(for: executives and business implementers)

Vertical Industry Initiatives
Chair: Dale Waldt, Principal, Alphaleon, Inc, USA

How and Where XML is Changing the Markets
Anthony B. Coates, Leader of XML Architecture & Design, Reuters, United Kingdom
XML has taken root in the financial world, but only the first pieces of the puzzle are in place. This paper presents an overview of the available financial XML specifications, what their scopes are, and how they relate to each other in practice. Reuters is the world's largest supplier of financial data, so this is a practical discussion of what is and is not possible at present, and what is in the pipeline going forward. XBRL, FpML, IRML, ISO15022, and others are covered.

Topic Maps in the News
Daniel Rivers-Moore, Director of New Technologies, RivCom, United Kingdom
NewsML is a powerful new XML-based standard for the management of news items in all media throughout the news lifecycle. It is a flexible standard that has built-in mechanisms for its own controlled evolution as new requirements emerge in the fast-changing environments of the News industry and modern communication technologies. Topic Maps are a general-purpose mechanism for the definition, navigation and manipulation of information objects based on the meaning of the information they contain. One of the strengths of Topic Maps is that they provide a logical overlay to a mass of information resources, and make those resources accessible and navigable on the basis of the topics they cover, and whatever relationships between those topics may be of interest. This presentation provides an overview of NewsML and Topic Maps and show how, because of their powerful synergy, these standards can combine to make a newsfeed into a knowledge engine, and a news archive into a navigable knowledge repository.

XML for the Specification of the Euronext FIX Trading Protocol
Stephane Bidoul, Project Manager, Software AG Belgium, Belgium
This paper describes the use of XML to create schemas and document the FIX messaging protocol, used for the real-time electronic exchange of securities transactions at Euronext, the first pan-european stock exchange.

(for: executives and business implementers)

Vertical Industry Case Studies
Chair: Dale Waldt, Principal, D. Waldt, Inc, USA

XML for Rail Systems Maintenance Documentation
Eric Perottet, Project Manager, Maintenance Documentation & SLI, Alstrom Transport; Laurent Vinesse, Project Manager, Eurodoc Sofilog, France
This paper describes the XML publishing chain for ALSTOM Transport, as designed by EURODOC and processed for rail systems related maintenance documentation production. It stresses the benefits of using XML as the global e-doc infrastructure for industry. This system has been successfully deployed and used for production of tramways metro and train documentation for more than one year. It demonstrates which functional requirements can be achieved, which technical choices are reasonable for the current time and evolutions expected through the use of the latest XML companion standards evolutions.

Enabling Global Steel Trading with XML
Richard Edmonds, Head of E-Commerce, Stemcor USA Inc, USA; John J. Chelsom, Managing Director, CSW Informatics Ltd, United Kingdom
Stemcor, one of the world's largest independent steel traders, has developed a new trading system using XML and web technology to allow rapid development, deployment and adoption by users in any trading location. This presentation will focus on the business drivers that led Stemcor to introduce a web-based trading system, the key role that XML plays in that system and some of the technical background of the implementation and role out to Stemcor traders worldwide. The system is implemented as a multi-tier application, using a relational database in the data tier and a high performance, pure Java application server to manage processes and sessions in the middle tiers.

Using XML in distributed real time automation processes in textile industry
Detlev Hartenstein, Dipl.-Ing., TLON GmbH, Germany
This presentation documents the use of XML core technology in different vertical stages of the supply chain and the management system of typical textile industries. There are over 10 thousand dye houses all over the world. The future market for such systems is over 10 billion dollars. The key idea is the connection of different manufacturers, their data, tools and other products using XML. The presenter shows why and how XML is the favourite interconnection technology for the textile industry of the future.

Late-breaking News Presentation

(for: executives and business implementers)

Vertical Industry Case Studies
Chair: Dale Waldt, Principal, D. Waldt, Inc, USA

XML – A P2P Technology
Michel Vulpe, CTO & Founder, i4i (Infrastructures for Information Inc.), France
Faced with continuous budget cuts and an estimated 75 per cent increase in workload over five years, for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) process improvement is critical. So the agency set its sights on conducting 80 per cent of its transactions electronically by 2003, thereby eliminating costly and time-consuming manual processing. The USPTO recognized that some electronic transactions simply replace one delivery medium for another (e-mail for fax), while others are machine processable. XML (the latter type) is clearly the infrastructure technology that supports the type of transactions the USPTO needed. However, their B2B is heavily P2P - people-to-people, none of whom have any interest in XML. The USPTO adopted a solution that is user friendly, cost-effective, deployable on a mass scale, replicable and extensible - in short a 'killer app' that requires no buy-in. This presentation will review some of the user interface considerations that went into making XML user friendly.

e-gif and Government Gateway
Paul D. Spencer, CTO, alphaXML Ltd, United Kingdom
During 2000, the UK Government issued the e-government interoperability framework (e-gif) and started work on defining standards and developing systems to promote interworking between individuals, companies and national and local Government. This is all in support of the Government statement that all services will be available electronically by 2005. This paper introduces the e-gif and the work on developing XML schema guidelines and other supporting documents. It then discusses the Government Gateway - the interface into Government. This part of the paper talks about the involvement of the various commercial and Government organizations in the project, the design decisions required for such a system, the XML standards used (including the benefits and hazards of working with W3C working drafts such as XML Schema) and the final decisions taken regarding schemas and interfaces.

After e-Commerce, Can XML Drive e-Democracy?
Peter Pappamikail, Head of Information Resources Management, European Parliament, Belgium
Lacking the business incentives and pressures of the private sector, what could be the interest in a whole range of parliaments across the world developing common XML vocabularies? This presentation will look at the origins and progress of just such a project and offer some insights on the long road to standardisation.