Astoria Software announced a major upgrade to its software, which enhances XML authoring for distributed workgroups, complex XML documents can be securely authored by access through the Internet.

The position() and last() XPath functions are ignored when you use them directly as XSLT function (standard, script, and extension function) arguments in XPath query expressions that are used in XSLT style sheets.

The Homeland Security Department will tweak the new Data Reference Model to create a data model for the exchange of counterterrorism data. Under Executive Order 13356, DHS data architect Michael Daconta is leading a revision of the Federal Enterprise Architecture’s 30-page DRM to share counterterrorism data while preserving individual privacy.

A letter to Sun Microsystems' COO Jonathan Schwartz by the European Commission (EC) this week may set the stage for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to adopt the Open Office XML format (also known as OO.o XML) as an ISO standard. If it does, the stamp of approval would mark the largest ever validation of Sun's work on the desktop.

eWeek Senior Writer, Darryl Taft contacted me last week and asked about how I’d feel if Microsoft dropped Avalon from the Longhorn release, and then put some of my comments in this article. He mentioned that he had a quote from a Microsoft exec inferring that it may happen, but I didn’t realize that it was a quote from Soma Somasegar. My full comment was:

The XML Editor of Visual Studio 2005 shows the elements that are allowed according to the XML Schema. The editor not only shows the elements and attributes that are possible where the cursor is positioned, it also shows some documentation about the elements and attributes.

The Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) and Clasma, Inc., announced today plans for the second annual XML Symposium to be held February 9, 2005, in conjunction with the world's largest HVAC/R event, AHR Expo at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. In a non-technical, high-level manner, the 2005 XML Symposium will communicate to the HVAC community the significant role XML and Web Services continue to play in this industry. As the industry witnesses further evidence of IT convergence, these technologies have become the most vital enabling technology for the future of integrated and intelligent buildings. XML and Web Services technologies are primarily utilized in the IT industry as well as many other industry groups that desire to leverage the Internet as a connectivity and automation vehicle.

Bret Freeman, sales for Vasont Systems in Emigsville, and Kay Ethier, founder of Bright Path Solutions, will co-present the “XML Authoring/Editing and Content Management of Legislative and Regulatory Documents” forum at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 21 at the Key Bridge Marriott in Washington, D.C. The forum is hosted by the Federal Government XML Working Group and the Washington, D.C. Area XML Users Group.

Roger Costello recently started a discussion thread on the XML-DEV mailing list about the common misconceptions people have about XML document validation and schemas. He recently summarized the discussion thread in his post Fallacies of Validation, version #3.

Intuit Inc.'s (Nasdaq:INTU - News) Distribution Management Solutions division today announced the release of Eclipse Business Connect XML. The new technology will benefit wholesale distributors by extending their reach to customers and vendors via a secure, online channel, enabling them to automatically process more inter-company transactions and improve customer satisfaction and partner relations.

As EContent readers, you likely develop, manage or deliver content. In doing so, increasingly you encounter the three-letter acronym XML, short for "eXtensible Markup Language." This is true whether your content is only text, graphics, streaming media, voice, or any combination thereof. Read resumes today and you're likely to see claims of XML skills, but when you press candidates to learn what they mean, most inadvertently cite "data-centric" XML experience—the use of XML to interchange information between systems, often for ecommerce or Web applications. One way to determine if candidates are familiar with XML for content is to ask how they viewed or developed XML models. If you get a blank stare or a response like "Notepad," the candidate is probably familiar only with data-centric XML, if that. The use of data-centric XML has in fact taken the software world by storm but is only one of the originally intended uses of XML. Content-centric XML—or simply "XML" in the rest of this column—is likely to be of more interest to you, and such XML requires conformance to a document model expressed as a document type definition (DTD) or, increasingly, as an XML schema. Schemas can express and enforce far richer models, like "date," which DTDs express only as text.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. With the XML-based SSML language, content authors can generate synthetic speech on the Web, controlling pronunciation, volume, pitch and rate. "SSML builds on the work of the pioneers in speech synthesis to provide application developers with a powerful and flexible means to deliver a high quality mix of synthetic and pre-recorded speech as part of interactive voice response services," said Dave Raggett (W3C/Canon). Read the press release, testimonials and implementation report and visit the Voice Browser home page.

Training videos are now available to help you learn about programming for Visual Basic, .NET and XML as well as prepare you for Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD.NET) certification.

Intuit Inc.'s (Nasdaq:INTU) Distribution Management Solutions division today announced the release of Eclipse Business Connect XML. The new technology will benefit wholesale distributors by extending their reach to customers and vendors via a secure, online channel, enabling them to automatically process more inter-company transactions and improve customer satisfaction and partner relations.

A communique from Tom Bradford reports on the recent production release of dbXML Version 2.0 by the dbXML Group. dbXML is a Native XML Database "capable of storing and indexing collections of XML documents in both native and mapped forms for highly efficient querying, transformation, and retrieval. In addition to these capabilities, the server may also be extended to provide business logic in the form of scripts, classes and triggers."

Tim O'Reilly has written and spoken often on what he coins “The Open Source Paradigm Shift”. I've heard Tim give this speech a few times, and read it a few to boot. The one major point that sticks with me is that the software we “use” is no longer just on your desktop/laptop, but the software of the internet that we use everyday a la Google, eBay, Salesforce.com & Amazon to use his prime examples.

Altova, Inc. (www.altova.com), producers of Altova® XMLSPY®, the world's leading XML development environment, today announced that XMLSPY 2004 was selected as the winner in the Best XML Development Tool category of the first annual SQL Server Magazine Readers' Choice Awards.

A new standard designed to improve the management of HR metrics data has been approved by the more than 100 member organizations of the HR-XML Consortium. The standard provides an important tool for employers and HR solution providers wanting to access and integrate HR performance data from different computer systems.

The VoiceXML Forum has named Bruce Pollock, West Corporation's Director of Strategic Technology Solutions, to serve as chairman for the next year.

I have been remiss about talking about the ongoing and upcoming content on the MSDN XML Developer Center. The most interesting recent article has been Priya's Generating XML Documents from XML Schemas. In this article she provides a tool that allows you to generate sample documents that validate against a particular schema. This is very useful if you have a schema document but would like to see what a valid instance of that schema looks like. This is one of those tools I'd love to see added to the XML editor in Visual Studio. The one caveat is that her tool requires .NET Framework v2.0 beta 1 or higher to run.