In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

It's virtually axiomatic: technology innovations first boost personal productivity then group productivity. The PC, for example, first helped individuals automate writing, accounting and personal organization functions, then spawned group productivity through networks, the Internet and e-commerce.

Should emergency personnel and law enforcement be called to the scene of a suspected chemical warfare attack, the last thing these frontline workers will want to do is wrestle with incompatible IT systems. Therefore, the federal government is in the throes of linking databases scattered throughout the 22 agencies that now make up the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), while tying in the efforts of state and local entities.

In this article I will show you how to implement an XslTransform wrapper to trace and profile XSLT transformations at runtime in .NET applications. The source code and supporting files can be downloaded from ww w.sys-con.com/xml/sourcec .cfm.

ConciseXML is a new syntax I co-developed with Christopher Fry that builds on the best features of XML and S-Expressions while eliminating their constraints. XML originated with the document-markup world of SGML and has become the leading syntax of the Internet.

Part 1 of this article demonstrated how standard ANSI SQL can integrate fully, naturally, and seamlessly with XML. This was accomplished by naturally raising SQL processing to a hierarchical level, enabling relational data (including XML-shredded data) to integrate at a full hierarchical level with native XML.

The manufacturing industry has been a leader in adopting XML technologies, recognizing the benefits of enterprise-class open standards. Applications in the manufacturing industry often need to live as long as the capital equipment itself - a time frame that can stretch as long as 30 years.

This two-part article will change your view and understanding of standard SQL and its ability to integrate naturally and fully with native XML. The perceived problem with achieving full SQL-based integration of XML is that relational data is flat while XML data is hierarchical, producing a huge impediment to a seamless solution.

The Web is like a huge library whose contents we can search and edit. In order to search quickly and efficiently, the contents must be organized.

Thriving organizations constantly explore new ways to share information via Internet sites, intranets, extranets, portals, CRM systems, and elsewhere. Organizations are finding it increasingly necessary to more carefully manage the process of creating, publishing, and reusing information.

Few executives will deny that critical business decisions must be based upon timely, accurate information. Historically, however, delivering actionable business intelligence to the appropriate person at the right moment has been difficult, largely due to the fact that internal corporate information commonly resides in isolated islands of information, with each functional area maintaining its own repository of data, with its own data taxonomy.

Is XML documents or data? Should XML be managed with a database or a document management system? Should XML be managed at all, or is it simply a data interchange standard? These are among the most common questions people ask about XML when they're trying to get a grip on what XML is.

For some time the text information world has known instinctively that something called 'content management' should be part of its planning and operations. Prior to the Internet and Web, however, managing one's content, while perhaps valuable, often wasn't perceived as critical to the success of information efforts, and where it was, technological 'cats and dogs' could be made to work well enough to get by.

Integrating efficient XML publishing into high-volume content environments remains a significant challenge. Among the many real-world barriers: the need to convert quantities of paper and other legacy documents and to integrate easy-to-use XML publishing tools into the content-creation process, and the lack of workflow management tools necessary for mass conversion environments.

E-business, B2B, enterprise information portals (EIPs) and XML are the leading buzzwords of our industry because information - and its efficient management - is at the heart of any e-business environment. XML is the standard for the markup of information in Web-based Internet/intranet and extranet applications and this article provides future users of XML with a blueprint of how to make the best use of these new and converging technologies.