ARTS MEMBERS UPDATE - March/April 2003

Exclusive retail standards information for Members Only  

Top Story of the Month

ARTS Data Model Release 4.0 is now available for download from ARTS Website
This long-awaited release supports the total retail enterprise. Until now, the ARTS Data Model focused exclusively on interoperability of applications within a single store. Release 4.0 provides the organizational and group structures to link stores to central or corporate offices and to create management grouping of stores for multiple purposes. Major enhancements included in Release 4.0 include:

 
Enterprise Expansion
Retail Store Groups
POS Department
Multiple Languages
Calendar
Item
Locations
Party Name and Address
Sales Tax
Transaction Log
Rentals
Event Scheduler

For complete information see the Change Section on the website on the Data Model page. That is just one of the 12 sections of the release documentation that can be downloaded now and will be sent on CD next week to all members in good standing.

ARTS Standards News:

POSlog Meeting Establishes Priorities for Version 2 for June Release
POS management from Blockbuster, Inc., Limited Brands, Inc., RadioShack Corporation and Target Corporation met with representatives from 360Commerce, IBM Corporation, NCR Corporation and Triversity, Inc. and agreed that Tender and Taxation are the priorities for version 2 of POSlog. These will be included in the next release available in June. More than 30 new functions were considered; the remaining functions will be further evaluated for possible inclusion in subsequent releases. The complete list of features is available to members only on the ARTSXML Webboard in the POSlog V2 conference.
UnifiedPOS Elects Chair and New Members
At the most recent meeting of the UnifiedPOS committee, hosted March 11 - 12 in San Jose by Sun Microsystems Inc., Boyd Dimmock of IBM Corporation was elected the chair under the Policies and Procedures document approved last month by the ARTS Board. Boyd has successfully coordinated the Committee for the past three years. Axiohm Transaction Solutions and Ultimate Technology Corp. were elected to serve on the Committee. The Policies and Procedures can be found on www.nrf-arts.org under the UnifiedPOS section.

In other actions at the meeting, Sun Microsystems gave an overview of JXTA technology, which has been selected by NACS for physical device connections, and UnifiedPOS release 1.8, which will include smartcard reader, device statistics and enhancements to other devices was reviewed by the group.
ARTS Customer Work Team Meeting at NRF CRMretail Conference 
A meeting was held March 19 at NRF's CRMretail Conference in Baltimore Maryland to determine if there was sufficient interest among ARTS members to restart the Customer work team. Attended by representatives of CashAmerica, Magrabi Optical (largest retailer in the Middle East), Arinware Technologies (Argentina), Blue Martini Software, SAP and Symbol Technologies, it was decided that there was indeed enough interest, and that the next step would be to hold a conference call and possibly meet during the IXRetail meetings scheduled for May 7-9 in the RadioShack offices in Fort Worth, Texas. Send an email to arts@nrf.com if you are interested in participating.

Upcoming Meetings and Events:
ARTS to present at the NRF CIO Council meeting April 11-13 in Sarasota, FL
 
 Next IXRetail Meeting to be hosted by Radio Shack in Ft. Worth, TX, May 7-9. Register now on arts
 
ARTS will present with David Hogan, NRF's new SVP and CIO, at Retek World 2003 in Orlando FL, May 11-14. See www.retek.com/world for more information. 
 
ARTS to present at IBM Store System Users Group meeting, May 18-21 in Miami FL. See www.ibmstoresystemsug.org for more information on

this great event.

 
There will be a general ARTS member meeting at Retail Systems June 11th in Chicago, IL. See moonwatchmedia.com for more details.

INTRODUCING ARTS Newest MembeRS
BearingPoint, Inc. United States
DS Data Systems SpA ITALY
Manor AG SWITZERLAND
Star Micronics United States
Trigo Technologies, Inc. United States