Jon Bosak led the creation of the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

specification at the W3C. From 1996–2008, he worked for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

XML

Tim Bray Timothy William Bray (born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification. He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 w ...

, who was one of the editors of the

specification, has this to say in his note on Bosak in his annotated version of the specification: In a 1999 posting to the xml-dev mailing list, Bray writes: When he stepped down from the W3C XML Coordination Group in 2000, Jon Bosak was given the unusual recognition of having a formal identifier reserved for him: :In appreciation for his vision and leadership and dedication the W3C XML Plenary on this 10th day of February, 2000 reserves for Jon Bosak in perpetuity the XML name "xml:Father".

The Universal Business Language

In 2001, Bosak organized the

OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

Universal Business Language Universal Business Language (UBL) is an open library of standard electronic XML business documents for procurement and transportation such as purchase orders, invoices, transport logistics and waybills. UBL was developed by an OASIS Technical C ...

Technical Committee to create standard formats for basic electronic business documents. He led the UBL TC through the completion of UBL 2.1 in November 2013 and continues to serve on the Committee as Secretary. UBL was approved for use in European public sector procurement by decision of the European Commission dated 31 October 2014 and published as an International Standard, ISO/IEC 19845:2015, on 15 December 2015.

Metrological Studies

Bosak is author of the book (, 2010) and the article (latest version 19 April 2014)

Bob Bosak

Jon Bosak's father, Robert Bosak (1925–1987), began the family's long involvement in the computer industry in 1947 when he went to work on the first computer on the west coast of the US. He joined

RAND The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is finan ...

in 1948 to work on analysis and programming of scientific problems. In 1951, he joined

Lockheed Aircraft Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but o ...

, where he organized and directed the Mathematical Analysis Group. For a short time after his divorce in the 1950s, he shared an apartment with

Bob Bemer Robert William Bemer (February 8, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was a computer scientist best known for his work at IBM during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Early life and education Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Bemer graduated from Cranb ...

, "the Father of ASCII." Bob Bosak returned to RAND in 1956 to become head of programming for the

Semi Automatic Ground Environment The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SA ...

(SAGE), the automated

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection ...

system that controlled US air defenses from 1959 to 1983 and strongly influenced the design of modern air traffic control systems. He was one of the designers of

JOVIAL JOVIAL is a high-level programming language based on ALGOL 58, specialized for developing embedded systems (specialized computer systems designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions, usually embedded as part of a larger, more complete dev ...

and principal author of the seminal paper ''An Information Algebra''.An Information Algebra

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are intended for readers wi ...

, Volume 5, Issue 4 (April 1962).

References

External links

Background information at ibiblio

Schema document for namespace http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Sun Microsystems people XML Guild {{compu-bio-stub