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XML and Web Services In The News - 07 March 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML.org Daily Newslink is sponsored by Innodata Isogen
HEADLINES:
Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV)
Daboo, Desruisseaux, Dusseault (eds), IETF Internet Draft
This document specifies a set of methods, headers, message bodies,
properties, and reports that define calendar access extensions to the
WebDAV protocol. The new protocol elements are intended to make WebDAV-
based calendaring and scheduling an interoperable standard that supports
calendar access, calendar management, calendar sharing, and calendar
publishing. This document proposes a way to model calendar data in
WebDAV, with additional features to make an interoperable calendar
access protocol. A CalDAV calendar is modeled as a WebDAV collection
with a defined structure; each calendar collection contains a number of
resources representing calendar objects as its direct child resource.
Each resource representing a calendar object (event or to-do, or journal
entry, or other calendar components) is called a "calendar object
resource". Each calendar object resource and each calendar collection
can be individually locked and have individual WebDAV properties.
Section 9 (pages 65-77) covers "XML Element Definitions" (CALDAV:calendar,
CALDAV:mkcalendar, CALDAV:mkcalendar-response, CALDAV:calendar-query,
CALDAV:calendar-data, CALDAV:filter, CALDAV:timezone, CALDAV:time-range,
CALDAV:calendar-multiget, CALDAV:free-busy-query). The authors
anticipate submission of the CalDAV draft for Last Call in time for
the 65th IETF Meeting (Dallas, TX, USA, March 19-24, 2006).
See also: XML and Calendars
Introduction to CalDAV
Nathan Willis, NewsForge
Calendaring and scheduling are mission-critical activities for any
organization. Just as organizations depend on email working smoothly
across a diverse set of platforms and devices, so too calendaring must
function in heterogeneous environments to be considered reliable. The
CalDAV protocol makes that possible by supporting a range of client and
server implementations in ways that Outlook simply cannot. CalDAV
allows sharing, synchronization, and searching of calendar data between
multiple users in multiple locations. The core of the CalDAV protocol
defines maintenance, queries (including search), and access controls.
Since CalDAV is an extension of HTTP, it uses standard HTTP methods like
GET, PUT, and DELETE to manipulate iCalendar data, and resources can be
accessed with URIs. This dependence on HTTP is one of CalDAV's key
advantages over CAP; many devices -- including small, relatively low-end
devices such as embedded systems and phones -- already have an HTTP
stack. A number of high-profile open source applications use CalDAV,
chief among them the Mozilla Calendar project. Given its association
with the Mozilla suite, it is likely the most widely deployed and tested
CalDAV client. The Calendar extensions for Firefox and Thunderbird, the
standalone Sunbird calendar app, and the in-progress Mozilla Lightning
groupware client are cross-platform and all support CalDAV.
OASIS to Push OpenDocument Adoption
China Martens, InfoWorld
On the heels of last week's debut of the OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Alliance, the OASIS standards body Tuesday said it was forming a
similar group. But while the ODF Alliance seeks to encourage governments
to adopt the electronic document format, the OASIS ODF Adoption
Committee will work on promoting OpenDocument implementations among
industries and end-users. Patrick Gannon, OASIS president and Chief
Executive Officer, said he expects only "some small overlap" between
the new committee's remit and that of the ODF Alliance. The new
committee will generate white papers, case studies and other educational
materials and also plans to offer newsletters, online seminars and
conferences. OASIS is developing the Open Document Format for Office
Applications, also known as OpenDocument, as an XML (Extensible Markup
Language) file format. Files using the format can be opened by any
application that supports OpenDocument, giving users more choices of
office software. Some open-source software suites already support the
format as do Sun Microsystems's StarOffice and IBM's Workplace. OASIS
submitted OpenDocument to ISO in May 2005. Gannon expects that process
to be complete in the third quarter of this year. Some governments
limit their procurement to software that adheres to ISO standards.
Forrester's McNabb views the formation of the new OASIS committee as a
positive move. "In general, there's been too much focus on the fear
factor of not being able to access documents," he said. "It's somewhat
true, but it has been widely overhyped."
See also: the announcement
Microsoft to OpenDocument Alliance: Where's the Choice?
Peter Galli, eWEEK
The battle between Microsoft's OpenXML format and the OpenDocument
Format intensifies as Microsoft attacks the newly created OpenDocument
Format Alliance. Microsoft is accusing some competitors of exactly the
same thing of which they have criticized the software company: pushing
an exclusive standard to the detriment of all others and not enabling
choice. The OpenDocument Format Alliance formed as a coalition of more
than 35 organizations from across the world whose goal is to enable
governments to have direct management and greater control over their
documents. The alliance -- whose supporters include many of Microsoft's
Linux and open-source foes such as Corel, IBM, Novell, OpenOffice.org,
Opera Software, Oracle, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems -- is essentially
positioning the XML-based ODF (OpenDocument Format) as the alternative
to other document formats like Microsoft's OpenXML, which is the new
file format that will be used in Office 2007 when it ships later this
year. Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's Information Worker
Business Strategy in Redmond, Wash., this week accused the alliance,
which he referred to as "Sun, IBM and their friends," of wanting to push
the ODF as an "exclusive" standard to the detriment of all others,
rather than enabling choice among formats like PDF from Adobe,
Microsoft's OpenXML and HTML. Simon Phipps, Sun's chief open-source
officer, agrees that choice and competition are clearly preferable,
which is why standards exist for mature product categories, so that
vendors have a baseline and can compete on implementations rather than
competing on incompatible "standards."
See also: Bob Sutor's blog
Laying Tracks for Shopping Feed Standards
Jason Lee Miller, WebProNews
Submitting product data to comparison shopping sites and search engines
can be a taxing process. Each engine has its own feed format and special
requirements that create extra work and lower ROIs for retailers while
reducing revenue and efficiency for the engines (especially the smaller
ones). Understandably, then, a movement has begun to standardize the
process. On Feb 27, 2006, the Association for Retail Technology Standards
(ARTS) met with retailers and major search engines in Menlo Park, Calif.,
to discuss moving forward on an open standard format for SKU-based
advertising. After the Menlo Park meeting, Rimm-Kaufman said the choice
for standardized feeds "will most likely be XML." Standardization would
allow feeds to work on an "atomic" level, where details can be modified
and an environment that supports creativity is developed. In addition to
that, what these organizations have in mind is a system that also
allows data feedback from the engines. ORDS (Online Retail Datafeed
Standardization) is group of online retailers, search engines, and online
agencies working together to create a common standard for communicating
product descriptions and advertising costs more easily.
See also: ORDS web site
Tip: Use the Unicode Database to Find Characters for XML Documents
Uche Ogbuji, IBM developerWorks
The Unicode standard database has a wealth of characters for maximum
expressiveness and even for fun. The Unicode consortium is dedicated to
maintaining a character set that allows computers to deal with the vast
array of human writing systems. When you think of computers that manage
such a large and complex data set, you think databases, and this is
precisely what the consortium provides for computer access to versions
of the Unicode standard. The Unicode Character Database comprises files
that present detailed information for each character and class of
character. The strong tie between XML and Unicode means this database is
very valuable to XML developers and authors. In this article Uche Ogbuji
introduces the Unicode Character Database and shows how XML developers
can put it to use. Once you are familiar with the UCD, you can use it
in all sorts of advanced ways: sorting values in XML files in
internationally sound ways, normalizing data in XML files for easier
comparison and digital signing, and much more.
See also: XML and Unicode
Authoritative Metadata
Roy T. Fielding and Ian Jacobs, W3C TAG Finding
In Web architecture, communication between agents consists of exchanging
messages with predefined syntax and semantics: a shared expectation of
how each message's control data and payload (representation data and
metadata) will be interpreted by the recipient. When supported by the
communication protocol, the Web architecture uses representation
metadata to indicate the sender's intentions regarding how the recipient
should interpret the representation data. For example, HTTP and MIME
use the value of the "Content-Type" header field to indicate the Internet
media type of the representation, which influences the dispatching of
handlers and security-related decisions made by recipients of the
message. In this finding, we review the architectural design choice that
metadata provided in an encapsulating container, such as the metadata
provided in the header fields of a received message, be considered
authoritative. We examine why recipient behavior that fails to respect
authoritative metadata can be harmful and under what conditions such
behavior is allowed. Finally, we consider how specification authors and
implementers should incorporate these design constraints into their work.
See also: other W3C TAG Findings
AJAX Toolkit Framework
Craig Becker et al., alphaWorks Emerging Internet Tech Group Project
IBM has announced the release of its AJAX Toolkit Framework -- a
technology that assists in constructing Eclipse framework support for
AJAX Toolkits and provides enhanced DHTML/Javascript IDE features
for AJAX developers. ATF provides extensible tools for building IDEs for
the many different AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) run-time
environments (such as Dojo, Zimbra, etc.). This technology also contains
features for developing, debugging, and testing AJAX applications. The
framework provides enhanced JavaScript editing features such as edit-
time syntax checking; an embedded Mozilla Web browser; an embedded DOM
browser; and an embedded JavaScript debugger. An additional and unique
aspect of the framework is the Personality Builder function, which
assists in the construction of IDE features for arbitrary AJAX run-time
frameworks and thus adds to the supported set of run-time environments
in the ATF. The technology is based largely upon WTP 1.0. ATF enables
support of DOM browsing and JavaScript debugging by using Mozilla
XULrunner to embed the Mozilla browser component (Gecko) in the Eclipse
framework. The tool requires Eclipse 3.1.1, Eclipse Web Tools Platform
(WTP) 1.0, and Java 1.4.2. The Emerging Technologies Toolkit (ETTK) is
a collection of emerging technologies that are relevant to IBM's
emerging software strategies. The ETTK team works with external users to
incubate and further develop these technologies so they can be used to
create innovative customer solutions.
PHP Framework Begins to Take Shape
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com
The first public baby steps of the effort to create a new framework
for PHP application deployment are now live for all to see. The effort
may well prove to put PHP on the same level as J2EE and .NET for
application server deployments. Version 0.1.1 of the framework is now
available for download as a preview, and it has already racked up 15,000
downloads during its first weekend of existence. The first public
preview release introduces a number of framework components that will
enable an enterprise-class PHP application deployment. 'Zend Search
Lucene' adds the Apache Lucene search engine's capabilities to PHP and
allows PHP-driven sites to take advantage of new search capabilities.
The binary file format used is claimed to be fully compatible with
Apache's Java version of Lucene. Web Services are also a key focus of
the framework. According to the Zend Framework Web site, the project
is working on engaging more API vendors directly to make PHP the premier
platform for consuming Web services. PHP 5, which first debuted in 2004,
introduced new XML capabilities to PHP. Those capabilities are being
expanded in the framework with the Zend_XmlRpc module. RSS is part of
the mix thanks to Zend_Feed, which consumes and discovers RSS and Atom
feed data. E-mail is also addressed with the Mail and Mime module,
which creates and sends e-mail, as well as includes support for
attachments. The PDF module gives the framework the ability to generate
PDFs on the fly without the need for additionally compiled PHP
extensions, as is typically the case for PHP deployments.
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