The Open Financial Exchange (OFX) Consortium announced the public availability of the OFX 2.0.2 XML Schema. The new OFX 2.0.2 XML Schema is compliant with the W3C’s XML Schema Recommendation, 2 May 2001. It complements the existing OFX 2.0.2 specification and DTD to enable software developers to utilize the latest in XML technology. Additionally, the new OFX XML Schema provides a clear expansion path to allow OFX to support other XML technologies such as SOAP and WSDL. It also expands OFX to support account aggregation in a manner that conforms to the latest BITS Phase II Aggregation guidelines. OFX can support connectivity within the systems of the financial institutions. The OFX XML schema allows intra-enterprise-oriented tools to be developed using XML technology that, while dedicated to internal purposes, also adheres to an industry standard. This helps assure interoperability with other internal and external systems. The OFX 2.0.2 XML Schema was developed by the OFX Web services working group chaired by Business Logic. Other key contributors were Intuit, Microsoft and Citigroup. The consortium, which includes Intuit Inc., Microsoft, CheckFree Corp., Citigroup, TD Waterhouse and Corrillian Corp., has made the new schema available for review and is requesting that comments be submitted. www.ofx.net
Day: January 21, 2004
A2i, Inc. announced xCat will immediately support the JSR 168 portlet interface standard, as well as the portal environments, including IBM WebSphere Portal. Each of the portlets in A2i’s library provides specific capabilities and user interface for accessing any data stored in the xCat system, is fully adaptive to the schema structure of the xCat catalog repository to which it is connected, and provides a window into the repository by connecting to a particular data source. Portlets can be configured and assembled into portal pages that are both editable and searchable in multiple dimensions without writing code. In addition, all of the portlets feature the multidimensional pick-list limiting, where each portlet is search-state aware and collaborative with other A2i portlets on the page, and is dynamically updated with each selection to reflect the current search constraints and corresponding results set. A2i’s suite of portlets also includes support for illustrated parts catalogs with exploded view diagrams and hotspots drill down navigation, capabilities that have already been incorporated into IBM’s vertical market solution for the automotive market. www.a2i.com
Vignette Corp. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tower Technology Pty Ltd. The acquisition will bring together content management, collaboration and portal solutions with integrated enterprise document and records management solutions to offer an enterprise content management solution upon which to base and manage enterprise Web initiatives. Vignette will pay $125 million, comprised of $45 million in cash and $80 million in Vignette stock; the stock portion of the transaction equates to approximately 29.8 million shares. Tower Technology has three primary products: Tower IDM – a Web-enabled, document processing system for managing unstructured business information, including images, forms, computer-generated reports, statements and invoices, office documents and e-mail; Tower Seraph – a records management solution; and Tower WebCapture – which provides the ability to capture and aggregate the content that constitutes an online transaction and to automatically create a permanent, unalterable visual transaction log and audit trail. www.vignette.com, www.TowerTech.com
