Mark Logic Corporation, provider of the industry's XML content server, has announced the general availability of MarkLogic Server 3.0. New features in MarkLogic Server 3.0 include the automatic conversion of Microsoft Office, PDF, and HTML documents to XML, a Web services-enabled content processing framework, and enhanced full text and XML search functionality. MarkLogic Server is built on open standards including XML and the XQuery language and is designed to deliver the functionality essential for processing high-value content in one integrated product.

MarkLogic Server 3.0 is intended to eliminate the time-consuming and cost-prohibitive first step most organizations experience when attempting to format and load their content. Because MarkLogic Server loads XML "as is" and now automatically converts Microsoft Office, PDF, and HTML documents to XML without requiring any DTD or XML schema, there is no need for the detailed analysis and costly effort required to "shred" or "chunk" documents into a relational database.

MarkLogic Server 3.0 is intended to allow customers to integrate and repurpose content, implement flexible custom publishing applications, and create valuable new content products from existing content. With the new content processing framework, combined with an XQuery engine, MarkLogic Server lets customers define and execute custom content processing pipelines comprised of XQuery statements (executed natively within the system) and which can incorporate any Web services-enabled external applications into the processing flow without incurring the time and cost of special purpose integrations.

MarkLogic Server 3.0 is designed to deliver millisecond search and query response times against multi-terabyte content bases. Customers can search, discover, and retrieve specific pieces of information, not just links to documents, otherwise hidden within large content bases.

• Automatic content conversion--In addition to loading XML "as is", MarkLogic Server 3.0 now automatically converts common document formats including Microsoft Office, PDF, and HTML into well-formed XML without the need to create a DTD or XML schema.
• Fast, scalable full text and XML search--New XML element query, improved XML proximity search, and highlighting give MarkLogic Server 3.0 a complete full text and XML search capability (including word, phrase, Boolean expression, wildcard, proximity, thesauri, spell checking, and highlighting).
• Content processing framework--MarkLogic Server 3.0 is designed to enable organizations to create custom content processing pipelines (trigger-based sequences of content processing steps) comprised of native XQuery statements and Web services-enabled external applications. For example, a content processing pipeline might consist of these steps: A PDF version of a medical journal article is loaded and automatically converted to XML; the XML is sent via a standard Web services interface to an external application that extracts and returns all the medical terms; back in MarkLogic Server, the medical terms are tagged in the XML and an index of the terms is created and appended to the XML document; a searchable Web page is then rendered with the medical terms highlighted and linked to definitions.
• Expanded operating system and platform support--MarkLogic Server 3.0 offers new support for Red Hat Linux ES3 on AMD Opteron (64-bit) and Windows Server 2003 on x86 systems. MarkLogic Server also runs on Sun Solaris 8 and 9 on SPARC systems, Red Hat Linux ES3 on x86 systems and Windows 2000 on x86 systems.