XML and Web Services In The News - 08 September 2005

SSO: The Holy Grail of SOA
Alice LaPlante, SOA Pipeline
SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) was in the spotlight again last week. An XML-based framework developed by OASIS Security Services Technical Committee, SAML allows companies to securely and automatically share identity information on the Web. Computer Associates announced its plans to use SAML 2.0 with eTrust SiteMinder, its Web access management product. The access management support eliminates the need to re-authenticate at each site; the product will thus allow customers to federate as identity providers or as service providers with multiple partners. SAML 2.0 is important because it represents the coming together of two important SSO standards efforts. After all, as recently as this past winter, various groups were working on competing standards, including SAML 1.x, the Liberty Alliance's ID-FF, Internet2's Shibboleth, and Microsoft's Passport. The Liberty Alliance and Internet2 chose to provide input to the latest version of SAML and help consolidate the standards into SAML 2.0
See also: SAML references

End Users to Gain Voice in SOA Blueprints
Vance McCarthy, Integration Developer News
Finally, it appears that enterprise end users will get their chance to influence the creation of SOA Blueprints for the real world. IDN here examines the results of the first OASIS meeting, where vendors of products and services will now work closely with leading enterprise end user firms in banking, manufacturing and other sectors. Discussions of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) are about the leave the world of vendor-speak and enter the real world. Or at least that's the hope, as OASIS held its first meeting of the newly-formed SOA Adoption Blueprints technical committee last week. OASIS SOA Adoption Blueprints TC will seek to define J2EE and .NET neutral patterns or recipes for how end user companies can build SOA projects for their internal enterprise, as well as for B2B integrations.
See also: SOA Blueprints

CA Patents Made Available to Open-Source Community
Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK
Computer Associates, which up until a year ago had no visible involvement in the open-source software world, Wednesday promised the open-source community free access to software covered by 14 of its US patents, including graphical display of data, methods of multiplexing data transmissions and a way to automate network-wide surveillance. The New York-based Computer Associates International Inc. also announced a long-term, patent cross-license agreement with partner IBM, which opened about 500 of its own software and hardware patents in January. In making the announcement, CA joined Big Blue in creating what it called an industrywide "patent commons," in which patents are pledged royalty-free to further innovation in areas of broad interest to developers. The patents covered by CA on Wednesday address a variety of software and components and can be used in a full range of open source projects. The IBM-CA "patent commons" library being built with these new additions should not be confused with the Open Source Development Labs' (OSDL) recently established patent commons, which was announced last month at LinuxWorld.
See also: CA's Non-Assertion Statement

OASIS Standardizes Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Specifications.
XML Cover Pages
The OASIS Emergency Management TC has advanced two specifications toward standardization, and commences work on a third XML-related standard for messaging within the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) suite. CAP v1.1 defines a simple/general format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over any network. The EDXL Distribution Element spec standardizes a message distribution framework for data sharing across emergency information systems.
See also: Emergency Management