Month: April 2005 (Page 6 of 10)

Architectures and Architectures

April 12, 2005 / Bill Zoellick / 2 Comments

In the course of two days of sessions here at the Gilbane Conference it is
clear that, when it comes to compliance, we’ve overloaded the word
"architecture." We have had a fair amount of talk in some of the
conference sessions about "compliance architectures." We have also
seen different technology architectures used to support compliance systems.

It is easy to understand why at least some of the people in the audience
could get all of this confused. Sometimes it seems that even the speakers
have the two "architectures" confused and wrapped around each
other. The bad result that comes from this goes beyond a few confusing
conversations. If there is enough confusion, the consequence is a
misdirected approach to addressing compliance issues in individual
organizations.

So… I’ll take a crack at getting the terms and ideas unwound from each
other. Think of these as "first cut" definitions–aimed at
helping people who are just now coming to terms with compliance lingo to
understand what is going on. If you can help out here–improving the
definitions–please add some comments.

Ephox Launches EditLive! for XML 3.0

April 12, 2005 / NewsShark / 0 Comments

Ephox launched a major upgrade to its EditLive! EditLive! for XML enables business users to easily create and edit XML content in a simple, browser-based tool and provides developers with an easy to use XML forms development environment. EditLive! for XML is an XML forms solution combining browser-based access, comprehensive rich text authoring capabilities and cross platform support. Version 3.0 also introduces a desktop edition of the forms development environment and a new form solution file format which decreases the amount of effort required to design and deploy XML forms. The EditLive! for XML solution for XML forms makes it possible to combine rich text (graphics, rich text, tables) with strict data types (numbers, dates, plain text) to leverage the best features of forms, documents and spreadsheets. EditLive! for XML also consists of a development environment for XML forms which reduces the costs and complexities of designing and deploying solutions for the contribution and editing of XML content. Evaluation versions are available for download from http://www.ephox.com

Software and IT Staff as Compliance Enablers

April 12, 2005 / Bill Zoellick / 1 Comment

This morning I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the
Gilbane Conference that
included Carole Stern Switzer of the Open
Compliance and Ethics Group, Lynn Brewer of The
Integrity Institute, and Michael Evans, Ernst and Young partner responsible
for developing the compliance architecture within Ernst and Young. One
objective of the discussion was to provide the IT people and project and product
management people, who make up a substantial part of the audience at Gilbane
Conference sessions, with some of the conceptual tools they need to help create
more effective compliance and risk management programs within their companies.

One of the questions raised from the audience toward the end of the
discussion asked about the "enablers" of an effective compliance
program. Lynn Brewer’s answer was interesting. Her observation has
been that companies that are making really effective use of compliance, rather
than just treating it as a checkmark, are typically ahead of the curve in terms
of investing in and integrating IT systems into the compliance effort.
Both Lynn and Carole Switzer argued that one of the key "enablers" is
the early and active engagement of people doing hands-on work on the IT side of
an organization.

Live-Blogging: John Yunker and Eric Silberstein

April 12, 2005 / Bill Trippe / 0 Comments

John Yunker is speaking on globalization, as part of the session, Content Management Globalization. John’s a great speaker, and has a very useful blog, Web Globalization News.
Eric Silberstein is the founder of Idiom and an expert on DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Eric and I have done a couple of webinars recently on DITA and globalization, and his presentation today is a more comprehensive version of the one he has given in the Webinars. Eric is also an excellent speaker, and has a lot of credibility on this topic. Click here for the Idiom-sponsored white paper on DITA, and click here for Robin Cover’s resource page on DITA.

Live-Blogging: A Look at Some Technical & Management Challenges

April 12, 2005 / Bill Trippe / 0 Comments

I am sitting in on the session, A Look at Some Management & Technical Challenges, which is moderated by Seth Gottlieb of Optaros. The speakers are Ann Rockley, Jan Johnston-Tyler, Hardware Writing Manager at Juniper Networks, and Scott Handley, Master Technologist at Hewlett-Packard.

XyEnterprise Releases Latest Versions of XML Content Management, Publishing Applications

April 11, 2005 / NewsShark / 0 Comments

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.

Vignette Releases Portal 7.2

April 11, 2005 / NewsShark / 0 Comments

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

Keynote Debate: Microsoft & Sun: What is the Right XML Strategy for Information Interchange?

April 11, 2005 / Bill Trippe / 1 Comment

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)