How we got started
By 1980 Boston College (BC) had gained national notoriety for the innovative uses of information technology to solve Higher Education business problems. As other colleges and universities witnessed BC's continuing adoption of evolving technologies in the creation of imaginative business practices, institutions began seeking information and requesting assistance, including the sharing of software. BC made the management decision not to get into the software business but rather to allow Information Technology staff, principally Bernie Gleason, to offer limited consulting services. The first engagement was with Cornell University to provide mentoring and expertise in the design and building of an on-line Admissions System. The success at Cornell served as a springboard to work with other institutions. Thus, a business was born.
XMQL -- What does it mean?
By the mid-1990's the influence of the Internet and the World Wide Web was being felt on the BC campus and users had begun experimenting by developing departmental Web pages without adherence to any consistent standards. While the initiative of the user community was a good thing, it was quickly recognized that the campus website needed a enterprise solution that appearance and navigational structure across all departments, In addition, users needed an easy-to-use set of software tools to develop pages and existing enterprise business systems needed to be re-engineered to provide accessible via the Web. To that end BC Information Technology developed XMQL (eXtensible Markup & Query Language), which was successfully implemented universally across campus. NOTE: XMQL software was replaced years later once a superior commercial site product was identified, purchased and implemented. But a name - XMQL - was born.
By the late 1990's the technology challenge in the area of business applications had shifted to integration and interoperability, in particular, how to allow multiple applications running in disparate operating environments to communicate with each other and exchange data on a near real-time basis. The solution involved the development of a message-oriented middleware layer that utilized Message Queuing (MQ) and XML. MQ provided an asynchronous protocol and XML defined the standard format for business communications. So the name stayed the same - XMQL - just a different meaning. Consequently, we decided going forward to stick with the company name (XMQL) as technology emphasis shifted in the future. So XMQL became permanent.
By 1980 Boston College (BC) had gained national notoriety for the innovative uses of information technology to solve Higher Education business problems. As other colleges and universities witnessed BC's continuing adoption of evolving technologies in the creation of imaginative business practices, institutions began seeking information and requesting assistance, including the sharing of software. BC made the management decision not to get into the software business but rather to allow Information Technology staff, principally Bernie Gleason, to offer limited consulting services. The first engagement was with Cornell University to provide mentoring and expertise in the design and building of an on-line Admissions System. The success at Cornell served as a springboard to work with other institutions. Thus, a business was born.
XMQL -- What does it mean?
By the mid-1990's the influence of the Internet and the World Wide Web was being felt on the BC campus and users had begun experimenting by developing departmental Web pages without adherence to any consistent standards. While the initiative of the user community was a good thing, it was quickly recognized that the campus website needed a enterprise solution that appearance and navigational structure across all departments, In addition, users needed an easy-to-use set of software tools to develop pages and existing enterprise business systems needed to be re-engineered to provide accessible via the Web. To that end BC Information Technology developed XMQL (eXtensible Markup & Query Language), which was successfully implemented universally across campus. NOTE: XMQL software was replaced years later once a superior commercial site product was identified, purchased and implemented. But a name - XMQL - was born.
By the late 1990's the technology challenge in the area of business applications had shifted to integration and interoperability, in particular, how to allow multiple applications running in disparate operating environments to communicate with each other and exchange data on a near real-time basis. The solution involved the development of a message-oriented middleware layer that utilized Message Queuing (MQ) and XML. MQ provided an asynchronous protocol and XML defined the standard format for business communications. So the name stayed the same - XMQL - just a different meaning. Consequently, we decided going forward to stick with the company name (XMQL) as technology emphasis shifted in the future. So XMQL became permanent.