Pacific Edge Software Inc. announced that eProject.com, Great Plains, Onyx Software, PlanView, Primavera Systems and Welcom have joined Pacific Edge Software to define the XML schema for project management. The flexible, business-to-business schema will enable intelligent project data exchange between an organization’s information systems. The coalition of collaboration technology, e-business solutions, CRM, project management, workforce management and PKM companies will work together to forge an open industry standard by making modifications, extensions and enhancements to Pacific Edge Software’s XML schema for project management. eProject.com, Great Plains, Onyx Software, PlanView, Primavera Systems and Welcom will work with Pacific Edge Software to update the Project Management XML schema on a regular basis. The schema and its source can be viewed at www.biztalk.org and www.pacificedge.com/xml
Month: March 2000 (Page 5 of 6)
The Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 is accelerating its processes, expanding its reach to include XML and object oriented electronic data interchange (OO-EDI) and collaborating with related standards development initiatives. ASC X12’s collaborative efforts with e-commerce organizations will help support the requirements of a broad base of users by bringing together the EDI foundation with XML development. To accomplish these objectives, the committee focused at its recent ASC X12 meeting on refining the goals of the newly created XML Task Group, which is charged with providing X12 input into complementary XML initiatives. This group covers the breadth of XML technical work and facilitates a forum for industry experts to address similar initiatives. In a parallel move, the X12 Committee actively participates in and formally endorses the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) initiative, which is working to provide an open XML-based infrastructure enabling the global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure and consistent manner by all involved parties. ASC X12 will pursue its XML development efforts within the framework being defined by ebXML. Furthermore, the committee encourages XML education and the development of emerging business requirements. By offering its expertise on “Procurement Using a Purchasing Card as Payment Method,” the committee completed work on the OO-EDI standards pilot project, demonstrating a next generation of EDI utilizing unified modeling language methodology. The committee will continue to research and develop core components for plug-and-play solutions that utilize OO-EDI, XML, and other emerging syntaxes. www.x12.org
Data Junction Corporation announced general availability of XML Junction. This major new release enables e-Commerce and Business Integration professionals to XML-enable virtually any application or data source for a full range of e-Commerce integration, application integration and B2B data exchange projects. The product features automated creation of DTDs and XML documents as well as myriad data-mapping and data- manipulation capabilities. XML Junction is available only as a download at www.xmljunction.net, and is free to download until July 31, 2000. The product contains online documentation and tutorials. Once this promotion has ended, XML Junction will sell for $895. XML Junction leverages Data Junction’s drag-and-drop interface and integration engine to rapidly map and transform more than 100 application and data formats to XML. DTDs and XML documents are automatically created with point-and-click ease, allowing data stored in any format (EDI, XML, SQL, Cobol, HL7, SAP, etc.) to be published to the web or exchanged with any external application — even data stored in complex hierarchical structures. Furthermore, data stored in XML documents and traditional applications can be manipulated to ensure compliance with any standard, such as those utilized by BizTalk, Schema.net, Ariba’s Commerce XML and Financial Products Markup Language (FpML), as well as non-XML business-to-business standards such as Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) and RosettaNet. www.datajunction.com
GE Global Exchange Services (GE) announced the commercial availability of native XML support within the AppFusion product suite of integration brokers, which includes GE InterLinx, Application Integrator, and the Enterprise System. This announcement follows months of beta testing with several clients. The addition of XML support allows the AppFusion product suite to recognize the data type it is dealing with; as a result, the integration brokers can perform business rules upon the business object. The integration broker can inspect certain fields and values, route the business object to multiple destinations based on the content of these fields and transform the fields to other values or to completely new business objects using data transformation functions contained within the integration broker. The AppFusion product portfolio includes: Application Integrator, the transformation engine has a process for performing data transformation via a one-pass process. The one-pass process enables it to handle data transformation in a real time manner to facilitate speed. Application Integrator supports XML, EDI and user defined file formats including ODBC databases and is fully internationalized to provide support for multi-byte character sets. GE InterLinx, a multipurpose integration broker that provides a platform upon which clients can centralize, expand, and manage their Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and electronic commerce integration requirements. GE InterLinx allows clients to implement a flexible, standard method for integrating their new ERP systems with their legacy applications, extending those applications for e-commerce, integrating their web applications with ERP and legacy systems, and streamlining their entire supply-chain. www.geis.com
Eprise Corporation announced it has formed a partnership with Information Highway, a leading Internet systems integrator headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The agreement calls for Information Highway to market, sell, and support Eprise Participant Server technology and services to customers throughout Europe as a core solution for Web content management. The two companies will work on strategic accounts within the high technology and financial services sectors. www.ih.com, www.eprise.com.
The VoiceXML Forum announced it has completed the VoiceXML 1.0 specification, which is expected to expand the reach of the Internet by providing voice access to content and services. The Forum membership, which now numbers 79 companies, is reviewing the specification before it is submitted to the appropriate body for formal standardization. VoiceXML specification provides a high-level programming interface to speech and telephony resources for application developers, service providers and equipment manufacturers. Standardization of VoiceXML will: simplify creation and delivery of Web-based, personalized interactive voice-response services; enable phone and voice access to integrated call center databases, information and services on Web sites, and company intranets; and help enable new voice-capable devices and appliances. On the basis of the 0.9 version of the specification, released last year, many companies have already begun implementing VoiceXML in their products and services, and a market for third-party VoiceXML application development has begun to emerge. The VoiceXML 1.0 specification is based on research and development at AT&T, IBM, Lucent Technologies and Motorola, as well as comments from Forum members. 18 companies have joined the VoiceXML Forum as supporters since the 0.9 specification was issued, including Brooktrout Software; Cisco Systems; ConApps; Gold Systems; Indicast Corporation; Intraco Systems; IP Unity; ITT Industries; Net Technologies, Inc.; Nokia Corporation; Oki Electric Company, Ltd.; Onebox.com; PipeBeach AB; S-Link Corporation; Spyglass, Inc.; SS8 Networks, Inc.; Vail Systems, Inc.; and Voyant Technologies, Inc. The 1.0 version of the specification, currently being reviewed by Forum members, is now available to the public on the Forum’s Web site at www.voicexml.org
TEOCO Corporation announced the availability of direct wireless support in Release 2.0 of its PageNgine family of products. PageNgine Web Site Publisher will now support concurrent delivery of HTML, XML and WML content. PageNgine Portal Infrastructure will dynamically generate web content optimally formatted for a range of wireless devices including cell phones and PDAs and WebTV. Written in Java/EJB, PageNgine’s portable architecture allows it to be fielded on a variety of run-time platforms including Windows NT and 2000 and most UNIX operating systems, while operating against all major relational databases (Oracle, Sybase and SQL Server). PageNgine is designed to support high-volume and mission-critical applications and its runtime, document and data processes are easily configurable to satisfy individual organizations’ business needs. PageNgine includes a migration feature that facilitates the re-presentation of existing Web sites through the PageNgine. PageNgine Web Site Publisher uses template-based construction to allow both dynamic and static presentation of the corporate Web presence. The product centralizes control of the site’s “look and feel” and appropriate technical standards while allowing for distributed content management and dynamically generated content such as navigation and section branding. PageNgine reduces time consuming, expensive and error prone manual processes while significantly improving publishing time. PageNgine Portal Infrastructure provides content delivery functionality packaged for the needs and revenue models of Web Portals and virtual businesses including private label branding of site content for multiple end displays and portal partners. Upcoming enhancements include user-profiling, which enables organizations to capture user and site usage information and automatically modify their presentation based on usage patterns and preferences. PageNgine Release 2.0 will be available on March 31, 2000. www.teoco.com
Extensibility, Inc. announces the upgrade of XMLschema.com an on-line service that streamlines the exchange of valid e-business grammars. The newly introduced SchemaStream allows any application utilizing XML schemas to take advantage of this Internet based service. This interface for automated processing supports the XML-Schema (Dec. 17 draft) and is being offered for a limited time free-of-charge for remote application access. XMLschema.com now offers: Conversion – automated across all major and emerging schema dialects, including DTD, XML-Schema (Dec. 17 draft), XDR, BizTalk and SOX v2; Validation – automated service that ensures schemas are accurate; Instance documents can be converted into schemas or an XML exemplar document can be generated from an existing schema; SchemaDOC – schema documentation allowing for output in browser viewable graphics or style sheets in any of the major or emerging dialects; and SchemaSource – a resource for posting and searching for schemas on the Internet. The first customer applying technology from XMLschema.com is Microsoft’s BizTalk Framework. For a limited introductory period, SchemaStream is being offered free-of- charge. All other services are available to the public for free at www.xmlschema.com, www.extensibility.com
