At the end of May the leaders of the international CGM community met in Cologne / Germany.

Dieter Weidenbrueck, CEO of ITEDO Software and Chairman of the CGM Open (now an OASIS Member Section) had taken over the responsibility of hosting the technical CGM Open Meeting this year.

After the successful market launch of WebCGM 1.0 many new and extensive tasks in the field of CGM are now to be taken care of. The consortium is currently working with full power on the development of WebCGM 2.0 which will be added considerable functional enhancements.

In this context, the new WebCGM DOM (Document Object Model) and a standardized architecture for XML Companion Files deserve special mention. The WebCGM DOM will allow an easier and standardized access to WebCGM objects.

Users of XML companion files will now be able to load additional meta data in a WebCGM viewer. DOM functions then allow the access to this data. At the same time, CGM Open is evaluating if there is demand for a version 5 of the CGM standard (ISO 8632). A list of requirements for such a version is currently compiled, decisions are expected for the end of 2004.