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XML and Web Services In The News - 19 July 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Sun Microsystems
HEADLINES:
Implementing the Atom Publishing Protocol
Joe Gregorio, XML.com
The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) is nearing completion, many of the
design issues have settled down, and there is work being done on
implementations and interoperability. Although the interoperability
work will go on for years to come, we can put together an implementation
and discuss the requirements the APP puts on you, the gotchas, and the
ways we can optimize the service. If you've been following along with
Restful Web columns at home, you won't be surprised that the
implementation is in Python. The Atom Publishing Protocol is an
application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources
using HTTP and XML 1.0. The protocol supports the creation of arbitrary
web resources and provides facilities for: (1) Collections: Sets of
resources, which may be retrieved in whole or in part; (2)
Introspection: Discovering and describing collections; (3) Editing:
Creating, updating and deleting resources. The Atom Protocol uses the
following HTTP methods: GET is used to retrieve a representation of a
resource or perform a query; POST is used to create a new, dynamically-
named resource; PUT is used to update a known resource; DELETE is used
to remove a resource. Along with operations on resources, the Atom
Protocol provides list-based structures, called Collections, for
managing and organising resources, called Members. Collections contain
the IRIs of, and metadata about, their Member resources. For authoring
and editing of resources to commence, an Atom Protocol client can
examine Introspection Documents which represent server-defined groups
of Collections. This initial article in a series dives into some code,
implementing draft -08 of the Atom Publishing Protocol. Future articles
in the series will build more complex services on top of this APP
implementation.
See also: Atom references
Software Freedom Law Center Gives Thumbs-Up to OpenDocument
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, NewsForge
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) announced that the OpenDocument
Format (ODF) standard is OK for use in free software. The opinion
letter, written by SFLC chairman Eben Moglen, explains that concern
about the format was a result of the Organization for the Advancement
of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) standardization process for
ODF. Because the OASIS process allows for "standards to be licensed
under terms potentially at odds with free software licenses," there was
concern that the ODF standard may be incompatible with free software
licenses. However, Moglen says that while there's still concern about
"technological standards that are incompatible with free software,"
the ODF standard is not one of them. How did the SFLC get drawn into
the discussion? A few SFLC clients, including the Plone Foundation, and
a few organizations not affiliated with the SFLC, turned to the SFLC as
the most likely resource to make the determination of whether ODF would
be free software compatible. Joel Burton, chair of the Plone board
foundation, says that the SFLC "are the most trusted people to give
this answer."
See also: the Opinion Letter
W3C XForms 1.1 Working Draft
John M. Boyer (ed), W3C Working Draft
W3C's XForms Working Group has released an updated Working Draft for
the XForms 1.1 specification. Designed to refine and strengthen the
XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0, version 1.1 adds
several submission capabilities, a more powerful action processing
facility, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access
event context information, and adds numerous helpful data types,
utility functions, user interface improvements, and action event
handlers. According to the editor's blog, this release will be the
second to last "thin"spec — a specification describing only new
features. The team expects to publish one more thin spec near the end
of August 2006, then migrate to a full specification by merging
XForms 1.0, the errata, and the new features in the thin specification.
See also: XML and Forms
Java XML Digital Signatures
Sun Java Web Services Team, Technical Report
Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology is now an integral part
of web-based business applications. These applications require a
fundamentally sound and secure infrastructure to meet the security
requirements of confidentiality, endpoint authentication, message
integrity, and nonrepudiation. XML signature, XML encryption, XML
Key Management Specification (XKMS), Security Assertion Markup
Language (SAML), and XML Access Control Markup Language (XACML) are
the XML security standards that define XML vocabularies and
processing rules to meet these security requirements. This article
provides an introduction to XML digital signatures and to the Java
XML Digital Signatures APIs (JSR 105). It also supplies information
on how to accelerate Java XML digital signature performance using
cryptographic hardware accelerators, with focus on the UltraSPARC
T1 processor cryptographic acceleration support. Because XML
technology has become an integral part of web-based business
applications, it is critical that applications meet the security
requirements of data integrity, nonrepudiation, and endpoint
authentication. The Java XML digital signature implementation
provides the infrastructure to meet these security requirements.
The Java XML digital signature operations of Sign and Validate are
computationally expensive, and more than 30 percent of the CPU time
can be spent in doing the actual cryptographic operations. You can
use hardware cryptographic accelerators to meet the demanding
performance requirements of cryptographic operations. The UltraSPARC
T1 processor has a built-in cryptographic accelerator to accelerate
the computationally expensive modular arithmetic operations found
in PKC algorithms such as RSA and DSA.
What Is Geronimo?
Kunal Jaggi, O'Reilly OnJava.com
Geronimo is the newest Apache-initiated, open source application server.
Licensed under the Apache license (version 2.0), Geronimo is a Java
EE 1.4 certified app server. Geronimo is not the only open source app
server available in the market. There are other open source Java EE
app servers out there as well, such as JOnAS from ObjectWeb. However,
Geronimo fills a need that other application servers do not. With
Geronimo, components can be easily integrated. Its key aim is to
support custom builds, geared to the needs of specific applications.
Geronimo offers choices. For instance, if you don't want transaction
management, you can go for a web-tier container such as Tomcat or
Jetty. Geronimo supports the assembly of custom components pretty
easily. In short, you can make it whatever you need it to be. This
means Geronimo is much more than simply an app server; it offers a
framework that can be used to glue together different components. One
of the most elegant features of Geronimo is that it doesn't require a
restart. Unlike other web- and business-tier containers, which
require restarting the container for any configuration change, Geronimo
is tailored from the ground up to support dynamic class loading, and
keeps running as an uninterrupted service.
See also: Apache Geronimo
Ipedo's EII Platform Gets a Retrofit for Service-ability
Stephen Swoyer, Enterprise Systems
Enterprise Information Integration (EII) specialist Ipedo Inc. last
week unveiled an SOA-ready revamping of its bread-and-butter XIP
integration platform, complete with a new Web Services Publishing
Wizard and requisite support for both SOAP and representational state
transfer (REST)-based Web Services. It's an important release for the
EII player, which — more so than pure-play rivals (and EII superstars)
Composite and MetaMatrix — is under pressure to break free and
differentiate itself from the rest of an otherwise teeming pack. And
in several key respects, says James Kobielus, a principal analyst for
data management with consultancy Current Analysis, XIP 4.2 helps do
just that: "Ipedo's SOA and XML/relational features in XIP 4.2 allow
it to contend effectively against its nearest pure-play EII rivals
[Composite Software and MetaMatrix], which offer equivalent features,
and also against IBM." Kobielus points to improvements in XIP 4.2's
hybrid XML/relational query engine, which boasts new cost-based query
optimization features, pushdown techniques, and join algorithms.
XIP's hybrid XML/relational engine remains a key differentiator for
Ipedo, but the company's pure-play rivals have also introduced hybrid
XML/relational implementations — for modeling, metadata, and even
query processing — of their own. Kobielus notes that none of Ipedo's
competitors offers REST support as an SOA alternative to SOAP, WSDL,
and UDDI.
Sun CTO: Incremental Open-Sourcing of Java is the Way
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Expect the open-sourcing of the Java programming language to be done
in incremental steps, with some pieces available by next June — but
not the entire platform, Robert Brewin, co-CTO of Sun Microsystems'
software group said. Some components of Java that could be open-sourced
in an incremental fashion include the Java virtual machine, the runtime
environment, the Web services stack and the Swing GUI components. There
has been some discussion about releasing the virtual machine, Swing,
and the runtime at the same time. The company has sought to maintain
compatibility of the programming language as it pursues an open source
road for Java. Sun already has offered Project Glassfish, an
implementation of Sun's application server, via an open source format.
Also at Sun, the company is eyeing the addition of lightweight REST
(Representational State Transfer) Web services and more scripting
language support to the Sun Java Studio Creator and NetBeans developer
tools; an announcement is expected in four to six weeks. Scripting
languages being pondered as part of the effort include JavaScript,
Python, and Ruby. The Ruby on Rails Web framework also may be supported.
Microsoft Executive Lauds Open Source
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
David Kaefer, director of Business Development, Intellectual Property
and Licensing at Microsoft, said open source had bolstered innovation
in a distributed fashion, and he called the open source software
movement a "very powerful force in the industry." Microsoft has
partnered with the open source community, linking up with companies
such as JBoss, SugarCRM and XenSource, Kaefer said. And it is leveraging
open source in its Open XML Translator project, which will enable its
Office suite to support the OpenDocument Format standard. Emphasizing
Microsoft's intention to be more open, Kaefer said, the company is
doing more to open up its protocols and license formats, such as its
Office format. The company's Shared Source program, for its part,
allows access to its code. Microsoft itself is bolstering its efforts
in IP (intellectual property) licensing. The company is trying to
understand how it can create technologies and find homes for some of
those outside the company; the company is exploring inbound IP
acquisitions. The company this week announced it has licensed 3-D
technology codenamed TouchLight to Eon Reality.
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