OASIS Forms TREX Technical Committee

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS Forms TREX Technical Committee to Create XML Document Validation
Language Specification

Boston, MA, USA; March 13, 2001—OASIS, the XML interoperability
consortium, announced the formation of a new technical committee to
create a specification for validating XML documents with TREX (Tree
Regular Expressions for XML). Using XML syntax, TREX extends the concept
of regular expressions (familiar to many Web developers) to XML
structures.

TREX is the latest in a long list of accomplishments by James Clark,
widely regarded as one of the most prolific contributors to the field of
structured information standards. Clark served as technical lead for the
W3C’s XML 1.0 Recommendation and editor of the W3C Recommendations for
both XPath and XSLT. He is perhaps best known as the author of
open-source parsers including expat and XP for XML and sgmls and SP for
SGML.

"There is a genuine need for a straightforward, easy-to-learn XML schema
language, and TREX delivers that,” said James Clark, who will serve as
chair of the OASIS TREX Technical Committee. “I am excited to be
developing the TREX specification within OASIS. The OASIS technical
process is both open and lightweight, so we expect to benefit from a
maximum level of participation with a minimal amount of organizational
overhead.”

Unlike many schema languages, TREX limits its scope to describing and
validating the structure and content of an XML document. It does not
attempt to specify any application processing semantics. TREX also gains
simplicity by treating attributes and elements uniformly. TREX can
partner with a separate datatyping language, such as the W3C XML Schema
Datatypes.

“TREX is a new, powerful tool for XML developers. It focuses on
validation alone and does not change the information set of a document,”
commented Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS.
“Developing the TREX specification within OASIS gives the entire XML
community the opportunity to contribute to this important work."

Those interested in participating in the development of TREX are
encouraged to join the OASIS TREX Technical Committee. More information
is available on http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/trex/index.shtml.

About OASIS
OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) is the international, not-for-profit
consortium that advances electronic business by promoting open,
collaborative development of interoperability specifications. With the
United Nations, OASIS sponsors ebXML, a global framework for electronic
business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.ORG, the non-commercial
portal that delivers information on the use of XML in industry. The
XML.ORG Registry provides as an open community clearinghouse for
distributing and locating XML application schemas, vocabularies and
related documents. OASIS serves as the home for industry groups
interested in developing XML specifications. OASIS technical work
embraces conformance, security, business transactions, repositories and
other interoperability issues.

OASIS sponsors include Adobe Systems, Access360, Aerospatiale, AND Data
Solutions, Arbortext, Auto-trol, Aventail, Baltimore Technologies, B-Bop
Associates, BEA Systems, Bentley Systems, Boeing, Bowstreet, Bridge,
Business Logic Corporation, Chrystal Software, Cohesia, Commerce One,
Critical Path, DataChannel, Dataloom, Defense Information Services
Agency, Deutsche Post AG, Documentum, EADS Airbus, eCredit.com, empolis,
Engage, Enigma, Excelergy, eXcelon, Extensibility, Extricity, First
Call, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, icomXpress, Informix, Infoteria, Innodata,
Interwoven, IPNet Solutions, ISOGEN, ITEDO, Ivis Group, Jamcracker,
JetForm, Logistics Management Institute, Mediaplex, Mercator Software,
Micrografx, Microsoft, Netegrity, Netfish, Netscape/AOL, NextPage, NII
Enterprise Promotion Association, Nimble Technology, NIST, Novell,
ObjectSpace, Pick Systems, Pearson Education, Planet 7 Technologies,
Popkin Software, ProNet Technology, Reuters, SAA Consultants, Sabre,
SAP, Securant Technologies, Sequoia Software, SilverStream Software,
SoftQuad, Software AG, Sterling Commerce, StreamServe, Sun Microsystems,
Tamalpais Group, Thomas Technology Solutions, TIBCO, Virtual Access
Networks, Visa, Wavo, webMethods, Whitehill Technologies, Xerox, XML
Global, XMLSolutions and XyEnterprise.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.941.284.0403