Netegrity, Inc. announced that it is working with a group of companies to define a standard for enabling secure e-commerce transactions using XML called Security Services Markup Language (S2ML), that will create a common language for sharing security information about transactions and end users between companies engaged in online B2B and B2B2C transactions. Authors of the S2ML specification are Bowstreet, Commerce One, Jamcracker, Netegrity, Sun Microsystems, VeriSign, and webMethods. Reviewers of the specification include Art Technology Group, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and TIBCO. Traditionally, security has been implemented within a single enterprise. However, companies are now conducting inter-company business using the Web, which has expanded the scope and range of their e-commerce transactions. For example, in the B2B industry companies now use a number of different e-marketplaces to purchase a broad range of supplies and products. Each of these marketplaces may have different proprietary authentication and authorization solutions, which makes interoperability across marketplaces difficult if not impossible. In B2B2C commerce, users often are involved in business transactions that span several different company Web sites that have joined forces to create an affiliate network of services. In this case, users are forced to log on multiple times and re-start their transactions. The business transactions in both of these markets must span multiple companies, multiple Web sites, and multiple marketplaces that have their own unique and heterogeneous set of platforms and e-commerce infrastructure components. S2ML is intended to solve these problems by helping to unify access control methods through an open, standards-based framework for the next generation of secure e-commerce transactions. The S2ML specification addresses three main areas of security services: authentication, authorization, and entitlement/privilege. S2ML defines standard XML schemas, as well as an XML request/response protocol, for describing authentication and authorization services through XML documents. S2ML also will provide specific bindings for various protocols such as HTTP and SOAP and B2B messaging frameworks such as ebXML. The S2ML effort is an open industry initiative in which any organization can participate and implement the specifications. The vendors behind the S2ML initiative plan to submit the S2ML 0.8 specification to the W3C and OASIS for consideration within the next 30 days. www.S2ML.org, www.netegrity.com
Day: November 14, 2000
Texterity, Inc. announced the release of TextCafe, an automated document conversion service that accepts PDF, Quark, and Word files and converts them to structured XML, HTML and Open eBook formats. TextCafe also supports automated creation of Microsoft Reader, Rocket eBook, and Adobe PDF formats. The service is initially targeted to publishers who have large amounts of trade books that need to be moved into structured XML format. The service is faster, less expensive, and more accurate than alternative solutions, which involve manual labor and proofing. TextCafe provides the following key features: detection of text blocks, including paragraphs, which can be reflowed automatically; dynamic creation of a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) based on normalized styles used in the document; chapter and sub-chapter recognition and tagging based on document type; recognition and removal of running headers and footers in XML output; recombination of words broken between lines, columns, or pages based on language-specific dictionaries; extraction of embedded images with links created in XML output; and automated generation of XML, HTML, Open eBook (OeB), Microsoft Reader (.LIT), Rocket eBook (.RB), and reflowable PDF. TextCafe works by using artificial intelligence algorithms to deduce the hierarchical structure of documents. This is done based only on the visual cues available in the document and a knowledge of document type, such as novel, white paper, or manual. The result is richly-tagged, pure and valid XML that can be repurposed endlessly. TextCafe is available immediately. Pricing is based on document type and conversion volume. Quotes can be obtained by web-based submission at the Texterity web site www.texterity.com
