XyEnterprise announced the availability of the latest releases of its products: Content@ 3.2 XML content management software and XML Professional Publisher (XPP) 7.3 enterprise publishing application. The new releases provide enhanced XML capabilities and build on Content@ and XPP’s Web Services interfaces, editing adapters, and workflow automation features. In addition to standard integration with the latest versions of XML authoring tools, Content@ 3.2 adds support for Oracle 10g, Microsoft Windows 2003 and the Apache Web Server, as well as updates to its Microsoft InfoPath adapter. Content@ 3.2 provides XML schema and namespace support for those editorial tools with this capability. Content@ 3.2 also incorporates the latest version of Verity K2 Developer. This OEM search product for independent software vendors includes search features that enable users to retrieve, categorize and re-use information based on content, XML attributes (e.g., tags or metadata) or both. XML Professional Publisher 7.3 supports Microsoft Windows 2003 servers and XP clients. XPP 7.3 features several enhancements to its XyView editing interface that enable users to more efficiently handle structured content. The latest release also adds enhanced XML schema and Xpath support, as well as a new integration for MathML editing using the Design Science MathFlow Editor. XPP 7.3 includes a long list of specific enhancements requested by XPP customers.
Day: April 11, 2005
Vignette Corp. announced the general availability of Vignette Portal release 7.2. This latest portal release extends Vignette’s personalization, identity management, reporting, collaboration, content management and application integration. Vignette has extended its ability to consume third-party standards-based portlet applications based on the Web Services for Remote Portlets standard (WSRP), whether created in Java or .NET. Vignette Portal release 7.2 includes: Enhanced out-of-the-box search capabilities that allow users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, relational databases, file systems and Web sites; the ability to derive personalization rules from multiple data sources; the ability to link personalization attributes and mined data from multiple systems across the organization; and integration with Vignette Records and Documents through the use of standards-based JSR-168 portlets. The latest version also advances support for globally distributed portal deployments. Included in this release is the ability to synchronize disparate portal clusters, allowing organizations with multiple portal deployments in separate geographies to maintain their portal installations as a single source across the organization. Vignette Portal also implements an administrative component API that can be used to encapsulate Web applications that plug into the Vignette Portal administrative console. Vignette Portal release 7.2 is shipping and available to customers. Licensing costs for Vignette Portal begin at $75,000 (U.S.). http://www.vignette.com
I am liveblogging the Keynote Debate between Microsoft and Sun on what is the right strategy for information interchange. The panelists are Tim Bray, Director, Web Technologies, Sun Microsystems, and Jean Paoli, Senior Director, XML Architecture, Microsoft. Jon Udell is moderating.
- Actually Frank Gilbane is moderating, and not Jon, so we will hear some of Jon’s thoughts as well
- Frank: the session is really about strategies for sharing, preserving, and integrating document content, especially document content with XML.
- Frank gave some background about the European Union attempts to standardize on Microsoft Office or OpenOffice
- Tim elucidated some requirements of your data format. (1) Technically unencumbered and legally unencumbered (2) High quality (and a notable aspect of quality is allowing a low barrier to entry). Tim: “As Larry Wall (the inventer of Perl) noted, easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible).”
- Jean predicted that by 2010, 75% of new documents will be XML.
- Tim agreed with Jean that 75% of new documents will be XML by 2010, but asked how many of them will be XHTML (as opposed toa more specialized schema, I assume).
- Some agreement by all that electronic forms are an important aspect of XML authoring, but Tim thinks the area is “a mess.” I’m paraphrasing, but Tim commented on the official XForms release, “Well, it’s official.”
- Jean commented that XML-based electronic forms are made more difficult because forms themselves require consideration of graphical user interface, interactivity, and even personalization to a degree. This suggests forms are more complex than documents. (And this reminds me of a comment Mark Birbeck made about there being a fine line between an electronic form and an application.)
- Good question from the audience. So much time has elapsed since SGML got started, and we are still only have XSL-FO (which this person was not happy with). What does this suggest about how long it will take to get better, high-quality typographically sophisticated output?
- Tim would suggest we are seeing some improvement, beginning with better resolution on the screen.
- Another commenter weighed in, suggesting that format is important and format does convey meaning. Would like to hear that the tools are going to get better.
- Frank: when do you need a customized schema?
- Jean: best way to safeguard your data and systems is to have an XML strategy. You can gain efficiencies you never had before. Also suggested that the Microsoft schemas will not somehow trap your content into Microsoft’s intellectual property.
- Jon’s takeaways: (1) software as service (2) XML-aware repositories and (3) pervasive intermediation (the content flows in such a way that you can intermediate it)
