|
XML and Web Services In The News - 22 September 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by IBM Corporation
HEADLINES:
E-Authentication Maps Out Its Future
Jason Miller, Government Computer News
The General Services Administration estimates that agencies have about
600 applications that would benefit from E-Authentication services. Right
now, about fourteen (14) do. So GSA and the government have a long way
to go before they fully enjoy the benefits of a single-sign-on environment.
Officials from GSA and the Office of Management and Budget are working
with agencies to figure out how and in what order the other 586
applications will start using Security Assertion Management Language or
a digital certificate. Final plans, which some agencies already have
handed in, are due September 30, 2006. The biggest challenge in all of
this is the decision of whether to upgrade legacy applications to use
the E-Authentication model. 'We asked OMB to let us determine whether
older applications should be e-authenticated,' [Michel] Kareis said.
'The return on investment needs to be done. It is very expensive to
e-authenticate older systems.' In addition to the plans, GSA released
an E-Authentication request for information earlier this month. The RFI
asked commercial and public-sector providers for information on how
they could support public access to online government services. GSA
said there currently are six public and private-sector providers issuing
at least two of the four levels of identity credentials. The RFI
requested information on how entities would provide Level 1 and Level
2 credentials. In addition to deciding whether the Liberty Alliance
Project will take over testing, Kareis said the E-Authentication
executive committee is revamping the governance and standards model.
The main piece is the legal suite, which is being updated and stripped
down to focus on only those elements that must be formalized. The
Justice Department is leading this effort, she added. Kareis also said
she expects the federation model to move to SAML 2.0 sometime in early
calendar year 2007. The move will come just after GSA awards a contract
for the Managed Validation Translation Service, which lets users with
a public-key infrastructure certificate step down and use applications
that require only a Level 1 or Level 2 SAML assertion. Kareis said GSA
is performing the technical evaluation. As part of the move to SAML 2.0
and the MVTS contract, GSA will hold a strategic planning session later
this month to ensure the federation is evolving quickly enough and
moving in the right direction.
See also: SAML references
Introduction to XForms: Forms, Models, Controls, and Submission Actions
Chris Herborth, IBM developerWorks
The flexibility and power of XForms make it attractive to Web developers,
and its small footprint and client-side processing make it attractive
to systems administrators. The W3C is currently reviewing XForms 1.1
as a Working Draft document (1.0 is an official Internet Recommendation,
which puts it on par with things like XHTML, PNG, and CSS); IBM is
currently spearheading an effort to merge competing XML-based forms
standards with the features and abilities of XForms. This article, the
second of a three-part series, focuses on creating an XForms-based form
using any of the available controls, as well as creating a data model.
The series provides an introduction to XForms and its capabilities,
including the basic XForms model and form, the various types of controls,
and basic and advanced form submission. XForms provides a consistent and
clear XML-based data model that lets you include arbitrary XML directly
in the document, or in external files loaded during page processing. The
standard supports equivalents for all of the standard existing HTML
form controls, in addition to a couple of other helpful controls for
range selection and displaying data. The basic XForms submission actions
cover the legacy HTML submission methods, as well as two more XML-based
methods.
See also: XML and Forms
Public Review for Universal Business Language Version 2.0
Staff, OASIS Announcement
Members of the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical
Committee have announced a third Public Review Draft for Version 2.0
of the Universal Business Language (UBL). Edited by Jon Bosak, Tim
McGrath, and G. Ken Holman, the specification defines a library of XML
schemas for reusable data components such as 'Address,' 'Item,' and
'Payment' — the common data elements of everyday business documents.
It also provides set of XML schemas for common business documents such
as 'Order,' 'Despatch Advice,' and 'Invoice' that are constructed from
the UBL library components and can be used in generic procurement and
transportation contexts. UBL is designed to provide a universally
understood and recognized commercial syntax for legally binding business
documents and to operate within a standard business framework such as
ISO 15000 (ebXML) to provide a complete, standards-based infrastructure
that can extend the benefits of existing EDI systems to businesses of
all sizes. UBL is freely available to everyone without legal
encumbrance or licensing fees. UBL schemas are modular, reusable, and
extensible in XML-aware ways. As the first standard implementation of
ebXML Core Components Technical Specification 2.01, the UBL Library is
based on a conceptual model of information components known as Business
Information Entities (BIEs). These components are assembled into
specific document models such as Order and Invoice. These document
assembly models are then transformed in accordance with UBL Naming and
Design Rules into W3C XSD schema syntax. Comments are welcome through
6-October-2006. [*Note: A PDF file is included in the zip archive;
however, since this committee draft was created in XHTML, the TC asks
that you refer to the XHTML version for review purposes, ignoring the
PDF, which has no practical purpose.]
See also: the announcement
W3C Call for Participation: Mobile Web in Developing Countries
Staff, W3C Announcement
W3C announced that position papers are due 1-November-2006 for the
"Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries", to be held
5-6 December 2006 in Bangalore, India. Participants will discuss the
challenges, requirements, and use cases for mobile Web access in
developing countries. The Workshop will bring together experts in
mobile Web technologies and specialists on emerging countries and
the digital divide. According to the World Bank, more than two billion
people own a mobile phone and 80% of the world's population has access
to GSM service. With one million new subscribers every day, almost
four billion people will have a mobile phone by the end of 2010.
Although access to phone service is fundamental, W3C considers access
to Internet services such as email and the Web vital for education,
commerce, and communication. High speed mobile data networks and more
affordable Web-enabled phones are helping to make this access possible
in the developing world. For some, telephones may be the primary, or
even sole, means to access the Web. In order to deliver Web standards
that enable access for all, W3C is organizing this Workshop to learn
more about the specific needs, expectations, and challenges faced by
people in developing countries.
See also: the announcement
Study: Web Services Lead Growing IT Investment
Stan Gibson, eWEEK
Web services have come out of nowhere to emerge as the top technology
for 2006, according to a survey of senior IT execs. In a poll of 139
members of the Society of Information Management conducted in May 2006,
the respondents placed Web services at the top of their technology to-do
lists. Web services were not among the top six technologies in the
previous year's survey. The results of the survey, revealed at SIM's
annual SIMposium conference here, also showed increases in IT budgets
and salaries, reflecting a continuing bullishness for IT in general and
a reversal of the bearishness surrounding IT from 2001 to 2004. Security,
which had been at the top of the list for two years, dropped to third
place, said the study's author, Jerry Luftman, professor and associate
dean of graduate IS programs for the Stevens Institute of Technology,
in Hoboken, N.J., and SIM vice president of Academic Community Affairs.
Luftman said the lessening in interest in security probably reflects
the progress that IT pros believe they have made in the past several
years to make their IT systems less vulnerable to attack. Business
intelligence was in second place behind Web services, followed by
security, business process management, customer portals and systems
integration. Luftman said the emphasis on Web services is tied to an
increased emphasis on virtualization and SOA (service-oriented
architecture). He said it's likely that members will make greater use
of thin clients and servers such as mainframes sporting virtualization
technologies.
Interoperability of the Office Open XML formats
Brian Jones, 'Open XML Formats' Blog
"A comment was posted today that had a lot of thought put into it and
rather than just replying to it in the comments stream I thought it
would be worth talking to directly... In terms of the [Office Open XML
formats] standardization, that decision was definitely strongly
influenced by governments. We'd always planned on having rich complete
documentation for the formats, because otherwise no-one would use them
and it would have defeated the purpose of all the work I've been
involved with (I certainly didn't want to waste the past 6 years of
my life). We had a number of governments tell us that they would be
more comfortable if we gave the formats to an independent standards
body so that regardless of what happens to Microsoft, the documentation
for the formats will always be available. It's really a matter of
stewardship of the documentation... I probably spend less than 5% of
my time discussing ODF. The only reason I talk about it is that people
have asked me why we didn't use it as our default format. A simple
"it wouldn't work" answer obviously isn't good enough, so I had to
show specific examples to help explain my view. ODF is perfectly
fine for some scenarios and not for others. Open XML is perfectly
fine for some scenarios and not others. HTML is perfectly fine for
some scenarios and not others. DocBook is perfectly fine for some
scenarios and not others. The reason I get excited and talk up the
progress on Open XML is that I work on the thing. It's my baby and
my coworkers, my fellow Ecma members, and I am extremely proud of
the work... We're working as fast as we can to get Office 2007 and
the Open XML formats out the door. We're providing free updates to
older versions of Office that allow them to read and write the
formats. We're standardizing the formats and providing thousands of
pages of documentation that describe every last detail about how
they work. Do I wish we already had this all out there? Of course!
It takes time though. Office 2000 users have the HTML and RTF
formats available. Office XP users have the HTML, RTF, and
SpreadsheetML formats. Office 2003 users have the HTML, RTF,
SpreadsheetML, and WordprocessingML formats. And once Office 2007
ships, they will all have the Office Open XML formats as well.
Xlink Isn't Dead
XML-DEV Community, Permathread
Linking and addressing lie at the heart of hypertext. The W3C "XML
Linking Language (XLink)" is one of the key early specifications, and
(non-)use of its facilities gives rise to episodic discussion on the
XML-DEV list: "who is using it, and for what?" The XLink specification
"defines the XML Linking Language (XLink), which allows elements to be
inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links
between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can
describe the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well
as more sophisticated links." Samples from today's XML-DEV thread:
Michael Kay: "I think the big mistake in XLink is a failure to
recognize that there are two separate things: a relationship between
pieces of information, and a navigable hyperlink. We've achieved the
separation of content from presentation in other areas, we just
haven't achieved it for relationships. The presentation forms do need
better navigation facilities, and core XML also needs (much) better
facilities for modelling relationships..." Ben Trafford: "In an ideal
world, a lot of XLink would've gone into the styling languages. But we
weren't in an ideal world. That doesn't render the work invalid; the
ideas behind XLink are sound, they're just in the wrong place, i.e.
the document...." Norm Walsh: "One of my personal motivations for
touching XLink again was to make it practical to use XLink in DocBook
in a post-DTD world. DocBook V5.0 uses XLink more-or-less ubiquitously."
See also: the specifications
New to XML?
Staff, IBM developerWorks
For those needing help getting started with XML, the IBM developerWorks
XML zone provides articles, tutorials, and tips to help developers with
XML-based development. For users trying to find their way in a new
topic, all of that information can be overwhelming. The "New to XML"
page provides an overview for readers who want to learn about XML, but
who don't know where to start. The page should help one understand what
XML is all about, explore Ajax, learn about mashups or RSS, or prepare
for XML certification. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a
platform-independent way to represent data. Simply put, XML enables you
to create data that can read by any application on any platform. You
can even edit and create it by hand, because it is based on the same
tag-based technology that underlies HTML. XML is platform and
programming-language independent, so you can use it with virtually any
programming language, as long as the underlying software, such as a
parser, which reads the text file of tags and creates the XML Document
for manipulation, is available. As developers began to use XML for
various applications, standard vocabularies, or XML applications, began
to emerge. For example, XHTML is an XML version of HTML, and podcasting
takes place using various flavors of an XML vocabulary called RSS. The
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language provides a way to define graphic
images using XML in a way that browsers such as Firefox can render them.
Although you can implement Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) using a
variety of technologies, the most common is to use Web services, and
that means XML. The two most popular means to implement Web services,
SOAP and REST, are both based on XML. XML is at the heart of many of
today's nascent technologies. For example, as search engines improve and
the world moves towards the Semantic Web, XML is how webmasters can add
meaningful information to their pages. Grid computing and autonomic
computing continue to gain ground, and XML figures prominently in these
technologies, as well. Database vendors continue to look at storing XML
more efficiently, and XML Query Language gains steam.
XML.org is an OASIS Information Channel
sponsored by BEA Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Innodata Isogen, SAP AG and Sun
Microsystems, Inc.
Use http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage
to unsubscribe or change an email address. See http://xml.org/xml/news_market.shtml
for the list archives. |
