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XML and Web Services In The News - 04 December 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Innodata Isogen
HEADLINES:
Novell Adds Microsoft's Open XML to OpenOffice
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Linux-Watch
The first fruit of the recently announced Novell/Microsoft
interoperability agreement arrived on December 4, 2006 with Novell's
announcement that its version of the OpenOffice productivity suite will
now support the Microsoft Office Open XML format. The release candidate
of Novell's modified version of OpenOffice.org 2.02 is now available
for Windows for free download by registered Novell users. In addition
to all the usual OpenOffice.org features, this version includes support
for the Open XML document format, plus the ability to email any document
as a Microsoft Office file from the system's default email application.
It also enables users to migrate Excel VBA (Visual Basic Application)
macros to OpenOffice's Calc. This version also includes AGFA fonts that
mimic Microsoft's default TrueType fonts. Novell is also working with
Microsoft and others on a project to create bi-directional open-source
translators for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations between
OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. The word processing translator is
coming first, and currently is expected to be available by the end of
January 2007. The Open XML/ODF Translator project is hosted on
SourceForge, and is licensed under the BSD open source license. The
first component, the ODF Add-in for Microsoft Word 2007, which allows
users to open and save ODF documents in Word, is now available as an
0.3-M1 beta.
See also: the announcement
China Aims to Set a New Office Document Standard
Neil McAllister, InfoWorld
What office document formats will your organization support next year?
The answer used to be simple: You'd standardize on Microsoft Office,
just like everybody else. With ODF (OpenDocument Format) gaining
momentum, however, it seems likely that you'll have to contend with at
least two different document standards from now on. Corel has already
announced that the forthcoming version of its WordPerfect office suite
will support ODF in addition to Microsoft's Office OpenXML. But just
when the industry was starting to get comfortable with the idea of two
competing formats, now along comes a third. In China, however, there
are at least four other domestically developed office suites to choose
from. According to Wu Zhi-gang, deputy director of the China Electronics
Standardization Institute 's Information Technology Research Center,
one of the key impediments to more widespread adoption of these Chinese-
developed solutions is lack of interoperability. Standardizing on UOF
would allow documents created by any one of the application suites to
be opened by all the others while still allowing the software to compete
on features and functionality. "It is not suitable to let the public and
important information be controlled by a single vendor," said Ni
Guangnan of the China Academy of Engineering, speaking at the Open
Standards, IPR, and Innovation International Conference in Beijing in
November. "If UOF, which based on XML, can be promoted, there would be
a phase of equal competition in office software, and the good
performance/price ratio of homemade office would be fully demonstrated."
The sheer population of China is enough to ensure that UOF will become
a significant player on the global IT stage. As end-users increasingly
adopt open, well-documented standards based on widely accepted
technologies such as XML, the influence within the industry of de facto,
proprietary standards will begin to wane. With China developing its own
standards and UOF enjoying increasing popularity in both the U.S. and
the European Union, the days when office documents are synonymous with
Microsoft may be drawing to a close.
Health Hazard: Computers Spilling Your History
Milt Freudenheim and Robert Pear, New York Times and CNet News.coms
Powerful forces are lobbying hard for government and private programs
that could push the nation's costly and inefficient health care system
into the computer age. President Bush strongly favors more use of
health information technology. Health insurance and medical device
companies are eager supporters, not to mention technology companies like
IBM and Google. Furthermore, Intel and Wal-Mart Stores have both said
they intend to announce plans this week to embrace electronic health
records for their employees. Others may soon follow. Bills to speed the
adoption of information technology by hospitals and doctors have passed
both chambers of Congress. But the legislation has bogged down, largely
because of differences over how to balance the health care industry's
interest in efficiently collecting, studying and using data with privacy
concerns for tens of millions of ordinary Americans--not just celebrities
and victims of crime. Academic medical centers like NewYork-Presbyterian
have considerable experience with electronic records. But many other
hospitals have been slow to jump on board, as have doctors and patients.
Only one in four doctors used electronic health records in 2005,
according to a recent study by researchers at Massachusetts General
Hospital and George Washington University, and fewer than 1 in 10
doctors used the technology for important tasks like prescribing drugs,
ordering tests and making treatment decisions. Cathy Schoen, a senior
researcher at the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation, said
primary-care doctors in the United States were far less likely than
doctors in other industrialized countries to use electronic records.
In Britain, 89 percent of doctors use them, according to a recent
report in the online edition of the journal Health Affairs; in the
Netherlands, 98 percent do.
See also: Coalition
Hitachi America Unveils XBRL Solution
Brian Prince, eWEEK
Hitachi America has introduced Xinba 2.0 Reader and Analyzer, a
desktop-based Microsoft Excel add-in that allows users to import, open
and manipulate Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) financial
information directly in Excel. According to Hitachi, Xinba 2.0 Reader
and Analyzer allows end users to import XBRL 2.0a- and 2.1-compliant
financial information directly into Excel by using Web services to
access taxonomies and instances that can be stored locally, over a
network or anywhere on the Internet. It also supports Web services
standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web
Services Description Language) so end users can send requests and
receive instance data from third-party data vendors using them. The
program supports both the US-GAAP and IFRS taxonomies as well, company
officials said in a statement. With Xinba 2.0 Reader, users can analyze
XBRL data in the same manner they are accustomed to when using Microsoft
Excel for financial analysis, Hitachi officials said. The program
provides XBRL Worksheet Functions, allowing an XBRL dataset to be
displayed in an Excel spreadsheet. In addition, Xinba 2.0 Reader permits
users to customize the display of financial information by selecting an
individual element with its sub-elements or an entire category such as
income statement or earnings release. Other features include the
ability to display labels in different languages; a presentation
setting that offers a roll-up calculation option; a consistency check
on the Calculation Linkbase relationship between a reported element and
its sub-elements and reporting of any inconsistencies found; and the
ability to examine and analyze XBRL financial data and create customized
financial reports and graphs. Analysis can be performed on the data
using standard Microsoft Excel functionality.
See also: the XBRL web site
SOA Software Launches Workbench Governance Solution
Eric Knorr, InfoWorld
Pure-play vendors of SOA governance solutions have been dropping like
flies: Infravio was bought by webMethods, and Systinet by Mercury
Interactive, which was then swallowed by HP. Yet SOA Software, one of
the few remaining independents, continues to bulk up. SOA Software
unveiled a new SOA governance product dubbed Workbench, seven months
after the acquisition of services networking vendor Blue Titan. Like
the SOA governance products that Infravio, Systinet, and IBM developed,
Workbench combines a UDDI v3 registry for publishing services with a
repository for service metadata, along with tools to assist in the
development and maintenance of design-time and runtime policies. The
difference, according to VP of product marketing Ian Goldsmith, is that
Workbench is available in two configurations: a standalone a registry/
repository, and integrated with SOA's Service Manager for a "closed-loop
SOA infrastructure." Normally, runtime policies in a repository have
little or no connection with the rules implemented in a service
management product, where the rubber meets the road for security
details and service levels. Goldsmith said competitors ask IT to hope
policies are being enforced, and 'hope' is a very bad word in
governance. In contrast, Workbench can push policies out to service
endpoints and audit runtime policy enforcement from a central location.
See also: the announcement
JustSystems Announces Availability of XMetaL Author 5.0
Staff, EContent Magazine
JustSystems recently announced the availability of its XMetaL Author
5.0, the company's new XML-based authoring and content collaboration
software. The offering builds on JustSystems' authoring solutions with
content management system integration, enhanced publishing capabilities,
and extended support for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
(DITA) designed to enable enterprise-wide content lifecycle management.
XMetaL used standalone or integrated with any of several content
management and publishing systems can be used by any writer or reviewer,
even without XML knowledge. DITA and Enterprise editions of XMetaL
Author 5.0 are currently shipping; Author and XMAX editions are
scheduled for delivery in December 2006. New functionality in XMetaL
Author 5.0 includes: more publishing options with the ability to publish
directly from the desktop, with extended support for the DITA Open
Toolkit, the new embedded RenderX-powered XSL-FO engine for PDF output
or with the extensible publishing framework that enables users to
utilize other commercial publishing engines; improved content
repository or management system (CMS) integration with capability for
a single-interface access enabled by the new XMetaL Connector; and
enhanced DITA support, with DITA specialization support for the
development of authoring interfaces for new content types, and extended
DITA map editing capabilities for leveraging the DITA maps for content
reuse and document assembly.
See also: DITA references
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