Sight & Sound SoftwareÆ today announced support for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) within BookSmart 2.0.


November 3, 1999, Portland, Ore - Sight & Sound SoftwareÆ, the developers of BookSmartTM, the industry's premier online travel booking engine, today announced support for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) within BookSmart 2.0. The combination of BookSmart's internal Extensible Markup Language (XML) data storage format, and support for XSL, offers unparalleled flexibility in generating a variety of formatted data outputs from within BookSmart. For example, personalized booking confirmation email, formatted HTML for web pages, even other XML formats, such as the emerging Open Travel standard, are all as simple as creating an XSL style sheet. The proprietary BookSmart XSL server handles the translation from the internal XML format to the output format specified by the style sheet.

XSL support gives complete control and flexibility to the web site designer to specify exactly how data should look on a page. Different style sheets can be applied for different sets of customers on the same web site, providing a fully personalized look and feel. Since XML also provides the basis for many of the emerging wireless standards, the new XSL support will make creating wireless booking applications with BookSmart much easier.

"BookSmart's customization capabilities contribute to its superior value in today's market," said Jeff Kennedy, President of Sight & Sound Software. "XSL is one of several technologies supported by BookSmart for providing a highly extensible and scaleable travel planning tool kit. It allows us to provide our customers with added flexibility as well as unique functionality, improving the end-user experience."


BookSmart
BookSmart is a travel booking engine that interfaces mainframe computer reservation systems to a variety of client programs, including web servers and wireless devices. Unlike other companies that offer booking engines through a service bureau, BookSmart is licensed to customers and can be run in their own data centers or outsourced to application service providers. BookSmart is based on open industry standards, so it can be configured by qualified professionals and customized for each unique installation. BookSmart's travel e-commerce platform provides for easy implementation of high-traffic online travel sites, which possess real-time access to the worldwide schedules, fares, and rates of airlines, hotels, car rental companies, tour operators and other travel providers.


About Sight & Sound Software
Founded in 1994, Sight & Sound Software provides products and services for the online travel market. The company's flagship product, BookSmart 2.0, occupies a unique position in the online travel industry and currently handles approximately 12% of all online travel transactions. For more information, write to Sight & Sound Software, Inc., 1200 NW Naito Parkway Suite 200, Portland, OR 97209, phone (503) 274-0938, fax (503) 274-0939.