Some Technology Highlights at the Gilbane Conference
April 1, 2004
I was busy at last week’s Gilbane conference event, so I can’t say I looked systematically at every vendor who was exhibiting. Overall, it was an excellent concentration of content management and XML vendors. A few quick thoughts:
- I got an update from Ixiasoft and Ektron about their integration efforts. Going forward, Ektron implementers can use Ixiasoft’s TextML server as the storage mechanism behind the Ektron CMS. I am pleased to see Ektron pursue so much XML functionality at the lower-priced end of the market.
- I got an excellent extended demo of Snapbridge’s client and server products for integrating XML, relational, and other data sources. While I have not played with the actual product yet, I have to say that I was really impressed with how it demoed. It looks very easy to locate, access, and begin to mine and manipulate different sources of data. It also seems to perform really well. The VP of Software Architecture is Bill Lindsey, long-time SGML guru and more recently has been maintaining the excellent XSLT open-source engine, XT.
- I really liked a new XML-based Web CMS from UK vendor Immediacy. Again, I have only seen it demoed, but here I was impressed with the product’s out-of-the-box XML publishing functionality. I also liked how the templating environment could straightforwardly include other processes, such as a separate database query.
There was more, of course, but these were the items that caught my eye. In the interest of equal time, I would be happy to hear more from any of the vendors who attended. I could then highlight some of them in future entries here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at April 1, 2004 9:30 PM








