A2i Inc. announced the availability of a new tool for aggregating electronic product content. The xCat Import Manager features A2i’s Parametric Import technology and supports the import of product information from any electronic source in any tabular or XML format. xCat is a database-driven, cross-media catalog publishing system that centralizes and structures the management of electronic product content, simplifies the catalog production process and completely automates project workflow. xCat supports both electronic and printed output from a single data source for Web-based electronic commerce, CD-ROM-based electronic catalogs and custom paper catalogs. The major impediment to creating large catalogs has been the complexity of aggregating — and normalizing — rich electronic product content. Such content aggregation has required that source data be meticulously pre-processed into a format that can be imported, a labor-intensive and manual process that is very slow and very, very expensive. The xCat Import Manager is a GUI tool that eliminates much of this pre-processing and provides a WYSIWYG interface for cleansing, normalizing and restructuring content as part of the import process itself. Two key components of this solution are: 1) Partitioning to create or reconstitute hierarchy, to merge field values, and to establish one-to-one mappings between source and destination values and value combinations. Partitions can be nested (which creates hierarchy) or combined (which merges value combinations), and 2) Field-at-a-time rather than record-at-a-time handling of data values. This makes value mapping and exception handling much more efficient since the number of distinct values for each field is usually dramatically smaller than the total number of records to be imported, and the maximum number of exceptions is the sum, rather than the product, of the number of distinct values in each mapped field. www.a2i.com

Liquent, a division of ESPS, Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement with eonDigital. Under the terms of the agreement, eonDigital will use Liquent’s core rendering technology within its end-to-end solution, which brings together content management, publishing, and printing technologies. Liquent’s technology will provide eonDigital users with rendering and publishing capabilities that enable companies to take text and visual components and automatically assemble them into customized documents and communications. Liquent technology builds upon the rendering technology developed by ESPS over the past six years, adding the ability to aggregate information components from virtually any file format and repository and render them to an open, standards-based format. As a result, the information can be reused for multiple needs and audiences. The technology also assembles and formats the information, and publishes the final product as electronic or paper output. www.eondigital.com, www.esps.com

IXOS SOFTWARE AG announced the “IXOS-eCON Solution Suite” consisting of four products that are modular, easily integrated and web-enabled. Additionally, IXOS introduced new product initiatives including innovative document management solutions for the Microsoft GroupWare platform, Exchange, as well as the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and integrated document solutions for CRM systems from SAP and Siebel. The IXOS-eCON Solution Suite is comprised of four products: IXOS-eCONserver ensures the management of enterprise-wide data and documents; IXOS-eCONtext allows the management of documents within their business context; IXOS-eCONtent offers enhanced document management solutions for groupware applications; and IXOS-eCONcert provides a new, universal document portal solution. All of the Solution Suite components utilize Internet technologies such as Java and XML. With its new product IXOS-eCONtent for MS Exchange, IXOS introduces a document management system based on the Microsoft groupware platform. IXOS-eCONtent for Microsoft Exchange provides document management solutions that are integrated with the Microsoft Office and groupware systems. IXOS-eCONtent provides a secure path for migration to a Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. The new versions of IXOS-eCONserver and IXOS-eCONtent for Microsoft Exchange are designed to integrate with the Microsoft Web Storage System, which is an important component of the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. IXOS-eCONcert is available immediately worldwide. www.ixos.com

IntraNet Solutions, Inc., announced it has formed a strategic marketing alliance with iSyndicate. The alliance provides IntraNet Solutions’ Xpedio Content Management customers with access to more than 1,800 digital content and information sources worldwide, including The New York Times, UPI, Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, ABCNews.com and CNBC.com. Using iSyndicate’s administrative interface, site administrators select content types to download. iSyndicate’s content catalog is then published in XML to Xpedio, providing customers with seamless access to this business content through the Xpedio-published site. Customers are also provided with full text search, meta data tagging and archiving capabilities. www.intranetsol.com, www.isyndicate.com

UnitSpace Corporation announced the launch of its e-content portal and tools, which will enable companies to create and successfully manage their online businesses. Combining front-end visualization with back-end structures, UnitSpace gives business managers and online marketers an easy and inexpensive way to organize their online content, putting at their fingertips the ability to create sales and marketing materials, catalogues, product descriptions, dynamic showcases and other e-business applications using “click, drag and drop” technology. UnitSpace’s software allows e-marketplaces to enhance marketplace participants’ information and provide more efficiency for e-procurement, distribution marketplaces, industrial and consumer auctions. UnitSpace’s partnership with leading suppliers of visual formats allows users to create powerful rich content front-end environments.

OASIS has formed a new technical committee to develop an XML-based protocol for managing complex, B2B transactions over the Internet. The OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee plans to build an open specification for XML message interfaces that will support the coordination and processing of Web services from different organizations. The new OASIS committee initially plans to base its work on the Business Transaction Protocol (BTP) specification, submitted to the Consortium by BEA Systems. BTP allows complex XML message exchanges to be tracked and managed as loosely coupled `conversations’ between businesses. OASIS welcomes the submission of other suitable technologies for consideration in this work. Organizations and individuals interested in business transaction issues are invited to join the OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee and participate in this development. Information on Consortium membership can be found on www.oasis-open.org