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Microsoft Releases XML Schemas for Office Visio 2003

Redmond, Washington — April 16, 2004 — Microsoft has announced the release of the DataDiagramML XML Schema, an XML based data model expressed using XML Schema (XSD), the official W3C language for XML data modeling, which defines a Microsoft Visio document's data elements and attributes and their containment relationships. Microsoft Visio 2003 is a drawing and diagramming solution that helps users transform business and technical concepts into visual diagrams, automatically creating database diagrams, Web maps, timelines, calendars, charts, etc. A DatadiagramML file is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document that contains all the components of a Microsoft Office Visio binary file.

The DataDiagramML XML Schema is offered by Microsoft under a royalty-free license. Additionally, Microsoft has announced that detailed documentation will be provided, empowering XML developers to leverage data contained in Visio diagrams when developing powerful XML-based software applications. According to Microsoft, the documentation contains everything an XML developer would need to know about how to read and write Visio's new XML file formats, including the technical descriptions of objects found in the file formats like shapes and stencils – allowing developers to seamlessly integrate Visio information with other applications and systems throughout their organizations as part of their business processes.

Commenting on the significance of the announcement, Carlo Innocenti, Stylus Studio's senior product architect said: "Visio is a great tool for building visual representations of complex data structures, such as flowcharts and diagrams, however, it was previously impossible to share the valuable data contained within the information-rich Visio diagrams, with other software applications. This presented a serious problem that often resulted in either information loss or duplication. Using Stylus Studio's advanced XML development tools such our XML Schema Documentation Generator, developers can quickly visualize and understand all aspects of the Microsoft DataDiagramML XML Schema. Furthermore, using Stylus Studio's XSLT editing, and XML mapping tools, developers can create powerful XSL stylesheets to programmatically access the data within Visio XML files, which can then be seamlessly integrated with other XML-enabled applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or other Web service applications.

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• W3C Releases Public Working Draft for Full-Text Searching of XML Text and XML Documents (July 12, 2004)
• Universal Business Language 1.0 (UBL) Approved OASIS Committee Draft (May 4, 2004)
• Microsoft Announces Mobile Device Profile for Web Services (May 3, 2004)
• Microsoft Releases Royalty Free XML Schemas for Office Visio 2003 (Apr. 16, 2004)
• Tim Berners-Lee Awarded Millennium Technology Award for Pioneering Work on Web (Apr. 15, 2004)

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