Progress Software announced Progress Apptivity Version 3.1, its Java application server and integrated development environment. The new version’s support for XML facilitates the deployment of broadly available business-to-business and e-commerce applications. In addition, enhanced SQL functionality strengthens e-commerce applications by allowing custom, vendor-specific queries on enterprise databases. Progress Apptivity Version 3.1 greatly increases the ability for enterprises to exchange information via support for documents formatted with the XML data interchange language. Progress Apptivity Version 3.1’s integrated XML support enables more rapid deployment of business-to-business transactions such as procurement and cataloging without the need for external XML servers. Via enhanced Progress Apptivity SmartAdapter technology, inbound XML data are integrated into local applications as relational data, reducing the need for manual conversion. Additional enhancements include: Improved SQL Functionality, Conditional HTML, Java 2 Support, and a Refined Look and Feel. Progress Apptivity server prices start at $10,000 USD. Availability is immediately. www.apptivity.com
Category: Content technology news (Page 602 of 640)
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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OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, announced it has received financial commitment from industry for XML.org, the global XML industry portal. IBM, Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems have all agreed to support XML.org as Founding Partners, and Commerce One, DataChannel, Documentum, the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) and SoftQuad have demonstrated their support as XML.org Founding Affiliates. XML.org Partners (companies with revenues in excess of $250M US) are expected to contribute 100,000 USD and Affiliates (companies with revenues under $250M US) to provide 25,000 USD annually to fund the industry portal. Initially, the XML.org Steering Committee will be led by these founding organizations, although other companies are welcome to participate in the future by becoming Partners or Affiliates. XML.org ( http://xml.org) is the OASIS XML industry portal that provides accurate, timely information about the application of XML in industrial and commercial settings. XML.org serves as a reference repository for specific XML standards such as vocabularies, DTDs, schemas, and namespaces. www.oasis-open.org
Differential and UWI.Com, announced a strategic relationship. The combined technology provides a safer than paper solution for enterprises and financial institutions to securely send and receive legally binding transactions and other contractual agreements for conducting business-to-business e-commerce. Differential’s Digital Receipt Infrastructure compliments InternetForms by providing a complete non-repudiation solution for e-commerce and legacy systems. Non-repudiation is the use of strong electronic evidence to prove to an independent third party that a document or transaction was sent and received at a specific time by a specific person or company. Non-repudiation requires an irrefutable trail of digital evidence, as well as protocols and procedures for transaction verification, dispute resolution, auditing and reconciliation. A Digital Receipt is an XML document, which captures the digital signatures of the sender and the receiver, a verifiable time stamp and standardized transaction details. Digital Receipts may contain information about related receipts permitting complicated transactions to be re-assembled and reconciled. Digital Receipts also support real-time assurance such as online notaries, insurers and auditors. An InternetForm is an XML document that preserves in a single, digitally signed form all of the elements of a transaction required to produce a binding record. InternetForms capture the questions a form posits, and the answers a person provides, as well as any internal form logic and attached related documents, to provide non-repudiation and preserve the signer’s intent. www.uwi.com, www.differential.com
OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, announced the election of a new board of directors led by Simon Nicholson (Chrystal Software) as chairperson and Bill Smith (Sun Microsystems) as president. Jonathan Parsons (Xyvision Enterprise Solutions) serves as vice president/secretary/treasurer and Bob Sutor (IBM) as chief strategy officer. Norbert Mikula (DataChannel) serves as chief technical officer and leads the technical track. Mary McRae (DMSi) serves as chief marketing officer and leads the marketing track. Alan Hester (Xerox) serves as director and liaison to the CGM-Open affiliate consortium. www.oasis-open.org
Interleaf, Inc. announced volume general customer shipment of BladeRunner, the Company’s XML-based, and Microsoft Word-based e-content solution. Now BladeRunner is immediately available to any business that requires customized, dynamic, and intelligent e-content solutions for e-business applications. The general customer shipment of BladeRunner comes shortly after the completion of the Early Adopter Program (EAP). EAP was designed to enable customers to deploy a pre-release version of BladeRunner, develop XML-based prototypes, and evaluate the performance of applications through close collaboration with Interleaf’s development organization. www.interleaf.com
MacroSoft announced that the company has been acquired by SER Systeme AG, the international document management group headquartered in Neustadt/Wied, Germany. SER is the largest European based provider of document management solutions with major divisions in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The acquisition is an important advance in SER
The W3C released Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry and expert community agreement on the first efforts for allowing style sheets to be associated with an XML document, thus bringing a wider range of design and display options to XML authors. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C membership, who favor its adoption by the industry. Style sheet development and the separation of presentation information from the structure of a document has been a core W3C work area since its inception. Web publishers use style sheets written in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language to flexibly enhance the display of Web pages written in HTML. Microsoft, Netscape, Opera Software, and SoftQuad have products that support the new recommendation. Other vendors have promised to support the specification in upcoming products. Work is already underway to develop technologies that will allow developers to place the style sheet link outside the XML document itself in ways that are extensible, self-documenting, and that can be validated. www.w3c.org
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum announced the release of the WAP Version 1.1 specifications, a newly enhanced version of the mobile Internet standard that will enable the rapid commercial deployment of WAP-ready products and services worldwide. Using WAP V1.1, users of digital mobile phones and other wireless devices will be able to securely access and instantly interact with Internet/intranet information and advanced telephony services. Representatives from 120 WAP Forum member companies from across the globe have joined together at the meeting to advance the development of WAP and build relationships with other industry organizations to ensure that future Internet standards address the needs of low power, low memory wireless devices. WAP Version 1.1 provides handset manufacturers with a common global platform and a richer service offering to both consumers and carriers. Network operators can differentiate themselves through new WAP-compliant value-added services and enhancements to existing voicemail and email services. Infrastructure providers and content developers benefit from an expanded market for their products and services. Consumer and business users of WAP-ready mobile devices will have near anytime, anywhere access to information. To ensure interoperability of WAP products, the WAP Forum has contracted The Open Group (www.opengroup.org) to develop a test suite to support a certification program for WAP V1.1 conforming clients and servers. The test suite is focused on the Wireless Markup Language (WML) application layer specifications, but also includes tests for the underlying communication protocols. WAP is collaborating with ARIB, CDG, ECMA, ETSI, TIA, W3C and other industry bodies to ensure that future technical specifications from all organizations meet the needs of this device category. www.wapforum.org.
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