XML and Web Services In The News - 24 November 2006

Provided by OASIS | Edited by Robin Cover

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by BEA Systems, Inc.



HEADLINES:

 Last Call Review for XML Schema Patterns for Databinding
 New Google Search Appliance Delivers Inclusive Search Results
 Adapt Web Applications to Work With Multiple Browsers
 W3C Last Call Review for Compound Document Framework and WICD Profiles
 Open Federation Goodies
 Put the X in Ajax: How to Structure XML for Interactive Web Apps


Last Call Review for XML Schema Patterns for Databinding
Jonathan Calladine, George Cowe (et al., eds), W3C Technical Reports
The W3C XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group, part of the W3C Web Services Activity, has released two working drafts for review. The mission of this Working Group is to define a set of XML Schema patterns that will be efficiently implementable by the broad community who use XML databindings. Patterns which may prove useful to model include abstractions of structures common across a wide variety of programming environments, such as hash tables, vectors, and collections. There are several ways of representing such abstracted data structures and Web Services toolkits are currently using ad hoc technologies to infer the most suitable language mapping when processing XML Schemas. Agreeing on a set of XML Schema patterns for which databinding optimizations can be made will facilitate the ability of Web services and other toolkits to expose a more comprehensible data model to the developer. The WG has published a First Public Working Draft for "Advanced XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0." This document defines an advanced set of example XML Schema 1.0 constructs and types in the form of concrete XPath 2.0 expressions. These patterns are known to be in widespread use and considered to be compatible with databinding implementations. Implementers of databinding tools may find these patterns useful to represent simple and common place data structures. Ensuring tools recognise at least these simple XML Schema 1.0 patterns and present them in terms most appropriate to the specific language, database or environment will provide an improved user experience when using databinding tools. The WG has also issued a Last Call Working Draft for the "Basic XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0" specification. A databinding tool generates a mapping between XML 1.0 documents which conform to an XML Schema 1.0 schema and an internal data representation. For example, a Web services databinding tool may use XML Schema 1.0 descriptions inside a WSDL 2.0 or WSDL 1.1 document to produce and consume XML and SOAP messages in terms of data structures in a programming language or data held inside a database.
See also: Advanced XML Schema Patterns

New Google Search Appliance Delivers Inclusive Search Results
Mike Heck, InfoWorld
Enterprise search is much like air and water: Users expect it to be available without a second thought. Google and ISYS continue to perfect their enterprise offerings to do just that. The Google Search Appliance 4.6.4 is much improved: the new One Box for Enterprise set of APIs enables users to securely access business applications, such as CRM or BI systems, from the Google search box — and have this information presented separately from public search results. The Admin Console UI remains a collection of basic Web pages and forms accessed from a straightforward navigation tree. I also set up KeyMatches, to give preference to specific results for common queries; Query Expansion, to enlarge a query to include multiple words with identical meanings; and Synonym lists. Changing the basic look of the search box and results was quick; more extensive changes didn't take too much longer using the XSLT style-sheet editor. The Google Search Appliance provides a solid range of security and access control, omitting documents from search results if users aren't entitled to see them. The system indexes both public and restricted information — and enforces document-level security policies at search time. Search results were consistently top- quality. At the basic level, I searched information protected by basic HTTP authentication, and I integrated the appliance with Lotus Notes to crawl a Lotus Domino server. New conveniences include number and date ranges that users can specify to narrow down results. The OneBox technology creates a trigger that determines whether the search is relevant to a OneBox module, such as finding customer information within your Salesforce.com account. Google then passes appropriate security credentials to the provider, gets the results in XML, transforms the data into HTML based on an XSL template, and presents the results to the user in line with their other search results. This type of mashup is one of the more important developments in enterprise search. Users get relevant information from document management systems, Oracle purchase requisitions, SAS reports, and others within the featured area of the search results — all without any special steps.

Adapt Web Applications to Work With Multiple Browsers
Hong Guang, INM developerWorks
The features of different Web browsers, such as language settings and JavaScript support, can cause Web applications to work differently from one browser to another. This lack of continuity among browsers not only causes an application to look bad, but it often causes it to break. This article presents a number of tips you can follow to solve some of these problems. The main reason that Web pages cannot work everywhere is that different kinds of browsers support different standards. The best way to overcome this is to use only common attributes and methods. Sometimes, however, you must write special code. The author offers a number of tips, such as how to implement the innerText attribute in Mozilla-based browsers, how to use variables to represent geometry values to make them available for all browsers, and how to adjust the position of an element by the offset of the origin when the page is shown in Internet Explorer from right to left. The article also shows how to get a multilane tree view list, how to set the proper size for DIV elements, and how to support browsers that don't support JavaScript

W3C Last Call Review for Compound Document Framework and WICD Profiles
Timur Mehrvarz, Lasse Pajunen (et al., eds), W3C Technical Reports
W3C's Compound Document Formats Working Group has released four Last Call Working Drafts. A Compound Document is the W3C term for a document that combines multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, SMIL, and XForms. When combining user interface markups, specific problems have to be resolved that are not addressed by the individual markups specifications, such as the propagation of events across markups, the combination of rendering or the user interaction model with a combined document. The Compound Document Formats working group addresses these types of problems. This work is divided in phases and two technical solutions: combining by reference and by inclusion. The group is addressing the semantics of combining markups, which goes beyond the mechanics and syntactical elements used to combine markups. The semantic of combining markup is, to a large extent, specific to any two markups being combined. For example, including SVG markup in an XHTML document can be done in various ways and there is a need to define how the combination is done and what it means, especially with regards to issues mentioned above (such as event propagation, user interactions or rendering). "Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0" defines a generic Compound Document by Reference Framework (CDRF) that defines a language-independent processing model for combining arbitrary document formats. "WICD Core 1.0" defines a device independent Compound Document profile based on XHTML, CSS, and SVG. WICD Core 1.0 is based upon the Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0 (CDRF) and serves as a foundation for the creation of rich multimedia content profiles. The "WICD Full 1.0" profile is designed to enable rich multimedia content on desktop-type agents. It may also be appropriate for high capability handheld devices with a pointing device. In this profile, child documents are embedded by reference (CDRF). The "WICD Mobile 1.0" profile is designed to enable rich multimedia content on mobile handset devices, and may also be appropriate for other handheld devices. WICD Mobile addresses the special requirements of mass-market, single-handed operated devices and enables publishers to target these type of devices without having to evaluate the user agent identification string.
See also: the W3C news item

Open Federation Goodies
Eve Maler, Pushing String Blog
If you read Planet Identity, you've probably already seen the excellent posts announcing Open Federation, which is the addition of code for identity federation and identity-based web services to the OpenSSO project. The OpenSSO project recently announced the availabilty of the Java source code for the identity federation and web services framework of the Sun Java System Access Manager and Sun Java System Federation Manager. The name of this effort is Open Federation. The disjointed identity phenomenon offers the opportunity to fashion a system for computer users to link their local identities. With the introduction of Circle of Trust and identity provider, Identity federation allows the user to associate, connect or bind the various local identities they have configured for multiple service providers. The linked local identities, referred to as a federated identity, then allow the user to log in to one identity provider site and click through to an affiliated service provider site without having to re-authenticate their identity again. The Open Federation framework is provided to endorse this notion of single sign-on, the implementation supports several open standard technologies, such as OASIS SAML v1/v2 and Liberty Alliance Identity Federation Framework, therefore encouraging an interoperable infrastructure among providers. In particular, industry standards are implemented by Open Federation include (initially): (1) Liberty Alliance Project Identity Federation Framework (Liberty ID-FF) v.1.1 and v.1.2 (including identity provider and service provider extended profiles) (2) Liberty Alliance Project Identity Web Services Framework (Liberty ID-WSF) v.1.0 and v.1.1 (3) Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) v.1.0 and v.1.1 (4) OASIS SAML v.2.0 (Operational modes: IdP and SP Complete).
See also: the Open Federation architecture

Put the X in Ajax: How to Structure XML for Interactive Web Apps
Kris Hadlock, ComputerWorld
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a popular choice for Ajax, simply because it is the standard intermediate language that all programming languages are able to share. It is also supported both on the server side and client side, which makes it the most flexible solution. XML is essentially a custom tag-based structure that you, the developer, define. XML's tag-based structure is similar to that of HTML, except that HTML has predefined tags that represent its structure, such as the head, the body, tables and so on. XML can be passed between the front end and the back end for easy communication of multiple languages. Having this common language between the front end and the back end is extremely powerful. It enables us to create direct connections from the GUI to a server-side language and, ultimately, if desired, a database. Communicating with XML between the GUI and the front end allows for complete separation of the two application layers. Separation of the GUI and the back-end logic is extremely important because it enables us to have a completely decoupled application in which GUI developers can work on the front end, while the back-end developers work on the back end. This keeps specific parts of the application separated for easier management, and allows teams or individual developers to focus on the layer that is in need of growth. Not only is this approach ideal for teams of developers, it is also important for any individual developer who might be working on every part of the application. With this structure, an individual developer can focus on specific layers of the application without interfering or having to make changes to the adjacent layers.


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