XML News Desk

ESB Testing Strategies with Mule

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:45:00 EDT

To be able to do anything useful, an ESB must be configured with all sorts of parameters, from endpoint connection URIs to message transformation scripts to content-based routing definitions. Moreover, ESBs like Mule can host custom components, which will process messages and perform user-specific actions on them.

OOXML Standardization Naysayers Apparently Throw in the Towel

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Representatives of the state IT organizations of Brazil, South Africa and Venezuela, three of the four countries that protested ISO’s standardization of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format, have apparently thrown in the towel on taking their appeal any further. India, the fourth protester, has not been heard from.

Top Keynotes at SYS-CON's World-Beating RIA Conference & Expo: AJAX World

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:00:00 EDT

Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

SYS-CON.TV: View "Virtualization Power Panel" Live from Times Square, NYC

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:20:00 EDT

Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, Egenera CTO Pete Manca, Allen Stewart, Group Manager, Windows Virtualization at Microsoft, and Brian Duckering, Sr. Director of Products and Alliances at Symantec were the top industry executives who joined Jeremy Geelan in the 4th Floor Reuters Studio overlooking Times Square for a special SYS-CON.TV 'Virtualization Power Panel' recorded on June 22, 2008, the day before the opening of SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo - which was held 23-24 June 2008 in New York City.

Appeals Denied, OOXML Inches Toward Apotheosis

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:30:00 EDT

ISO said Friday that the appeals made by Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela protesting the standardization of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format hadn’t gone anywhere – it was unclear whether any of them had any standing anyway – but since they “failed to garner sufficient support” from the ISO/IEC technical committees, as ISO put it – the standards body is going to go ahead and publish OOXML as an ISO/IEC International Standard, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 – or it will provided another, effective appeal isn’t registered.

i-Technology Viewpoint: The Performance Woe of Binary XML

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:40:00 EDT

Since its inception, XML has been criticized for the overhead it introduces into the enterprise infrastructure. Business data encoded in XML takes five to 10 times more bandwidth to transmit in the network and proportionally more disk space to store.

Vordel 5.1 Puts Policy Control at the Heart of XML Networks

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Vordel unveiled version 5.1 of its XML network infrastructure products, to accelerate, manage and protect XML applications. Vordel 5.1 addresses the need for lifecycle management of policy across the SOA. By combining the central management of SOA policies with distributed enforcement across a network of XML gateways, organizations generate increased returns on IT architecture and maximize their SOA investments.

How to Enable High Speed Parsing of Very Large XML Files

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EDT

As the number of XML files in enterprise organizations significantly increases, architects, application developers, and data integration specialists must deal simultaneously with the growing number of XML formatted messages on the network as well as their rapidly expanding file sizes. While XML has become the 'de facto' standard for transferring data from one step to the next in a business process or between applications, there are more and more occasions when files are easily exceeding 50-100MB in size, causing performance slow downs and memory overloads.

DataDirect Technologies Introduces the DataDirect Data Integration Suite

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:15:00 EDT

DataDirect and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation announced the availability of the DataDirect Data Integration Suite. The new offering combines DataDirect Technologies' existing XML-based technologies in one package with a single, simple installation. Software developers now have the combined power of the DataDirect XQuery, DataDirect XML Converters (Java and .NET) and Stylus Studio products to meet their immediate data transformation and aggregation needs.

Minimize XML Performance Challenges and Boost Productivity

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Today's applications rely on data feeds from many sources, using technologies that are based on the use of XML. XML data descriptions can be complex often creating performance and scalability challenges for the enterprises. Efficient XML processing is the cornerstone of almost every Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployment, regardless of the language or data center environment.

TX Text Control With Office Open XML (DOCX) Support

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:45:00 EDT

TX Text Control has been setting the standard in the software component industry for more than seventeen years. Today, The Imaging Source - the manufacturer of these word processing components - has just announced version 14.0 with many improvements and much technical innovation. Demand from the component's customer base to add support for MS Word standard Office Open XML (DOCX) has been strong.

Free Guest Passes for the SOA World Conference & Expo in New York City

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON's upcoming '3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo' faculty includes such distinguished speakers as: Al Aghili (Managed Methods), Alan Chhabra (Egenera), Andi Mann (Enterprise Management Associates), Andrew Conte (APC), Andy Astor (EnterpriseDB), Ariel Cohen (Xsigo Systems), Bill O'Conell (IBM), Bob Lozano (Appistry), Bob Quinn (3Leaf Systems), Brian Martin (IBM), Carlo Innocenti Ph.D. (DataDirect Technologies), Chris Shayan (Ashna Samane), Chris Wiborg (Cisco), David Kleidermacher (Green Hills Software), Doc D'Errico (EMC Corporation), Donato Buccella (Certeon), Dror Gill (Ceedo), Etay Bogner (Neocleus), George Pradel (Vizioncore), Geva Perry (GigaSpaces), Gordon Hunt (Real-Time Innovations), Gregory Brail (Sonoa Systems), Greg Lyon (Egenera), Harry Petty (Brocade), Hezi Moore (Reflex Security), Hubert Yoshida (Hitachi Data Systems), Ian Thain (Sybase), Jacek Kruszelnicki (Numatica Corporation), Jeremy Geelan (SYS-CON Media), Jerry Melnick (Marathon Technologies), Joe McKendrick (WebServices.org), Johan Nordin (Software AG), John Goodson (DataDirect), John Senor (iWay Software), JP Morgenthal (Avorcor), Julian Weinstock (Desktone), Keith Swenson (Fujitsu), Ken North (Computing, LLC), Kenon Owens (VMware), Kevin Epstein (Scalent Systems), Koen Aers (Red Hat/JBoss), Kurt Daniel (Parallels), Kurt Ziegler (SIMtone), Kyle Gabhart (Web Age Solutions), Mark Davydov Ph.D. (Blue Cross Blue Shield), Mark Hapner (Sun Microsystems), Mark Milligan (VirtualLogix), Matt George (Fidelity Investments), Michael CareyPh.D. (BEA Systems), Michael Gorman (Whitemarsh Information Systems), Mike Pizzo (Microsoft), Miko Matsumura (Software AG), Nikita Ogievetsky (Morgan Stanley), Parviz Peiravi (Intel), Paul Lipton (CA), Paul Vasquez (VMware), Peter Manca (Egenera), Phil Morris (Sun Microsystems), Pierre Fricke (Red Hat / JBoss), Ravi Gururaj (VMLogix), Rich Lechner (IBM), Rich Schreiber (Nastel Technologies), Richard Mark Soley (OMG), Rick German (Stoneware), Robert Steward (DataDirect), Ron Williams (Tivoli Software), Sean Derrington (Symantec), Shai Fultheim (ScaleMP), Simon Crosby (Citrix), Stefanos Damianakis (Netrics), Stephen Herrod (VMware), Stephen Pollack (PlateSpin), Tom Bishop (BMC Software), Ursula Sinkewicz (Fidelity Investments), Victoria Livschitz (Grid Dynamics), Yakov Fain (Farata Systems), Zoran Cakeljic (Virtual Iron).

Integrated Support for XML Data Management

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:00:00 EDT

XML is increasingly being used as the language of data exchange. An XML document based on a DTD or an XML Schema contains data that conforms to a standard structure. A number of technologies, such as ebXML (Electronic Business XML), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and RDF (Resource Description Framework) are based on XML.

SYS-CON's Virtualization Conference & Expo: Themes & Topics

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:30:00 EDT

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

Brazil, India & Venezuela Join South Africa in Objecting to OOXML Standardization

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:30:00 EDT

At the eleventh hour Brazil, India and Venezuela joined South Africa in appealing ISO's highly politicized standardization of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. Meanwhile, the Danish Open Source Business Association has protested the Danish Standard's 'yes' vote for standardization claiming a lack of consensus, rules violations, no final draft and little chance of interoperability. It wants ISO to reopen the issue. Denmark's is not a formal appeal and Danish Standard disagrees with the charges made. Microsoft declined to comment saying the flap is between ISO/IEC and the national bodies.

South Africa Throws a Monkey Wrench into Microsoft's OOXML Plans

Fri, 30 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

South Africa has formally objected to the fast track used to get OOXML to the brink of ISO standardization. South Africa, which has given the world Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu, is one of the so-called 'P' members of JTC 1 - meaning it's got enough clout to delay or possibly derail ISO's standardization of Microsoft's precious OOXML file format.

Red Hat Named "Platinum Sponsor" of Virtualization Conference & Expo

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

Microsoft To Support ODF

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Office will support the Microsoft-hostile OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1 when Office 2007 Service Pack 2 arrives in the first half of 2009. Microsoft said users will be able to open, edit and save documents in ODF directly from inside Office applications without having to install any other code. That means no more translators. They will even be able to set ODF as the default.

JustSystems, SEC, XBRL International, EDGAR Online Lead XBRL Survival Course

Wed, 21 May 2008 10:45:00 EDT

XBRL can help to transform business, dramatically simplifying filing and reporting and improving transparency and information access in ways never before imaginable. Now, SEC Chairman Cox says an XBRL mandate is on its way. In an upcoming Webinar, JustSystems, the SEC, XBRL International, and EDGAR Online will discuss how XBRL turns flat, one-dimensional information into live, interactive information that reveals its full context. Suddenly, financial data is universally accessible, richly contextual and highly comparable.

Brits Bitch to EC about Microsoft

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Becta, the British Educational and Communications and Technology Agency, has taken its gripes against Microsoft's allegedly 'anti-competitive' licensing policies for schools and the 'interoperability impediments' in Office 2007 to the European Commission, as a contribution to the new antitrust investigation of Microsoft and its OOXML file formats - among other things - that the EC opened in January.

EDI to XML: A Practical Approach

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:45:00 EDT

While EDI transactions account for most worldwide commercial activity, XML-based alternatives are beginning to gain traction. According to Forrester Research, stateful XML, stateless XML, and even flat file exchanges are all projected to grow at a faster rate than EDI over the next few years. The firm predicts stateful XML transactions will be required for a growing number of B2B process-oriented transactions and are projected to exceed the growth of EDI transactions over the next five years.

JustSystems Contributes Key XBRL Rendering Technology to Financial Community

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:30:00 EDT

JustSystems announced that it is contributing intellectual property rights for its invention of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) rendering technologies to XBRL International, the standards body responsible for the oversight of the XBRL specification. The invention, known as the 'formatting linkbase,' provides enabling technology for viewing XBRL data in financial and other business applications.

JustSystems Launches Campaign for XBRL Success

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:15:00 EDT

JustSystems announced its campaign to help organizations adopt XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), the XML-based standard for communicating financial and business information. In related news, JustSystems also announced that it has contributed intellectual property rights of the 'formatting linkbase,' a key JustSystems innovation that enables formatted rendering of XBRL information.

Word Documents Generated By the Current Version of Office 2007 Don't Conform to ISO/IEC 29500

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:15:00 EDT

Word documents generated by the current version of Office 2007 don't conform to ISO/IEC 29500, the OOXML file format draft standard Microsoft moved heaven and earth to get ISO to accept. At least that's what Alex Brown, the guy in change of the ISO group that's supposed to maintain OOXML.

Benefitfocus Selects DataDirect XML Converters

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:45:00 EDT

DataDirect announced Benefitfocus is using DataDirect XML Converters to automatically transform thousands of X12 compliant EDI documents from insurance carriers to XML for accelerated processing. DataDirect XML Converters provide bi-directional, highly-scalable software that streams EDI, flat files or other legacy data formats as XML and back, making data accessible to any application in the enterprise. The high-performance Java and .NET components support past and current X12 and HL7 EDI standards and provide a highly scalable streaming architecture to exceed the most demanding enterprise system requirements.

ISO Becomes OOXML's Steward

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:45:00 EDT

Against the backdrop of a noisy protest march through downtown Oslo Wednesday by 60 Norwegian software experts - including Opera CTO Haakon Wium Lie - objecting to Norway's Yes vote for Open XML standardization by the International Standards Organization, ISO took control of the controversial Microsoft file format, setting up three committees to handle it from here on out.

JustSystems Named "Cool Vendor" by Gartner

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:30:00 EDT

JustSystems was included in the list of 'Cool Vendors' in the 'Cool Vendors in Content Management, 2008' report by Gartner. The report was authored by Toby Bell, Mark R. Gilbert, and Rita E. Knox. According to Gartner, 'Cool vendors in content management are establishing new directions for established technologies which can benefit professionals engaged in valuable content-focused business processes. Making their lives simpler, and the content itself smarter, yields extremely rewarding results.'

JustSystems Champions "The Document as the Application"

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:00:00 EDT

JustSystems announced the 'document as the application,' the company's vision for the future of information creation, collaboration, and delivery. JustSystems' 'document-as-application' approach blurs the line between traditional documents, which provide rich context, persistence and portability; and business applications, which provide live data and an interactive user experience. The result is a dynamic document that comes to life with diverse and distributed information sources that are always up to date.

Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:15:00 EDT

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

Microsoft Pushes OOXML Over the Top

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:45:00 EDT

Microsoft has gotten enough votes to make its Open Office XML file format (OOXML), the default file format in Office 2007, an ISO standard, theoretically saving Office from being run out of town by a lot of ODF-smitten government agencies. There have been, as everyone must know by now, myriad accusations of chicanery, undo pressure, committee-stacking, ballot box-stuffing and other voting irregularities - on both sides of the aisle actually - Microsoft points an accusing finger at IBM, an ODF supporter, as Sun did during the aborted Java standards process for poisoning wells - and right after the results were in CNET reported that the allegations roused the European Commission - which, let's face it, has what can only be described as a hard on for Microsoft - to investigate.

Web 2.0 Is Fundamentally About Empowering People

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:00:00 EDT

'Unlocking content to be remixed into new business value' is the driver of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, says Rod Smith, IBM VP of Emerging Internet Technologies, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan on the occasion of IBM's release of a new technology created by IBM researchers, codenamed 'SMash' - short for Secure Mashup.

Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

LogiXML Adds ETL Data Integration to Web-Based Business Intelligence Product Line

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:30:00 EDT

LogiXML announced the availability of the new Logi ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) product designed to support integration of enterprise data into a consistent format to support a variety of corporate applications. The new Logi ETL product is a Web-based data integration application that can transfer data from diverse sources to multiple destinations directly, be invoked by predefined processes, including scheduling, or be triggered by application actions. Although Logi ETL is part of Logi Unified BI Platform, the product can be used independently as well.

ANA Selects JustSystems' Dynamic Docs for Boeing 787 Dreamliners

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:00:00 EDT

JustSystems announced that All Nippon Airways ('ANA') has adopted JustSystems' dynamic document vision and the xfy document-centric composite application platform as the foundation of its new system for creating, editing, and managing aircraft rulebooks and operation manuals.

Layer 7 Technologies and Novell Team to Provide Identity Driven Security for XML Web Services

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:15:00 EDT

Layer 7 Technologies announced a go-to-market partnership with Novell to secure programmatic Web services, leveraging Novell eDirectory and Novell Access Manager identity solutions. Under the terms of the agreement Layer 7 will become a preferred partner joining Novell's identity and security management partner ecosystem to help address Web services security. End-users will benefit from an integrated best of breed approach to Web and Web services security.

iPhone Developer Summit

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:45:00 EDT

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the iPhone SDK, including discussion of the App Store, Apple's planned distribution channel for SDK applications. Keep in mind that the contents of the SDK and experiences while using it are covered under NDA, so be prepared for me to talk in generics and leave out specific details that might be covered by the NDA. I am planning on providing a quick introduction to Objective-C for those attendees who may have never seen it and might be worried that it will be difficult to code in (it isn't!).

Siemens PLM Software to Makeover Manufacturing

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Documents are a key part of manufacturing processes, from requirements and specifications, to bills, parts lists, marketing materials and technical maintenance manuals. However, documents typically provide static views of a dynamic business. In turn, documents can introduce design, development and maintenance delays, mistakes, rework costs and compliance issues that can rapidly erode profit margins, customer loyalty and time-to-market advantages.

TopQuadrant Software Imports Email MetaData into Enterprise-Class Semantic Applications

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:45:00 EDT

TopQuadrant announced that TopBraid Composer and TopBraid Live now include a Semantic email importer. This technology enables organizations to develop Semantic applications that combine email metadata with other data sources, which can be searched and analyzed. This allows organizations to answer business questions using a combination of data from email, relational databases, spreadsheets, XML, UML, RSS/Atom and Semantic data imported from GRDDL, RDFa, RDF triple stores, SPARQL endpoints.

The Grand Convergence: Web + RIA + Widgets + Client/Server

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:30:00 EDT

For the past ten years application developers have been stuck with only two desktop client choices. Traditionally, they can choose either a very thin Web-client technology implemented in HTML and CSS, or a very heavyweight thick client experience implemented using traditional client/server (C/S) technologies (e.g. Java Swing, MFC). It wasn't until the introduction of RIA technologies (e.g. AJAX, Adobe Flex, Curl, and Silverlight) and widget engines (e.g. Yahoo! Widgets and Google Gadgets) that we were given more options.

Drupal Creator Forms Company

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Acquia has yet to price its maintenance and support subscriptions - there should be a variety of SLAs - but they're supposed to include an electronic update notification system code named Spokes for updates that have been reviewed for security and compatibility and are supported by Acquia. Acquia is currently at 12 people, expecting to be 25 by the end of the year. Its Series A money comes from Northbridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. According to Dries' blog, Drupal 7 should offer the ability to create, share and mashup managed content, letting Drupal be a data repository accessed by tools and web sites across the network.