Industry Leaders Publish Ground-breaking XML Standard for E-commerce and Directories
PORTSMOUTH, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 1999--
Bowstreet, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Sun-Netscape submit Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) 1.0 to industry standards bodies
Bowstreet, the leader in mass customization of business-to-business e-commerce, today delivered a universal directory service language for the Internet to three key Internet standards bodies. This language, called Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), represents an e-commerce milestone and is supported by the collective efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. By helping establish directories as the infrastructure for
e-commerce applications, DSML enables easy sharing of valuable business data and processes within and across company boundaries.
DSML will also accelerate the industry shift toward business-to-business applications built on Web services, modular units of software functionality located anywhere on the Internet. DSML and Web services will enable companies to develop dynamic e-commerce Web sites that can uniquely meet the needs of a company's customers and business partners.
The DSML 1.0 specification submission enables different vendors' directory services to work together more easily by describing their contents - including data about people and computing resources - in the Internet's lingua franca for commerce, XML. Particularly convenient for e-commerce applications, XML is the emerging standard for business-to-business data interchange. Today's announcement keeps the working group's July 12 promise to reach consensus on a draft standard this year.
"XML enables the application-level interoperability so necessary to global electronic commerce, so developers are embracing it whole-heartedly," said Jamie Lewis, CEO and research chair of The Burton Group. "Directories are an equally important part of the e-business infrastructure,
and DSML gives developers a simple and convenient way of directory-enabling their XML-based applications, allowing them to leverage the information and power the directory
provides. That's a win for developers and makes building directory-enabled applications easier."
End users will also benefit from DSML as Web-based applications discover and act upon directory-resident data related to users' roles, preferences, affiliations and available computing resources.
Standards bodies to consider DSML
The six companies today turned over the DSML 1.0 specification draft to OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, a nonprofit, international consortium considered the world's leading independent organization for the standardization of XML applications in e-commerce.
"DSML, as an extension of XML, is a vital building block of future Internet applications and will help make the directory key to all e-business applications," said Dave Shirk, vice president of product marketing, Novell, Inc. "With its DirXML and NDS eDirectory products, Novell is leading the industry in incorporating the DSML standard to vastly increase the value of directories and thus improving the e-commerce and e-business experiences."
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Patiently waiting for the Directory Dam to burst. The pressure is getting exceedingly high. GO!! |
