(November 21, 2002) - Novell plans to provide visual tools based on the emerging XForms standard in the next major release of Novell exteNd, its J2EE-based Web application development suite. Developed by the W3C, XForms enables information to be presented as XML to provide a next-generation approach to building interactive Web applications.

Novell's support for XForms underscores the company's commitment to standards-based Web application development. "The XForms standard will become the cornerstone for the presentation of XML-based information, including information delivered via Web services-based applications," said David Litwack, Novell's senior vice president of Web application development.

Novell's commitment to standards ensures that applications built using Novell exteNd will run on all major platforms and operating systems. The XForms standard resembles Microsoft's new forms application for inputting XML data, XDocs, but it is unknown whether Microsoft will support XForms. "So far it seems like XDocs is similar (and in some cases broader) to XForms in scope and goals. The biggest concern, of course, is interoperability: will XDocs and XForms be compatible? Even if it does not today, XDocs will eventually need to support XForms to effectively interoperate with the Web," commented Ashish Larivee, product manager for Novell exteNd.

Future releases of the Novell exteNd suite will leverage the XForms standard to provide visual tools to design and build pages in addition to binding these pages to Web Services, relational databases, and other data sources. Drag-and-drop tools based on XForms will reduce the amount of programming necessary to build interactive Web applications.

Visual design tools based on XForms will be available with Novell exteNd 5, scheduled for release in mid-2003. Novell's XForms technology preview is available for free download at www.novell.com/xforms.