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The customers included here are using XML and Visual Studio to build Web and Enterprise applications. For each customer there is a brief scenario and quote highlighting why and how they used XML.
FreeEDGAR's mission is to deliver timely and in-depth financial information to its customers. This information is delivered via a service based on real-time filings from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. FreeEDGAR's customers must be able to use the service on multiple platforms, such as Microsoft Windows NT and UNIX, independent of any database technology. They also need to query and access the structured information in an open manner to create products ranging from Web sites to desktop applications to server applications that create proprietary databases from this data service.
For us, XML is the perfect solution and core to achieving our mission. XML gives us the platform-independent and extensible solution we need. It also provides a way to extend our data service's capabilities while maintaining backward compatibility.
Creating an XML-based delivery service to achieve these objectives was very simple. We had a processing server, and we were able to build our XML service on top of it. Today, the XML we send out is generated from ISAPI DLLs used to convert our ActiveX objects that are serialized using MFC and responses from SQL queries. To generate Web pages, we use the MSXML DLL in conjunction with some XSL stylesheets that we authored to convert the XML into HTML. We use MSXML inside of a Web page written with Visual InterDev and Visual Basic components. In practice we've found this approach saves a lot of code over traditional database queries and reduces our code maintenance as our back end changes. It also makes for much more readable code; it is a lot easier to read and comprehend XSL rules than procedural code.
--Steve Gold, Vice President of Marketing, FreeEDGAR.com, Inc
Contextual shopping is one of AltaVista's key features in bringing relevant results to users and Web-based businesses through the premier AltaVista new media and commerce network. Users who conduct keyword searches through AltaVista Search receive Web results from the vast AltaVista index, complemented by highly relevant product offers available from Shopping.com. For example, the keyword "DVD player" on AltaVista Search will return Web search results along with relevant DVD players and electronics merchandise available for purchase from Shopping.com.
Working on AltaVista's Shopping.com, Magenic Technologies was faced with the need to transfer data between two incompatible operating systems, and we needed to do it quickly. We decided to use XML because its syntax was simple enough to implement quickly, yet rich enough to allow us to pseudo-normalize our data-a feature that drastically reduced the overall size, and subsequent transfer time, of the data file. Outputting XML with our SQL stored procedures was a snap. We were able to easily and quickly output an XML file that was just as easily read and interpreted by a PERL script on the other side of the pipeline. XML thus transformed a major hurdle in our overall systems architecture to a trivial exercise allowing us to concentrate on the more esoteric aspects of the design.
--Michael Lester, Program Manager, Magenic Technologies
In order to provide its online store with a faster, more stable, and scalable platform, MountainZone.com used XML technology, allowing for last-second binding of presentation and content. MountainZone.com is marrying XML data with formatting information that delivers information much more quickly to the user's browser than with HTML, which mixes content and presentation.
Presenting our catalog in XML keeps our content and presentation entirely separate. This allows us to change the look and feel of the site on the fly merely by updating one XSL stylesheet. More importantly, it allows for the possibility of passing pure XML down to IE5 clients, and doing the binding with the stylesheet on the client itself. This has significant performance and feature benefits.
--Evan Wallace, Director of Development for MountainZone.com
The xpower Server is a collection of ISAPI extensions built with Microsoft Visual C++, which handle loading, parsing, transforming, and serving pure XML content to XML-aware clients like Internet Explorer 5. Earlier Web browsers and set-top boxes get HTML, and additional types of information can be delivered by creating add-ons through a COM interface. The xpress Content Management System is a Web-based application for creating, managing, and publishing XML content for the xpower Server. It uses XML to represent site hierarchy, object state, user information, rollback, workflow, and version information. The xpress system uses several features of Internet Explorer 5 and a collection of ActiveX Controls built with Microsoft Visual C++.
XML is the answer to questions a lot of publishers on the net are asking right now: how do we repurpose our content for multiple sites? How do we share content with our partners? Is there a way for us to participate in syndication arrangements with other organizations?
We chose to use the Microsoft XML parser as the core for the xpower Server and the xpress Content Management System because it's fast, robust, and has the best support for standards that we've seen. Its COM interface, great documentation, and great support have made the process of building our applications straightforward and productive.
--Alan Westenbroek, VP - Technology, xpower networks, inc
MarketSoft Corporation is a leading marketing automation software vendor focusing on Web-based lead management solutions. MarketSoft's eLeads software package manages leads across enterprise-marketing, direct sales, and channels. MarketSoft's schema has been submitted to BizTalk.org , the central repository and developer resource site for BizTalk Framework compatible schemas.
MarketSoft believes that XML enables the future of eCommerce and data exchange. In using XML to develop eLeads, we solved a critical problem in managing leads between multiple enterprises. Using Visual Studio enabled an almost seamless use of XML, which allowed us to develop a revolutionary eMarketing solution for our customers.
--Nancy Benovich-Gilby, Vice President of Engineering, MarketSoft
ThePlunge.com specializes in customizable event Web sites. Users can build a Web site for their event using online tools. They can manage information related to the event (like RSVPs) and get information about planning an event. Event planners can choose from various decorative themes to determine the look and feel of their site. They can include maps and photos as well as include guest books and discussion boards.
XML, SQL Server, and MTS are an essential part of our suite of next-generation Web products. For example, party hosts can use thePlunge.com to build an entire Web site for their events without knowing any HTML. They can choose from hundreds of design templates as often as they want, without having to alter the content they've entered. XML helps make all this possible. Visual Studio's built-in data and parsing tools make our programmers much more productive and let them concentrate on our products' functionality.
--Paul Parry, Technical Director, Rocketworks, Inc. (developers of MSBET.com and thePlunge.com)
Praxa used XML as part of a video-on-demand system built with Microsoft NetShow Theater. Content, which is the heart of the system, can be described in a myriad of ways. Some properties are common to all content, while others are dependent on the style of content. XML, with its ability to add any format of data, is a perfect solution for describing the attributes of a piece of content.
We needed a fast, efficient, and extremely flexible way of describing our streaming media content. Often you don't have a fixed structure that your data conforms to, or that structure may change. XML is very useful in these cases, especially when combined with a relational database such as SQL Server. XML gave us the flexibility we wanted, and the Microsoft MSXML component gave us the speed and efficiency we needed.
--Ewen Stewart, Program Manager Streaming Media, Praxa Limited
Pacific Life is using XML and XSL to let users choose how to display a long list of forms on the Web. When the user wants to reorder the list, XML is used rather than rebuilding the entire page.
We were faced with a design dilemma: we needed to provide an intuitive navigation method to users who would be looking for items in one of two ways. Conventional approaches to solve this would have required multiple server round trips or sending down a lot of data that may never be used. We opted to use XML, as it allowed us to construct a single data set and let the user choose how they wanted to display it. We change the way the data is rendered dynamically on the client without needing to go back to the server. The Visual Studio tools let us easily develop and manage the different elements required to implement this solution.
--Brian Loesgen, Senior Software Engineer, Stellcom, Inc.
i3Solutions is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider in Sterling, VA offering a variety of electronic business related consulting and development services. They design, build, and deploy XML-based solutions to handle e-commerce and business-to-business integration needs.
We like to think of XML as a bridge builder, helping to connect businesses that were once separated by a sea of disparate platforms and protocols. With XML, we can accept data from a multitude of data sources and convert it to a format that works for us. In the case of our stock ticker application, we pulled data from a Web portal, converted that data into XML with the help of Visual Studio 6.0, and formatted it for viewing over the Web with XSL. The beauty of it is that we could do just about anything that we wanted with the data, like formatting it for use with a hand-held device, storing it in our SQL Server, or simply placing it in a Word document. XML, for us, means bridging the gap and allowing businesses on separate platforms to finally shake hands.
--Scot Johnson, President, i3Solutions
The Schools Interoperability Framework is an industry initiative to develop a specification for ensuring that K-12 instructional and administrative software applications can share information seamlessly. Through this initiative, the education software industry is working to resolve the challenge of interoperability in K-12 schools. The ability to access data from these operational systems will make it easier for schools and districts to generate reports and give educators the ability to analyze this data for faster and more accurate decision making.
The Schools Interoperability Framework project involves interoperability for software products in the educational industry. We used XML because it enables diverse applications on different platforms to exchange information without resorting to any platform-specific technologies. For example, an application running on a Macintosh system can exchange information with another application running on Windows NT, as long as these two applications use the same XML schema to format their messages. XML provides an open solution to the software interoperability problem. It helps the schools lower the cost of software deployment and increase the productivity of workers using various applications.
--Allen Kong, Microsoft Consulting Services
The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is an industry trade association representing businesses and professionals in computer software and hardware development and consulting and Internet services businesses.
As the fastest IT industry trade association, ACT needs to deliver timely information to a wide range of people including members, policy makers, and the press. Using Microsoft's XML parsing and transformation technology and Visual Studio, we are creating a flexible resource site that can serve up information in several formats including HTML, Text, and RTF, customized to the needs of the recipient. Microsoft's componentized implementation of their XML parser together with their early implementation of emerging standards such as XML stylesheets has allowed us to increase the efficiency of our staff by reducing redundancy in content creation."
--Jonathan Zuck, President, Association for Competitive Technology
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