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XML and Web Services In The News - 11 December 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by SAP AG
HEADLINES:
Sun Goes Multilingual with Java SE 6
China Martens, InfoWorld
Over two years in the making, Sun Microsystems is releasing the latest
version of its Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software Monday
[2006-12-11], placing particular emphasis on the application
development platform's support for other scripting languages. Java SE
6 is the first version that lets developers mix Java technology with
other languages — languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript.
Sun's approach used to be that Java was the solution for all developers'
problems, he said. But it has since become clear to Sun that developers
want to use other languages in conjunction with Java to create hybrid
applications. Sun has created a collection of scripting engines on its
Web site, and Java SE 6 includes a preconfigured version of Mozilla's
open-source Rhino JavaScript engine. Java SE 6 comes with support for
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, the business release of
which made its debut late last month. Sun had to engage in some
"difficult workarounds" with pre-release versions of Vista, but [Mark]
Reinhold said that such issues are no longer a problem when integrating
Java SE 6 with the APIs contained in the final, shipping version of the
Microsoft OS. Some of the joint engineering work Microsoft and Sun
have done as part of interoperability effort Project Tango appears in
Java SE 6's support for new Web services APIs such as the Java API for
XML Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0. When the full-blown open-source version
of Java SE known as OpenJDK Project appears in March next year, it will
include all the new functionality of Java SE 6.
See also: the announcement
Java Update Warms to Scripting Languages
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
Sun Microsystems has released a Java development kit that seeks to
meld Java and scripting languages. Java SE 6 includes enhancements that
let programmers write applications in Java as well as scripting
languages, said Sun executives. The Java update complies with Java
Specification Request 223, which lets scripting languages, including
JavaScript and Python, run on the Java Virtual Machine. Scripting, or
dynamic, languages are becoming an increasingly popular way to write
Web applications, particularly the front-end user interface. The
language PHP, for example, is used in millions of public sites, such as
Web portals Lycos and Yahoo. With the latest version of the Java
software, a company could have a group of developers write server Java
programs, which do tasks such as complex calculations and database
look-ups, while scripting developers create the user interface. In
addition, the update will include software from a project called
Project Tango, which is meant to improve the interoperability between
Microsoft .Net Web services and Java programs.
See also: the Scripting Framework
CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 Working Draft
Robin Berjon (ed), W3C Technical Report
W3C's CSS Working Group has released a Working Draft of the "CSS Mobile
Profile 2.0", updating a document from 2002-07-25. The specification
defines in general a subset of CSS 2.1 that is to be considered a
baseline for interoperability between implementations of CSS on
constrained devices (e.g. mobile phones). Its intent is not to produce
a profile of CSS incompatible with the complete specification, but
rather to ensure that implementations that due to platform limitations
cannot support the entire specification implement a common subset that
is interoperable not only amongst constrained implementations but also
with complete ones. Additionally, the specification aligns itself as
much as possible with the OMA's Wireless CSS 1.1 specification. In order
to conform to this specification, user agents, authoring tools, and
content must conform to the 'Conformance and Error conditions' section
of the CSS 2.1 specification, with the specified modifications.
See also: W3C CSS home page
BEA to Run Java Sans Operating System
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
BEA Systems has created a version of its Java application server
designed for virtualization technology, using an approach that cuts
the operating systems out of the picture. At the company's customer
conference in Beijing this week, BEA will give details of a forthcoming
product called WebLogic Server Virtual Edition and of related products,
including an administration application. WebLogic Server is a Java
application server used to run Java programs, such as high-volume Web
sites. The virtual edition is a break from BEA's current offering in
that it was written to run on VMware's hypervisor, which is the basis
for VMware's virtualization software. Some virtualization software
uses a hypervisor that lets a single computer run several instances of
an individual software package. In BEA's case, it created software
called Liquid VM. Liquid VM is an addition to the company's JRockit
Java virtual machine, which runs directly on VMware's hypervisor. That
virtual machine allows Java programs to interact with hardware servers
without the need for an operating system, according to Stephen Hess,
director of product management for the WebLogic Platform. The goal of
the virtualization push at BEA is to give IT administrators a set of
tools to consolidate several Java applications on a single server and
to optimize their performance, he said. Typically, virtualization is
used in corporate data centers to improve the utilization of existing
servers by putting several workloads on a single machine.
Passwords in the Clear
Ed Rice (editor), W3C Draft TAG Finding
An updated editor's draft has been issued for "Passwords in the Clear,"
along with request for comments. The purpose of the finding is to
clarify the security concerns around using passwords on the World Wide
Web. Specifically, the objective is to point out that passwords should
not be transmitted in the clear except for a few very specific cases.
When a password are transmitted in clear text, it is vulnerable in many
ways; (a) The password is available on the wire. As the password is
transmitted over the wire, tools such as packet sniffers or network
analyzers can easily monitor the traffic and intercept passwords as
they're sent between computers. (b) The password is available in
browsing history. Most web browsers allow you to navigate 'back' to
previous pages, the content is cached for performance as well as ease
of use for the user. These pages are stored in memory and are
relatively easy to examine. (c) The password is readable on the web
proxies. Many larger corporations, as well as internet service
providers, offer web proxies to allow users faster downloads as well
as some level of anonymity to web browsers. The Yankee Group
estimates that between 1 and 2 percent of ecommerce transactions are
related to fraud. As customers are becoming more 'net savvy' they are
starting to examine the web page types and are attempting use only
secure systems. Therefore its imperative that any organization who
wishes to safeguard its customers data start with secure transfers of
user login and password information.
See also: W3C TAG Findings
Why China's UOF is Good
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Opinion
Some people are startled to find that, amidst all the talk here of
OASIS (now ISO) ODF versus ECMA Office Open XML, China has developed
its own independent office document format, Uniform Office Format (UOF).
I am not startled, but delighted, and here's why. UOF is a Chinese
(People's Republic) industrial standard. It seem mainly to come out
of the needs of RedOffice, which is a fork of Open Office that adds
support for some East Asian specific features: electronic chops (like
signatures), hand annotation for tricky characters (I am surprised
this is needed for Simplified Chinese documents: but Chinese need to
communicate with Traditional Chinese users, not to mention Japane and
Korea — any readers have more information on why this is needed, apart
from for red-lining?), and so on. PRC has its own encoding of Unicode
too, and I gather RedOffice and UOF may use this natively: it has nicer
ordering and transcoding properties with some legacy Chinese encodings
than UTF-16 or UTF-8. According to the UOF material, the format
encapsulates requirements from several other word processing or office
systems too. China raised the possibility of getting it adopted as an
international standard, but there was not much interest from other
national bodies: probably if it had Japanese and Korean features and
acceptance as well it would have little trouble getting though ISO. Or
even Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Singaporese adoption. However, not ever
national standard needs to become an international standard. The
cultural/organizational differences between nations is an additional
hurdle even above indigenous technical and business requirements: it
is difficult to have a thriving international participation in
standards work until after you have a thriving national process.
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