XML and Web Services In The News - 25 May 2004

Web Services Message Specification Touted: Sun, Oracle, Others Back W3C Proposal
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Arjuna Technologies Ltd., Enigmatec Corporation Ltd., Hitachi, IONA Technologies, Inc., Nokia Corporation, Oracle, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced support for the WS-MessageDelivery specification recently submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in accordance with the W3C's royalty-free licensing requirements. The royalty-free specification is intended to make it easier to build complex applications using Web services by standardizing the way Web service endpoints are referenced when multiple Web services are engaged in common message exchange patterns, according to the supportive companies. The specification is designed to work with patterns outlined in Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and lays a foundation for more sophisticated message-based interactions without sacrificing the loosely coupled model of Web services.
See also: the announcement

Cape Clear, CA Hop on the Enterprise BUS: Both Companies Integrate Key Products
Ed Scannell, InfoWorld
At CA World on Monday, Cape Clear Software announced its intention to integrate its Business Integration Suite with Computer Associates International's Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) in hopes of providing a richer environment for helping create and manage a services-oriented enterprise. By leveraging the management features of WSDM with the data integration capabilities of Cape Clear's Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) users will be able to deploy, manage and secure Web Service across the breadth of their infrastructure. Specifically designed for managing Web services, company officials claimed that WSDM is the first solution to support ad-hoc XML, Corba, EDI existing within the same Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). Using Unicenter it can help enable corporate developers to manage brand new services along with their older infrastructure from a single console.
See also: the CA announcement

Microsoft Builds Office, Web Services Bridge. Bridge Lets Users Access Data from Back-End Business Systems from Within Office Apps.
Joris Evers, InfoWorld
Expanding on its vision of Office as a front end to business applications, Microsoft Corp. has announced the trial release of a software bundle that allows developers to link business systems to Office applications using Web services. The bundle, called Office Information Bridge Framework, includes an Office add-in for interpreting XML (Extensible Markup Language) metadata, a server component that exposes data, views and actions of a Web service, and a metadata designer that plugs into the Visual Studio developer tool, Microsoft said at its Tech Ed user event in San Diego. The Office Information Bridge Framework allows allow developers to add functionality to Office applications such as Outlook and Excel so users of those applications can access information from back-end business systems from within the Office applications.
See also: the MS IBF web site

CA Moves with New Open-Source Licensing for Content, Database Projects
Peter Galli, eWEEK
Computer Associates International Inc. used its annual CA World user conference in Las Vegas to make a slew of open-source announcements, including establishing a new open-source foundation that will support Plone, an out-of-the-box content management system built on the free Zope Application server; unveiling a new open- source license, and placing a version of Ingres, CA's flagship DBMS, under it. CA also announced the creation of the CA Trusted Open Source License (CA-TOSL), a derivative of the Common Public License, that will be available from Opensource.org. CA's Ingres Enterprise Relational Database will be released into the open-source community under this new license. CA and Zope plan to provide customers with scalable, open-source content management solutions that are compatible with relational database technology and meet enterprise demands for performance, data persistence and manageability.

Updated WS-Trust and WS-SecureConversation Specifications Accompany Release of Microsoft WSE 2.0.
XML Cover Pages
Microsoft has announced the final release of Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0, together with revised specifications for "WS-Trust" and "WS-SecureConversation," both now supported in WSE 2.0. More than 250,000 developers use Microsoft WSE to build security-enhanced Web services based on the latest Web services protocol specifications, including WS-Security 2004 (OASIS), WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, and WS-Addressing.