John Thompson

Since agreeing to chronicle the thought process behind CROSSMARK's Knowledge Management System (KMS) and the use of NeoCore's XML Information Server, I've been involved in two incidents that convinced me that CROSSMARK needs both of these to be successful. The first incident involved Markatec, a start-up business that provides a best-of-breed marketing approach to comarketing, brand development, and promotional services. Markatec and another company hosted an educational/sales seminar. The seminar was intended to target only C-level executives such as CEOs and CFOs; Markatec's obligation was to fill between 20-40 seats. They used a list of contacts from another company to generate the target list of C-level executives. The list was created by the sales force of the company that provided the list. The problem with the list was that none of the names were C-level exe... (more)

Mission Impossible XML

XML is changing the business world by making integration easier. You can't pick up a computer industry or business magazine without seeing an article about the impact of XML on large software infrastructure companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. The stories are similar: a company representative describes a proprietary form of XML messaging that makes integration with other products easier, followed by a pledge to support a new global standard. The key points of the article are usually: their product is the center of your IT universe; they recognize your need for functiona... (more)

Mission Impossible XML(MI-XML)

In previous articles in XML-J (Vol. 2, issues 3, 4) we documented the thought processes involved in Crossmark's development of a knowledge management system using NeoCore's XML Information Server. Although the first version of the application isn't yet complete, we'd like to share some of the insights we've gained during the development period. The goal of the KMS is to provide a framework for gathering information from diverse sources and constructing relationships between the pieces of information. We believe that revealing the relationships between information will provide in... (more)