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XML and Web Services In The News - 27 April 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML.org Daily Newslink is sponsored by SAP
HEADLINES:
IBM alphaWorks Technology: BPEL Repository
Jussi Vanhatalo, et al., IBM
BPEL Repository, a tool from the IBM alphaWorks emerging technologies
Web site, provides a mechanism for storing and retrieving XML data via
object-oriented querying. As the market for Business Process Management
(BPM) matures, organizations implementing BPM solutions observe the
proliferation of BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), WSDL
(Web Services Description Language), and other forms of XML documents.
Storing, finding, and using these documents is laborious and inefficient.
BPEL Repository solves these problems by providing the following
features: (1) An extensible framework that currently supports several
standard XML files for BPEL, WSDL, and other XML schemas; (2) Support
for access to the stored XML data as Java objects, which makes it easier
for Java programs to process the data; (3) Ability to query the data
using an object-oriented query language: Object Constraint Language
(OCL); (4) An Eclipse plug-in for visually interacting with and
administer the repository of XML data. The Java API is used to manipulate
the files as EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) objects, hiding the data
serialization and de-serialization from the user. BPEL Repository
provides basic operations (create, read, write, and delete) for
manipulating the data as objects. Although the user manipulates the
data as objects, the data is stored as XML files compliant with the
standard XML schemas for BPEL, WSDL, and so forth. BPEL Repository can
easily be extended to support other XML schemas.
See also: the project site
Justice and Law Enforcement Information Exchange Clearinghouse Goes Live
Staff, Government Technology
Yesterday, the IJIS Institute announced that the Bureau of Justice
Assistance in the Office of Justice Programs of the U.S. Department of
Justice has added an information exchange clearinghouse to its web site
to allow government and industry developers to post information exchange
package descriptions (IEPD's) about information exchanges that have
been documented in law enforcement and justice. The purpose of the
clearinghouse is to provide a single source of information on IEPD's
that have been developed or are being developed so that others can find
models to follow or collaborate on the development of documentation
packages for specific exchanges. The IEPD is a well-defined set of
artifacts about an information exchange, including XML schema that
conforms to the Global Justice XML Data Model (GMXDM). The concept
behind the definition of the IEPD and the process which has been
developed for creating them is to promote component reuse in the
development of information sharing activities in the law enforcement
and justice world. The web site was constructed by technical assistance
grant funds made available by BJA to the IJIS Institute under the
guidance of the IJIS Institute XML Advisory Committee and GTTAC members.
It is based on a tailored version of the RightNow software used to run
the GJXDM Knowledge Management System and Help Desk.
See also: the web site
Review: Sun Microsystems Java Enterprise System Collaboration Suite
Michael Caton, eWEEK
Sun Microsystems' Messaging Server, Calendar Server and Instant
Messaging Server fit together nicely. The Web-based clients aren't as
advanced as some competing products, but they are fast and easy to
navigate. To access IM Server, users can choose between the Java-based
client and a client that supports the XMPP standard. While each of the
Sun Collaboration Servers is a discrete component within the Java
Enterprise System, Sun has done a good job of integrating the servers
where it makes sense to help users manage e-mail, calendars and IM.
The messaging and calendar servers are standards-based systems that can
be accessed through a Web browser, standard e-mail client or Outlook
(using the Sun Java System Connector plug-in). The IM server is also
standards-based -- an XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol)-based system that we accessed through either a Java-based
client or by using a client that supports XMPP, such as Gaim. The IM
server also supports federation, so a company can use it to directly
connect the internal IM network with internal IM networks of partners,
as well as public IM networks. We particularly liked the Java IM
client. It does a good job of providing access to the rich
capabilities found on most XMPP-based servers, such as persistent chat.
Java Enterprise System can be configured to manage archiving of
IM-based conversations -- on the server or by copying conversations
to the user's in-box.
See also: XMPP specifications
IBM Eyes Programming for the Masses
Martin LaMonica, ZDNet News
IBM is working on a project, called QEDwiki, that takes a stab at a
long-held industry promise: end-user programming. According to Rod
Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging technology, [QEDwiki is] a
relatively lightweight approach to writing applications. The idea
behind QEDwiki, which stands for quick and easily done wiki, is that
businesspeople can create their own Web pages by dragging and dropping
components onto a pallet. For example, a businessperson could build
a "dashboard" to see how weather is affecting sales at retail outlets.
By aggregating information from public Web sites, such as mapping and
weather services, he or she could assemble a very useful, if simple,
content-driven application... Several Web technologies, such as RSS
(Really Simple Syndication), XML (Extensible Markup Language), and
collaborative Web sites called wikis, are increasingly being used in
a business setting. IBM, long a proponent of industrial-strength
languages like Java and Cobol, is trying to capitalize on these
technologies with software and services for relatively short-lived,
rapidly built applications, Smith said. QEDwiki is targeted at people
who want to make Web applications without the aid of professional
programmers. It uses AJAX scripting and a wiki on a server to collect
and share information, such as RSS and Atom feeds. "To do more advanced
work and customizations, people can use the PHP language with the
QEDwiki; the idea of application assembly, in which businesspeople,
rather than programmers, build their own applications, has been
around for some time, but that vision has never been fully realized."
The company is currently testing QEDwiki with its corporate customers
to determine how affordable and valuable these "five-minute
applications" and assembly tools are.
See also: Gerken's blog
Microformats in Context
Uche Ogbuji, XML.com
There has been a lot of discussion in XML circles as to how far the
extensibility revolution promised by XML can take us, or has taken us.
Is XML really a tool for creating specialized languages so that
information can be expressed in the most natural formats practical?
In this article I focus mostly on microformats with XHTML as a host
language. Microformats enshrine the idea that rather than creating
whole new vocabularies, developers should piggy-back off existing,
widely supported and deployed formats such as XHTML. The problem is
that XHTML, at its best, does is good for basic document structure but,
at its worst, tends to be used for the presentation of documents.
Microformats are a lightweight way to express more specialized
information within the structure of XHTML without changing its syntax.
The idea is that the success of this approach rests on modest (hence
"micro") constructs in modules that are mutually independent and focused
on very specific domains. Through such simplicity and modularity
microformats minimize the strain on the host languages, as well as the
implementation effort and overall conceptual load. Norm Walsh wrote a
weblog entry in which he provided some thought experiments on a means
for validating microformats. He believes that "[the validation] problem
has to be solved before microformats can be considered a reliable way
to encode data."
See also: Norm Walsh blog
Assertion of Intent: SAML 2.0 in Denmark
John Gotze, Gotzeblogged e-Government
IDABCs eGovernment Observatory brought this story out in English
on 2006-04-25: 'The Danish IT Architecture Committee has decided to
stand firm on SAML 2.0 as the recommended standard for federation'.
Once broken into English, the story was quickly brought around
internationally. SecureID News basically copied the IDABC-story, Danish
Government says 'yes' to SAML 2.0 and encourages Microsoft to support
those specifications.. Computer Business Review follow-up and talked
to Liberty Alliance: Identity next public sector battleground for
Microsoft? There is a bit more to the story than the international
coverage caught. Basically, the committee decision was about an open
letter to Microsoft. It was written by my former collegue, Soren
Peter Nielsen from the IT-Strategic Office in the Danish Ministry of
Science, Technology and Innovation; the letter to Microsoft was sent
via Microsft Denmark to Don Schmidt, senior program manager for
Microsoft's Identity and Access group. [The letter said in part:] "In
the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation we have the
responsibility to select and recommend IT standards for public sector
usage as also create shared services for public sector. This work is
undertaken in an open process that involves all levels of public
sector institutions. The Danish public sector decided early in 2005
to recommend using SAML 2.0 for federated identity and access
management. This was among other based on the momentum for the standard
in product support from various suppliers, plans for actual usage in
public sector solutions worldwide, proofing og interoperability through
testing, and also very important SAML 2.0 being a ratified OASIS
standard..."
See also: SAML references
PKI Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Worthwhile
William Jackson, Government Computer News
Bill Burr, National Institute of Standards and Technology: "PKI
promises to be a pretty good way to authenticate users, sign documents
electronically and secure data. It uses a pair of mathematically
related encryption keys to secure data. One key is kept private while
the other is made public, allowing communications between individuals
without exchanging secret keys. Using a public key, messages can be sent
that can only be read by someone possessing the corresponding private
key. Material encrypted with a private key can be decrypted using that
individual's public key, validating who sent and signed the message.
The tricky part of PKI is the infrastructure, a system for generating
and managing keys and digital certificates that contain them. It's much
harder than we thought it would be; we've backed the wrong horse any
number of times." He said one of these wrong horses was the decision to
use a bridge certificate authority rather than a single central
certificate authority to issue and manage digital certificates. Burr
said that a bridge system between authorities eventually would be
needed, but that in retrospect the government should have started by
using a single certificate authority within government.
See also: OASIS PKI Member Section
Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0: Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP)
Glenn Adams (ed), W3C Working Group Note
Members of W3C's Timed Text Working Group have produced a second Last
Call Working Draft for the "Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0:
Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP)." The DFXP Timed Text
Profile provides a standardized representation of a particular subset
of textual information with which stylistic, layout, and timing
semantics are associated by an author or an authoring system for the
purpose of interchange and potential presentation. It specifies the
distribution format exchange profile (DFXP) of the timed text
authoring format (TT AF) in terms of a vocabulary and semantics. The
timed text authoring format is a content type that represents timed
text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems.
Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or
extrinsically associated with timing information. The Distribution
Format Exchange Profile is intended to be used for the purpose of
transcoding or exchanging timed text information among legacy
distribution content formats presently in use for subtitling and
captioning functions. In addition to being used for interchange among
legacy distribution content formats, DFXP content may be used directly
as a distribution format, for example, providing a standard content
format to reference from a 'text' or 'textstream' media object
element in a SMIL 2.1 document.
See also: the W3C news item
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