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/
Category: Content technology news (Page 555 of 645)
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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Intuit Inc. and Microsoft Corporation announced proposed additions to the next version of the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) specification. The new features would include 401(k) extensions, 1099 capability and transfers between brokerage accounts. In addition, the companies are proposing XML compliance in version 2.0 and intend to make the new version backward compatible with OFX 1.0.2, OFX 1.5.1 and OFX 1.6, the versions widely used by financial services companies today. Finally, Intuit and Microsoft have indicated that they will propose adding insurance data and transactions in subsequent versions of OFX. Intuit and Microsoft are actively engaged with the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Working Group to support the creation and rollout of the IFX standard. At whatever point IFX becomes established and a certification process exists for high-quality implementations, Intuit and Microsoft plan to work closely with the IFX Working Group to create a migration path for existing OFX Solution Providers and to preserve the existing investment in OFX by these companies. This will be important as the number of financial institutions and technology providers that use OFX continues to grow, because OFX is here now, it works, and these companies have relied on OFX to bring their online financial services offerings to market quickly. Intuit is drafting the proposed 2.0 specification and will submit it to Microsoft and CheckFree for their review and input. Together, the three companies develop and maintain the OFX specification. Intuit is targeting release of the specification in Q1 2000. www.intuit.com, www.microsoft.com
webMethods, Inc. and KPMG LLP announced a joint software and services solution for implementing B2B e-commerce initiatives based on the RosettaNet standards. RosettaNet’s primary goal is to streamline the information technology supply chain and to improve the flow of critical information allowing information technology supply chain partners to fully leverage e-commerce applications and the Internet as a B2B e-commerce tool. This joint offering is specifically designed to address the needs of RosettaNet’s key constituents
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
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
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