About the Authors

R. Allen Wyke

R. Allen Wyke, of Durham, North Carolina is Vice President of Technology at the Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) solutions company, Blue292. At Blue292 he leads the engineering team and works with the executive team ensure their products services have the proper vision and direction. He is constantly working with XML, HTML, JavaScript, and various other Internet technologies in designing and developing the online EHS software and services that Blue292 has to offer.

Allen, who wrote his first computer program at the age of eight, has programmed in everything from C++, Java, and Perl to Visual Basic and JavaScript. He also has experience in other "languages" such as SQL, HTML/XHTML, DHTML, and XML. Allen has written roughly a dozen books on various Internet technologies and previously wrote the monthly Webmaster column for SunWorld, and a weekly article, Integrating Windows and Unix, for ITworld.com.

Brad Leupen

Brad Leupen is the Chief Technology Officer for the education software company Entrinsik Inc. At Entrinsik Brad brought Web-based products to market that utilize cutting-edge technology such as XML and XSLT. Entrinsik's latest product is entirely XML-based and relies on the technology for its user-interface, middleware components, and data storage. In addition to being a technology strategist, he has also worked as a product manager and implementation specialist for Entrinsik.

Brad has been programming applications since childhood. He worked as a professional programmer over summers in high school before attending Harvard University, where he earned an A.B. with honors in Computer Science. Brad helped to teach several undergraduate courses in programming and operating systems in his time at Harvard. Upon graduation he accepted a job with Entrinsik to become their R&D specialist. Brad has extensive practical knowledge of XML/XSLT, HTML/XHTML, DHTML, Java, J2EE, C++, Visual Basic, and several database technologies.

Sultan Rehman

Sultan Rehman, based in Hong Kong, is the Chief Software Architect for Engage Asia/Australia, where he is responsible for designing and implementing next-generation ad serving and optimization solutions. He specializes in using object-oriented designs for implementing mission-critical distributed systems. One of his current projects involves developing a high-performance and extensible XML Server that exposes a legacy database schema through a set of DTD-constrained XML documents, XLST templates, and XML-RPC methods. Sultan is also working on a configurations management system that uses XML at all levels; from the back store to the configuration documents. He is considering open-sourcing this project and is talking to OpenNMS.

Programming became Sultan's passion more than a decade ago when the boss at his summer job's bought an IBM XT. He quickly mastered BASIC and moved on to Turbo Pascal, C++, Delphi, and eventually to his current favorite, Java. He first got hooked on XML in 1998 after upgrading to Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and saw the possibility of creating a cross-platform way of managing and communicating data and information. When he's not bathing in the glow of a computer screen, Sultan can be found playing "chase the laser pointer" with his eight cats.