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XML and Web Services In The News - 29 January 2007
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Sun Microsystems
HEADLINES:
Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) Becomes an ISO/IEC
Standard
Staff, SNIA Announcement
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced that its
Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) has been designated
an International Standard by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
This designation is expected to further accelerate the already widespread
adoption of the standard by storage vendors and IT users in all markets
worldwide. The SNIA was supported in the ISO/IEC standardization effort
by partnering with the International Committee for Information Technology
Standards (INCITS), whose T11 Technical Committee assisted with the
submission of the specification to the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee,
JTC 1, Information Technology. After processing by the JTC 1
subcommittee SC 25, Interconnection of Information Technology Equipment,
SMI-S was successfully voted as an International Standard on 28 November
2006. It is expected to be published before the end of the first quarter
of 2007 as ISO/IEC 24775, Information Technology - Storage Management.
The SNIA recently announced it is continuing to expand SMI-S with new
capabilities in an effort to meet the global IT users' needs and vendor
requirements for rapidly evolving storage technology. Support for such
storage capabilities as host-based controllers, storage enclosures,
support for file system quotas, volume protection and consistency
management for snapshot and replication management support are expected
to be included in future releases of the SMI-S standard. So far, SMI-S
has been implemented in more than 450 products tested for conformance
with the standard.
See also: SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S)
Guidelines for Writing JSR-168 Portlets
Drew Varner, BEA Technical Report
JSR-168 is a collection of Java APIs for portlet developers. There are
a number of reasons to design JSR-168 portlets that adhere to the
specification. Portability is an obvious benefit. Code written according
to the specification will be easier to move to among portal servers.
The majority of Java-based portal servers support JSR-168 portlets.
Another benefit is easier federation. Exposing JSR-168 Portlets via
Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) producers is easier when
portlets adhere to the JSR-168 specification. WSRP provides a standard
to federate portlet content via Web services. JSR-168 and WSRP 1.0
portlet capabilities are tightly coupled. JSR-168 to WSRP portlet
bridges utilize JSR-168's URL rewriting APIs. This article illustrates
best practices for developing JSR-168 portlets for portability. [Note:
JSR-168 was motivated by the fact that "Servlet/JSP specifications
define an include mechanism for aggregating Servlets and JSPs, they do
not define the Desktop metaphor where this aggregation happens. Neither
the Servlet/JSP specifications define the possible states and
transitions of an included Servlet or JSP, or how the state of one
Servlet or JSP affects the display of the other included Servlets or
JSPs. In addition, The Servlet/JSP specifications do not define a
personalization interface or the idea of persisting the personalization
information. Furthermore, the Servlet specification does not define
URL-rewriting functions to allow the creation of links and actions
targeted to a specific form within the fragment of a page (Portlet
markup fragment). The Portlet specification is designed to leverage
XML, JAXP, Servlet/JSP, JAAS, and other J2EE technologies.]
See also: the JSR-168 web site
Best Practices for Applying AJAX to JSR 168 Portlets
Greg Ziebold and Marina Sum, Sun Developer Network
AJAX has become increasingly popular in the software arena and many
new AJAX technologies have emerged. Examples are JavaScript libraries
and toolkits, such as the Dojo Toolkit, the Yahoo! UI Library, the
Google Web Toolkit, Script.aculo.us, and DHTML Goodies. In addition,
new standards bodies like Open AJAX and the Dojo Foundation are key
players. In light of the many developments in the past year and the
host of feedback on how to use AJAX in portlets, this article describes
several helpful tips and practices on how best to exploit AJAX in
portlets that comply with the Java Specification Request (JSR) 168:
Portlet Specification. The article refers to an updated version of
the sample, AJAX Portlet Invoice Viewer, from the original article.
A significant disadvantage of using AJAX with JSR 168 portlets is
that you cannot make asynchronous calls to portlets through portlet
URLs. The portlet JavaServer Pages (JSP) tag library offers simple
tags for constructing portlet URLs, but the tags do not produce the
desired results. Portlet URLs enable window state changes and mode
changes that require a subsequent render request to the portal or
portlet container. The result? The response contains not only the
content for the target portlet, but also that for the entire portal,
including all the other rendered portlets. Currently, the expert
group for JSR 286, which defines Portlet Specification 2.0, is
evaluating solutions to better support portlets that make asynchronous
calls with AJAX. In the meantime, solutions do exist. Here is one:
Because a portlet is a Web application that can contain other resources,
such as servlets and JSP pages, you can make the asynchronous requests
to the resources that are bundled with the portlet. For instance, the
Invoice Viewer sample includes a servlet that you can call to
asynchronously render new content in the portlet. To take maximum
advantage of this flexibility, the portlet and the servlet should be
able to share information between themselves.
Adobe Releases PDF 1.7 to AIIM for ISO Standardization
Staff, Adobe Systems Announcement
Adobe Systems Incorporated announced that it intends to release the
full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the
Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of
publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
PDF has become a de facto global standard for more secure and
dependable information exchange since Adobe published the complete PDF
specification in 1993. Both government and private industry have come
to rely on PDF for the volumes of electronic records that need to be
more securely and reliably shared, managed, and in some cases preserved
for generations. Since 1995 Adobe has participated in various working
groups that develop technical specifications for publication by ISO
and worked within the ISO process to deliver specialized subsets of
PDF as standards for specific industries and functions. Today, PDF for
Archive (PDF/A) and PDF for Exchange (PDF/X) are ISO standards, and
PDF for Engineering (PDF/E) and PDF for Universal Access (PDF/UA) are
proposed standards. Additionally, PDF for Healthcare (PDF/H) is an AIIM
proposed Best Practice Guide. AIIM serves as the administrator for
PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/UA and PDF/H. Adobe will release the full PDF 1.7
specification as defined in the PDF Reference Manual to AIIM for the
purpose of submission to ISO. The joint committee formed under AIIM
will identify issues to be addressed, as well as proposed solutions,
and will develop a draft document that will then be presented to a
Joint Working Group of ISO for development and approval as an
International Standard. AIIM holds the secretariat for the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical
Committee (TC) 171 and 171 SC2 for Document Management Applications,
and is the administrator for the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO
TC 171 that represents the U.S. at international meetings. AIIM, an
international authority on Enterprise Content Management (ECM), is
leading the way to the understanding, adoption and use of ECM
technologies. These technologies, tools and methods are used to
capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content across an
enterprise in support of business processes. As a non-profit
association for more than 60 years, AIIM provides industry news and
information, educational events and professional development, market
analysis, industry standards development, publications, regional
chapters, and executive networking.
See also: Duane Nickull's Blog
Parasoft SOAtest 5.0 Collaborative Test and Analysis Suite
Staff, Parasoft Corporation Announcement
Parasoft Corporation provides software development organizations an
automated infrastructure to control and improve the process of
developing business applications. Parasoft has announced the availability
of Parasoft SOAtest 5.0, a comprehensive and collaborative test and
analysis suite. Designed specifically to ensure secure, reliable and
compliant Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), the new release
simplifies testing through multiple layers of business applications.
Wayne Ariola, VP of Strategy and Corporate Development of Parasoft
Corporation: "Parasoft SOAtest 5.0 now allows users to drive a series
of test scenarios, which can then be converted to JUnit tests which
directly correlate message layer tests to source code. This
significantly improves error diagnosis and remediation, and facilitates
collaboration between QA and Development. SOAtest 5.0's new policy
enforcement is a key design feature that allows users to strictly
comply with defined SOA policies. Additionally, the new integration
with BEA Aqualogic Enterprise repository provides another layer of
policy enforcement, which further ensures interoperability and
consistency. Parasoft SOAtest 5.0 facilitates the challenges of
testing in a complex environment and boosts productivity in a
distributed environment. Parasoft SOAtest can now automatically run
load tests in regression mode regularly and much earlier, enabling
users to detect performance problems early in the software development
lifecycle when they are easier, quicker and less costly to resolve.
By streamlining the process of rapidly constructing robust regression
suites for more complex business scenarios, Parasoft SOAtest 5.0
helps clients achieve the ROI that is expected of SOA initiatives.
Organizations can now reuse or be capable of reusing their Web service
assets. Parasoft is a leading provider of innovative solutions for
automated software testing and analysis and the establishment of
software error prevention practices as an integrated part of the
software development lifecycle.
See also: Parasoft SOAtest
Novell's Identity 'Bandit' in Cahoots with Microsoft
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com
In the emerging race to create identity systems that span the Internet,
there are proprietary and open source systems. The two are no longer
mutually exclusive: Novell's Project Bandit and Eclipse's Project
Higgins next week will show how their identity systems interoperate
with Microsoft's Windows CardSpace ID metasystem at the RSA Conference
2007 in San Francisco. Windows CardSpace, one of the key new
technologies included in Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system,
securely stores and transmits personal identities. The open source
Bandit Project is a similar effort, leveraging other open source efforts,
including Eclipse's Project Higgins. The Bandit Project was born February
2006, though it was not officially announced until June of the same
year. There has been a lot of refinement in Bandit since it first got
started, according to Dale Olds, distinguished engineer at Novell.
Olds indicated that when dealing with interoperability issues, it's
very difficult to get current accurate and good specifications. Olds
thought Microsoft did a better job working with Bandit than most,
though there are still some issues that cropped up: "Things that are
not suppose to matter like where the white space is in the XML,
sometimes it's a bug in the original implementation. If there was a
bug in CardSpace with the white space parsing of the XML data in Vista
and it gets shipped to millions of customer you just have to code
around that regardless of what the spec says."
See also: Higgins Trust Framework Project
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