The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum and the W3C announced a formal liaison relationship to define next-generation Web specifications that support the full participation of wireless devices on the World Wide Web. The WAP Forum and W3C are working together to develop a common process of producing next-generation, XML-based Web specifications, define testing and implementation processes, and promote these specifications to the industry at large. By working together, the WAP Forum and the W3C will enable wireless devices to participate as full peers in the universal information space of the Web, largely through the incorporation of WAP’s Wireless Markup Language (WML) features into the W3C’s XHTML, the next-generation markup language for the Web. Coordination between the two bodies began this week in Sydney, Australia, in conjunction with the WAP Forum’s members meeting. The WAP/W3C coordination committee will meet on a regular basis to maintain consistency between the specifications of the WAP Forum and the W3C, promote common specifications wherever possible, and enable cooperation between the working groups in the WAP Forum and the W3C. Work items include the joint work on XHTML; compatibility with SMIL, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language; ensuring user control over privacy information; and CC/PP, a universal device profiling system based on W3C’s RDF Metadata technology. The two organizations are also producing a joint workshop in position-dependent information services, to be held in Sophia-Antipolis, France, in February 2000. The WAP Forum is dedicated to enabling advanced services and applications on wireless devices. The W3C is dedicated to leading and advancing the development of the World Wide Web. Together, the two organizations will face the technical challenge of mobile access to information on the Web. WAP Forum and W3C will coordinate on the future development of XML applications and in content adaptation through the use of vector graphics and style sheets. Instead of developing diverging sets of solutions, it is the intent of both groups to find common solutions that will address mobile requirements. www.w3.org, www.wapforum.org
Category: Content technology news (Page 551 of 641)
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Wysdom Inc. announced it has joined the WAP Forum. WAP Forum members represent over 95% of the global handset market, carriers with more than 100 million subscribers, leading infrastructure providers, software developers and other organizations providing solutions to the wireless industry. The WAP Forum includes other wireless industry leaders such as Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Microsoft. By increasing the ease of communication with the mobile user, the standards developed by the WAP Forum are a catalyst for making the wireless Internet a reality. Wysdom’s WAPvision product suite is a rapidly deployable turnkey solution that will allow any e-business to establish a wireless presence and extend its services to the mobile user. As a fully adaptable and customizable solution, the WAPvision suite provides the flexibility and scalability required to deliver value added Internet content from e-businesses to wireless end-users. www.wysdom.com
Microsoft Corp. and Ericsson announced a strategic partnership to develop and market end-to-end solutions for the wireless Internet, based on a shared vision of convenient and fast access to information anytime, anywhere, from any device. Ericsson and Microsoft will form a joint company to market and deliver mobile e-mail solutions for network operators. Ericsson will own the majority share of the new company. As part of the partnership – the first between the two companies – Ericsson will provide its WAP stack to Microsoft and will adopt Microsoft Mobile Explorer for feature phones. The joint company will focus on building, marketing and deploying solutions that utilize Microsoft Windows NT Server and Exchange platforms, and Ericsson’s infrastructure and mobile Internet technologies. Microsoft and Ericsson also agreed to collaborate in their support of developing open industry standards – including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), WAP and Bluetooth. The new dual-mode microbrowser displays both HTML and WAP 1.1-compliant content, thus eliminating the need for operators and developers to choose between technologies. Microsoft Mobile Explorer is a modular mobile phone platform for enabling secure corporate data access, e-mail, Internet, location-based services and electronic commerce from feature phones and smart phones. www.ericsson.se/pressroom, www.microsoft.com/presspass/
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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