Adobe Bolsters Its XML Infrastructure

However, Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said he sees opportunities in this deal beyond ebXML for Adobe. “While the ebXML stuff is interesting, I don’t think Adobe is acquiring the company for those assets–mainly because ebXML still lacks significant traction and is losing ground to Web services-based means for B2B transactions,” Schmelzer said. “Rather, Yellow Dragon has some significant assets in the B2B messaging and reliable document exchange areas, which could definitely benefit Adobe as it seeks to make Acrobat and the PDF a robust contender for the rich client-of-choice for things like forms and other user interaction with back-end systems.

“Adobe is definitely looking to change the landscape for the emerging e-forms market, and will be increasingly stronger in the market. In fact, the only other strong contender for rich, XML-based electronic forms is Microsoft’s new InfoPath product, and that product is barely out of the gate from an adoption perspective.”

Read more at: eWeek

Adobe Purchase Seen Protecting PDF Position

But ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said he doesn’t see the ebXML assets as the crown jewels of Yellow Dragon — which is actually an outgrowth of ebXML prioneer XML Global. Schmelzer said this is because ebXML lacks significant traction and is losing ground to Web Services-based B2B transactions.

“Rather, Yellow Dragon has some significant assets in the B2B messaging and reliable document exchange areas, which could definitely benefit Adobe as it seeks to make Acrobat and the PDF a robust contender for the rich client-of-choice for things like forms and other user interaction with back-end systems,” Schmelzer told internetnews.com.

“Adobe is definitely looking to change the landscape for the emerging e-Forms market, and will be an increasingly stronger in the market,” Schmelzer added. “In fact, the only other strong contender for rich, XML-based electronic forms is Microsoft’s new InfoPath product, and that product is barely out of the gate from an adoption perspective.”

Read more at: Internetnews.com

XML Data Store Multi-Client Study

While much has been written about XML data storage, none of the research to date has focused on the key questions:

• What are the different needs for XML data storage?
• ow do those needs translate into different storage requirements?
• How are various vendor solutions best suited to meet these different needs?

In attempting to understand the answers to the above questions, ZapThink realized that there was no single answer for any of these key questions. In fact, it seems that the various requirements for XML data storage pull end-user customers in different directions when they are deciding how to implement XML storage requirements. As such, this study seeks to do what no other study before it has done: show that XML data storage is not a distinct market segment, but instead a functionality requirement for applications that require XML storage in order to achieve their overall system objectives.

Local firm lands cash in a difficult market

Ronald Schmelzer comments on the XML Global $2 Million round of financing. Available for Subscribers Only.

Read more at: Business in Vancouver

XML in the Content Lifecycle

The process of creating content — information meant for human consumption — is almost always extremely effort-intensive. People must spend time organizing information prior to creation, constructing the content, and laying out the information so that it is easily read. With so much time, cost, and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible. Furthermore, content-oriented processes involve a complex set of interactions that progress in a “Content Lifecycle” consisting of five major stages: content creation, management, publishing, syndication, and protection. Each of these phases requires different technologies, processes, and resources.

By rearchitecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised to us by reusable and agile content. But first, we need to move from ad-hoc content creation to content componentization, and then to content services. XML and Web Services are the key to this transition that can help organizations maximize the value of their content.

XML Proxies

As the use and proliferation of XML and Web Services spreads throughout the corporate IT environment, so too will the demands on optimizing the performance of the XML data and applying enterprise-wide XML policies. Increasingly organizations are seeking to find solutions that can transparently monitor XML traffic on the network and apply business rules or corporate IT policies such as security, routing, performance, management, transformation, or end-point connection provisioning. Enterprises will implement XML Proxies, which can be either hardware Network Appliances,software Proxies, or software Firewalls, as a transparent layer over current LAN and WAN traffic, monitoring and acting on XML data as dictated by pre-configured rules.

XML Proxies

As the use and proliferation of XML and Web Services spreads throughout the corporate IT environment, so too will the demands on optimizing the performance of the XML data and applying enterprise-wide XML policies. Increasingly organizations are seeking to find solutions that can transparently monitor XML traffic on the network and apply business rules or corporate IT policies such as security, routing, performance, management, transformation, or end-point connection provisioning. Enterprises will implement XML Proxies, which can be either hardware Network Appliances,software Proxies, or software Firewalls, as a transparent layer over current LAN and WAN traffic, monitoring and acting on XML data as dictated by pre-configured rules.

ZapNote: B-Bop

The only true solutions for enterprise-wide XML data storage and retrieval are XML-enabled RDBMS and Native XML Data Store (NXD) approaches. The challenge with XML-enabled RDBMS is that they are not very well suited to highly extensible and flexible documents, while the challenge with NXDs is that they are unproven technologies with very small user bases. However, there is another option that is a sort of "middle ground": the use of an interpretive middle layer over standard RDBMS systems that offers schema-independent, "native" XML data storage. In this vein, B-Bop offers their Xfinity Server as a way of providing the features of Native XML storage while utilizing existing relational storage architectures.

ZapNote: Ipedo

Ipedo has developed a proprietary, hierarchical, in-memory database engine aimed at storing XML documents "natively". The Ipedo XML Database uses memory techniques to get substantial performance gains versus some other NXD approaches. Built as an all-Java server, the Ipedo system is meant to be easily integrated with typical application server environments. Ipedo has extended XPath for search across multiple XML documents and has also included XSLT transformations within the data store itself.

ZapNote: X-Hive

The most valuable attribute of Native XML Data Stores (NXDs) is their ability to store arbitrary and highly variant XML documents. XML-enabled RDBMS systems require explicit mappings to XML documents, and by their very nature are unable to deal with XML documents that have a highly variable structure and take advantage of XML’s extensibility capabilities. X-Hive provides a solution to this problem by presenting a highly scalable NXD system that is capable of supporting a large quantity and volume of XML documents. X-Hive/DB is differentiated itself by its focus on high volume XML data storage requirements, support for advanced XML query and storage specifications, and focused support of its European customer base.