Articles by Hitesh Seth

Raising the Bar

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:00:00 EST

2003 was definitely a positive year for the economy and the world of i-technology - and the year's success also raised the bar for what needs to happen in 2004, if we really want to see recovery. Although this statement focuses on financial aspects, it provides an indication of what we need in the world of information technology - a focus on delivering value out of the whole standardization story.

WSRP Re-ignites Interest in Portals

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 11:02:41 EDT

Web Services for Remote Portlets, or WSRP, was recently approved as a standard by OASIS. Although a number of Web services standards are being worked on by different OASIS technical committees (TCs) - around Web services orchestration, management, security, reliable messaging, and ebXML - WSRP is particularly interesting as it brings out the benefits of open standards-based Web standards to the world of enterprise portals.

Let's Get Together

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 00:00:00 EDT

2003 has been an exciting year so far for XML and Web services technologies and standardization. Most of the focus has been on stabilization of existing initiatives and making XML-based communications more robust, secure, and manageable.

Revisiting RSS

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 11:49:00 EDT

I'm one of those technology enthusiasts who like to be on the edge, which means that if I'm not creating news, I at least like to read a lot to keep up with the rapidly changing world of technology. A part of my morning (and sometimes even my night) is spent taking a good look at some of the popular technology Web sites.

An XML Take on Tech·Ed

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Microsoft's flagship technology conference, commonly known as Tech·Ed, was held in Dallas in early June. Much has been written elsewhere about this event, but I would like to point out a couple of things I thought were quite significant, from an XML perspective.

Beyond Integration

Thu, 22 May 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Even though interoperability and making systems and enterprises work together have been the main goals of XML and Web services technologies and standards, the quest for a better way to develop applications has led XML in another direction: around consuming XML/Web services to developing modular and dynamic user interfaces.

XML in Enterprise Applications

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 00:00:00 EST

Enterprise application systems - ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management), etc. - have for decades run mission-critical systems for medium to large organizations. With their large breadth of integrated, prebuilt functionality these systems have been at the heart of the IT infrastructure. There's also been the constant challenge of integrating them with legacy/custom/homegrown systems as well as the e-business/edge applications and infrastructure.

XMLBeans

Fri, 28 Mar 2003 00:00:00 EST

'Java and XML - portable code and portable data.' Even though this saying has been around since Java developers began using XML, developers have always faced a general XML programming-related productivity problem: manipulating XML content is rather different from manipulating Java objects.

XML and Integration

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 00:00:00 EST

Better known in the i-technology world as enterprise application integration (EAI), B2B integration, or middleware, integration involves connecting internal systems with external business partners, customers, and suppliers. Integrating systems running on heterogeneous platforms, typically developed in different programming environments and managed by different groups (or different companies), is quite a complex task.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Part 1

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 00:00:00 EST

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 provides an out-of-box solution for integrating internal systems and external business partners. BizTalk Server 2002 is its second generation, succeeding BizTalk Server 2000. It is built on top of a core Microsoft Windows 2000-centric infrastructure running on Windows 2000 Server platforms. BizTalk Server also utilizes SQL Server 7.0/2000 as the repository for BizTalk messaging management, shared queue, tracking, and the orchestration of persistence databases. These databases are created using the BizTalk Server 2002 Installation program.

Celebrate XML's 5th Birthday in Boston

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

On February 10, 1998, a revolutionary Internet technology child was born into this world and given an acronym that has since become synonymous with i-technology itself. Even though it enters only its sixth year this month, XML has had a widespread effect on the nature of generations of technology to follow.

XML in 2002 and Beyond

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

We're all hoping for a revolutionary year for the economy and the world of i-technology in particular. The New Year also marks an important phenomenon: all of us try to have a New Year's resolution (mine is to gain fame and riches in the world of i-technology). And of course, we tend to think of the events that marked the previous year as well as what's in store for the coming year. Here we'll look at how 2002 steered XML into the world of i-technology, and project the path of XML in 2003.

The Road So Far...and the Road Ahead

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

One of the key reasons behind the explosive growth of the Web is the simplicity and ease of use of the underlying standards - TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML. Experts and critics have often argued about what's wrong with HTML and HTTP and why we need IPv6 et al. For instance, with the advent of XHTML, we are now realizing why HTML should have probably been XML-ized from Day 1; similarly, we criticize the fact that HTTP is stateless. However, the ubiquity of these standards has easily surpassed their technological imperfections.

Java Architecture for XML Binding

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

Two foundation technologies, Java and XML, represent the marriage of portable code and data. A key ingredient of a successful marriage is compatibility. XML and a number of XML-based vocabularies are being used extensively as the standard data-exchange mechanism (and beyond) by both stand-alone Java 2, Standard Edition (J2SE) applications and server-based Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) enterprise applications.

Essential XML Quick Reference

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

If you're a developer looking for a quick and useful reference on some of the fundamental standards around XML, look no more. In a handy paperback edition priced at $24.99, Essential XML Quick Reference from Addison-Wesley is a great buy. Regardless of which programming language you use, this book stands out as a great reference on the basic constructs of XML and its usage.

Introduction to SALT

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 00:00:00 EST

Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) is a set of XML-based tags that can be added to existing Web-based applications, enhancing the user interface through interactive speech recognition.

The Real Success of XML

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 00:00:00 EST

XML is a relatively simple development. Yet it has probably been the most powerful development to date in the world of i-Technology. From being the launchpad for information delivery on the Web (XHTML, SMIL, SVG) to electronic business communication (Chem standards, ebXML, RosettaNet, OAGIS, EDI/XML), security (SAML), Web services (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, BPEL4WS), data transformation (XSLT/XSL), and speech recognition and telephony integration (CCXML, SALT, VoiceXML), XML has quickly grown as the universal markup language to define practically anything.

Introduction to CCXML

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 00:00:00 EDT

When building interactive voice recognition applications, we are inevitably faced with the challenge of providing advanced telephony call-control capabilities. In some scenarios we'd like to bridge two calls for a conferencing application, in others we'd like to provide basic call routing so the caller can be connected to an appropriate customer service agent, make outbound calls, and the like.

Selecting a VoiceXML Gateway

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 00:00:00 EDT

As an open standard, VoiceXML truly leverages the knowledge and products that the industry has developed around Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech (TTS), telephony interfaces, voice printing, and Voice over IP (VoIP). As an open standard, what VoiceXML has made possible is flexible models for development and deployment.

Modular Speech Application Development Using VoiceXML

Thu, 18 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

One thing weve learned from Web-based application development is that tools are useful only if they can reuse components and third-party libraries and make it easy to assemble applications. This article reviews how we can build modular speech applications using VoiceXML. The focus will be on the language constructs that VoiceXML provides for modularization and reusability and on vendor-specific approaches toward creation of a library of reusable dialogs for speech applications.

Mac OS X & Java - A perfect marriage

Fri, 01 Mar 2002 00:00:00 EST

Mac OS X sports a new look, not just on the outside with its great look and feel but also on the inside. OS X is proudly built on top of a BSD Unix-based core foundation. An exciting aspect of the new operating system is that the latest version of the Java 2 platform (J2SE v1.3) is preinstalled in every Macintosh notebook and desktop preloaded with OS X. (The current release is 10.1, however, in this article I’m referring to the latest version of OS X, v10.1.1.)

Tools for Developing VoiceXML Applications Part 2

Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 EST

Last year in this column (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 2) we reviewed an initial set of VoiceXML development tools and integrated development environments (IDEs). Now we'll review some of the new tool sets developed by independent software vendors for the development and testing of dynamic speech-based components and applications. I'll focus on how to use these tools to test and debug VoiceXML applications from a desktop-based development environment and/or a normal touch-tone-based phone.

JAX Pack! - Bridging The Gap Between Java and XML Technologies

Fri, 28 Dec 2001 00:00:00 EST

Java and XML are perfectly married. Java represents a technology evolution for platform-independent development and deployment, and an effective mechanism for achieving distributed computing. XML, a very simple concept, has taken the industry by storm and is revolutionizing how data is represented and exchanged within a company and between enterprises. In a nutshell, Java represents portable code and XML represents portable data - a perfect marriage.

Setting the StandardsFormalizing How Business Applications Communicate

Mon, 03 Dec 2001 00:00:00 EST

Referred to by some as the fourth wave of computing, Web services intend to standardize the way business applications communicate with each other, whether they are within an enterprise or communicating with external partners, customers, and suppliers. In this article we explore the key standards behind Web services, as well as the various tools and technologies that the upcoming Microsoft .NET provides for developing and deploying dynamic Web services. What is a Web Service? I like MSDN's (Microsoft Developer Network) definition of a Web service. A Web service is a unit of application logic providing data and services to other applications. Applications access Web services via ubiquitous Web protocols and data formats, such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP, with no need to worry about how each Web service is implemented.

Voice Enabling Existing Applications

Thu, 01 Nov 2001 00:00:00 EST

VoiceXML and interactive voice portals can enhance self-service and mobile-enable employees, customers, and partners. Voice portals provide anytime/anywhere access to vital information through a simple, natural interface such as speech-enabled conversations.

Developing VoiceXML Applications Using Microsoft.NET

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:00:00 EDT

In Part 1 of this article (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 6) we introduced the key components of the Microsoft .NET Framework - ASP.NET, C#, and Web Services. In Part 2 we apply the .NET technologies to develop an interactive VoiceXML application. Toward the end of the article we review the concept of Web Services and how it applies to the world of developing interactive voice applications.

Developing Voice XML Applications Using Microsoft.NET

Sun, 03 Jun 2001 00:00:00 EDT

In this fourth article in the 'Spotlight on VoiceXML' series we return to our hands-on approach for developing VoiceXML applications. In Part 1 we cover the basic fundamentals of the new Microsoft .NET Framework and its components. In Part 2 we'll apply .NET technologies, particularly ASP.NET, C#, and Web Services, to build an interactive VoiceXML application.

Grammars For VoiceXML Applications

Tue, 22 May 2001 00:00:00 EDT

The previous article in this series, 'Tools for Developing VoiceXML Applications' (Vol. 2, issue 3), reviewed tools that can aid the development and testing of VoiceXML applications. Now we dive into the mechanisms of writing the grammars and review the standards being developed around the ways of representing them.

Tools For Developing VoiceXML Apps

Wed, 07 Mar 2001 00:00:00 EST

The previous article in this series, 'Building VoiceXML Applications Using J2EE' (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 2), discussed building dynamic and interactive voice applications using VoiceXML and J2EE. In this issue we'll focus on the tools available to aid development and testing of VoiceXML-based components and applications. We'll discuss how to use the tools to test and debug such applications from a normal Touch-Tone-based phone.

Building VoiceXML Applications Using J2EE

Sun, 04 Feb 2001 00:00:00 EST

Welcome to VoiceXML. This column focuses on VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language), an emerging standard (defined by VoiceXML Forum, submitted to the W3C Voice Browser Activity Group) for the development of interactive voice-based applications. It's one of the first standards that opens up the formerly proprietary platforms for the development of Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) and Speech Recognition applications. VoiceXML allows developers to leverage their skills and investments in existing Web technologies (such as J2EE and Microsoft COM+). This first column focuses on getting you started with developing dynamic VoiceXML applications.