Sun Ships Java XML Pack

Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday rolled out a new Java XML Pack, a toolkit for developers that provides XML and Web services technologies for the Java platform.

Suns Java XML Pack is available immediately via download from its Web site. Sun officials said the download, available at http://java.sun.com/xml/downloads/javaxmlpack.html, bundles key industry XML and Web services standards, giving Java developers the technologies they need to quickly and efficiently build Web services.

For Web services developers, XML provides a standard for integration and service interchange, while Java provides a universal logic platform for building new business and consumer services that run across multiple operating environments.

Officials with the Palo Alto, Calif., company said the Java XML Pack will be refreshed quarterly to allow for the inclusion of all current publicly available releases of Java APIs and standards for XML and Web services, including processing, messaging, data binding and remote procedure calls, as well as services such as registration, description and discovery.

By downloading the Java XML Pack, developers can update the Web services support in their existing Java software. And Sun officials said major tools vendors have incorporated the Java XML Pack into their development tools.

Meanwhile, in other XML-related news, the OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) Technical Committee announced Monday that it has accepted the submission of CRML (Customer Relationships Markup Language), the XML vocabulary specification that defines customer relationships.

The CRML specification is an XML dialect initially developed by MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd., in Sydney, Australia. CRML provides an open, application- and vendor-independent method for describing any type of customer relationship, the standards group said.

Under the CRML standard, a customer can be a person or an organization. And CRML accommodates complex customer relationships including person-to-person, person-to-business and business-to-business.

"CRML extends the capabilities of the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee beyond standardizing the description of a customers characteristics to include their business and personal relationships. By enabling the capture of non-address customer data, such as communication devices, e-mail, personal details, etc., CRML may enhance the value of ebXML as a robust standard," said Marcus Goncalves, chief technology officer of Virtual Access Networks Inc., in Lawrence, Mass.

By: Darryl K. Taft

2001-12-17

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Sun-Ships-Java-XML-Pack/