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XML and Web Services In The News - 12 September 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by BEA Systems
HEADLINES:
OASIS Launches OpenDocument XML.org
Staff, OASIS Announcement
OASIS has announced the formation of the "OpenDocument XML.org" web
site as a "community gathering place and information resource for the
OpenDocument OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300). OpenDocument provides a
format that enables users of varying office suites to freely exchange
documents. The standard is advanced through an open process by the
OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee and the OASIS ODF Adoption
Committee. Both groups encourage new participation from developers and
users. All OpenDocument XML.org pages are accessible by the public, and
readers are encouraged to contribute content. In addition to technical
and educational background material on the standard, the site features
a community bulletin board and directory where readers share news,
events, product and services listings, information on deployments in
the public and private sectors, case studies, testimonials, and
recommendations on books, white papers, and other useful resources.
The web site may be used to: (1) Learn: Knowledge Base pages provide
reliable background information on OpenDocument; (2) Share: OpenDocument
Today serves as a community bulletin board and directory where readers
post news, ideas, opinions, and recommendations; (3) Collaborate: Wiki
pages let users work with others online and add new pages to the site."
See also: the web site
LoST: A Location-to-Service Translation Protocol
Ted Hardie, Andrew Newton, et al., IETF Internet Draft
Members of the IETF Emergency Context Resolution with Internet
Technologies (ECRIT) Working Group have released an -01 version of
"LoST: A Location-to-Service Translation Protocol." The document
describes an XML-based protocol for (PIDF-LO) mapping service
identifiers and geospatial or civic location information to service
contact URIs. In particular, it can be used to determine the location-
appropriate PSAP for emergency services. Example contact URI schemes
include sip, xmpp, and tel. Background: "In a number of areas, the
public switched telephone network (PSTN) has been configured to
recognize an explicitly specified number (commonly one that is short
and easily memorized) as a call for emergency services. These numbers
(e.g. 911, 112) relate to an emergency service context and depend on
a broad, regional configuration of service contact methods and a
geographically-constrained context of service delivery. These calls
are intended to be delivered to special call centers equipped to
manage emergency response. Successful delivery of an emergency service
call within those systems requires both an association of the physical
location of the originator with an appropriate emergency service center
and call routing to deliver the call to the center. The IETF WG was
chartered to show how the availability of location data and call
routing information at different steps in session setup would enable
communication between a user and a relevant emergency response center.
Though the term "call routing" is used in this document, it should
be understood that some of the mechanisms which will be described might
be used to enable other types of media streams. Video and text
messaging, for example, might be used to request emergency services.
See also: the WG Charter
XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0
Ian Hickson (ed), W3C Working Draft
W3C's Web Application Formats Working Group has released a Last Call
Working Draft for the "XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0" specification.
The deadline for Last Call comments is 7 December 2006. The XBL
specification defines the XML Binding Language and some supporting
DOM interfaces and CSS features. XBL is a mechanism for overriding
the standard presentation and interactive behavior of particular
elements by attaching those elements to appropriate definitions,
called bindings. Bindings can be attached to elements using either
cascading style sheets, the document object model, or by declaring,
in XBL, that a particular element in a particular namespace is
implemented by a particular binding. The element that the binding is
attached to, called the bound element, acquires the new behavior and
presentation specified by the binding. Bindings can contain event
handlers that watch for events on the bound element, an implementation
of new methods, properties and fields that become accessible from the
bound element, shadow content that is inserted underneath the bound
element, and associated resources such as scoped style sheets and
precached images, sounds, or videos. XBL cannot be used to give a
document new semantics. The meaning of a document is not changed by
any bindings that are associated with it, only its presentation and
interactive behavior. NS URI: "http://www.w3.org/ns/xbl".
See also: the W3C news item
Web Services for Geographic Information Systems
Shengru Tu and Mahdi Abdelguerfi, IEEE Internet Computing
[Editorial overview:] "Enterprises in the public and private sectors
have recently produced a surge in Web services and Web applications for
geographic information systems (GISs), making large spatial-data
archives available over the Internet. Google Maps, Google Earth, and
Microsoft Virtual Earth, for example, introduce GIS services to
ordinary Internet users with astonishing aerial imagery and responsive
performance. Logically, maps are a natural platform on which
information from different perspectives can converge through geographic
locations. Technically, Web services technologies have provided the
necessary standards for applications in different domains to integrate
with GIS data and services. Significant accomplishments in GIS Web
services have led to several exemplifying map and image services that
adhere to Web services standards and bring terabytes of geospatial data
and digital maps to enterprise developers who house no GIS data. In
parallel with the development of general-purpose Web services, the
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has successfully executed efforts
for GIS interoperability. For example, the OGC Web Services (OWS)
initiative has undergone multiple phases — including the Web Map Server
(WMS), Web Feature Server (WFS), Web Coverage Server (WCS), and OGC
Web Service Architecture, which support application developers in
integrating a variety of online geoprocessing and location services.
Conceptually, the OWS technology stack is a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) that includes service discovery, description, and
binding layers corresponding to UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP in the W3C
architecture. Currently, OGC is attempting to integrate the Web
services standards into the OWS framework, including specifying changes
to the common OWS architecture and providing WSDL descriptions in WMS,
WFS, and WCS. The articles in this issue's theme section aim to reflect
the state-of-the-art development in GIS Web services from different
angles.
See also: the abstract
W3C Licenses New Namespace URI Pattern for Use in Technical Reports
W3C Staff, Member Guide Document
Ian Jacobs, team contact for the W3C Advisory Board and editor of the
W3C Process Document, announced an update to the document "URIs for
W3C Namespaces" which authorizes the optional use of a new namespace
URI pattern. In the usage category "Namespace URIs in Recommendation
Track Documents, Group Notes, and other Working Drafts," the document now
licenses a URI with the form "http://www.w3.org/ns/ssss" for use, where
"ssss" is a short string not causing confusion, alarm, or embarrassment.
For instance, the short string should not cause confusion when used in
both "http://www.w3.org/TR/ssss" and "http://www.w3.org/ns/ssss" URIs.
The W3C document also specifies that in all Member and Team Submissions:
(1) Namespace URIs MUST be dereferenceable, and (2) Namespace Documents
MUST describe the relationship between the defining specification and
the namespace URI. A Namespace Document describes the namespace,
providing directly or by reference information for human and also,
ideally, machine consumption. A Namespace Document is available for
retrieval using a corresponding namespace URI. When a namespace URI
appears in a Recommendation Track document, the responsible group MUST
publish a corresponding Namespace Document.
See also: Namespaces in XML
Microsoft Moves Up Shipment of AJAX Technologies
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Microsoft is unveiling its official Atlas technology branding for AJAX
(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming on ASP.Net, and will make
the software available sooner than planned. The company hopes to ship
its Atlas technologies around the end of 2006. Microsoft has used the
code name ASP.Net "Atlas" to refer to multiple components of
technologies designed to assist Web developers with AJAX-style
development; now, the server-side Atlas functionality, which integrates
with ASP.Net, is called ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions. Client-side
functionality, which integrates ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions and other
back-end platforms such as PHP or ColdFusion, is called Microsoft AJAX
Library. This features the client-side JavaScript library. The Atlas
Control Toolkit, meanwhile, is now called the ASP.Net AJAX Control
Toolkit. Microsoft had planned to ship Atlas with the next version of
Visual Studio, code-named "Orcas," which is due next year. By offering
production-ready versions of ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions and the AJAX
Library this year, enterprise customers will be able to take Atlas
applications into production with fully supported APIs. To expedite
Atlas, the company will focus on a core set of supported functionality,
including common components needed to enable developers to build
client-side controls/components. Server-side functionality for
integrating with ASP.Net also has been deemed core to the platform.
Other features will be available in a separate download but not offered
in the core "bucket".
See also: ScottGu's Blog
Pump Some AJAX into Your JSF Application
Peter Wang, Java World
AJAX is an old technology with a new life. One of the biggest advantages
of AJAX is that it improves the user's experience. In traditional Web
applications, the entire Web content is rendered for every HTTP request
every time. With AJAX, only a portion of content is rendered. Put simply,
users can have a similar or the same experience working with a Web
application as they have when working with a Windows-based application.
JSF and AJAX are a perfect match when it comes to building a so-called
RIA (rich Internet application). AJAX and JavaServer Faces are a
perfect match for your client- and server-side elements. In a previous
article ("Put on a Happy MyFace") the author showed how to use the
JavaServer Faces (JSF) MyFaces component-based framework to create an
employee header/detail use-case. Other functionality needs to be added
to this application, such as the ability to add or delete an employee.
In this article, he introduces these new functions and demonstrates how
to use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to improve the JSF Web
application user experience. With just a few Ajax4jsf components and a
slight modification, an existing MyFaces Web application is turned into
an AJAX Web application, or a so-called RIA (rich Internet application).
Not only does Ajax4jsf demonstrate the power of AJAX in JSF, but it
also shows how flexible and extensible the JSF framework is.
Introducing xfy, a Native XML Application Platform
Hideki Hiura, IBM developerWorks
One of the key goals for many companies in using XML has been to enable
the processing of a wide variety of unstructured data that cannot be
effectively stored in a conventional relational database (RDB). This
goal is an important one, since most of the data in an enterprise is
not structured and cannot be stored in a normal RDB. In fact, one
survey found that only 10% of the total information in an enterprise
is managed in an RDB. This fact implies that 90% of the information in
an enterprise is not being systematically managed or utilized. Most
organizations cannot use such unstructured data efficiently. Many XML
proponents expected that XML would soon help achieve the goal of
converting this unstructured data into a form that could be managed and
utilized. Until now, two important pieces to achieve this goal were
missing: (1) A database that could store XML data and manipulate it as
XML data; (2) A comprehensive tool for developing native XML
applications. DB2 9 enables federated searches on data with different
schemas. This greatly expands an enterprise's ability to use data not
effectively storable in traditional RDBs. xfy is a platform for building
and executing native XML applications. It handles all types of XML data,
even XML compound documents, regardless of how little is known about
the XML vocabularies. xfy is implemented in Java, so it can run in a
variety of environments such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. xfy is
able to analyze unknown XML vocabularies returned from a database, and
to automatically generate appropriate views for the results. Unlike
previous database applications, xfy can display unknown XML vocabularies
without requiring any programming by the user. Also, xfy has a rich set
of components used for data visualization (for example, scatter charts
and spreadsheets). These components provide powerful tools for
displaying XML data in useful visual formats. The two products pureXML
DB2 9 and native XML xfy are the ideal combination for creating true
XML solutions and providing users with the full value inherent in XML.
Apache Axis2/C Version 0.93 Released with XML Schema Implementation
SYS-CON XML News Desk
Samisa Abeysinghe, pioneer of the Apache Axis2/C effort, architect the
core of the Apache Axis2/C Web services engine and AJAXWorld Conference
2006 speaker, has announced the release of Apache Axis2/C version 0.93.
Abeysinghe, a Software Architect at WSO2 whose involvement in open
source projects began in 2004 with the Apache Axis C/C++ project,
continues to be an active contributor to the Apaxhe Axis 2C team. His
presentation at AJAXWorld ("3-Tier No More") and is focused on
integration-ready applications with AJAX and WS-*. He shows how
combining the power of AJAX with Web services opens the door for a new
class of integration-ready enterprise applications, and how these
applications eliminate the Web-tier from the typical 3-tier style,
replacing it with a AJAX client powered by an enhanced XMLHttpRequest
style programming model called SOAPHttpRequest. Although it works the
same way, SOAPHttpRequest transparently adds full support for WS-* QoS
including addressing, security and reliable messaging. Major Changes
Since Last Release (1) REST support for HTTP GET case; (2) XML Schema
implementation; (3) Woden/C implementation that supports both WSDL 1.1
and WSDL 2.0; (4) Dynamic client invocation — given a WSDL, consume
services dynamically; (5) Numerous improvements to API and API
documentation; (6) Many bug fixes, especially, many paths of execution
previously untouched were tested along with Sandesha2/C implementation.
See also: Axis2/C
Axis 1.x or Axis2?
Anne Thomas Manes, Blog
A lot of people have been asking which version of Axis should they use:
[A] Axis2 is the next generation web services platform. It supports all
the latest and greatest SOAP and REST capabilities. It's definitely
the system you'll be wanting to use in 2007. Unfortunately, it is not
yet stable. The developers are planning to release v1.1 in late September,
and I'm hoping that version will be stable. But if you want to use Axis2
before that release comes out, you must be preprared to use the nightly
builds, to help identify bugs, and to perhaps propose fixes. The
documentation is also pretty sketchy for those unfamiliar with the
Axis2 architecture. [B] Axis is pretty much on life support. It's pretty
stable, although a few bugs still exist regarding arrays... Axis2 is
actually Apache's third generation SOAP engine. Generation 3: Apache
Axis2 is yet another completely redesigned SOAP engine with an
architecture that natively supports the next generation WS-* stack,
including SOAP 1.2, WSDL 2.0, WS-Addressing, and plug-in modules for
any WS-* header system. It also supports SOAP 1.1/WSDL 1.1, as well as
RESTful services. The Axis2 native programming model is based on AXIOM,
the Axis Object Model — which relies on StAX for XML processing. Axis2
supports automatic object/XML data mapping via optional plug-in data
binding systems, such as the Axis2 Data Binding (ADB) and XMLBeans. The
Axis2 developers are currently working on implementing the JAX-WS API
over Axis2.
Eclipse Shows Off its SOA, BPEL and PHP Muscle
Michael Meehan, SearchWebServices.com
Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse Foundation, was not
bashful about the success of his development platform when he took the
stage for his EclipseWorld 2006 keynote address. He highlighted the
Eclipse goal of being a universal platform stretching across all
languages, not just sticking to its Java roots. The far-reaching
ambition of the foundation has been on display all week in sessions
built around such hot topics as service-oriented architecture and
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Oisin Hurley, distinguished
engineer at Iona Technologies Inc., led the session on the Eclipse SOA
Tools Platform (STP); he emphasized how difficult it was to identify
the right set of tools to make up the platform. Much of it revolves
around aggregating work already done in other Eclipse venues such as
its Web Tools Project. If successful, Hurley hopes by next summer
Eclipse will have created a one-stop shop for basic SOA development.
STP has been broken down into five different subprojects: (1) Service
creation: which will work through integration issues between different
service creation methodologies, implementing functionality from
JAX-WS and the Eclipse Web Standard Tools subproject; (2) Core
models: which will implement the Service Component Architecture
assembly model as a standard methodology for service creation;
(3) SOA system: which will establish a deployment framework for Web
services; (4) BPEL2Java: originally a subproject of the Eclipse Test
and Performance Tools Platform, it will generate Java code from BPEL
and create engines for local and distributed execution; (5) Business
Process Modeling Notation: which is a standard maintained by the
Object Management Group, the plan is to provide fully-executable
business models capable of roundtrip engineering.
Microsoft Frees IronPython
Andy Patrizio, InternetNews.com
Microsoft has officially released IronPython, its first foray into the
world of dynamic languages, and it won't be the last, according to its
developer. Python is one of several dynamic languages that have come
of age entirely on the Internet and is a popular language used by Web
developers. Other dynamic languages include Perl, PHP, Ruby and Tcl.
These languages share several common traits, most notably they are
interpreted rather than compiled, so they are executed at run time.
Also, they rely on a very simple, basic syntax that makes them easy to
learn. While Python is enormously popular on the Web — it is used
heavily by Google and BitTorrent — IronPython's claim to fame is that
it's written for Microsoft's .NET framework. Not only can it use all of
.NET services, it will work with the forthcoming .NET 3.0, which adds
WinFX functionality. Microsoft's Jim Hugunin, said no other Python
implementation can support .NET without a great deal of extra work.
Bringing dynamic language support to .NET was important because the
only options up to now were static, compiled languages like Visual C#,
which are fairly complicated to learn... Performance of dynamic
languages is a complicated thing to measure, although the general
opinion of Hugunin is that compiled languages are faster for intense,
computational work. However, a lot of programs use frameworks and
libraries and their performance is independent of the application
language. Microsoft will add IronPython to the Visual Studio 2005 SDK
but it won't be a part of the compiler itself, since IronPython is an
open source project. It's available through CodePlex, Microsoft's attempt
to create a SourceForge-like open source development community. Huginin
said Microsoft will work on fixes to IronPython in the near term, then
start looking at other dynamic languages. One project he's has been
working with is Phalanger, a .NET implementation of the PHP language.
See also: IronPython web site
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