Managing change in an XML environment

DeltaXML News

News Archive

DeltaXML at Online Information Exhibition, London

November 2009 - DeltaXML is exhibiting in the XML Pavillion at the Online Exhibition in London. Online Information is co-located with IMS at Olympia in London, UK, and attracts more than 9,000 visitors from more than 70 countries. This year the show has is its own dedicated XML Pavillion where DeltaXML will be exhibiting alongside: RSuite, Mark Logic, X-Windows, Antenna House, Just Systems, Ovidius, TypeFi, Aptara, YuxiPacific and eGloo.

DeltaXML at OpenOffice.org Conference

October 2009 - DeltaXML is presenting a paper at the OpenOffice.org 2009 Conference in Orvieto, Italy, 4-6 November 2009. The paper, "How to keep translated OpenOffice.org documents up-to-date the easy way", presents a new approach to translation updates using DeltaXML technology.

National Geographic takes DeltaXML

February 2009 - National Geographic has become DeltaXML's latest customer. The National Geographic Society, based in Washington DC, is one of the world's largest non-profit scientific and educational organisations. National Geographic has opted for DeltaXML Core's 100% reliable XML change control functionality.

DeltaXML ODT Compare becomes most popular download

December 2008 - DeltaXML released the first of its suite of extensions for the OpenOffice.org environment at the end of October 2008. With more than 6,000 downloads of DeltaXML ODT Compare, a comparison tool for documents in OpenDocument Format, this extension has proved very popular with the OpenOffice and StarOffice community topping the list of OpenOffice.org Writer extension downloads for several weeks.

One user of the product commented: "Excellent extension.......I found it worked perfectly with OpenOffice3...."

DeltaXML ODT Compare performs a detailed text comparison and generates a new document with the changes marked.

DeltaXML attends OpenOffice.org Conference in Beijing

5th November 2008 - The world's largest gathering of OpenOffice.org developers takes place in Beijing today. The OpenOffice.org Annual International Conference (OOoCon) is holding its first conference outside of Europe and expects to draw its biggest audience. DeltaXML which is supporting the OpenOffice.org movement with the release of a suite of OpenOffice.org extensions has sent its own delegates to the conference to ensure they are up to speed with the very latest developments in this dynamic community.

DeltaXML announces Core Version 5

July 2008 - We are pleased to announce that DeltaXML Core 5.0 is now available.  This is a major new release  and includes the benefit of a new delta format, which is easier to process using XSLT/XPath/Xquery. Fewer lines of code need to be written, leading to cost savings and easier maintenance. This new format will also handle three or more documents and will therefore mean that users need only understand one format. A future update to DeltaXML Sync will use this new format.

Processing of documents has been further improved with optimisations to make the highlighting of changes more intuitive. All the filters and examples have been updated and new examples have been added. Error handling is improved to enable more automated handling of errors for server-side applications.

While this release defaults to use the new delta format, the old format is still available through a feature setting.

DeltaXML Core 5.0 also lays the foundations for a future multi-threaded release that will take better advantage of multi-core and multi-cpu hardware.

Nigel Whitaker, Lead Developer of DeltaXML commented, "We are very pleased to release this new version which has already had a great reception from our existing customers because the new delta format is so well suited for XSLT processing."

Award-winning XML Content Management provider chooses DeltaXML

May 2008 - Based in Wakefield, MA, USA, XyEnterprise is a leading developer of XML content management and multi-channel delivery solutions. XyEnterprise set out to find a commercial differencing technology to enhance its version compare and change tracking capabilities. Critical technical criteria included powerful diffing technology, native XML support so that both the content and structure of the content could be leveraged, and a flexible API so that the technology could be embedded into theri product offerings. XyEnterprise was also looking for a vendor that would back up their product offering with strong support.

Kevin Duffy, President and CEO of XyEnterprise stated: "After evaluating a number of solutions, DeltaXML was our clear choice from a technology, business partnership and support perspective."

Robin LaFontaine, CEO of DeltaXML commented, "We are delighted to be providing 100% reliable XML change control technology to an award winning provider of XML content management solutions."

State of California legal eagles employ DeltaXML Core

October 2007 - The Legislative data center at the State of California in Sacramento, California, USA, has adopted DeltaXML Core in its efforts to track the changes to proposed changes to the law and how they will affect Bills of Law. The system is completely open and allows citizens of California to see just what is proposed in any change to the law in an online system.

Lynn Lorber, Principal Consultant with the Senate Education Committee, writes, "I am very excited about the power of the Legislative Information System and how it will help me with my work. Having the ability to view how a bill will amend the law and comparing sections should prove invaluable. Using these tools in preparing bill analyses saves time. The Community Forum is a wonderful safety net that provides swift feedback about any questions I have, and allows me to learn from
responses to other people's questions."

Rick Simpson, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of the Speaker of the Assembly comments, "All I can say is that I wish I had this system when I was still a committee consultant. It finally fills in important gaps in our ability to quickly and accurately analyze legislation, to compare similar provisions in multiple bills, and to compare how a bill affected the law at various points in the legislative process. Maybe I won't retire very soon after all!"

DeltaXML Sponsors CGI Conference

April 2007 - DeltaXML was a participating sponsor at CGI Innovations 2007 held at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines in Austin, Texas from 29th April to 2nd May. CGI is one of the largest independent information technology and business process services firms in the world. CGI is an existing customer of DeltaXML and is currently introducing DeltaXML Core throughout its acclaimed Strata line of decision management applications. The CGI Innovations 2007 conference brought together some 200 banking industry professionals working in credit and trade.

Tax Services Company takes DeltaXML

April 2007 - H&R Block, the world's largest tax services provider, has taken DeltaXML Core to provide accurate differencing and comparison of its XML data. Robin LaFontaine, CEO of DeltaXML commented, "This is another major financial institution which has clearly seen the benefit of investing in a scalable 100% accurate XML processing solution."

Healthcare and Pharma companies sign up for DeltaXML Core

January 2007 - DeltaXML Core's powerful differencing and 100% accuracy has been recognised by two of Europe's largest pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. In an industry where accuracy is paramount both SchwarzPharma and Novartis have opted for DeltaXML Core to provide that certainty. The companies are headquartered in Germany and Switzerland.

Three into One will go! All new DeltaXML Sync 2.0 announced

25th January 2007 - DeltaXML announces the release of version 2.1 of its acclaimed DeltaXML Sync product. DeltaXML Sync 2.1 provides the ability to synchronize changes in three different XML documents or data sets.

Robin LaFontaine, founder and CEO of DeltaXML Ltd, said, "This new version of DeltaXML Sync will make software architects' lives much easier when it comes to handling simultaneous changes in two or more versions of any XML document set. Our tool will allow publishers to reduce copy preparation time by enabling concurrent editing where a document can now be reviewed and edited simultaneously by two different authors. DeltaXML Sync is already proving invaluable to software companies in updating configuration files during software updates."

DeltaXML Sync 2.1 is available for you to try on our web site to see how it works and run it on your own data.

New OEMs: RealObjects and SecurePassage sign OEM deals with DeltaXML

Oct 2006 - We are pleased to announce our latest two OEM partners, RealObjects of Germany and SecurePassage of Missouri, USA.

RealObjects manufactures and distributes a highly successful browser-based XHTML editor, edit-on Pro. Selling directly to customers through its strategic network of VARs and OEMs RealObjects is one of the leading providers of XHTML content authoring solutions worldwide.

RealObjects has licensed DeltaXML Core and created a whole new value add product which they are offering to their existing and future customers. Designated VersioTrack, this product has been designed to track document changes in real-time and offer document version comparison. RealObjects edit-on Pro with VersioTrack is the first online HTML WYSIWYG editor control providing these features, which previously have only been available in desktop word processors.

Commenting on the release of VersioTrack, Markus Neurohr, CTO and co-founder of RealObjects, said: "We were searching for a technology which could provide us with an easy integration path with our existing products and provide our customers with the robust, industry leading XML change control software which they require. DeltaXML fitted the bill perfectly."

In Kansas City, Missouri, USA, SecurePassage has taken DeltaXML Core to integrate with its industry leading FireMon product. FireMon monitors network control devices so that you can see, audit and control configuration and firewall policy changes. Jody Brazil, Vice President and CTO of SecurePassage, commented, "Our customers have been coming to us with more and more XML functionality in their firewall configurations and we wanted to find a generic XML change control solution which would suit all of their current and future needs. DeltaXML not only had the solution but had the industry experience, reliability record and simple integration path which we demanded."

New Website Demos

Oct 2006 - If you haven't visited  our online demonstrations for a while you will find that you can more easily assess the various capabilities of DeltaXML Core from your browser without downloading any software. Try the new interactive examples and 'Sandbox', using AJAX technology, and built on NetKernel from 1060 Research, for a fully interactive demo. Compare your own files using the new services via browser upload or URL.

Apart from improving the online demos and services, we still continue to offer free, time limited downloads of our Software Development Kit (SDK) for DeltaXML Core and Sync products. These provide full access to the API to run on your own system. If you want to test the power of DeltaXML for yourself please just follow the link on our home page.

Major Global Corporate Publisher takes DeltaXML

June 2006 - LexisNexis is the latest international player to sign up for the advantages of DeltaXML Core. LexisNexis is a leading provider of information and services solutions to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. Robin La Fontaine, CEO of DeltaXML, says: “We are pleased to welcome another major global publisher as a customer. LexisNexis will quickly see the benefits of change control in XML by using our products.”

DeltaXML announces Version 4

June 2006 - Greater capacity, better matching, ignore formatting and it's XHTML friendly!

A major new release of DeltaXML Core brings even greater capacity with the ability to handle files of several gigabytes for comparing and tracking changes in XML data. Significant improvements have also been made in how the product handles matching of nested elements without using keys, for example tables, paragraphs and chapters. This further improves the quality of the deltas and for those customers who are used to having to add keys to identify corresponding elements, this will be a significant time and processing advantage.

Also for those working with heavily-edited documents it is now possible to ignore formatting changes and to just call up text changes. This is a great asset for editors who have had to wade through reams of format changes to find vital textual changes.

The changes to the way DeltaXML Core handles tables have now made it much more accessible for tracking changes in XHTML. A new generation of XHTML editors are looking to incorporate DeltaXML’s functionality in their products.

Boeing and Thomson West amongst new customers

19th April 2006 - DeltaXML's family of customers continues to expand and we are pleased to announce the addition of aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing and aircraft industry supplier Corena. Also adding to their use of DeltaXML in new applications is global publisher Thomson West. In addition, we welcome financial industry body the Financial Accounting Foundation and electronic communications experts Data Communique Interational.

DeltaXML Core version 3.1 released

19th April 2006 -  DeltaXML announces the launch of version 3.1 of DeltaXML Core. This new version of the product provides much quicker access to the tool's functionality particularly for users who do not wish to code in Java. The new Delta Wing user interface and DeltaXML Pipelines language let non-Java developers quickly define what they want to do with their data and how they wish to display the results.

DeltaWing, the new user interface in DeltaXML Core 3.1 allows users to select the XML files that they wish to compare and then display the results in their own browser. Thes aids users by providing their XML comparison results quickly in a familiar format. Additional functionality has also been provided in a new DeltaXML Pipeline language which allows users to define filter configurations in XML to create bespoke applications. Consequently users can configure DeltaXML for their own data very easily without the need to do any programming.

Thomson employee wins an iPod nano

8th December 2005 - DeltaXML took a stand at the Online Information 2005 exhibition in London’s Olympia from 29th November – 1st December. The show which attracts information professionals and publishing and software executives from across the world was a great success for DeltaXML. It was our first foray into this market and provided a great opportunity to meet many current and potential customers and partners in the world of XML.

We ran a simple and fun competition on our stand to demonstrate the power of DeltaXML Sync. We used a single image of van Gogh’s “Bedroom at Arles”, rendered in SVG format, and made some changes to that image. Customers were invited to find all the changes to the image and enter our competition to win an iPod nano. The lucky winner was Angela Wilcox of Thomson Learning in Reading.

DeltaXML Launches Core 3.0

19th September 2005 - Upton-on-Severn, Worcester, UK. DeltaXML Ltd, announced the arrival of its latest step upgrade for its DeltaXML Core product, the industry leading tool for managing change control in XML. The new release 3.0 provides greater ease of integration of the tool within customer's applications and greater speed of processing of their data.

Delta XML Core 3.0 has been on release with beta test clients for more than two months and has received very positive reviews. Robin La Fontaine, CEO of DeltaXML, says: "Our customers are already reaping the benefits of this new version of DeltaXML Core. The new interfaces allow customers to integrate the tool many times faster into their applications."

New Corporate Website promotes new look DeltaXML

20th September 2005 - Upton-on-Severn, Worcester, UK. Following a change of name to DeltaXML Ltd earlier in the year, the company has launched a new look and feel to its corporate website. The new website has been designed to provide easy navigation, simple access to product demonstrations and evaluations and full technical commentary. Phil Callan, VP Sales and Marketing, commented, "The new website provides a simple front of house for business users, whilst still providing all the technical resources necessary to support an expert XML community."

Managing Aeronautical Infrastructure

Norwegian company Avinor AS, responsible for 46 airports across Norway, is using DeltaXML to manage the e-AIP, the large and continually updated central repository for aeronautical infrastructure information.
More details in our February newsletter.

New Licensing Options

We've introduced new licensing options especially of interest to those who want to use DeltaXMLfor internal, departmental, projects.
More details in our January newsletter.

XML 2004 - Washington DC, USA, 15-19 November 2004

We hope that this IDEAlliance conference will again be the main XML event of the year. We're presenting papers titled "Powering XML Pipelines with JAXP", looking at Java XML pipelining techniques, and "Conflict Resolution in XML - Forms For All", which looks at the use of XForms and similar technologies for handling the "conflict resolution" stage of a synchronization workflow. We'll be there all week, so do drop us a note with your cell phone number, or come along to one of the talks, and we'd be happy to discuss what DeltaXML could do for you. Read more...
Update: A valuable event, some very interesting speakers - see notes in our November newsletter.

Vignette Village - London, UK, 18-19 November 2004

Vignette hold their Northern & Central Europe event in London this year, we're pleased to sponsor them. If you'd like to meet up and discuss how DeltaXML can deliver for you please get in touch, or just come along to Vignette Village Londonand ask for us at the main Vignette stand.

DeltaXML Still Top Of The Reviews

The French national research agency INRIA identified DeltaXML as the best available technology back in 2002 - now they've updated their report, we're delighted to see we still come out on top. We also get a positive boost from another independent report, this time from Bloor Research. Read more...

European Commission Selects DeltaXML

With their requirements for absolute precision and the highest performance, the European Commission have turned to us to help with the challenges of ongoing translation and re-translation between 20 officially supported languages. We're glad to be able to help.

Vignette Village - San Antonio, Texas, 25-27 October 2004

We're delighted to sponsor the Vignette Village event, come along and meet us there.

XML Open - Cambridge, UK

We're discussing some of our "XML forms" work at the new "XML Open" conference in Cambridge, UK, 21-23 September 2004. Read more...
Update: a very useful event - watch out for this one next year. Read more...

DeltaXML Core API Release 2.8.2

What started as a minor point release with a focus on performance has become yet another huge leap upwards for our core product. We were already outpacing all competition, this release introduces speed increases of up to 2000%.

Inland Revenue (UK) Selects DeltaXML

With the increasing focus of UK government on XML has come a pressing need for effective means to handle change. The Inland Revenue has chosen DeltaXML as their preferred solution, allowing them precisely to identify and process changes. We're happy to welcome them.

DeltaXML Core API Release 2.8.1

The DeltaWing sample GUI has been further extended, other minor improvements.

DeltaXML Sync API 1.0 Launch

Our R&D into intelligent XML merging and synchronization has long been way ahead of the field. Now, after successful field trials with selected customers, the technology is ready for release as DeltaXML Sync API, a companion product that builds on the strengths of DeltaXML Core API. Read more...

DeltaXML Core API 2.8

April 2004 - Our latest release includes an updated Swing GUI demonstration, an updated tutorial, improved sample code and improvements to the engine kernel to further reduce memory consumption. Read more...

"Stunningly Cool" - Jon Udell on DeltaXML

Jon Udell of InfoWorld found our SVG demo and wrote a short piece about the possibilities of XML change control. Read more...

Beyond Babel - Simplifying Translation with XML

We'll be presenting a paper at the XML Europe 2004 conference in Amsterdam, April 18-21. Learn how you can use XML "Unified Delta" technology to manage updates to content when delivering in multiple target languages. We are looking for early adopters to provide feedback, so please do get in touch if you're interested to hear more. You'll find more details in our February newsletter.

Version 2.7

A "performance" release: a revised internal data structure gives 70% savings in memory use; orderless keyed comparisons have been optimized.
Extending our testing framework allowed us to find and fix a number of corner-case bugs - we've also improved error reporting. We suggest all customers upgrade to this release.

XML 2003, Philadelphia

Robin La Fontaine, CEO of DeltaXML, presented a paper titled "Russian Dolls and XML: Designing Multi-version XML Documents". Discussing the newly developed "unified delta" format, this paper explores the advantages of encapsulating multiple revisions of a document within a single XML archive that allows extraction and comparison of the contained versions.
Venue: Philadelphia, 11:00 Thursday December 11 2003.

For a summary of what Unified Delta technology can add to your XML infrastructure, please see our DeltaXML Sync page.

DeltaXML Sync product scheduled for release Q104

DeltaXML Sync builds upon our DeltaXML Core API - previously called just "DeltaXML API" - to provide comprehensive merging and synchronization for any XML data. This product will be shipping in the first quarter of 2004.
For a technology preview please see our DeltaXML Sync page.

Enterprise Content Management 2003, London

DeltaXML is providing compelling advantages for our CM customers. At the ECM2003 show in London in October Corel demonstrated a DeltaXML integration with their XMetaL® product, showing the power of this collaboration. Please get in touch if you'd like to learn more.
Venue: Olympia,London, 7 - 9 October 2003.

SVG Graphical Synchronizaton Demo

We have a simple graphical demonstration of our "3-way merge" or synchronization technology. See how separate independent edits to an SVG image can be combined - merging both sets of changes. Applications include database synchronization and updating multiple localizations of a multilingual website.

Evaluation Roadmap

You can now access our full evaluation resources directly from our website - including our on-line Test Drive site, tutorial, documentation and a fully functional time-limited copy of our DeltaXML Java API product.

Version 2.6

DeltaXML Version 2.6 includes a new "command.jar" tool to simplify command line access for testing and evaluation purposes. This includes simple switches to run XHTML-specific and Schema-specific comparisons.
A new security mechanism allows greater flexibility in distributing DeltaXML for evaluation.

XML Europe 2003, London

Our CEO Robin La Fontaine was again a speaker at XML Europe, presenting an XML change management white paper as part of the vendor stream.
Venue: Hilton London Metropole, 6 - 8 May 2003.

Technology partnerships

We are delighted to welcome Software AG and Isogen International as technology partners.

Version 2.5

DeltaXML Version 2.5 adds a customer-requested feature, support for empty root elements (!)

Independent evaluation of DeltaXML

An independent evaluation of the competing technologies has handed the prize to DeltaXML. A report from the French National Research Group INRIA (key sponsors of the W3C) in April 2002 evaluates speed and memory use, quality of result and ease of integration for the competing technologies, including DeltaXML, IBM Treediff, Sun's diffmk, Dommitt, MMDiff and their own xyDiff. DeltaXML excels in all areas and is selected as the best choice.

Version 2.4

DeltaXML Version 2.4 further increases the capacity of DeltaXML, even on low-end systems, through further code optimization. Customers requested ability to store program source code, kilobytes in size and containing many reserved characters, within attributes - this is now supported.
Extended samples now include a simple Swing GUI app, DeltaWing, to demonstrate the ease with which DeltaXML can be integrated, and to provide functional seed code for customers building visual end-user tools.

Version 2.3

DeltaXML Version 2.3 focusses on performance and improves the handling of long strings in PCDATA, as requested by customers processing humongous data files.
Performance tuning has resulted in a fourfold speed increase over previous (fast) speeds for some documents, with reduced memory requirements and greater capacity. A tutorial has also been added.

Version 2.2

DeltaXML 2.2 was launched in March 2002 at the XML and Webservices Exhibition in London. The new version provides important additional benefits to put DeltaXML well in the lead for XML change identification and control software.

DeltaXML is an embeddable solution which manages changes in a XML environment. DeltaXML is unique because it has an ability to represent changes between any two XML documents (or data files) in XML.

Version 2.2 allows full control of the comparison process so that corresponding elements are always correctly matched. Keys can be added to provide this fine control over the matching process. The keys could be ID attributes, other attributes or a combination of them, or even the content of sub-elements.

DeltaXML already handles unordered elements and now allows keys both in elements that are unordered and elements that are ordered. Such good control over the comparison ensures that the results are always as expected.

DeltaXML has always identified blocks of text, within an element, that have changed. In Version 2.2 it goes further and can detect changes down to the word level. This enables markup of changes suitable for editorial or approval review.

Added in Version 2.2 are new configurations for specific XML formats such as XML Schema. Schemas can now be compared in a way that detects and ignores changes to the order of elements where these are not significant. It always compares like-with-like by taking advantage of the new 'key' features of DeltaXML.

Building on both the new 'key' feature and the word-by-word comparison, a basic XHTML comparator is available as a demonstration on the web site. This compares XHTML files and shows the difference directly on the browser.

Summary of new features in 2.2