Web boy no longer

The time: Early October, time to finalize marketing plans for the next calendar year

The place: An "off-site" meeting room at a local hotel, furnished with a conference table, coffee setup, and continental breakfast

The players: Product managers, product marketing managers, division director, group VP

Lou: ...and so you see, it is vital that we reconceptualize our message to match the stratification in job function and scope of managerial authority among members of the target constituency for optimum efficiency and maximum return.

Phil: That's great, Lou, just great. So what are we talking about really? Who are these guys?

Lou: Well, first there's the enterprise group. That's the CIO, DP director, director of software development...titles like that.

Phil: And the hands-on guys?

Lou: Yeah, the coders. Team leaders, developers, project managers, analysts, software engineers.

Phil: Not "programmers"?

Lou: Nah, too downscale. Programmers are shareware guys, hobbyists. We're looking for the deep pockets.

Phil: Right, right. And what about the Web staff?

Lou: That's where it gets complicated. A lot of these sites are still built by somebody's son-in-law. We haven't found standard job titles or job descriptions. Even "webmaster" -- that's a development job in some companies, administrative in others.

Phil: I don't get it. Everybody's building e-commerce sites, intranets -- bottom-line it for me. Who's doing this work?

Lou: Well...you might as well call 'em "Web boys." Yeah, that's it. The whole damn industry's supported by Web boys.

Sound familiar? While most businesses are now actively pursuing Internet strategies, the Internet development world's job titles, roles, and responsibilities are not standard. A resume showing two years of "Web development" tells the interviewer relatively little about the applicant's experience.

That's where the Association of Internet Professionals' new technical application level specifications come in.

The AIP is a coalition of Internet professionals, industry companies, and educational institutions. Its mission, according to its home page, is to "unify, support, and represent the global community of Internet professionals." Among the activities the AIP undertakes in pursuit of this aim is the development of certification standards and competency definitions for specialties within the field.

The group's latest effort is the "technical application level" specification, which defines six primary Internet job roles. "While hundreds of Internet technical jobs exist in the market place under almost as many titles," the group says, "...they are made up of a combination of one or more of these six 'pure' job roles, in combination with other...skills."

The roles include three programming specifications (general developer, database specialist, and e-commerce transaction specialist) and three administration specifications (Internet administrator, Internet enterprise systems specialist, and security specialist).

"We have developed the baseline definitions that will help everyone understand what different professionals within the Internet world should be expected to know," AIP executive director Andrew Kraft told Developer News. "Once these baseline competencies are defined, certification firms -- many of them, like Microsoft, Adobe, and Compaq, are on our board -- can establish programs for certifying Internet professionals. If they're consistent with our application levels, then we'll offer AIP accreditation to the certificates."

You may be a database specialist or you may be an enterprise systems specialist...but with AIP on your side, you'll no longer have to answer to "Web boy."

Association of Internet Professionals
15 E. 26th St., No. 1403
New York, NY 10010
877-247-0800
info@association.org

How does Junction function?

Data Junction Corp. has announced the release of XML Junction, its latest data solution offering.  XML Junction combines XML with legacy data and SQL DBMSs, allowing for faster reconciliation between data and object definition differences, as well as with hundreds of other data formats. XML Junction functions as an integration server, allowing for bidirectional conversion between XML and the DTDs.  Creation of an XML document from existing data is simple -- point and click.

According to Mike Hoskins, President of Data Junction Corporation, XML Junction's ability to bridge traditional applications and data sources brings data transformation to a new plateau.

XML Junction manages to balance XML standards with constantly changing data definitions, giving users a tool which provides fast data adaptation.  It's comprised of a visual designer and a scalable transformation engine that automates the creation, parsing, transformation and integration of XML objects via a graphical drag and drop convention. Data stored in XML documents, as well as traditional applications, can be continually managed to run within industry standards.

XML Junction runs on Windows NT, Windows 2000 and UNIX, and is priced under $1,500 per license.

Data Junction Corp.
2201 Northland Dr.
Austin, TX 78756
800-580-4411
512-459-1308
512-459-1309 fax

Please "quote" me

As if Internet Explorer 5 hasn't had enough knocks lately, its development team is now faced with repairing HTML shortcomings in its default "Web Page, complete" save-page-to-disk setting. It seems that Microsoft's IE5 code does not take into account XML standards when it comes to retaining quotation marks around HTML element attributes.  Documents with the default setting of "Web Page, complete" produce data that cannot be extracted by XML.  Images, sounds and other non-textual elements are not saved within this setting.

Web developers have discovered that when files created in IE5 are routed through an XML parser, they fail to retain data not enclosed in quotes. This means that document information such as dates, titles, etc. cannot be extracted. For example, currently forms completed on the Web (within  IE5) cannot be utilized in custom database applications. This has serious implications to e-commerce developers. The alternative, using the "Web Page, HTML only" setting, will simply allow for document creation, sans sound, pictures, and so on.  The result isn't any more useful than a Word document.

According to Microsoft product manager Ray Sun, the problem is rooted in the way Microsoft's HTML engine records data to disk so images are viewable offline. The target of the source has to be rewritten such that images will load relative URLs and be saved to a file. No fix date has been announced.