific modules (called agents) which consist primarily of simple web pages. The agency provides basic support for processing electronic documents — a key component for utilizing web-based information. In addition to basic http client and server functions, the engine can dynamically parse and transform structured documents. Operating as a server, proxy, or client, the agency flexibly routes request to the appropriate agent(s) and provides hooks for customization and enhancement at all levels of the processing.Agents provide the user interface and task-specific information processing (with the processing logic represented in XML)–making it easier to develop and maintain by non programmers. These pages may include special tags which are dynamically interpreted by the agency. Interface designers, graphical artists, or technical writers may develop the XML pages, and actual information design can be modified without code modification. www.ricoh.com
Inso Corporation announced the availability of Version 3.1 of DynaBase, their Web content management and publishing platform. DynaBase 3.1 delivers performance improvements versus version 3.0 for content personalization and searching, while also adding new usability features and Java-based management capabilities that address the requirements of large-volume corporate and commercial publishers. DynaBase 3.1 adds support for managing and searching multiple content repositories. This enables publishers to more easily separate content for distributed authoring teams, segregate news feeds and other special data, and efficiently assemble content for searching and publishing on the Web, intranets or extranets. Publishers can now effectively manage ten times more content using a confederation of databases. DynaBase 3.1 includes a new Java API that provides full content management functionality (e.g. check-in/check-out, version control, etc.) and can be used to automate much of the Web publishing process. Full content management capabilities have also been added to Web Author, DynaBase
