October 2007

A Race to the Finish!

Several ARTS work teams are racing to complete new schemas and technical documents for release at the NRF Annual Convention & EXPO, January 13-16 2008 in New York City.

Items planned for completion are:

• SOA Blueprint plus SOA Best Practices - describing the infrastructure and services for the optimum SOA implementation in retail, plus a white paper describing related activities across various ARTS technical committees and work teams

• Retail Transaction Interface (RTI) - message sets from POSlog to reuse core POS functions and services in the SOA infrastructure described by the Blueprint

• Standard Data Warehouse for Retail - a view ARTS Data Model to support effective Business Intelligence (BI) that documents how to update the warehouse using ARTS standard XML schemas

• The New web-based Data Dictionary - With robust search function, relationships and accurate/understandable definitions plus more than 5,000 retail information elements

Brussels Committee Meetings draw from 11 Countries

The wide international representation allowed many valuable features to be added to all of the above.  Hosted by Oracle in their Brussels offices, the  meetings opened with status report by work team chairs on these developing standards.  This report can be viewed on the ARTS XML webboard under the Brussels 2007 Presentations conference (the webboard can be access through the ARTS members only area at www.nrf-arts.org).  Additional presentations include Tax Transaction and Scale Management.

Upcoming ARTS XML and Data Model Committee Meetings

Scheduled for November 12-14 in the Del Ray Beach FL offices of Escalate Retail, these meetings will be the final opportunity to review and offer suggestions on these documents prior to release.  Your attendance and contributions are an urgent matter.

Meeting agenda and venue information are available on http://www.nrf-arts.org/ARTSCalendar.htm and you can also register to attend on this page.  Registration is required for all attendees.  The meeting will feature a special session on how to enhance Digital Receipt, one of the first ARTS standard schemas.

Video Analytics Remains the HOT new ARTS Standard Initiative!

The charter/scope document for this work team is available to members only on the ARTS XML webboard - see the Video Analytics conference.  The charter currently covers 18 use cases, ranging from LP and CRM through Parking lot management.  The standard specification is being developed based on these use cases - if you have suggestions for additional use cases, please attend the Florida  meetings in November, or send an email to arts@nrf.com.  Many of the 14 members of the work team are planning to attend including Target, Axis, Brickstream and Cisco.  We urge retailers to attend in order to ensure standards for this relatively new retail business tool fully address your business requirements.

ARTS at NRF

ARTS will be out in force at the NRF Annual Convention.

• Sunday, January 13, ARTS Update Session: The ARTS SOA Blueprint and first draft of RTI Schema will be released with presentations by Big Lots, IBM and Microsoft

• Monday and Tuesday, January 14-15 - The ARTS Standards Pavilion: More information on all standards with experts on hand to discuss how to effectively use the new SOA Blueprint and RTI

• Tuesday January 15, Big !deas Session: ARTS will sponsor a joint session where IHL and RIS will release their 5^th Annual Store Systems Survey.  This will be followed by a panel discussion on the impact of the survey and how retailers can use ARTS standards to implement new solutions. 

Last Call for ARTS Pavilion Sponsors

Final planning begins November 13 in Del Ray Beach FL.  Any company wishing participate must be confirmed at that time.  In addition to the SOA Blueprint, ARTS is looking to feature presentations on Video Analytics, the Standard Data Warehouse and Web Services POS, the future release of UnifiedPOS.  Contact maderr@nrf.com for more information.

New Presentation Available for Download

Richard Mader's recent presentation to the Asia Pacific Retailers Conference and Exhibition (APRCE) describing the three standards revolutions is now available on http://www.nrf-arts.org/presentations.htm    Mader discusses the three standards revolutions that forever changed the use of technology in retail:  1. Bar Coding and EDI ; 2. The Internet and 3. SOA, XML and Web Services (happening right now).  The presentation explains why you need to beginning implementing these three latest standards-based technologies NOW to remain competitive.

5th Annual Retail Technology Summit a Great Success

100% of this year's attendees said they would return next year; attendees rated the information benefit of the Summit 4.5 on a scale of 1 – 5.  The presentations by JC Penney, Galeries Lafayette and Etam Groep established the business need for SOA and technical presentations by our sponsors, IBM, Microsoft, PCMS, SAP and Oracle gave attendees actionable information on implementations.  Presentations will be mailed to all attendees and later posted in the member’s only area.

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