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
Category: Content technology news (Page 554 of 642)
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.
We focus on product news, but also include selected company news such as mergers and acquisitions and meaningful partnerships. All news items are edited by one of our analysts under the NewsShark byline. See our Editorial Policy.
Note that we also publish news on X/Twitter. Follow us @gilbane
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
SoftQuad Software Inc. and Killdara Corporation announced a strategic alliance to integrate SoftQuad’s XMetaL XML content authoring environment and Killdara’s Paraphrase Engine. The integrated products will provide customers with a complete solution for creating XML documents and delivering them securely to the databases of business partners via the Internet. The Paraphrase Engine is a secure and intelligent XML-based network appliance. It can be easily connected to existing enterprise data sources such as databases, and configured to automatically generate XML reports from the data. The reports can then be delivered to trusted business partners using high-security, tamperproof Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology. Documents received from partners can likewise be authenticated, decrypted and delivered to users in the form of XML documents. www.softquad.com, www.killdara.com
Bluestone Software, Inc. announced complete support across its entire product line for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Sun Microsystems Inc.’s unified platform for developing, deploying, and managing enterprise-class software in a diverse corporate environment. Bluestone believes compatibility testing will demonstrate compliance with the J2EE specification for Bluestone’s Total-e-Business comprehensive e-business platform, its Sapphire/Web Application Server infrastructure, and the Bluestone XML Suite Integration Server – all based on the Java 2 platform and XML standards. Bluestone’s support of the JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology, the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) component architecture, and the Java Servlets API – core enterprise technologies which are unified in J2EE – simplifies enterprise application development by providing a comprehensive set of component services, and automatically handles many details of application behavior, without complex programming. Developers will also benefit from Bluestone’s “in-process” methodology for hooking JSPs to JavaBeans and EJBs, via an XML interface within a single Java Virtual Machine. By employing one Java Virtual Machine to execute application tasks, Bluestone enables e-business applications to run faster and more efficiently. www.bluestone.com
Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Inc. announced the latest version of its content and document management software, Parlance Content Manager. This new version builds upon Parlance’s proven component management functionality by extending its application development environment with COM and JAVA APIs and enhanced support for XML. Additionally, its redesigned user interface offers greater ease of use of the content repository and integrated tools. Parlance 3.0 includes support for dynamic XML import, use, and delivery. Users can automatically load XML encoded data from an editor, legacy data system, or other source and, based on content, document type definition or schema, derive a configuration from the data source. Parlance Content Manager comes with a new API)based on Microsoft COM for the Windows NT version of the product. A subsequent UNIX release will offer the same API functionality in JAVA. Parlance Content Manager 3.0 is scheduled to ship in March 2000. The Parlance server runs on Windows NT, Sun Solaris, and IBM AIX with clients on Windows 98, NT, and Unix. Parlance Content Manager uses Oracle and other databases and integrates with Arbortext Adept Editor, Adobe FrameMaker+SGML, and other application tools. A basic Parlance system, including server, API, dynamic XML import, and a 10 user license starts at about $50,000. www.xyenterprise.com
Personic Inc. announced its participation in the HR-XML Consortium. The HR-XML Consortium is a newly formed, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the development and promotion of standardized, human-resources-related XML vocabularies for enabling e-commerce and the automation of inter-company exchanges of human resources data.Using industry-standard XML vocabularies, one company is able to transact with countless other companies without needing to design, engineer, and install a multitude of separate interchange mechanisms. As a member of the HR-XML Consortium, Personic is developing technology to enable its core recruiting and hiring software to use XML. Personic is incorporating this communications technology into its core applications. Personic also partners with other organizations within the HR-XML Consortium to derive HR-XML (Human Resources Extensible Markup Language) standards. The HR-XML language provides standard definitions of data elements needed for an application to perform standardized Human Resources transactions and communicate with other applications using HR-XML. Through the HR-XML Consortium, more than 20 software and services suppliers have already endorsed three XML schemas designed to enable a new generation of Web-based workforce management and recruiting services that are based on open, e-commerce models and deliver employers greater ROI for their staffing expenditures. This will give HR and staffing vendors new opportunities for growth and profit. With a common medium of exchange, customers need not expend extra energy maintaining and updating proprietary interfaces. They save on costs and can dramatically reduce integration/maintenance efforts. HR-XML standardization shortens time for everyone involved in the recruiting and hiring process. www.personic.com
The Graphic Communications Association announced the creation of the not-for-profit International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance). IDEAlliance will provide comprehensive support to working groups engaged in developing industry- specific applications of both vertical and cross-industry open information standards. Current member groups of the IDEAlliance include: the Information and Content Exchange (ICE), which establishes standards for the syndication and aggregation of information across industries; the Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM), which is developing a standard XML metadata vocabulary for the publishing industry; the Customer Profile Exchange Network, a vendor-neutral open standard for the privacy-enabled exchange of customer profile information across disparate systems and applications; and the Independent Consultants Cooperative (ICC), an organization of XML/SGML consultants. Like its predecessor, the Graphic Communications Association Research Institute, IDEAlliance will serve as a host for meetings of the committees and other working groups of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), OASIS, ANSI, and W3C – groups responsible for the development and maintenance of structured information standards, XML, SGML, and their derivatives. www.IDEAlliance.org
Arbortext, Inc., announced that Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0, now support key Web standards aimed at easing customer and third-party developer efforts and maintaining interoperability with other key software platforms. In addition to extended Java support, Epic and Adept now support XSL, XSLT, DOM and COM standards. Combined with support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and additional scripting languages, these new standards offer Epic and Adept users a wide new range of interoperability options for developing XML-based e-Content. In addition, Arbortext software can now run as COM servers to provide Windows applications access to the DOM. This allows Windows programmers to write document-processing applications in Visual Basic, C, C++ and Java. With these new releases, developers on Windows can now write programs in Java that call, or are called by, Arbortext Command Language (ACL) scripts. Arbortext supports XSLT for those customers who have complex electronic publishing requirements that require the transformation of multiple types of tag sets. For customers who want to continue to use their existing stylesheets for their electronic publishing needs, Arbortext will continue to support them in both Epic and Adept. Arbortext uses CSS in the published output for the Web. CSS allows users to customize the display of HTML in a Web browser without having to edit transformation stylesheets. Arbortext also announced that in upcoming releases, it plans to support additional scripting languages such as Perl, TCL, Python and Microsoft scripting languages. Support for these scripting languages will provide another option to programmers who write document-processing functions. Pricing for Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0 varies, depending on number of seats purchased, type of licensing, and number of modules. Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0 will be available Dec. 15. www.arbortext.com
Subscribe to the Gilbane Advisor
