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XML and Web Services In The News - 10 May 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML.org Daily Newslink is sponsored by Innodata Isogen
HEADLINES:
AJAX Initiative Adds Backers: SAP, Adobe Among 13 New Participants
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
OpenAjax, which features a group of vendors collaborating to expand use
of the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web-scripting language,
is adding some heavy hitters on Tuesday. Chief among the 13 new
participants are Adobe and SAP. The other eleven (11) newcomers are
Backbase, Fair Isaac, IceSoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Opera, Scalix,
Software AG, Tibco, and XML11. Other initial members in OpenAjax
included BEA Systems, Borland Software, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse
Foundation, Google, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell,
Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo!, Zend, and Zimbra. OpenAjax
participants will hold a summit meeting next week in San Francisco to
determine specific deliverables. OpenAjax was announced in February.
Participants share the goal of promoting AJAX's promise of being
universally compatible with any computer device, application, desktop,
or operating system. The group also is pushing AJAX as being easily
incorporated into new and existing software programs and seeks its
usage in mobile applications also. David Boloker: "Although AJAX offers
benefits in Web applications in that it enables development of more
interactive user interfaces, it has issues that OpenAJAX seeks to
address, such as the lack of a common 'grammar,' or way of describing
a user interface; simplification of AJAX programming is needed..."
WS-Policy Doesn't Rock - It Just Runs Smoothly
Claus von Riegen, SAP AG Blog
WS-Policy and WS-PolicyAttachment have been submitted to the W3C for
further standardization. WS-Policy isn't really rocket science, but it
is in the center of Web services interoperability since it is used to
describe the characteristics of a Web service that consumers need to
understand before they can seamlessly interact with it. Without
WS-Policy, one would either need to call the administrator of the Web
service provider or need to try interacting with the service in a
trial and error mode in order to find out, for example, the detailed
security settings. That is why BEA Systems once called WS-Policy the
"phone call avoidance protocol" ... As one can see from the last section
of the team comment on WS-Policy submission, the W3C Team is already
working on a charter for a working group in this area. In parallel to
the submission, the authors of the specifications scoped and scheduled
an interoperability workshop to test the interoperability of available
implementations of WS-Policy. Specifications often tend to look
consistent and only when actually implementing them, various
inconsistencies, ambiguities and gaps are found. That is why the aim
of the workshop was to resolve any remaining issues and to demonstrate
the maturity of the specification. The collected results and feedback
can also save time during the standardization at W3C. SAP hosted the
WS-Policy interoperability workshop at its headquarters in Walldorf,
Germany from April 25-27. Seven companies (BEA Systems, IBM, Layer 7
Technologies, Microsoft, SAP, Sun Microsystems, WSO2) brought their
implementations of WS-Policy, WS-PolicyAttachment and WS-SecurityPolicy.
As far as the framework-level tasks of policy normalization, merging
and intersection are concerned, there were no interoperability issues,
except one question related to the normalization of nested policy
assertions. A proposal for a slightly enhanced text in WS-Policy will
be submitted to the W3C Working Group as soon as it is established.
See also: WS-Policy Submission Request
NewsML Aims for the Mainstream
Daithi O hAnluain, USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review
Fans of the little-known standard for transmitting news stories hope
version 2.0 will broaden NewsML's appeal, but critics remain skeptical.
The protocol news agencies use to transmit stories to newspapers and
news portals like MSN and Yahoo will get its version 2.0 by year end.
Developers of the standard -- called NewsML -- hope improvements will
take it beyond its typical old media sponsors. Critics argue there are
better tools to do the job. XML-based NewsML bundles all story
elements -- like photos, audio, video and text -- together in a virtual
"envelope," and including a ton of information that describes the
content in a way that a content management system (CMS) can understand.
The practical upshot is that all elements of a story are linked together
and a CMS can automatically render, for example, the headline, byline,
dateline, photo, intro and hyperlink on a news portal's front page,
and all elements of the story on separate webpage accessed by the
hyperlink. Le Meur, Chairman of the NewsML Architecture (NAR) working
group at the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) and
head of the Media Lab at Agence France-Press, is hoping the standard
will become a lot more active in version 2.0. and will move from an
isolated backwater into the main current of Web standards. At the
moment, NewsML is the standard of news agencies. It is used by almost
all the big international agencies, like Reuters, AFP, UPI, as well as
about 40 national agencies, like Italy's ANSA. In Japan it has even
become an official Japanese industry standard (JIS X7201), which works
like the codes of ISO, the international organization for standardization,
the official body that decrees the size of threads on a screw or the
dimensions of a freight container. Of the big agencies, only AP doesn't
use it and, according to Le Meur.
See also: the NewsML web site
Novell Brands Its Own Open-Source Religion
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
Novell is readying two major product launches meant to make its open-
source software more palatable to corporate customers. Later this
month, Novell will officially unveil Bandit, an open-source identity
management project that was quietly started earlier this year. Then
in July, Novell will ship a major upgrade to its Linux desktop suite,
called Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Jaffe said. The initiatives,
along with enhancements to Novell's Linux server operating system, are
meant to ramp up Novell's revenue from open-source software and
position the company as an alternative to Microsoft. But rather than
take on Microsoft across the board, Novell is picking areas it thinks
are ready for adoption by a significant number of users within
corporations... In the area of identity management, Novell has a well-
established line of directory products and server software that
authenticates network access. Now Novell is hoping to use the Bandit
project to make open-source software more mature. Bandit will make use
of Higgins, an open-source project, backed by both Novell and IBM,
that's meant to give end users more control over managing their
passwords for various Internet sites. Identity management is an area
that's well suited to open-source projects.
See also: Higgins Trust Framework
Voice XML 2.1 Boosts Functionality
Sanjeev Sawai, Network World
VoiceXML is quickly becoming the standard language used for developing
interactive voice response and speech-enabled self-service applications.
Applications that were previously deployed only on the Web are now
easily made available via the phone, giving customers a consistent,
convenient method for interacting with retailers, banks and utility
providers via the Web or telephone. The latest version, VoiceXML 2.1,
takes a significant step toward improving the responsiveness and
adaptability of speech-enabled approaches. This can be the difference
between customers who are happy with a company's speech-enabled self-
service options and those who take their business elsewhere. The
improvements proposed in VoiceXML 2.1, which is under consideration by
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), demonstrate that VoiceXML is
establishing itself as a stable, mature standard that deals with long-
term issues, such as the mechanics of application development. The next
major VoiceXML upgrade, VoiceXML 3.0, is scheduled for a candidate
recommendation in December, with the recommendation expected in June
2007. That specification will most likely include such features as
multimodal markup, support for speaker verification, call control
capabilities within VoiceXML and VoiceXML's role as the primary
standard for deploying full-featured voice-enabled applications over
the Web.
See also: VXML Forum
JBoss to Join Key Web Services Standards Groups
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Seeking standards compliance, open source middleware vendor JBoss
[announced] its participation in OASIS, the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) and the Web Services Interoperability Organizaton (WS-I). The
company also is upgrading its portal framework, adding support for
the WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) specification. By joining
the standards organizations, JBoss seeks greater visibility, the
opportunity to contribute to the specification process and to ensure
that its JEMS (JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite) conforms to emerging
standards relative to Web services and SOA. In OASIS, JBoss will be
participating on committees pertaining to several Web services
specifications, including WSRP, WS-RX (Reliable Exchange), WS-SX
(Secure Exchange) and WS-BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).
JBoss also will participate in SOA Reference Model and SOA Adoption
Blueprints activities. In W3C, JBoss will participate in the Web
Services Addressing and Web Services Choreography Working Groups.
In WS-I, JBoss joins as an advocate of the organizations
interoperability efforts. The company also is announcing version 1.2
of its JBoss Operations Network management software for monitoring
and administering JEMS. Version 1.2 adds features to the inventory
function of the product, such as a multi-platform auto-discovery
capability that gauges the network setup. Users can create
conditional alerts that trigger specific actions, such as
automatically allocating additional resources such as more message
cues. Also added is the capability of monitoring Apache Tomcat, the
Apache Web server and JEMS-based applications.
See also: DDJ
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