In a joint announcement announced a partnership to deliver advanced XML industry solutions. Extensibility will create a validated schema for DataChannel’s Portal Markup Language 1.0. (PML 1.0). PML 1.0 has been submitted to OASIS as an industry standard markup language for content display and management by an Enterprise Information Portal. XML Authority, Extensibility’s schema processing and validation server will contain PML 1.0 support in its next release. DataChannel will accelerate its lead in providing XML training and solutions by becoming the lead training partner for Extensibility, creating new curriculum and certification for XML Authority as well as other company offerings. These courses, along with other advanced tutorials from DataChannel will be offered in both open enrollment and customized training sessions, available the first half of next year. Additionally, DataChannel will include an evaluation copy of XML Authority in the SDK of its XML-based Enterprise Information Portal, DataChannel Server 4.0 scheduled for first quarter of 2000. As part of the agreement, Extensibility joins DataChannel’s XpertPartner Program. Other aspects of the agreement include joint development efforts on future offerings that were not disclosed by the companies. www.extensibility.com, www.datachannel.com
Category: Content technology news (Page 549 of 638)
Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.
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DataChannel Inc. and Wavo Corp. announced that Wavo’s NewsPak will be immediately incorporated into the next release of DataChannel’s portal solution. NewsPak is a solution for delivering pre-licensed, real-time news content to Web servers worldwide. It aggregates content streams from a catalog of over 600 media sources, including CNBC, Ziff-Davis, Financial Times, USA Today, Comtex, Knight Ridder and UPI. Providing these streams in a richly meta-tagged XML format, NewsPak will give DataChannel customers unparalleled ability to search, manage and personalize news information. www.wavo.com, www.datachannel.com
Bowstreet delivered a universal directory service language for the Internet to three key Internet standards bodies. This language, called Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), is supported by the collective efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. By helping establish directories as the infrastructure for e-commerce applications, DSML enables easy sharing of valuable business data and processes within and across company boundaries. DSML will also accelerate the industry shift toward business-to-business applications built on Web services, modular units of software functionality located anywhere on the Internet. DSML and Web services will enable companies to develop dynamic e-commerce Web sites that can uniquely meet the needs of a company’s customers and business partners. The DSML 1.0 specification submission enables different vendors’ directory services to work together more easily by describing their contents – including data about people and computing resources – in XML. The announcement keeps the working group’s July 12 promise to reach consensus on a draft standard this year. The six companies turned over the DSML 1.0 specification draft to OASIS. In an effort to gain rapid and widespread acceptance, DSML 1.0 information is also being provided to the W3C and BizTalk. The DSML effort builds upon Bowstreet’s work over the past two years on the Bowstreet Web Automation Factory, a system for dynamically creating, managing, and linking mass-customized Web sites for B2B e-commerce. www.dsml.org, www.bowstreet.com
SoftQuad Software Inc. announced the release of XMetaL 1.2, a free upgrade for its advanced, yet easy-to-use, XML authoring solution. The upgrade increases XMetaL’s performance and productivity for users of all skill levels, and provides powerful new tools for publishing XMLdocuments to the Web. For content authors, XMetaL 1.2 includes a number of performance and productivity enhancements, including improved table handling, improved CSS rendering, improved spell checking and more intuitive editing functions. To help organizations produce Web-ready HTML from XML documents, XMetaL 1.2 includes a built-in XSL transformation engine. The engine is implemented as an XSLT COM object, which developers can access through scripts. Using XSL stylesheets, XML documents can easily be transformed to HTML for output to a browser or a file. In addition, developers can use the XSLT COM object for performing other complex document transformations on the fly, directly within XMetaL. Other improvements now found in XMetaL 1.2 give developers the ability to automate more processes to increase productivity when authoring XML documents. These include: Broader Event Trapping and Scriptable Entity Creation. XMetaL 1.2 is available December 10th as a downloadable upgrade for registered users of XMetaL 1.0. New users can purchase XMetaL 1.2 for $495.00 (U.S.) per single user license. www.softquad.com
SoftQuad Software Inc. announced the signing of five new XMetaL channel agreements – AGRA Systems Limited, American Computer Innovators Inc., Datalogics Inc., Movement, Inc. and Software AG – that add to SoftQuad’s network of over 70 VARs and OEMs in 13 countries. XMetaL has a familiar word processor-like environment, which makes it a broadly deployable solution that reduces training and implementation costs. XMetaL can increase performance, productivity and stability for users of all skill levels, while giving developers additional tools and functionality to create a more intuitive and integrated XML authoring environment. www.softquad.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the availability of the Java API for XML Parsing Optional Package (“JAXP” ), and the formation of an expert group for the XML Data Binding project. The expert group for this project, which is going through the Java Community Process, consists of Allaire, Ariba, BEA/Web Logic, Bluestone Software, AOL/Netscape, Extensibility, Fujitsu, IBM, Object Design, Oracle, webMethods and Sun Microsystems. Sun’s announcement of the Java technologies for XML provides universal application logic that complements XML. The Java 2 platform and XML are complementary technologies that each have common features critical for Web-based applications, including platform-independence, industry standards, extensible, reusable, and global language support. Together, the Java 2 platform and XML will allow enterprises to simplify and lower the cost of information sharing and exchange in Web applications. The JAXP Optional Package allows developers to easily build Java-based applications enabled by XML for e-commerce, enterprise application integration, and web publishing. An optional package is a standard Java API that is not part of the Java Runtime Environment but can be optionally added depending on specific application needs. JAXP is now in early access release and available free-of-charge at http://java.sun.com/xml. The final version of JAXP is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2000. The JAXP optional package provides basic functionality for reading, manipulating, and generating XML documents through pure Java APIs. Seamlessly integrated with the Java 2 platform, JAXP provides a standard way for a Java platform-based application to plug in any XML-conformant parser. While the reference implementation uses Sun’s experimental high performing Java Project X as its default XML parser, the software’s pluggable architecture allows any XML- conformant parser to be used, such as the xml.apache.org XML parser, code named Xerces. (For information on this community project to which Sun donated technology visit www.apache.org) Sun also announced the expert group of industry leaders within the JCP that is working to create XML Data Binding software for the Java 2 platform. This project, code-named Project Adelard, will enable developers to deliver and maintain high-performance XML-enabled applications with a minimum of development effort. Project Adelard provides a two-way mapping between XML documents and Java-based objects along with a schema compiler tool. The compiler will automatically generate Java classes from XML schemas without requiring developers to write any complex parsing code. In addition, the compiler will contain automatic error and validity of checking of XML messages, helping to ensure that only valid, error-free messages are accepted and processed by a system. As with JAXP, Project Adelard is being developed through the JCP. Sun is working with the W3C XML Schema Group and other standards consortia, such as OASIS and XML.org. The specification and reference implementation for Project Adelard are under development by the expert group. Project Adelard will be available during the second quarter of 2000. www.sun.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that its Forte Fusion enterprise application integration (EAI) suite will feature enhanced support for XML and Java-based technologies that have emerged as the foundation for standards-based e-commerce solutions. Fusion uses an XML-based integration backbone and XSL for data integration. In addition, Sun announced that Forte Fusion will be enhanced to support Java technology-based adapters and Sun’s Java Message Queue 1.0 enterprise messaging software, giving customers increased access to open technologies to dot-com their businesses. The Fusion XSLT Data Transformation Engine employs XSLT to solve the core data transformation problem at the heart of any EAI solution. To support the development of XSLT rules, the Fusion Workshop for XSLT provides a graphical interactive workshop for authoring and testing. These XSLT capabilities will be available in the beta release of Forte Fusion 2.0 scheduled for the first quarter of 2000. During 2000, Forte Fusion will be enhanced to support Sun’s Java Message Queue 1.0 enterprise messaging software as a transport for its XML-based data integration backbone. Within Forte Fusion, messaging services are used to link separate applications into the Fusion backbone, which in turn provides services for data transformation and connectivity into the Fusion Business Process Engine. Fusion’s Java Message Queue support will complement existing support for HTTP and IBM’s MQSeries. In the Forte Fusion architecture, adapters are application wrappers whose sole purpose is to XML-enable applications that are not equipped with native XML support. Adapters connect to the Fusion backbone through a message transport, while the backbone provides semantic integration through the transformation of XML with XSL rules. This approach ensures that adapters are lightweight, quick to develop and reusable as general-purpose XML adapters. www.forte.com/product/fusion
Microsoft Corp. announced availability of the BizTalk Framework Document Specification 1.0, an updated component of the framework based on XML schemas and industry standards for sharing information. Microsoft submitted the BizTalk Framework Document Specification 1.0 to the BizTalk Steering Committee – composed of vendors, standards bodies and corporate customers – for review in September. The committee finalized and published the document specifications on the BizTalk.Org Web site (www.biztalk.org). Any individual or organization can access the specifications and use them to implement e-commerce and application integration solutions using the BizTalk Framework. With the final version of the specification now available, corporate developers and independent software developers can immediately embark on the development of BizTalk-compatible applications. The BizTalk Steering Committee provides guidance on the future direction of the BizTalk Framework and includes American Petroleum Institute, Ariba Inc., The Baan Co., The Boeing Co., Clarus Corp., CommerceOne Inc., Concur Technologies Inc., Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA), J.D. Edwards & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Microsoft, New Era of Networks (NEON), The Open Applications Group (OAG), PeopleSoft Inc., Pivotal Corp., RosettaNet and SAP AG. www.microsoft.com/industry/biztalk
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