The scenario is fairly typical. You launch your SaaS application for $14.99 per month. A few months later, a competitor launches a competing service for $10 per month. How do you respond with a competitive offer without cannibalizing your existing customers? We asked three software executives for their thoughts on the topic and have summarized their responses below: Paddy Srinivasan, CEO, Opstera (www.opstera.com) In the above scenario, you are introducing a new tier in the Free->Premium continuum. The inherent risk is that existing customers might want to downgrade to the new level to save albeit with a constrained set of features. While you cannot stop this, one way to have your customers think about this decision is to make the distinction between the SKUs extremely clear in the new tier vs. the premium SKUs. For example, at the low-end customers might be able to... (more)

XML, Ontologies, and the Semantic Web

If [computer networking] were a traditional science, Berners-Lee would win a Nobel Prize," Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell, once commented. Indeed, Tim Berners-Lee revolutionized the world when he created the Web in 1991. Now, he is talking about the second generation of the Web, and his talks are generating buzz...the W3C is establishing standards for it, and universities, companies, and industry consortiums are building the technologies necessary for it. He refers to it as the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is envisaged as a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. The key lies in the automation and integration of processes through machine-readable languages. In order to leverage and link the vast amounts of information available on the Web, software agents must be able to comprehend the information, i.e., the data must be... (more)

"Semantic Web" Is Getting Closer and Closer, Says Tim Berners-Lee

In February, unnoticed by many, two standards became W3C recommendations: the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL). This was the signal that Tim Berners-Lee's next project, the "Semantic Web" - an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation - is considered by the W3C to be ready now for more widespread adoption. Bringing his keynote audience up to date at the 13th annual WWW Conference, Berners-Lee reported that attendees could go straight out and "Semantic Web-enable" anything they can online - though "We're going to have to bootstrap things in the short term," he conceded. Referring to the process of getting RDF and OWL to the point where each could become a standard, Berners-Lee admitted that "There was a lot of pain and sweat ... (more)

Whitepaper on using Altova Tools with IBM DB2

Altova and IBM jointly published a whitepaper that shows how the integration of Altova tools with DB2 allows users to: Design and perfect XQuery statements faster, with real-time validation for a faster and more robust design time experience Preview, edit, and validate XML data stored in the database with just a few clicks Easily manage XML Schemas in the DB2 9 Schema Repository Map XML data from the database to a CSV file or convert it to an HTML table or other format The solutions to the business problems presented in the whitepaper show how DBAs and developers working with real-world XML applications can benefit from the integration of Altova tools with IBM DB2. Click here to download the whitepaper (PDF). ... (more)

RE: Keep business-process-specific data separate?

It depends on the scope of the timestamp if that is the dominant query term. It doesn't matter what the scope of the semantic of the application is in total. It matters that the message be scoped to the time because that is unique if time over other terms is dominant to the query goal. Intention. XML doesn't care. It's not a good idea to send empty elements to transactions that can generate them populated. Wasteful. I'm way out of practice, but as far as I recall, the art of the DTD was to precisely capture the most atomic set for the query and ensure validity scoped from it. In a message-oriented system (which a query system has to be and a document system doesn't of necessity), that is the key concept. len -----Original Message----- From: Costello, Roger L. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:12 AM To: '[email protected]' Subject: Keep business-... (more)

RE: RE: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?

> Because the semantics of the schema language used, W3C Schema > 1.0, are not rich enough to express all of the constraints > for XSLT as an XML vocabulary. I believe the RELAX-NG schema > semantics are rich enough. I don't think Relax-NG is rich enough to describe XPath expressions or XSLT patterns as a data type. So you will only ever describe a subset of the constraints. Also, there's a fuzzy boundary between syntactic constraints and semantic constraints (like: you can't call a template that hasn't been defined.). Any schema language can define all the syntactic constraints if you define "syntactic constraint" to mean "a constraint that can be expressed in the schema", and deem everything else to be semantic. Michael Kay http://www.saxonica.com/ ... (more)

XHTML 2 vs. HTML 5: Real World Matters

Some people like to say that choice is a good thing... It is when personal taste and preference are pre-dominant factors in that choice. When trying to maintain consistency and standards? Then, choice only leads to bifurcation, double the work, and a poor experience for all. When establishing a superset, what happens when a new feature or spec is released, backwards compatibility is preserved through keeping the previous feature set. You can use the new features, but your old pages that haven't been updated still work. It is why the web could, more or less easily, migrate from a "tabled" world of content and presentation to a "CSSed" world of separation between content and presentation. Because of intermingling a more or less functional web could be extended to all, across browsers and across versions. There is good in here even though it resulted in a confused jumb... (more)

JSF 2.0 Reminder: Project Stage

Just a reminder that while you are developing a JSF 2.0 project, you really, really, really should enable the Development Project Stage. Doing this enables better error messages, including in the client side JavaScript, at the cost of some performance. Enabling this is as simple as putting the below into your web.xml:   javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE   Development When going into production, simply change the project stage to Production, like so:   javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE   Production This will turn off some error messages, and emphasize performance. ... (more)

Will Oracle Bid for HP?

"Larry Ellison is borderline bat-shit crazy on a good day," the analyst Rob Enderle is quoted as saying in a piece last week by Sam Gustin - a senior writer at DailyFinance, an AOL Finance & Money site. Enderle was prompted to utter this remark by speculation that perhaps the Oracle CEO is about to embark upon the acquisition of his life: of HP. "I think his bet is that he can damage HP enough that it drops in value and he can wander in with an offer," Enderle is quoted as having added. So is it possible that Ellison the Conqueror, CEO of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977, truly has the $90BN HP in the crosshairs of his acquisition rifle-sight? Can a $120BN company somehow buy and absorb a $90BN one? Well certainly he now has on board the exact right man to tackle the integration of such a purchase: none other than HP's own former CEO, Mark Hurd. A... (more)

Crosscheck Networks führt branchenweit erstes Testprodukt für föderierte SOA ein

Crosscheck Networks, Inc., ein führender Anbieter von Test-, Simulations- und Sicherheitslösungen für Webdienste, hat heute die sofortige Verfügbarkeit von SOAPSonar 5.0 angekündigt. Diese neueste Version ermöglicht Unternehmen erstmals das Testen von Funktions- und Leistungseigenschaften von Dateianhängen bei Webdiensten in unbegrenzter Größe durch Streaming strukturierter und unstrukturierter Daten unter Verwendung von Industriestandards wie MTOM und MIME. Zu beachten ist, dass SOAPSonar in dieser neuen Version auch Unterstützung für WS-Trust, SAML 2.0 und WS-Identitätstoken bietet und so einen Ansatz für das Management föderierter Identitäten zum Testen von Authentisierungen und Autorisierungen nach bewährten Methoden garantiert. „Wer auf eine SOA (serviceorientierte Architektur) wechselt, hat damit nicht automatisch das Problem gelöst, wie große Dokumente innerh... (more)

Simba Technologies Releases New ODBC SDK for Fast Development of Custom ODBC Data Drivers and Other Standards-based Relational Data Connectivity

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/03/09 -- Simba Technologies Inc., industry's choice for standards-based relational and multi-dimensional data connectivity, announced today the release of SimbaEngine ODBC SDK 8, a new ODBC toolkit for easy development of ODBC drivers, JDBC drivers, OLE DB drivers and ADO.NET providers for both SQL-enabled and non-SQL data sources. SimbaEngine ODBC SDK provides users with the ability to quickly create data access for popular tools like Microsoft Excel, SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports and other ODBC type applications to connect to any SQL or non-SQL data source. It is a comprehensive software development toolkit that provides all of the components needed to develop commercial-grade, standards-based, data connectivity drivers. Using the SDK, users are able to quickly build an ODBC driver, JDBC driver, OLE DB driver... (more)