OnDisplay to offer free XML server software

By Ellen Messmer
Network World, 02/02/00

OnDisplay, which markets a line of business-to-business commerce servers, next month plans to offer free XML server software. The idea is to give users a chance to experiment with XML before investing in costly e-commerce software.

XML Connect will be available March 30 for free download at www.ondisplay.com, says Peter Buzzard, vice president of marketing. This server software can be used with Web servers running on Windows NT or Solaris. And it will allow trading partners to exchange XML-based documents.

"The key problem with XML is adoption," Buzzard says. He says he hopes the free XML software from OnDisplay will spur user interest in XML, a format-neutral document technology based on semantic markup "tags" around content to identify meaning.

The World Wide Web Consortium began to formalize XML standards about two years ago. XML is widely seen as having advantages over HTML, the basis for Web pages today.

For instance, XML semantic tags make it easier to search for document content and convert it to other formats. In addition, XML is seen as useful for e-commerce because purchase order or shipping information can be easily identified and sent between applications.

This kind of machine-to-machine processing is used by a much older technology called electronic data interchange, which has evolved over decades with the U.S. ANSI transaction sets and the international U.N.-approved EDI for Administration, Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT) transactions.

Though EDI is seen as less flexible that XML, particularly for use on the Web, EDI technologies remains widely used, mostly by large companies subscribing to EDI value-added networks.

There's a lot of expectation by the software industry that EDI will gradually give way to XML. However, that process has been slower than many XML enthusiasts would like.

OnDisplay points out that a lot of companies are running pilot projects with XML. "With the free XML Connect software we'll have, these companies can run an XML pilot with a handful of their trading partners," Buzzard says. "They can validate the return on investment in using XML."

The free XML Connect software will only be able to do one basic task: recognize and store an XML document sent via HTTP to another Web server using XML Connect.

"XML Connect will know the IP address of where it's supposed to send information, and it will specify that the information did arrive," Buzzard says. "You can put it in a message queue or write the document to a database using Open Database Connectivity."

OnDisplay hopes that once corporate users are convinced about the value of XML, they'll shop around for the type of XML-capable servers and repositories that OnDisplay sells. These OnDisplay products, which start at a hefty $100,000, convert XML documents into other formats and ensure that data is transmitted to back-end applications.