<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<document url="http://castor.org/projects.xml">
  <properties>
    <title>Castor - A marketplace</title>
    <abstract>
       Useful information about commercial support for Castor.</abstract>
    <status>Final</status>
  </properties>
  <body>
    <title>Castor - A marketplace</title>
    <header>
    </header>

    <section title="Introduction">

       <p>As <a href="support.html">already</a> explained, Castor is an 
	      open-source product. This means that the source code is available at 
		  no charge and may be obtained using <a href="cvs.xml">CVS</a> or
         <a href="download.xml">downloaded</a> via 
		 <url>http://dist.codehaus.org/castor</url>.</p>

       <p>Due to the nature of the project, there is no guaranteed level of 
		  support (of commercial quality) offered by the project and its 
		  community. As outlined <a href="support.html">here</a>, the online
          <a href="index.html">documentation</a> is the best place to 
		  start.</p>

       <p>Having said that, it is noteworthy to mention that there's plenty of 
		companies out there that offer ...</p>
		
		<ul>
			<li>(commercial) products based on Castor</li>
			<li>consulting services related to various aspects of Castor</li>
			<li>commercial support related to Castor</li>
		</ul>

		<p>This page provides you with various reference points, addressing 
		   most of the above areas. This includes a directory of companies
		   offering (commercial) services, a directory of success-stories 
		   (highlighting the (commercial) use of Castor in the industry), etc.</p>		
		   
		<p>We hope that the information provided is of value to you, our customers,
		   and we are more than happy to discuss any suggestions/recommendations
		   related to this offering.</p>

    </section>

	<section title="Use of Castor in other open source projects">
		
		<p>This section identifies various (mainly) open source projects where 
		   Castor is used and/or that offer tight integration with Castor or
		   parts thereof.</p>
		   
        <h3><a href="http://cocoon.apache.org">Apache Cocoon</a></h3>
			
			<p>Apache Cocoon is a web publishing framework built around the 
			   concepts of separation of concerns and component-based web 
			   development.</p>

			<p>As part of this framework, Cocoon provides a component, the 
			   <b>CastorTransformer</b>, that marshalls an object hierarchy (for 
			   which a mapping file or a class descriptor hierarchy exists) to 
			   XML and inserts it as a stream of SAX events into a Cocoon 
			   pipeline.</p>

			<p>Further information on the integration of Apache Cocoon and
			   Castor can be found <a href="projects.xml">here</a>.</p>
		
	</section>
	<section title="Companies and their commercial offerings">

      <companies>
        
		<company id="anecon">
			<name>Anecon Softwaredesign und Beratung Ltd.</name>
			<url>http://www.anecon.com</url>
			<contact>
				<name>Werner Guttmann</name>
				<email>werner.guttmann@anecon.com</email>
				<phone></phone>
				<description>Technical architect, Castor JDO technical lead</description>
			</contact>
			<description>
				Anecon offers expertise in the area of J2EE applications, with 
                a strong emphasis on the integration of persistence frameworks, object/relational 
                mapping tools and XML data binding frameworks in general and Castor JDO and 
				XML in particular; it supports clients in their focus to integrate such 
                frameworks into their enterprise computing platforms.
			</description>
		</company>

		<company id="codo">
			<name>CODA: Financial Intelligence</name>
			<url>http://www.coda.com</url>
			<contact>
				<name>Andrew Fawcett</name>
				<email>andrew.fawcett@coda.com</email>
				<phone></phone>
				<description>Technical Architect
				</description>
			</contact>
			<description>
                "As a developer of international financial management and
                procurement systems, CODA started a project to XML-enable our Financials
                application server," noted Andrew Fawcett of CODA. "We made two major
                technology decisions. The first was to use the W3C XML Schema to
                describe our XML messages. The second was to facilitate the use of an
                XML Data Binding framework. This allows our developers to process XML
                messages in a more productive and intuitive way within their programs,
                without requiring extensive training and experience with XML or its
                traditional APIs such as SAX or DOM. In performing an analysis of XML
                Data Binding frameworks, we found that Castor was the only
                implementation at the time that met our needs in terms of its support
                for W3C XML Schema and its ability to integrate with our Web
                infrastructure." 
                
                "In addition," Fawcett continued, "we use Castor internally within our
                Web client-enabling framework (based on the Java Servlet API). Java
                source code produced by the Castor source code generator is used to
                dynamically bind data to our Web forms. The resulting data can then be
                marshaled directly between our Web applications and application server."
			</description>
		</company>

		<company id="syscon">
			<name>Syscon Ingenieurbüro für Meß- und Datentechnik GmbH</name>
			<url>http://www.syscon-world.de</url>
			<contact>
				<name>Ralf Joachim</name>
				<email>ralf.joachim@syscon-world.de</email>
				<phone>+49 7071 369098</phone>
				<description>CEO, Technical architect</description>
			</contact>
			<description>
				Syscon is primarily concerned with the developement of custom-build/purpose-build
				software solutions and the design of database systems since its foundation in 1996.
				For 4 years we have been developing Java applications in enterprise environment.
				For these applications, we frequently use our own client/server framework side by
				side with open source projects such as the data binding framework Castor, where
				one of our engineers is an active committer.
			</description>
		</company>

      </companies>
      
	</section>

  </body>
</document>
