Industry Leaders Donate Technology to Provide Open Source Tools for XML
For Immediate Release --
Contact:
ZOT Group
Sally Khudairi
<sk@zotgroup.com>
+1.617.818.0177
http://www.apache.org/ -- 9 November, 1999 -- The Apache Software
Foundation, in collaboration with Bowstreet, DataChannel, Exoffice, IBM,
Lotus Development Corporation and Sun Microsystems, today announced the
formation of the xml.apache.org Project in response to the overwhelming
demand for Open Source XML and XSL tools triggered by the rapid adoption of
XML.
"XML has become increasingly crucial throughout the software industry, as
well as the Open Source community, as a nonproprietary method for storing
and exchanging complex data," said Brian Behlendorf, President of the Apache
Software Foundation and Founder of Collab.Net. "Building a solid reference
suite of applications and libraries for managing XML will help ensure
consistancy of implementation between free and commercial software, and
reassure developers that XML is a reliable choice for building applications
upon."
xml.apache.org will advance the development and deployment of XML and XSL
standards, and demonstrate the power of these technologies on both Web
server- and client-side environments. In addition, xml.apache.org will
provide a robust set of XML- and XSL-related libraries and applications
within an industry-wide, peer-based Open Source development process.
The xml.apache.org Project is being bootstrapped with technology donations
from several vendors and Open Source XML developers, and will be maintained
by the Project team. The donated technologies include:
- XML4J and XML4C Parsers from IBM -- parsers read and validate XML
documents, and are essential components in XML-based solutions. IBM's parser
technologies have been downloaded over 100,000 times and are being widely
used by many customers and partners. The XML4J parser was rated by Java
Report earlier this year as outstanding, and is considered industry-wide as
one of the best performing and stable available parsers.
- JavaTM Project X and XHTML Parser from Sun Microsystems -- a high
performance and fully conformant XML parser with optional validation, Java
Project X provides essential functionality for reading, manipulating and
generating XML text. Written entirely in the Java platform, Java Project X
offers complete support of SAX 1.0, DOM Level 1 Core, and XML Namespaces.
XTHML Parser is an experimental parser for reading and writing XHTML, the
Extensible HyperText Markup Language, based on the "Swing" HTML parser in
the Java Foundation Classes. XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0
and is currently a W3C Working Draft.
- LotusXSL, from Lotus Development Corporation -- an XSLT processor that
accepts and interprets
the new W3C XPath and XSL transformation language recommendations. These
are used to specify general transformations on XML documents. These
transformations map XML documents into either other XML documents or into
documents in other formats such as HTML. The LotusXSL processor is already
shipping in major commercial products from IBM and other vendors. It
includes such advanced facilities as XLocators, a pluggable interface for
accessing a broad variety of data sources including JDBC/ODBC databases.
- XPages, from DataChannel -- an XML application markup language for quickly
building data-driven, cross-platform Web applications that integrate
disparate data sources. An XPage application is defined by an XML file that
aggregates multiple data sources, makes that data URL addressable and
defines custom methods to access that data. The DataChannel submission
includes Java code for a servlet based engine.
- FOP, from James Tauber, now with Bowstreet -- the world's first
implementation of XSL for print use. FOP is a XSL formatter originally
designed for PDF, with plans for expansion to accommodate other output
formats as well. In development for more than one year, FOP has been
released as open source for the past six months. FOP (used in conjunction
with an XSLT implementation) allows the formatting of XML documents for
print, enabling XML-based print publishing using entirely open standards.
- Cocoon, from Stefano Mazzocchi and the Java-Apache community -- the 100%
pure java XML publishing framework that brings a whole new world of
abstraction and ease to consolidated Web
site management and publishing. Its three-layer creation and processing
model is the first application that will benefit from the core building
projects released in the XML project.
- OpenXML, from Exoffice and Assaf Arkin -- OpenXML is an open source, pure
Java, fully featured framework for XML-based applications. It supports the
DOM and SAX APIs, offers printers for generating XML/HTML/XHTML, and
integrates a support for WML.
- XSL:P, from Exoffice and Keith Visco -- a free, open source XSL processor
written in Java. Currently the processor implements the XSLT WD 1.0 19990421
working draft. The processor is DOM based and works with all the major DOM
compliant XML parsers.
xml.apache. org will name its parser technology Xerces, which will be based
on IBM's XML4J and XML4C technologies. The next version will incorporate the
best features on Sun's parser and other contributions from the open source
community.
The launch of xml.apache.org has received praise and support from key
industry players:
"Exoffice, through the development of its Enterprise software platform and
the ExoLab Portal
[www.exolab.org], is a strong supporter of Open Source. For this reason, we
are very excited about contributing to this outstanding effort led by the
Apache Software Foundation."
-- Ismael Ghalimi, CEO, Exoffice
"IBM is a strong believer in open standards computing and sees the formation
of xml.apache.org as another important step in adoption of the XML standard.
We are pleased to contribute the parser technology that we deliver in our
products to the broader development community via Apache."
-- Marie Wieck, Director of XML Technology, IBM
"Apache was at the heart of the first Web revolution and is continuing its
open standards leadership with the formation of the xml.apache.org Project.
This move to provide high quality Open Source XML tools is the beginning of
the next major wave in the evolution of the Web."
-- Eliot Kimber, Senior Consulting Engineer, Isogen International, a
DataChannel Company
"As part of Sun's commitment to XML and industry-developed standards, Sun
has committed to donate its experimental XML technologies to the
xml.apache.org project at Apache. Based on Sun's successful collaboration
with Apache on the Tomcat project [jakarta.apache.org], Sun is confident
that, through the Apache process, the best-of-breed parser will result from
the technologies donated by Sun and other companies."
-- Nancy Lee, Senior Product Manager, XML in the Java Platform, Sun
Microsystems, Inc.
"XML is central to the future of the Web. Apache is central to the Web
today - among other things, I'm betting my new startup on XML and the Apache
server - and the two need to work well together. Today's announcement makes
it clear that this won't be a problem. The combination of Apache and XML is
going to hasten the day when proprietary system software and proprietary
data formats are both regarded as quaint antiquities."
-- Tim Bray, co-editor of the W3C XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML
Recommendations
The Project code, along with developer participation guidelines, are now
available at http://xml.apache.org/
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For more information on the Apache Software Foundation, please see
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