Steven Pemberton recently announced on the public XForms mailing list the results of a gathering of XForms implementers, representing over 20 ongoing implementations of XForms.

The event was held on 27th and 28th February 2003 at Novell Inc., Waltham, near Boston, MA, USA. The aim of the meeting was to exchange experiences with implementation, identify issues for advancing XForms 1.0 from Candidate Recommendation phase of the W3C process, and to demonstrate implementations. In attendence were members of the Working Group, and a number of representatives of other companies implementing and using XForms.

At the outset, the attendees identified at least 20 known implementations of XForms that are in progress, as well as 2 'half' implementations (only implementing the model), and a validator.

Some large user communities were mentioned, in particular the British Government's e-government interoperability framework, which says "current guidance is to use the XForms 1.0 standards as defined by W3C".

Several systems were shown with demonstrations that included some novel use for XForms. Systems included the publicly available XSmiles, Novell Technology Preview, x-port.net FormsPlayer, as well as some unannounced systems. Of note was an unannounced implementation from Oracle that demonstrated the same form being served to a PC screen, a mobile phone screen, a voice server over a speaker phone, and even via an instant messenger virtual buddy.

There were discussions about and identification of issues not easy to resolve within an implementation, and issues that needed clarifying in the XForms specification, as well as discussions of features that although too late to add now would make good candidates for a future version of XForms.

One major decision taken at the meeting was to move XForms Basic from the XForms 1.0 specification to a separate one-page specification of the XForms Basic profile. The Working Group took this decision to reduce delays for XForms advancing to Proposed Recommendation status since the Working Group is already close to having the required two XForms Full implementations. The XForms Basic Profile, once separated out, will allow for XForms implementation on Mobile devices.

The XForms Working Group was delighted and energized by the workshop; the enthusiasm of the implementors and the interesting use cases that they had produced has shown the value of the general approach defined by XForms, and bodes well for its future adoption.

Related Resources:

• XForms Home page
• What are XForms?
• Final Stretch for W3C XForms