In this issue

Apache Site: www.apache.org
Release: 1.3.9 (Released 20^th August 1999) (local download sites)
Beta: None

Apache 1.3.9 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.6 and earlier on Unix systems should upgrade to this version. Users of Apache on Windows can now upgrade to Apache 1.3.9 avoiding the previous problems with Apache 1.3.6. Read the Guide to 1.3.9 for information about changes between 1.3.6 and 1.3.9.

The second official Apache conference, ApacheCon 2000, takes place March 8th-10th 2000 in Orlando, Florida. Apache Week is proud to be an official sponsor of ApacheCon 2000 and will keep you updated on conference news between now and March.

The preliminary schedule for the conference has been released, and contains 41 sessions from 39 presenters. Topics covered include business perspectives of using the Apache web server, security and e-commerce issues, in-depth technical talks, and details of Apache 2.0.

ApacheCon 2000 is the first Apache conference since the formation of the Apache Software Foundation and the conference includes a number of talks about the new Jakarta and XML projects.

This week sees the launch of the Apache Software Foundation's XML Apache project. In July the Apache group formed the Apache Software Foundation with the intention of providing a framework for other open-source projects alongside the Apache web server. One of the first new projects announced was the Jakarta Project, whose aim was to provide an open source implementation of JavaServer pages technologies.

XML is the Extensible Markup Language, a data format for structured document interchange. The XML project, xml.apache.org, links the foundation to commercial companies such as Bowstreet, DataChannel, Exoffice, IBM, Lotus Development Corporation and Sun Microsystems. The aim of the project is to advance the development and deployment of XML and XSL standards, and provide a robust set of open source libraries and applications. One of these libraries is an XML parser named Xerces, the parser will initially be based on IBM's XML4J and XML4C technologies, with later versions including features from Sun's XML parser and other contributions.

The Apache Web server already includes a cut-down XML parser, Expat, and although it is not used in the core code, it is available for use by add-on modules such as mod_dav.

More details of the launch are available in the Press Release and in a CNET News.com article, "Apache to create XML open-source tools"