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IDEAlliance standards update

Conn, Paul F.
 
 Paul F.  Conn
 VP, E-Business Initiatives
  Alexandria 
 Graphic Communications Association 
 USA 
 Virginia 
Graphic Communications Association,  CTO, IDEAlliance,  100 Daingerfield Road
Alexandria  Virginia  22314 USA
Phone: +1 703–519–8173 Fax: +1 703–548–2867 email: pconn@gca.org web site: www.gca.org web site: www.idealliance.org
 Biography
 Paul Conn - Paul Conn joined GCA/IDEAlliance in 1999, bringing over twelve years of EDI and e-Business standards development experience in the petroleum and commercial aviation industries. Most recently, he was Manager, Technical Development for SPEC 2000, a global e-Commerce program used by virtually every major airline in the world for the purchase and repair of aircraft and engine spare parts.
 As Vice President, e-Business Initiatives for GCA, and CTO for IDEAlliance, Conn is responsible for multiple XML based e-Business standards development initiatives, supporting a broad spectrum of business applications and industries.
 

The work of IDEAlliance

 IDEAlliance, the International Digital Enterprise Alliance, was established in 1999 by GCA as a vendor-neutral, non-profit research and development center for both vertical and cross-industry e-Business standards development. Its mission is to foster the development of interoperability applications and systems by providing comprehensive technical, administrative, promotional, and educational support to working groups engaged in developing industry-specific applications of open information standards
 IDEAlliance is the logical next step in an evolutionary process that began over thirty years ago with the creation of GCA to introduce computer technologies to the printing and publishing industries...then through the creation of GCARI, the GCA Research Institute, as the focal point for EDI and e-Business standards development and promotion...to today, where IDEAlliance works with a broad spectrum of XML and e- Business users, vendors, and standards bodies to build, promote, and propagate the use of leading-edge e-Business technologies. IDEAlliance continues to evolve well beyond its predecessor, GCARI, in the scope and breadth of the services it offers and the industries it supports.
 The current member groups of IDEAlliance include:
 

PRISM

 PRISM, Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata, an initiative to develop a standard XML metadata vocabulary for the magazine and catalog publishing industry. There will be an immediate impact on real, revenue-based business goals in the publishing industry when this is completed. Publishers will be able to exchange content over the web using standard communication protocols such as ICE (see below). Users and managers of aggregation sites will be able to find and update content more easily and reliably, publishers will have a standard and extensible way to manage re-use of information across their own publications, and vendors will be able to incorporate support for this vocabulary into their software products to provide off-the-shelf tools.
 The companies active on the working group represent a broad mix of vendors and users, including Cahners, Conde Nast, Time Inc., DataFusion, Wavo, Quark, Getty Images, Artesia, and more. Together, this team has achieved some significant accomplishments, including an exceptionally successful interoperability demonstration at the Seybold Boston conference last February. This demonstration consisted of a rich set of scenarios including both vendors and content providers that showed just how the use of PRISM can greatly simplify and enhance the repurposing and aggregation of news, information, and entertainment. Version 1 of the PRISM specification is scheduled to be released by mid-2000.
 

ICE

 ICE, Information and Content Exchange, is a standard protocol for the server-to-server exchange of digital assets between networked partners and affiliates. Applications based on ICE enable companies to easily construct syndicated publishing networks, Web superstores, and on-line reseller channels by establishing Web site to Web site information networks.
 For example, a news and information Web site could license content from multiple news services, using ICE-enabled products to manage the exchange and updates of the information. A manufacturer could build an on-line reseller network for its products by allowing its on-line distributors to automatically integrate product and pricing information from the company's centralized Web site. And there are many other applications as well.
 The working group that developed ICE is called the ICE Authoring Group. This is a customer-driven team with broad representation from both content users and providers to ensure the viability of ICE. Members include Vignette, Adobe, Sotheby's, Kinecta, Microsoft, Wavo, What U Want, Inc., RNCi, and more. In addition, the Authoring Group works with the ICE Advisory Council, a diverse membership organization that helps the Authoring Group by evaluating changes to the protocol and providing feedback directly to the group.
 ICE version 1.0 has been published as a W3C note and can be found on the W3C web site. The Authoring Group has completed Version 1.1, which has also been submitted to the W3C. The team is also putting together a reference implementation, called RICE (Reference implementation for ICE) that will be ready for beta in the third quarter this year. This will be a set of libraries and test harnesses that software providers can plug into their products to provide ICE capabilities.
 

CPExchange Network

 The CPExchange Network (Customer Profile Exchange) is a privacy-enabled, XML-based standard for the exchange of customer profile information among enterprise applications and partners. CPExchange (formerly CPEX) gives organizations a way to share a common image of the customer across business units like sales, customer support and order management. This can include the customers' identities, behaviors and needs. It can also be used to provide the same benefits to an entire supply chain.
 A key component of CPExchange protocol is a rich set of privacy safeguards that allow the customers themselves to specify the degree of privacy that should be applied to their data. From then on, these protections travel with the data to ensure that the customers' needs are met.
 Members of the CPExchange Network enjoy a variety of benefits, not the least of which is the opportunity to review drafts of the specification as it's being developed and to provide feedback directly to the CPExchange Working Group. There are currently over 50 member organizations of the CPExchange Network, including more than 30 Working Group members.
 The CPExchange Working Group has completed its data model and compiled a rich set of use case scenarios that is driving the requirements for the specification. The first release of the CPExchange specification is scheduled for release this summer.
 

Topic Maps

 Topic Maps are documents that describe what an information set is about, by formally declaring topics, and by linking the relevant parts of the information set to the appropriate topics. It's an international standard for organizing and providing access to large information sets.
 The original idea for the application of HyTime that we today know as Topic Maps was developed by a working group of the GCA's Research Institute, known today as IDEAlliance. Topic Maps moved from GCARI to the ISO arena and last year was released as an official International Standard. All along the way, GCA and now IDEAlliance have supported the activity through tutorials, conferences, and technology demonstrations.
 Topicmaps.org, also known as XTM (XML Topic Maps) is a recent IDEAlliance initiative to apply the same concepts to the Web. Today's Web is just a maze of one-to-one, static links. The topicmaps.org specification will show how to create organized, indexed hubs of information for the Web. XTM will provide a way to specify the information navigation in a formal way. It enables one to many or many to many links.
 

ISO 12083

 IDEAlliance is also the host organization for the ISO 12083 Working Group. This specification provides additional flexibility to support the publication of scholarly documents. The working group is currently revising the standard to migrate from an SGML platform to XML.
 

IDEA-ICC

 Last, but certainly not least, IDEAlliance is the host for the Independent Consultants Cooperative (IDEA-ICC). This is a group of independent experts in SGML, XML, the Internet, and E-Business. They bring a broad variety of specialties to IDEAlliance and its member organizations. They are a perfect fit with IDEAlliance's focus on user-driven standards because they have a such a long and proven track record in providing expert services to users in a variety of industries, and they bring their vast and diverse knowledge and experience to bear for the benefit of IDEAlliance member organizations.
 

Summary

 In just a few short months since its formal launch at GCA's XML '99 conference in Philadelphia, IDEAlliance has established itself as a leader in the development of open interoperability and structured information standards. IDEAlliance's success is due, in no small way, to its credibility as an open-process, vendor neutral, user-driven organization. This, combined with a long history of leadership and expertise through IDEAlliance's parent, GCA, and it's predecessor, GCARI, ensure that IDEAlliance will be able to continue to meet the changing needs of the e-Business community.
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