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XML and Web Services In The News - 18 December 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
HEADLINES:
Google Partners With NASA
Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Google and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA)
Ames Research Center have signed an agreement to work together on a
variety of projects that include large-scale data management and
distributed computing, and human-to-computer interfaces. The search
engine [company] and the space agency said that the first in the series
of joint collaborations covered under the Space Act Agreement would
make more NASA information available on the Internet. Such projects
would include real-time weather visualization and forecasting, 3-D maps
of the moon and Mars, and tracking of the international space station
and the space shuttle. For Google, the deal was expected to give it
access to a "wealth of technical expertise and data that will be of
great use to Google as we look to tackle many computing issues on behalf
of our users," Eric Schmidt. The two organizations said they intended
to collaborate on incorporating agency data in Google's geographic
mapping service called Google Earth. In addition, they planned to focus
on user studies and cognitive modeling for human-computer interaction,
and better search for scientific data. NASA and Google were also working
on agreements for additional collaboration on research, products,
facilities, education and space missions.
See also: the announcement
The Essence of Declarative, XML-based Web Applications: XForms and XSLT
Chimezie Thomas-Ogbuji, XML 2006 Presentation
The use of push XSLT processing, facet segregation, and well-modeled,
single-purpose vocabularies such as Atom and XUL provides a very powerful
tool chest to ease the authoring headaches often associated with XForms
and enable the next generation of XML-based web applications associated
with the Rich Web Application Backplane architecture. A reader with some
familiarity with XForms implementation nuances can appreciate the other
aspects of XForms that can be throttled via the XSLT transforms. For
example the subtle difference between one XForms implementation and
another (differing levels of conformance, perhaps) can be accommodated
by using XSLT's import mechanism to override default behavior with
behavior specific to a particular implementation. In addition, a reader
familiar with XUL and XForms might take note of the fact that both
frameworks rely heavily on XML Events to manage user interface behavior.
As a further exercise, such a reader might want to experiment with how
the common reliance on XML Events can be leveraged by the XSLT transforms
presented here.
See also: the abstract
Services Orchestration for AJAX
Masayuki Otoshi, JavaWorld Magazine
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is now widely known as a
technique used in client-side interactions. However, AJAX requires
special coding for asynchronous requests and for server-side
programming. This article proposes a new AJAX approach that executes
the process definition on the client. It allows you to orchestrate
services synchronously and apply the MVC (Model View Controller)
pattern, so you will find coding similar to server-side programming.
AJAX typically communicates with the Web server using asynchronous
requests so that other tasks can be executed while waiting for a
response. It enables the user to interact with the browser, rather than
the standard Web application. A synchronous model, rather than an
asynchronous one, is intuitive and more natural for most developers. It
would prove helpful if, somehow, our asynchronous requests could be
changed to synchronous ones. Moreover, the parallel pattern should be
easily acceptable when the developer requires it, and flow control
should be separated from the components properly. These requirements
don't seem that special because they are standard for server-side
development. Our goal is to apply server-side style to our client-side
asynchronous model. To achieve this goal, this article takes a process-
centric approach that describes methods for execution as services in
process definition XML using J-SOFA (Java/JavaScript Services
Orchestration for Actions), an open source framework for orchestrating
services. It provides two service orchestrators for the client and
server. The client-side orchestrator invokes JavaScript functions,
and invocations of Java objects and Web services are delegated to a
server-side orchestrator. J-SOFA helps in creating an intuitive process
flow similar to server-side programming. To execute asynchronous
requests, you simply describe tags sequentially in XML. J-SOFA reduces
the differences between communication modes (asynchronous or synchronous)
and types of components (JavaScript functions, Java objects, or Web
services), and enables you to develop using the MVC pattern. This
approach allows you to create more complex AJAX Web applications for
the client with the same level of productivity and reusability you
would find in server-side programming.
Opera Introduces Fraud Protection for New Web Browser
Brian Prince, eWEEK
Opera Software has announced the introduction of real-time fraud
protection for its Web browser Opera 9.1. The Fraud Protection tool
includes technology from GeoTrust, a digital certificate provider,
and PhishTank, a collaborative clearinghouse for data and information
about phishing on the Internet. Fraud Protection extends the original
anti-phishing capability in Opera, company officials said. The tool
adds a new level of online safety by working in real time to protect
Opera users from the latest phishing attacks. Phishing is a form of
online fraud in which someone convinces users to visit a forged Web
site. That site is designed to mimic a trusted site in order to steal
personal information from users, such as credit card numbers or bank
account details. According to PhishTank, there were more than 9,628
unique phishing attacks in November alone. Since most phishing sites
are taken down quickly, only real-time protection holds the key to
consistent safety. PhishTank, operated by San Francisco-based OpenDNS
and community members, enables anyone to submit, verify, track and
openly share phishing data. The open access of PhishTank and the use
of PhishTank data in Opera is intended to encourage the sharing of
information and increase the chance of eliminating phishing all
together.
See also: the announcement
The Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX)
J. Stephen Downie, D-Lib Magazine
The Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) is a
community-based formal evaluation framework coordinated and managed
by the International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation
Laboratory (IMIRSEL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(UIUC). IMIRSEL has been funded by both the National Science Foundation
and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create the necessary
infrastructure for the scientific evaluation of the many different
techniques being employed by researchers interested in the domains of
Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and Music Digital Libraries (MDL).
Some of these tasks, such as "Audio Onset Detection," represent micro
level MIR/MDL research (i.e., accurately locating the beginning of
music events in audio files, necessary for indexing). Others, such as
"Symbolic Melodic Similarity," represent macro level MIR/MDL research
(i.e., retrieving music based upon patterns of similarity between
queries and pieces within the collections). MIREX is similar to the
Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) approach to the evaluation of text
retrieval systems. Both MIREX and TREC are built upon three basic
components: (1) a set of standardized collections; (2) a set of
standardized tasks/queries to be performed against these collections;
and, (3) a set of standardized evaluations of the results generated
with regard to the tasks/queries... M2K is an open-source initiative,
meaning that any individual or group may leverage or modify this
software and it can be evolved to support future evaluations — freely
available online. The MIREX evaluation frameworks are implemented in
M2K's modular format. Modules are connected by an XML-based itinerary
which describes the particular process flow for each evaluation task.
See also: XML and music
Lessons from the Adoption of MusicXML as an Interchange Standard
Michael Good, XML 2006 Presentation
Around 2000, many people realized that XML technology could be a
great way to finally create a successful interchange format for music
notation and digital sheet music applications. In the past, adoption
of music notation interchange formats had suffered from both technical
and social problems. Previous efforts like SMDL and NIFF never met
their goals of becoming a standard music notation interchange format,
even with the ISO 10743 seal of approval for SMDL. The major technical
problem was to design a format that was complete enough for both
commercial and academic use, while usable enough to be approachable for
developers. Getting an XML format adopted as an interchange standard is
a social and technical process. For the largest, most well-understood
areas, standards organizations can help in both processes. But for
smaller industry areas like music notation, the overhead of standards
organizations can hinder these processes, rather than help them. Many
factors aid the adoption of an interchange standard. It is very important
for the user community to have an active voice in the development and
maintenance of the standard — a voice that is truly powerful, not
simply for show. But there are many means to that goal, and individual
companies can provide a more effective mechanism than standards
organizations in some circumstances.
See also: the conference web site
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