XML and Web Services In The News - 31 May 2005

As Easy as X+V: How to Write an XHTML+Voice Application
Jeff Kusnitz, IBM developerWorks
Everyone in the industry is hyping multimodal applications as the next cool way to build applications -- why limit users to a single input/ output modality when they can use several at one time? X+V simplifies multimodal application development. This article takes you through the steps necessary to build a simple, but useful, multimodal application. The XHTML+Voice profile "brings spoken interaction to standard web content by integrating the mature XHTML and XML-Events technologies with XML vocabularies developed as part of the W3C Speech Interface Framework. The profile includes voice modules that support speech synthesis, speech dialogs, command and control, and speech grammars. Voice handlers can be attached to XHTML elements and respond to specific DOM events, thereby reusing the event model familiar to web developers. Voice interaction features are integrated with XHTML and CSS and can consequently be used directly within XHTML content."
See also: XHTML+Voice Profile 1.2

W3C Working Group Note for SSML say-as Attribute Values
Voice Browser Working Group, First Working Group Note
The Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) provides a variety of markup elements to direct the behavior of a speech synthesizer in its processing of text to be spoken. One of the features in this language is the 'say-as' element, which provides for semantic tagging of content to assist the processor in disambiguation of ambiguous input or to simplify authoring in common cases where the processor knows how to perform the conversion of certain types of content into orthographic text for the target language. However, SSML 1.0 does not define the values of the attributes of this element, leaving open the questions of what standard content types might exist and how extensions beyond those types might be introduced. This W3C WG Note fills in the gap by (1) defining how standard content types are denoted and distinguished from extensions, and (2) providing definitions for these attributes that cover many of the most common use cases for the say-as element.
See also: The Note

Access Allowed
Sue Bushell, CIO Magazine
Thanks to digitization and the Web, institutions like the National Library of Australia, the Australian War Memorial and the National Archives have changed their view of service delivery and are rapidly transforming themselves from providers of collections to providers of access. The AWM offers a range of services on its Web site for family historians and other researchers, including a Research & Family History service providing links to its ReQuest online reference service, its Encyclopaedia and its XML finding aids, written using Encoded Archival Description. There are also biographical databases containing personal data like nominal rolls, records of honours and awards, and what the AWM's Booth describes as "some really touching files" of those wounded and missing in the First World War contained in Red Cross files, avidly used by family historians. The AWM also offers three online collections for its general museum collection (including all objects, photos, film, sound, art, military technology, private records), books and official records, and another for its growing collection of digitized documents from official war diaries -- currently mostly from the Second World War and Korea, but it is now working on Vietnam and the First World War, and will soon have about two million pages online in these databases.
See also: Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

Rx for Structured Product Labeling
Dan Dube, SYS-CON XML Journal
The long-term benefits of XML-based Structured Product Labeling (SPL) are creating many short-term headaches for drug makers as they scramble to comply with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deadline for electronically processing all drug-related labeling content. The FDA plans to complete the regulations, standards, and systems needed to switch labeling content from PDF to SPL, an XML schema, for prescription drugs by late 2005, and for all drugs by 2006. Without question, converting product-labeling documents to SPL is a major challenge. The question for drug makers is whether to treat the conversion of product- labeling documents to an Open Source digital format as a headache or an opportunity. XML's uniform formatting and the centralization of content control it affords lets companies search all their product information more efficiently and use it more effectively in all contexts. However, the road to SPL compliance is also filled with potholes that could derail their efforts. Our experience implementing XML-based systems for companies in the pharmaceutical/life sciences and other industries has uncovered three pitfalls that often plague organizations deploying new content management and publishing systems. On the other hand, we're convinced that organizations that adopt a careful strategic approach to SPL compliance, one that embraces XML and its potential while avoiding these pitfalls, will seize a clear competitive advantage and drive significant improvements throughout their organization.
See also: SPL references

DITA: Getting Started
Christian Kravogel and Boris Horner, XTech 2005 Conference Presentation
This presentation addresses a low-effort-required solution for users looking to take a step into XML for their technical documentation. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and its associated public toolkit provide you with the DTDs, stylesheets and other tools you require to make your steps into XML. But DITA is much more. The DITA specialization process gives you the ability to easily adapt DITA to your company requirements to provide value for various document types. DITA is integrated into and actively supported by many state-of-the-art tools commonly known in the XML world like EPIC, XMLSpy, Serna, WorldServer OpenTopic, Content Mapper and many others to come. If you are involved in a project to introduce XML, a new CMS, or in general a new authoring environment, you will face many time and budget consuming issues and challenges -- if there is anything cool and you get it for free, then take it. With DITA you will be part of a community, there are already many people around using DITA based solutions.
See also: DITA references

XML: Out of the Shadows
Jim McKay, Government Technology
Global Justice XML may link law enforcement, firefighters, emergency management services and more. The DOJ's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has tallied at least 50 fully implemented Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications in the government justice and public safety realm thus far, including Amber Alert, possibly the most noteworthy example. That number could stretch to 200 or more when newer, developing implementations are considered. The federal departments of Homeland Security and Justice recently agreed on a global data-sharing standard that could spur interoperability throughout the public safety community and beyond. The move limits proliferation of incompatible XML data models -- which translate data into information that can be shared among multiple IT systems -- and opens the door to greater cooperation among law enforcement, firefighters, health organizations and others. The DHS and DOJ also tied use of the new standard -- known as the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) -- to federal grants for information exchange projects in fiscal 2005, so states and localities are challenged with getting up to speed on the promising data-sharing model. That's exciting to those who see XML as a silver bullet for interoperability among disparate communications systems. The XML thrust received a big boost in February with the announcement that the DHS and the DOJ will use the GJXDM for interoperability.
See also: XML and Emergency Standards