The XML/EDI Group, the largest grass-roots organization advocating XML for business exchanges over the Internet, has joined with the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) for management of its business and technical services. The XML/EDI Group and DISA made the announcement at the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) meeting in Orlando, Fla. The XML/EDI Group becomes the latest client of DISA’s rapidly growing Collaborative Services Division. Like other Collaborative Services clients, DISA will host the XML/EDI Group’s web site and e-mail discussion list, as well as provide a venue for regular meetings of the group. DISA will also provide the XML/EDI Group with publishing and administrative services. The XML/EDI Group began in July 1997 as an ad hoc collection of a few professionals and volunteers in various industries dedicated to promoting and guiding the future of XML standards and products applied to electronic data interchange (EDI). The Group has grown to about 1,700 members focusing on the technology of incorporating XML with e-business particularly for smaller enterprises that have not before been able to use EDI. www.disa.org
Year: 2000 (Page 54 of 63)
Vignette Corp. announced its Integration Toolkit for IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Suite, an out-of-the-box integration solution for Vignette’s StoryServer software and IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Suite, formerly Net.Commerce. The Integration Toolkit for WebSphere Commerce Suite is the first of the four Vignette e-business product integrations with IBM software announced in September and designed to help businesses attract and retain online customers and conduct transactions with them. Still to come in the first half of this year are StoryServer integrations with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database, and AIX operating system. The Integration Toolkit for WebSphere Commerce Suite, compatible with StoryServer versions 4 and 5 and WebSphere Commerce Suite version 3.12 or 3.2, is available at no additional charge to current StoryServer customers and available upon request directly from Vignette. To obtain the toolkit, call 888-608-9900 or 512-306-4300 and choose the option for product and sales information. www.vignette.com
GroupServe, Inc. introduced its forum to establish a groupware standard. The forum, known as Groupware Data Exchange (GroupDX – www.groupdx.org), was created to facilitate data exchange among the various groupware applications, and facilitate data synchronization among groupware applications and their individual counterparts. The goal of the GroupDX forum is to provide industrial grade XML DTDs and Object Schemata for Internet groupware applications. This new standard will be known as Groupware Markup Language or GML. As more and more personal devices access the Internet (for example, via WAP-enabled phones, via PDAs, and via voice through regular phone calls), more and more XML languages are being invented where traditional HTML will not suffice. GroupDX.org classifies these languages as “Final Rendition XML”, the XML that is rendered in a user’s device. GroupDX.org aims to produce a single, semantically oriented “Final Transformation XML” for groupware, an intermediate XML that can be transformed into a “Final Rendition XML”. This Final Transformation XML is GML. In December, GroupServe launched the Palmtop version of GroupVine, its web discussion service. The Palmtop version runs on Palm OS devices, Nokia Communicator, and Windows CE devices. GroupServe is providing GroupVine accessibility to WAP-enabled mobile phones in beta this month. Voice access to GroupVine, developed using Motorola’s latest technologies, is also available in beta. GroupVine Desktop and GroupVine Palmtop are available at www.groupvine.com. Both versions of GroupVine are offered at no charge. www.groupserve.com
OASIS announced that IBM has submitted its Trading Partner Agreement Markup Language (tpaML) for standardization within the OASIS XML.ORG initiative. Developed by IBM, the tpaML specification uses XML to define and implement electronic contracts. The foundation of tpaML is the Trading Partner Agreement (TPA), which defines how trading partners will interact at the transport, document exchange and business protocol layers. A TPA contains the general contract terms and conditions, participant roles (buyers, sellers), communication and security protocols and business processes, (valid actions, sequencing rules, etc.). XML-based TPA documents capture the essential information upon which trading partners must agree in order for their applications and business processes to communicate. tpaML is a complementary technology to ebXML, the Electronic Business XML initiative, which is a joint effort of the United Nations/CEFACT and OASIS to establish a global framework for the exchange of electronic business data. Multiple software vendors and solution providers including CommerceQuest, DataChannel, Extricity, Geac/JBA, Harbinger, JDA, Infinium, Intelisys, Mincom, PeopleSoft, Sterling Commerce and Synquest have endorsed tpaML for potential use with their customers. OASIS welcomes representatives from all industries to join the consortium and help evolve tpaML as an essential component of B-2-B e-business. The tpaML specification is posted for public access on www.ibm.com/developer/xml. www.oasis-open.org
SoftLock.com, Inc. announced SoftLock PagePortals, thematic, customized bundles of highly respected content from leading publishers of business and financial information. This product automatically provides complete web storefronts for SoftLock Affiliates, enabling them to sell valued content. SoftLock PagePortals are available immediately, and can be instantly deployed by any organization seeking to enhance their Web site with premium content that will pay them whenever content is sold. SoftLock PagePortals are the latest eMerchandising initiative of SoftLock.com. The Company’s Brand Managers’ expertly craft bundles of valuable electronic documents and then place links to the SoftLock PagePortals in contextually appropriate locations throughout the Web. SoftLock Affiliates interested in more compelling content and increased revenue will benefit from the immediate ability to offer these sophisticated merchandising displays to their visitors, allowing them to browse through premium content and conduct point-of-purchase, e-commerce transactions. Visitors stay on the SoftLock Affiliate site throughout the entire process. SoftLock PagePortals are available immediately at www.market.softlock.com/sandp
NetSanity, Inc., creators of a new category of Internet software for the delivery, notification and management of web-based information, previewed their forthcoming “XML Pull” technology and announced two additional investors. NetSanity received capital investments from – Regis McKenna and Bill Melton. The software will soon exit the beta phase of testing. The company’s first product, the NetSanity SmartBar, is a small (400k) application that retrieves XML-based web content directly from disparate sites, presenting it in one location on the desktop – without delivering advertisements. www.netsanity.com
fourthchannel, inc., announced a new version of its e-commerce solution, now offering new content management capabilities. The solution, formerly called fourthchannel, has been renamed “profitlaunch.” Along with the name change, a new Content Wizard has been added, which enables companies to personalize customer sites by adding internal and external content. The new version also includes improved customer service and marketing capabilities, making profitlaunch a complete and compelling e-commerce solution for the mid-market. profitlaunch’s Content Wizard is designed to help companies improve their customers’ Internet buying experience beyond providing a simple online catalog. The wizard makes it easy to add timely customer briefings or general industry information to a selling site. This new capability extends a site’s value to its customers and turns it into a “community site” where people come not only to place orders, but also to check industry news, trends and other items of interest. Accessed from within profitlaunch’s browser-based catalog management tool, the Content Wizard also has a customer personalization capability that enables individuals to choose content based on their unique needs. The wizard allows non-technical users to manage the content on their e-commerce sites easily adding, editing, or deleting Internet feeds and information. profitlaunch is available immediately. Pricing is based on the size and complexity of each company’s catalog and type of implementation. An ASP solution is available for companies that want fourthchannel to host and manage their Internet catalogs off-site. For companies that want to run the application internally, fourthchannel also offers a licensing option. www.fourthchannel.com
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the XHTML 1.0 specification as a W3C Recommendation. This new specification represents cross-industry and expert community agreement on the importance of XHTML 1.0 as a bridge to the Web of the future. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C membership who favors its adoption by the industry. HTML currently serves as the lingua franca for millions of people publishing hypertext on the Web. While that is the case today, the future of the Web is written in XML. XML is bringing the Web forward as an environment that better meets the needs of all its participants, allowing content creators to make structured data that can be easily processed and transformed to meet the varied needs of users and their devices. In designing XHTML 1.0, the W3C HTML Working Group faced a number of challenges, including one capable of making or breaking the Web: how to design the next generation language for Web documents without obsoleting what’s already on the Web, and how to create a markup language that supports device-independence. The answer was to take HTML 4, and rewrite it as an XML application. The first result is XHTML 1.0. XHTML 1.0 allows authors to create Web documents that work with current HTML browsers and that may be processed by XML-enabled software as well. Authors writing XHTML use the well-known elements of HTML 4 (to mark up paragraphs, links, tables, lists, etc.), but with XML syntax, which promotes markup conformance. The benefits of XML syntax include extensibility and modularity. With HTML, authors had a fixed set of elements to use, with no variation. With XHTML 1.0, authors can mix and match known HTML 4 elements with elements from other XML languages, including those developed by W3C for multimedia (Synchronized Multimedia Language – SMIL), mathematical expressions (MathML), two dimensional vector graphics (Scalable Vector Graphics – SVG), and metadata (Resource Description Framework – RDF). W3C provides instruction and tools for making the transition from HTML 4 to XHTML 1.0. The “HTML Compatibility Guidelines” section of the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation explains how to write XHTML 1.0 that will work with nearly all current HTML browsers. W3C offers validation services for both HTML and XHTML documents. W3C’s Open Source software “Tidy” helps Web authors convert ordinary HTML 4 into XHTML and clean document markup at the same time. www.w3.org/
