Symposium includes HP's first XML mention for e3000

March 2000
Symposium includes HP’s first XML mention for e3000

Specialized Web language is supported on platform, but no HP software is required

Web developers at the HP 3000 Solution Symposium in Sunnyvale, Calif. learned their HP e3000s will support the emerging XML Web language. HP didn’t have to offer a product to deliver the functionality on the e3000, but the support requires a non-3000 server to be included in the e-commerce loop, for now.

Alvina Nishimoto, the R&D manager for the Internet and Interoperability team in the HP e3000 division (CSY), said that XML is working on the 3000 and gives Web sites a way to separate content from presentation in Web pages.

“XML is making a lot of noise these days,” Nishimoto said. Smith-Gardner, makers of the industry-leading MACS and WebOrder e-commerce applications for the e3000, “announced nine months ago they had an XML interface in their application.”

“The 3000 works well with XML,” she added. The language can put the actual data for a Web page in a separate metadata area, to let applications or application servers manipulate and share the data. In contrast, “HTML embeds the data with presentation, which is one of its flaws.”

Nishimoto said XML lets an application “interpret the data ahead of time without knowing a specific format. You don’t have to have to know the layout, because it’s part of the processing in XML.” Once the application server has parsed the XML, it often uses ODBC or JDBC to connect the database.
HP “is contemplating doing a parser for the e3000, but typically we find people are working with an application server on NT or Unix, and need to access IMAGE data.” The parser would allow a customer to host their Web application entirely on e3000 systems. “Since we do have ODBC and JDBC on the 3000, it works just fine with the [NT and Unix] services.”