Looking to beef up the XML for Analysis (XML/A) specification — a messaging interface for online analytical processing (OLAP) and
data-mining applications — Microsoft Corp. and Hyperion Solutions Corp.
said Monday that
SAS Institute Inc. will join them as co-chair of the XML/A Council.
The specification, first published in April 2001, is intended to standardize data access interaction between a client application
and business intelligence systems and other applications over the Web and in distributed environments. This, in turn, is supposed to
help businesses develop and deploy Web services-based business intelligence solutions more rapidly and efficiently, and also to help
integrate diverse applications.
The specification is built on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) standard.
The council has already released beta and version 1 releases of the specification, and is expected to release the latest version as
early as Monday.
SAS, which had been serving as a contributing member of the council, is a specialist in data mining technology, and Microsoft and
Hyperion said SAS brings expertise in advanced analytics to the table.
“Having SAS as a co-chair brings additional momentum to XML/A,” said Robert Gersten, chief development officer at Hyperion. “Moving
this initiative forward in an open forum with other leaders in the business intelligence community will benefit customers, who will
gain the ability to protect server and tools investments and ensure that new analytical deployments will interoperate smoothly and
efficiently.”
Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS, added, “The development of viable industry standards for XML-based business intelligence
is critical for the growth of our industry.”
Other participants in the council include ANGOSS Software Corp., SPSS Inc., Alphablox Corp., Applied OLAP Inc., Applix Inc., arcplan
Information Services AG, Aspirity LLC, Brio Software Inc., Business Objects SA, Cognos Corp., Comshare Inc., Crystal Decisions,
Dimensional Systems, Harmony Software Inc., Lawson Software, MicroStrategy Inc., ProClarity Corp, Simba Technologies Inc., and
Temtec.
But even as momentum builds around the specification and many other XML-based standards and specifications, Congress’ General
Accounting Office (GAO) issued a new report recommending that federal agencies should take their time implementing the XML standard.
The report said the GAO’s reservations were based on the lack of an explicit, government-wide strategy for XML adoption, that the
needs of federal agencies have not been uniformly identified so as to represent them before standards-setting bodies, and the lack
of a registry of government-unique XML data structures such as data element tags and associated data definitions.
“Although agencies need flexibility to tailor XML-based systems to meet their unique needs, they risk building and buying systems
that will not work with each other in the future if their efforts do not take place within the context of a well-defined strategy,”
the report said. Elaborating on the need for a registry, it added, “Without such a registry, developers are less likely to build
systems using compatible data definitions, which would likely defeat the goal of broad data access and exchange. In order to
establish such a registry, policies and procedures for adding tag definitions and maintaining the system would also be needed and
have not yet been developed.”
The GAO recommended that the director of the Office of Management and Budget hammer out a strategy for government-wide adoption of
XML together with the CIO Council (a group of federal chief information officers) and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology.
