XML Asia/Pacific 2001 A Success!

The XML Asia Pacific conference was held again this year at Sydney's Hilton Hotel. Amazingly, attendance was very high and the buzz was as energetic as ever. This year, the Asia/Pacific conference offering was split into two separate events, each with a different focus. Open Publish, which was held earlier in the year in July, concentrated on XML and other technologies and standards in the publishing industry. XML Asia Pacific held this November, on the other hand, focused on markup as an integration tool and an electronic commerce enabling technology.

Perhaps the most talked about issue at this year's conference was Web services: the delegation of niche activities to modular, Web-delivered applications. Web services promise a network of business processes that can be invoked by other applications or services when required. Microsoft’s Passport service delivered with Windows XP, for example, offers a secure authentication function exported on the Web. Thus another Web service may delegate its user-authentication process to Passport rather than re-invent the service itself. There is nothing entirely new to the process of specialist delegation in business but, oddly, systems technology often lags behind what we take for granted in the physical world.

This year’s conference also presented some more theoretical concepts such as Topic Maps that are finding their maturity in practical applications and an increasing range of financial implementations such as XBRL, ebXML and LIXI.

This year's conference featured a special track on metadata and syndication track, were of interest to anyone grappling with the ubiquitous need for content management across and within enterprises.  The track began with a welcome by the track chair Linda Burman.  Linda was the founder of the PRISM (Publishers Requirement for Industry Standard Metadata) Working Group and actively participates in the marketing activities for the ICE Authoring Group.  Linda addressed why metadata and syndication are partner standards for the publishing marketplace.Next on the program was Ron Daniel from Interwoven.  Ron is the current chair for the PRISM working group.  He introduced the concept of metadata and provided an overview of the PRISM metadata specification. Andrew Wilson from the Australian National Archives discussed the AGLS metadata schemem its purpose, elements, the current status of this metadata project. Alok Srivastava from Oracle introduced the idea of syndication.  He explained why Oracle believes syndication is critical to its customers and discussed why Oracle has chosen to implement the ICE syndication protocol within Oracle's new 9i product line.  Other speakers included David Leland, Renato Iannella from IPR Systems, and Chuck Meyers from Adobe Systems.

XML Asia/Pacific is jointly presented by Allette Systems and IDEAlliance.  This year in Sydney, IDEAlliance hosted a breakfast as a kickoff for a new Asia/Pacific IDEAlliance Network.  The mission of IDEAlliance is to advance user-driven, cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes by developing standards, fostering business alliances, and identifying best practices.   The goal of the new Asia/Pacific Network to facilitate the development of a close-knit network within that geographical region to better meet the IDEAlliance mission.  IDEAlliance will host an Asia/Pacific only portion of the website, will make contacts of all within the network available as resources to the network membership, and host special IDEAlliance Asia/Pacific meetings throughout the year.  Anyone interested in Asia/Pacific membership should contact Shelly Marshall.

Allette Systems is also working with IDEAlliance to host a series of new Open Publish Conferences that focus on information technologies for publishing. Open Publish 2002 will be held in Seattle in March, Open Publish Singapore makes it debut in May and the second Open Publish Australia will be held in July 2002 in Sydney.

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