WebXi, Inc. introduced Symmetry Xchange integration Suite (SymmetryXi), a B2B integration solution to integrate corporate data sources and legacy systems with a cost-effective, scaleable and flexible open standards architecture. SymmetryXi is a solution for portals and application server vendors. SymmetryXi provides reliable, commercial-grade XML messaging – critical for emerging XML-based e-markets and trading exchanges. Using SymmetryXi, companies can integrate the business processes of customers, suppliers and distributors, reducing development and implementation costs and speeding time-to-market. SymmetryXi is a Java-based solution that uses XML technology as a backbone to deliver a scaleable B2B integration solution. SymmetryXi provides a flexible architecture utilizing XML adapters and also provides a software development kit so that companies can create custom XML adapters to integrate in-house systems and to incorporate emerging standards. Symmetry Xchange integration Suite is available now. Pricing varies depending on components and configurations purchased. Volume discounts may apply. www.webxi.com
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Art Technology Group, Inc. announced the acquisition of Boston-based Petronio Technology Group, a provider of educational training and consulting services. ATG’s acquisition of Petronio provides it with Java, J2EE, and XML courseware, as well as other enhanced technology training capabilities. Additionally, it was announced that John Petronio, the founder and President of Petronio Technology Group will serve as ATG’s new director of customer education. ATG currently provides a broad selection of training for customers and partners, including programming classes to accelerate productivity and ensure maximum benefit from its Dynamo Product Suite. The addition of Petronio Technology Group will serve to meet increasing market demand for dedicated, customized training services required to develop personalized eBusiness applications on Dynamo and will strengthen ATG’s existing worldwide curriculum development and delivery capabilities through the addition of both seasoned trainers and curriculum developers. www.atg.com
Newmarket International, Inc. announced the submission of a complete, end-to-end XML schema for MeetingBroker.com, its new Web-based service that facilitates the open exchange of sales information among meeting planners, site selection or e-RFP sites, hotels, and destinations. The schema will work with the BizTalk Framework, an e-commerce framework that provides a set of implementation guidelines that facilitate open integration using Internet standards. MeetingBroker.com translates leads sent from e-RFP sites and deposits them directly into sales automation applications installed at individual hotels and destinations. MeetingBroker.com employs an open bi-directional architecture based on XML. In 1999, the HITIS (Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards) Advisory Committee and the OTA (OpenTravel Alliance) endorsed XML as the primary standard for platform mapping. The MeetingBroker.com schema utilizes XML and is available on the BizTalk web site at: www.biztalk.org, www.newsoft.com
SyncML, the initiative founded by mobile technology industry companies Ericsson, IBM, Lotus, Motorola, Nokia, Psion, Palm, Inc. and Starfish Software, has released its first specification and reference toolkit. Delivered months ahead of schedule, the Specifications and Reference Toolkit source code are available in the Supporter area of the SyncML Website located at www.syncml.org. With the immediate availability of the first set of released SyncML specifications and development code, Supporters can deliver feedback directly to the SyncML initiative and start product development work. Bringing SyncML-based products one step closer to the public, the specifications include a full description of the XML based SyncML format, and a first look at the SyncML synchronization protocol. The toolkit will also include information on using SyncML over HTTP, WAP and OBEX. Since the announcement of its formation in February 2000, nearly 200 companies have announced their support for SyncML. The goals of the initiative are to develop a universal synchronization standard for the mobile computing industry. SyncML compliant products will be able to exchange information seamlessly across a wide range of operating platforms and communications technologies. Supporters of the initiative now include the founding eight companies and organizations such as Symbian, Excite@Home, PUMATECH, fusionOne, Xircom, and BT Cellnet. A complete list of the Supporters can be found on the Website. www.syncml.org
Arbortext, Inc. announced the launch of Epic 4.0. Principal among Epic’s enhancements is the introduction Epic E-Content Engine (E3), a server-side system that enables e-businesses to attract and retain more customers by providing more personalized, dynamic and easily searchable content for improved pre-sale and post-sale interactions. In addition, Epic 4.0 adds compatibility with Oracle 8iFS to the list of repositories that Arbortext supports. E3 forms the centerpiece of a Web-based system to assemble, process and personalize business-critical content for delivery to the Web, print, wireless devices and other media. Running under a Web server, E3 offers powerful content processing capabilities that can be triggered through commands sent over the Web. Developers can write processing routines in a choice of several programming and scripting languages including C, C++, Java, TCL and Perl. Developers gain access to E3’s capabilities through its support for the Web-standard Document Object Model (DOM) Application Programming Interface (API). E3 can convert Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker and Interleaf content to XML through the Epic Interchange option. In addition, E3 can capture XML from Web forms with the Forms Engine option. E3 is capable of transforming XML for many different purposes, including HTML for Web browsers, WML for cellular phones, Open Electronic Book (OEB) for eBooks, PostScript and PDF. Through stylesheets based on XSL E3 adapts content to the capabilities and limitations of each device. For example, customers can control the size and font of text, the amount of text that fits in a single page, and the format of an automatically generated table of contents. Available as a new standard feature of Epic Architect, graphical DTD development for XML DTDs is the starting point for quick development of a DTD. This feature, along with Arbortext’s free form editing, enables rapid prototyping and helps reduce development time substantially compared to traditional DTD development. Epic 4.0 adds DOM Level 2 core support to existing DOM Level 1 support along with Range interface. Epic Editor, Epic Editor LE and E3 may be programmed using C, C++, Java, Perl, TCL and Arbortext Command Language (ACL). Epic Editor’s “Tag Alias” feature lets customer present alternate tag names to authors, which allows authors working in different language to create content based on the same DTD. With this release, all versions of Arbortext software support 16-bit Unicode. Epic 4.0 will ship in July 2000. All Arbortext customers on maintenance are eligible to receive the Epic 4.0 upgrade at no charge. www.arbortext.com
Quadralay Corporation announced the general availability of WebWorks Publisher Professional Edition 6.0. WebWorks Publisher Professional automates the conversion of FrameMaker documents for online delivery. WebWorks Publisher Professional, an upgrade to Quadralay’s WebWorks Publisher 2000 product, adds support for XML and XHTML. It also introduces WebWorks Help 2.0, a fully-XML-based online help system. WebWorks Publisher Professional provides a set of simple-to-use functions for mapping FrameMaker documents and converting their content and graphics into a selection of online delivery formats. WebWorks Publisher Professional creates online output that is immediately usable, with no editing or post-processing required. WebWorks Publisher Professional also provides comprehensive template creation, re-purposing and customization capabilities. WebWorks Publisher Professional scales to accommodate any size of enterprise online publishing project. Its collapsible tree views now afford project management and structural flexibility because they provide the ability to manage any number and size of books within the scope of a single project. In addition, they allow enterprise-wide projects that blend FrameMaker-based documents with other formats such as Microsoft Word, and other publishing tools such as Robohelp. WebWorks Publisher Professional is priced at $995 for Windows platforms and $1,295 for UNIX platforms. Pricing for shared UNIX systems and international versions and for upgrading from WebWorks Publisher 2000 or WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition, a version shipped with Adobe FrameMaker 6.0, is available from Quadralay. Quadralay also offers a full set of training, consulting, technical support and template customization services. www.webworks.com
Lutris Technologies, Inc. announced Lutris Enhydra Professional 3.0, the latest Lutris-certified and supported version of the Open Source Enhydra Java/XML application server. The product includes an integrated suite of development and deployment tools for consultants, system integrators and corporate IT departments building Internet and wireless applications. Lutris Enhydra Professional 3.0 is the latest addition to the Lutris product family, which includes Lutris Enhydra Standard currently available from Lutris, and Lutris Enhydra Enterprise scheduled for release in the fall. The professional version includes an integrated suite of tools that speed overall development and deployment of Enhydra applications, enhanced support for development of wireless applications, comprehensive documentation, and additional customer support. Lutris Enhydra Professional 3.0 supports wireless development with the inclusion of a wireless development tutorial, and a wireless development kit that includes versions of the YoSpace WML browser–an all Java Nokia phone emulator, and the WAPtor WML editor. Using these tools, developers can build applications that transparently support varied devices such as PCs, phones, PDAs, and kiosks. Integrated development and deployment technologies include InstantDB, Inprise’s JBuilder Foundation 3.5, and PostgresSQL 6.5.3. InstantDB, an Open Source all Java relational database provides developers with the convenience of an easy to install, standards-based development database. The comprehensive set of award-winning development tools in JBuilder Foundation 3.5 offer developers an integrated environment from which to develop their entire application. Forte for Java Community Edition 1.0 from Sun is also included on the product CD. Pricing for Lutris Enhydra Professional 3.0 has not yet been announced. The product is scheduled for release next month. www.lutris.com
IBM alphaWorks has posted two new Java tools in XML messaging and intelligent software for developer feedback — SOAP for Java Q and ABLE — as part of IBM’s ongoing efforts to promote open standards on the Internet. SOAP for Java Q XML-based messaging technology has better synergy with other Internet standards than its predecessor. ABLE provides a framework and graphical editor for constructing intelligent software agents in Java. The SOAP specification defines a simple, Internet-friendly way of using XML to send messages and to access services. SOAP is important to e-business because it provides a flexible, natural way of building applications of which pieces are distributed across networks. With XML and SOAP, each business can choose its own internal implementation technology, such as Enterprise JavaBeans, Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM), or traditional languages such as COBOL. In addition to HTTP, SOAP services can now be accessed through a variety of message transports. For example, bindings could be defined to IBM’s MQseries, or to electronic mail messages (SMTP). SOAP data representations and structures have been aligned with the proposed W3C XML Schema language, and it is now possible to apply those encodings in a much broader range of message patterns (e.g., streaming, one-way, multicast, etc). Using SOAP, any business can access a service, such as a parts catalog, or send a purchase order, to or from any other business. SOAP makes it easy to bind to the programming language or object system of the developer’s choice. SOAP’s built-in support for Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) also makes it easy to invoke methods on remote objects, using XML and HTTP, so developers can use SOAP to create distributed systems within their own organizations. This posting on alphaWorks is in Java, and is designed to work well with Websphere and other servlet-based systems. IBM and Tivoli’s ABLE is an agent construction toolkit based on the JavaBean architecture. Targeted to the needs of Java application developers, academicians and researchers working on intelligent agent software, ABLE provides an extendable library of JavaBean software components, called AbleBeans, that includes inferencing and learning algorithms. ABLE’s graphical Agent Editor allows users to quickly construct and test intelligent agents. The library of reusable AbleBeans provides forward and backward chaining inferencing, fuzzy reasoning, genetic search algorithms, and neural network learning capabilities. Application developers can focus on the unique requirements of their application and use the intelligent AbleBean components to create solutions. ABLE is designed to allow Java application developers to easily construct hybrid intelligent agents out of IBM and third-party software components. ABLE provides a flexible mechanism for integrating software agents with Java client and web applications. www.alphaWorks.ibm.com
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