3rd Weekly Newsletter

[Martin Hardwick]

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== STEP Tools Weekly Newsletter -- 27 Apr 1998

This weekly newsletter is a brief update of what is going on in STEP
and at STEP Tools, Inc.  If you want to know more, try the STEP Tools
web site (http://www.steptools.com) or the contact for each article.


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STEP Tools, Inc. Wins SBIR

STEP Tools, Inc, has won an Air Force SBIR to develop "SESAME: A STEP
Entry system for Small and Medium Suppliers".  SESAME will be a suite
of Internet tools to share product information across the supply
chain. Over the next six months you will be able to watch a prototype
of SESAME grow on our web site.  We want it to be the suite of tools
that you need for managing product information, so any feedback that
you can give us will be most appreciated. For more infomation contact
Martin Hardwick at hardwick at steptools.com

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STEP Application Programming

The next Application Programming with STEP class will be held in Troy
NY on May 12-14. The class is a hands on tutorial that shows C and C++
programmers how to write application programs that read and write data
defined by the STEP standard. For some examples see the AP-203 mystery
programs at http://www.steptools.com.  For registration information
contact Annalara at anna at steptools.com

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STEP and XML

STEP Tools, Inc. has started working on a STEP/EXPRESS interface to
XML.  XML is an extension to HTML that lets World Wide Web Browsers
process a richer range of data sets. A number of groups around the
world are interested in using XML to send structured communications
between contractors and suppliers.

XML will need a schema so that the sender and receive know what to
expect. Therefore, the idea of defining an interface between EXPRESS
and XML has become a hot topic because industry will be able to use
the STEP schemas to define the messages.  For information contact
valois at steptools.com.

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Thesis on SDAI Implementation

David Loffredo's Ph.D thesis is now on our web site.  He defines a
series of benchmarks for measuring the performance of SDAI databases
and gives results for those benchmarks for ORACLE and ObjectStore
databases.

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STEP-NC Workshop

The workshop on the new STEP interface for machine tool controllers
is being held this week on Wednesday and Thursday. If you want to be
a last minute registrant contact Paula at paula at rdrc.rpi.edu

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Translation Service Statistics

The following is a usage summary for our translation service this week.
For more information see http://www.steptools.com/translate

    Period Covered: Sun Apr 19-26 1998
    Total usage: 44
    Sucessful usage: 33 (75%)
    Errors: 11 (25%)

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Why Customers Prefer our Products

STEP Tools, Inc. software is installed at over 300 sites on a wide
variety of UNIX and PC boxes. It is used in commercial CAD, CAM, CAE
tools like Unigraphics, Bentley, 3D-Eye/Trispectives Hitachi Zosen,
Bridgeport Controls and Tecnomatix.  You can find a list of reasons
why people prefer our products at:
    
    http://www.steptools.com/products/stdev/reasons.html


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