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XML and Web Services In The News - 18 August 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Innodata Isogen
HEADLINES:
Meet the Specs: SML Models Complex IT Systems
Kane Scarlett, IBM developerWorks
This article is part of a "Meet the specs" series which focuses on
various components of the Service Modeling Language specification.
The Service Modeling Language specification is a proposed open
standard that defines a modeling language complete with a set of
constructs to help you model complex system hierarchies for components
that manage such elements as configuration, monitoring, policy, health,
capacity planning, and Service Level Agreements (SLA). One of the
effects of SML is to increase the automation of management tasks,
thereby reducing the need for a human to intervene in necessary
adjustments. In today's multivendor environment, customers demand open,
standards-based methods to accelerate integration of management
software technologies, methods that include the ability to speed
software deployments and to reduce the overhead caused by needing
human intervention. You can use SML to capture knowledge about the
different parts of complex IT systems and the constraints that these
parts must satisfy in order for the IT system to function properly.
Using SML generates several effects, one that addresses the needs of
the autonomic computing adopter and one that is shared by everyone
employing the language: (1) To increase automation of some management
tasks (because the knowledge is captured in a machine-readable way);
(2) To allow those with different expertise, who touch the system at
different points in the life cycle, to efficiently collaborate by
sharing relevant expertise and have these different contributions
seamlessly integrated.
See also: SML
Atom License Extension
James M. Snell, IETF Internet Draft
A Last Call review for the experimental "Atom License Extension"
specification released as an IETF Internet Draft. The document
defines how Atom feed publishers can associate licenses with the
metadata of a feed or entry. Licenses associated using these mechanisms
might be machine readable and are intended to communicate the various
rights and obligations others may have with regards to the associated
Atom Feed or Entry. For feed elements, the term 'metadata' refers to
the values and attributes of the author, category, contributor,
generator, icon, id, link, logo, rights, subtitle, title, and updated
elements, as defined by RFC 4287, as well as all extension elements
appearing as children of the feed element and all elements appearing
as children of the author and contributor elements. It also includes
the selection and arrangement of entry elements contained by the feed
but not the metadata or content of the entries themselves. For entry
elements, 'metadata' refers to the values and attributes of the author,
category, content, contributor, id, link, published, rights, source,
summary, title, and updated elements, as well as all extension elements
appearing as children of the entry element and all elements appearing
as children of the author and contributor elements. Multiple 'license'
link relations specifying different href attribute values are are
considered to be mutually exclusive alternatives. For instance, if an
entry specifies both a Creative Commons License and the General Public
License (GPL), the entry is considered to be licensed as either
Creative Commons OR GPL as opposed to Creative Commons AND GPL. If
multiple license link relations are specified, each SHOULD contain a
title attribute specifying a human-readable label for the license.
Because entries contained within a feed may originate from other
sources, 'license' link relations appearing within a feed apply to the
metadata of the containing feed element only and do not extend over
the metadata or content of the contained entries.
See also: Atom references
W3C Working Drafts for Compound Document Framework and WICD Profiles
Timur Mehrvarz, Daniel Appelquist et al., (eds), W3C Working Drafts
Addressing 'Last Call' comments, W3C's Compound Document Formats
Working Group has released four updated Working Drafts: "Compound
Document by Reference Framework", "WICD Core 1.0", "WICD Full 1.0",
and "WICD Mobile 1.0". Web Integration Compound Document (WICD) is a
device independent Compound Document profile based on XHTML, CSS and
SVG. The "Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0" specification
defines a language-independent processing model for combining arbitrary
document formats. Combining content delivery formats can often be
desirable in order to provide a seamless experience to the user. For
example, XHTML-formatted content can be augmented by SVG objects, to
create a more dynamic, interactive and self adjusting presentation.
A set of standard rules is required in order to provide this capability
across a range of user agents and devices — for example, XHTML + SVG
+ MathML; XHTML + SMIL; XHTML + XForms; XHTML + VoiceML. The
Compound Document Framework is language-independent. While it is
meant to serve as the basis for integrating W3C's family of XML
formats within its Interaction Domain (e.g., CSS, MathML, SMIL, SVG,
VoiceXML, XForms, XHTML, XSL) with each other, it can also be used to
integrate non-W3C formats with W3C formats or integrate non-W3C
formats with other non-W3C formats. A Compound Document by inclusion
combines XML markup from several namespaces into a single physical
document. A number of standards exist, and continue to be developed,
that are descriptions of XML markup within a single namespace. XHTML,
XForms, VoiceXML, and MathML are some of the prominent examples of
such standards, each having its own namespace. Each of these
specifications focuses on one aspect of rich-content development. For
example, XForms focuses on data collection and submission, VoiceXML
on speech, and MathML on the display of mathematical notations.
See also: W3C Rich Web Clients Activity
Review: Inside IBM DB2 Viper
Sean McCown, InfoWorld
A technological marvel, IBM's new XML-powered server aims to change
the face of database storage. IBM's newly released DB2 9.1 (previously
code-named 'Viper') sheds many of the limitations of DB2 8, boosting
performance, scalability, and security. But one feature in particular,
the hybrid XML/relational engine, gives this Big Blue serpent its
distinctive shape. For customers plunging into the new era of XML data
management, Viper's innovations are tempting indeed. Native XML
databases have been around for a while, but they require special
libraries and aren't compatible with relational data. On the other
hand, traditional relational databases have trouble dealing with
hierarchical models and have only limited functionality in this area.
So the major database vendors have been busy bolting XML capabilities
onto their relational database products. IBM is no exception. IBM's
technology outdoes its competitors, however, by preserving the native
format of XML data. Five years in development, DB2's brand-new storage
engine, dubbed pureXML, has one foot planted squarely in the world of
relational databases and the other in that of XML databases. Instead
of storing the XML as a BLOB (binary large object) or parsing it into
relational key/value pairs, pureXML stores the XML file itself, with
all its properties and hierarchical structure preserved. DB2 9.1 is
an excellent database with groundbreaking features. Its new hybrid data
engine offers true native XML storage, allowing the entire data store
to be retrieved using either SQL or XQuery, interchangeably. In
addition, the new Development Workbench wins big points with its
support for building XQuery expressions. Other new features include
row-level compression, scalability improvements, and advanced,
granular access controls.
Comparing XML Office Document Formats: Using XML Metrics
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Articles
Here are some XML metrics for a large document with almost 180,000
words, tables, lists, sidebars and some graphics. I chose a large
document so that bootstrap effects would be minimized. I used the ODF
v.1.0 specification, converting it from .SWX to .DOC and .ODT in Open
Office 2.0, then converting the .DOC to .DOCX in Word 2007 beta. Then
I used a COTS archiver to treat the ODT and DOCX files as ZIP archives,
and extracted the XMLfiles containing the basic text and markup:
content.xml (ODF) and word/document.xml (MSOOX). I chose to use a .SWX
format because I didn't want to have any MS-dependencies in the data,
.DOC being proprietary. I also resaved the document to .DOC, re-opened
it and re-exported it to .DOCX and extracted the word/document.xml file.
Resaving data is a good trick when doing data conversion, because it
removes extraneous information or structures from the source: the
first .DOC are what Open Office thinks .DOC looks like, the second
.DOC is what Microsoft does things. The numbers seem to support the
interpretation that beta MSOOX may be quite a bit less complex than
ODF 1.1 at this stage, at least in the sense of using fixed structures
more, and simpler in these sense of using fewer elements and attributes.
ODF is flatter and has smaller filesize but seems to include more
style headers than the MOOX does. The metrics indicate that the use
of attributes may be significantly different between the two formats,
for example for people looking at data conversion estimation. On the
application level, Open Office loads the ODT file much faster than the
Word 2007 beta loads the DOCX file. I'd wouldn't be surprised if
MSOOX were easier to convert from (because of its regularity, scale
and low complexity) while ODF were easier to convert into (because of
its richness and flexibility), after the initial hurdle of converting
anything to/from either of them was leapt.
OASIS Discussion List for Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML)
Staff, Announcement
OASIS announced that certain of its members members have requested
a new discussion list regarding a possible new OASIS Unstructured
Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC. The Unstructured Operation
Markup Language specification "defines a universally representative
unstructured document operating language through the abstract
description of unstructured documents. The application program can
realize document-related operation through UOML application,
including document organization, page description, information safety,
index and search, content extraction, fonts management, storage
management, plug-in mechanism, and script description etc. UOML is
expressed with standard XML, featuring mighty compatibility and
openness." The proposers plan to contribute a draft version of
the UOML to the TC when it is formed, for further review, discussion
and refinement. The schema is suitable for operating written documents,
including create, view, modify, query information that can be printed
in paper, e.g. books, magazine, newspaper, office documents, maps,
drawings, blueprints, but is not restricted to these kinds of
documents. There are several commercial and free applications available
based on UOML, with more currently under development. A standard for
document operation will be of great utility to many users and software
companies developing applications, and should be made available as
soon as possible.
See also: the UOML web site
VoiceXML 2.1: The Upgrades Are Few, But Significant
Jeff Kusnitz, IBM developerWorks
The intent in VoiceXML 2.1 was to include a small number of features
that were not included in VoiceXML 2.0, but were deemed significant
enough to warrant documenting and standardizing. VoiceXML 2.1 has met
these goals &emdash; it contains just eight features, of which only two are
completely new; the other six are enhancements to existing VoiceXML
elements. The VoiceXML Forum has more or less moved out of the
specification-writing arena and is now focused primarily on marketing
and education in the VoiceXML industry. To this effect, the Forum has
put together a pair of certifications, one for VoiceXML platforms to
certify they are compliant with the VoiceXML 2.0 specification and one
for developers, to demonstrate that they have a well-balanced
understanding of the VoiceXML 2.0 language. At the time this article
was written, 17 VoiceXML platforms have been certified by the VoiceXML
Forum, and more than 100 developers have taken and passed the Forum's
developer certification examination. For those who are not necessarily
interested in developing voice applications, but are instead interested
in building voice application platforms (that is, a VoiceXML browser),
the CATS group in the IETF is working on Media Resource Control
Protocol version 2 (MRCP v2). MRCP v2 builds on the MRCP specification
jointly developed by Cisco, Nuance, and SpeechWorks several years ago,
which is now supported by most, if not all, of the major players in
the industry, either by providing MRCP-based speech resources, or by
providing VoiceXML browsers that "sit on top of" MRCP-based speech
resource. In the voice application space, VoiceXML and related standards
(SRGS, SSML, and so on) have emerged as "the" standards for building
voice applications and platforms. Judging by the usefulness of the
features released in VoiceXML 2.1, there's no reason to think that
VoiceXML won't continue to be the standard for building voice
applications for a long time coming.
See also: VoiceXML Platform Implementations
GPL 3 Lawyer Has His Regrets
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com
Few topics are as contentious in the Linux world as GPL 3, the general
public license that details how many open source software programs can
be used. During a session at the LinuxWorld conference here, Free
Software Foundation counsel and co-author of the GPL 3 draft, Eben
Moglen, explained the current status of the license draft discussion
as well as some of the more contentious issues surrounding it. Three
areas of disagreement remain and need to be sorted out within 65-80
days, according to Moglen. They include: patent clauses; digital rights
management (DRM) policy, and compatibility terms. HP has already made
known its objections to the patent clauses in draft 2. "It is the
position of those that hold patents whose claims we have to take into
account," Moglen said. He also admitted to mistakes in the draft process,
and called it exhausting. The GPL version 3 effort began in January
with a first draft that marked the first significant attempt at revising
the GPL version 2 license, which has sat unchanged since June of 1991.
Among the contentious issues in the first draft were approaches to DRM
(Digital Rights Management) and patents. The second draft was released
last month, after much community input and discussion. In terms of
license compatibility, the issue is whether a GPL program may contain
some file that contains restrictive terms that do not apply to the
program as a whole. Moglen said the power of the additional permission
sections in the latest draft means that, for example, parties who
object to a particular requirement in the license can grant additional
simple permissions that will change the bearing of the license on
their project. For DRM, Moglen said the goal is to include the minimum
necessary to protect the freedoms with software that the FSF is trying
to guarantee.
See also: the FSF GPLv3 web site
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