OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, announced it has received financial commitment from industry for XML.org, the global XML industry portal. IBM, Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems have all agreed to support XML.org as Founding Partners, and Commerce One, DataChannel, Documentum, the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) and SoftQuad have demonstrated their support as XML.org Founding Affiliates. XML.org Partners (companies with revenues in excess of $250M US) are expected to contribute 100,000 USD and Affiliates (companies with revenues under $250M US) to provide 25,000 USD annually to fund the industry portal. Initially, the XML.org Steering Committee will be led by these founding organizations, although other companies are welcome to participate in the future by becoming Partners or Affiliates. XML.org ( http://xml.org) is the OASIS XML industry portal that provides accurate, timely information about the application of XML in industrial and commercial settings. XML.org serves as a reference repository for specific XML standards such as vocabularies, DTDs, schemas, and namespaces. www.oasis-open.org
Month: July 1999 (Page 8 of 9)
Progress Software announced Progress Apptivity Version 3.1, its Java application server and integrated development environment. The new version’s support for XML facilitates the deployment of broadly available business-to-business and e-commerce applications. In addition, enhanced SQL functionality strengthens e-commerce applications by allowing custom, vendor-specific queries on enterprise databases. Progress Apptivity Version 3.1 greatly increases the ability for enterprises to exchange information via support for documents formatted with the XML data interchange language. Progress Apptivity Version 3.1’s integrated XML support enables more rapid deployment of business-to-business transactions such as procurement and cataloging without the need for external XML servers. Via enhanced Progress Apptivity SmartAdapter technology, inbound XML data are integrated into local applications as relational data, reducing the need for manual conversion. Additional enhancements include: Improved SQL Functionality, Conditional HTML, Java 2 Support, and a Refined Look and Feel. Progress Apptivity server prices start at $10,000 USD. Availability is immediately. www.apptivity.com
Lutris Technologies released Enhydra 2.1. Enhydra 2.1 is a Java/XML application server with new developer tools leveraging XML. Enhydra XML Compiler (XMLC) is a new XML technology that eliminates the shortcomings of embedding code in HTML found in Sun’s JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP). Merging W3C consortium standards XML and the Document Object Model (DOM), Enhydra now supports a new, more efficient approach for interface designers and programmers to co-develop Web applications using Java to generate dynamic HTML. Lutris developed a technology similar to JSP and ASP over two years ago. Since then, the limitations of this approach have become obvious during the course of many consulting engagements. These limitations include: HTML editor incompatibility, wasteful designer/engineer interdependence, needless manual source file editing, and difficult application maintenance. Enhydra XMLC overcomes these limitations. XMLC converts HTML documents into Java classes represented as DOM objects. The W3C standard DOM defines a way to represent XML documents as a Java object tree. This process lets developers easily isolate data application logic from interface design, improving collaboration between the developer and the interface designer. The inclusion of simple id tags in an HTML document means that HTML templates can be created with any HTML editor, and then be modified and re-used with no impact on the underlying application. Available now, Enhydra 2.1 runtime and source code is free and may be downloaded from www.enhydra.org. On-line demonstrations, documentation, and FAQs are provided for quick evaluation. www.lutris.com
Vignette Corporation announced that on June 30, 1999, it completed the acquisition of Diffusion Inc. Vignette announced the acquisition of Diffusion earlier this year, and completed the initial technology integration in less than three months. Today, Vignette is also announcing the Vignette Multi-Channel Server, a solution based on the integrated technology, enabling organizations to extend their online customer relationship building. Vignette Multi-Channel Server is targeted towards organizations that look to develop tighter, more individual customer relationships with their online customer base. The new software provides a central point of management and control for automated interaction with a defined customer community. Vignette Multi-Channel Server will enable Vignette customers to manage the distribution of personalized information across any delivery channel, including the Web, e-mail, fax, pager and telephone, regardless of the channel the communication originates from or is routed through. www.vignette.com
Universal Systems Inc. (USI) officially announced its e.POWER Workflow Activator for PC DOCS/Fulcrum’s DOCS Open. The initial version is designed to meet the needs of existing and new PC DOCS/Fulcrum customers. Workflow Activator is accessible from the DOCS Open user interface making the automation of enterprise processes available to organizations in an already familiar environment. Enterprise processes such as procurement and contract management procedures in governmental agencies or the management of change in manufacturing and utilities are repetitive and occur frequently. USI already deploys PC DOCS/Fulcrum as part of the e.POWER Records Management Edition, the workflow-enabled records management application certified by the Department of Defense (5015.2 Standard). Using both Web browsers and Windows clients, e.POWER Records Management Edition supports a wide range of applications from correspondence and action management to electronic procurement and customer service. With e.POWER Workflow Activator, customers use their existing DOCS Open client with e.POWER WorkManager for workflow and process automation. www.USI-Web.com
GlobeID, announced it has performed the world’s first secure Internet purchases using the Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML) standard. The transaction, which took place on Tuesday, July 6, 1999, was run at GlobeID’s Paris office. The implementation demonstrates the compliance of GlobeID’s @dvanced Payment Solution Suite with ECML. ECML enabled @PayWallet and @PayButton will be commercially available this quarter. The ECML format was announced in early June by a consortium of major technology companies, including AOL, IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, CyberCash and others, along with Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Until now no real-time transaction application has been conducted. ECML, the new proposed standard, is a set of XML tags that merchants will be asked to use on their merchant servers to make form completion easier. www.globeid.com
Differential and UWI.Com, announced a strategic relationship. The combined technology provides a safer than paper solution for enterprises and financial institutions to securely send and receive legally binding transactions and other contractual agreements for conducting business-to-business e-commerce. Differential’s Digital Receipt Infrastructure compliments InternetForms by providing a complete non-repudiation solution for e-commerce and legacy systems. Non-repudiation is the use of strong electronic evidence to prove to an independent third party that a document or transaction was sent and received at a specific time by a specific person or company. Non-repudiation requires an irrefutable trail of digital evidence, as well as protocols and procedures for transaction verification, dispute resolution, auditing and reconciliation. A Digital Receipt is an XML document, which captures the digital signatures of the sender and the receiver, a verifiable time stamp and standardized transaction details. Digital Receipts may contain information about related receipts permitting complicated transactions to be re-assembled and reconciled. Digital Receipts also support real-time assurance such as online notaries, insurers and auditors. An InternetForm is an XML document that preserves in a single, digitally signed form all of the elements of a transaction required to produce a binding record. InternetForms capture the questions a form posits, and the answers a person provides, as well as any internal form logic and attached related documents, to provide non-repudiation and preserve the signer’s intent. www.uwi.com, www.differential.com
Interleaf, Inc. announced volume general customer shipment of BladeRunner, the Company’s XML-based, and Microsoft Word-based e-content solution. Now BladeRunner is immediately available to any business that requires customized, dynamic, and intelligent e-content solutions for e-business applications. The general customer shipment of BladeRunner comes shortly after the completion of the Early Adopter Program (EAP). EAP was designed to enable customers to deploy a pre-release version of BladeRunner, develop XML-based prototypes, and evaluate the performance of applications through close collaboration with Interleaf’s development organization. www.interleaf.com
