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XML and Web Services In The News - 14 September 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by BEA Systems
HEADLINES:
The Atom Publishing Protocol
Joe Gregorio and Bill de hOra (eds), IETF Internet Draft
Members of the IETF Atom Publishing Format and Protocol (atompub)
Working Group have released an updated (version -10) draft of "The Atom
Publishing Protocol" specification. The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)
is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources.
The protocol is based on HTTP transport of Atom-formatted
representations. The Atom format is documented in the Atom Syndication
Format (RFC 4287). The protocol supports the creation of arbitrary web
resources and provides facilities for: (1) Collections: Sets of resources,
which can be retrieved in whole or in part; (2) Service: Discovering and
describing Collections; (3) Editing: Creating, updating and deleting
resources. The Atom Publishing Protocol uses HTTP methods to edit and
author Member Resources as follows: [a] GET is used to retrieve a
representation of a known resource; [b] POST is used to create a new,
dynamically-named, resource; [c] PUT is used to update a known resource;
[d] DELETE is used to remove a known resource. Along with operations on
Member Resources the Atom Protocol defines Collection resources for
managing and organizing Member Resources. Collections are represented
by Atom Feed documents and contain the IRIs of, and metadata about, their
Member Resources. There are two kinds of Member Resources - Member Entry
Resources and Media Resources. Member Entry Resources are represented as
Atom Entries. Media Resources MAY have representations in any media
type. A Media Link Entry is a Member Entry that contains metadata about
a Media Resource. Collections, represented by Atom feeds, contain
entries. Those entries contain the Member Entry and Media Resources IRIs
of the Collection. A Collection can contain any number of entries of
either kind. In the diagram of a Collection below there are two entries.
The first contains the IRI of a Member Entry Resource. The second
contains the IRIs of both a Media Resource and a Media Link Entry
Resource, which contains the metadata for that Media Resource. Version
-10 renames Introspection to Service, moves XML conventions to convention
sections, renames XML related Conventions to Atom Publishing Protocol
Documents, adds auth header to examples, consolidates definition of all
resource types into the model section, adds IANA registration
information for 'application/atomcat+xml'.
See also: Atom references
UK Government Recognized for Excellence in Digital Identity Management
Staff, Liberty Alliance Announcement
Liberty Alliance announced that the UK Government Authentication Gateway
has been awarded the 2006 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Award
for excellence in digital identity management. Liberty Alliance presents
the IDDY Award annually to recognize outstanding digital identity
management deployments based on the proven interoperable and privacy-
respecting Liberty Federation and Liberty Web services specifications.
Said George Goodman president of the Liberty Alliance management board
and director of the platform capabilities lab at Intel: "Governments
around the world are deploying Liberty Federation and Liberty Web
Services to build identity management solutions users can trust for
conducting more secure and privacy-respecting online transactions." The
Government Gateway Service is the authentication server for all
e-government services in the UK. The Gateway leverages open federation
and interoperability of federation products to secure the electronic
delivery of government services to citizens, enable authentication and
single sign-on in support of a 'joined up government' and to break down
technical silos that had previously been hindering a transition to
eGovernment. Nearly 8 million citizens in the UK are registered to use
the gateway service. The panel of judges for the 2006 Awards was made
up of the following identity experts from within and outside of
Liberty's global membership base: Michael Barrett, CISO, PayPal, Inc.;
John Fontana, senior editor, infrastructure, Network World; Gerry Gebel,
service director-IdPS, Burton Group; George Goodman, president of the
Liberty Alliance management board and director of the platform
capabilities lab at Intel; Paul Madsen, co-chair of the Liberty Alliance
technology expert group and identity standards researcher at NTT, Robin
Wilton, Co-chair of the Liberty Alliance public policy expert group and
corporate architect at Sun Microsystems; Christine Varney, partner,
Hogan & Hartson, Washington, D.C. Liberty Alliance is a global
identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for
consumers, governments and businesses worldwide.
See also: See also on IDDY Awards
XDocs 1.0 as a DITA Enabled XML Content Management System
Staff, Bluestream Announcement
Bluestream Database Software Corporation has announced the general
availability of XDocs 1.0, an XML content management system. XDocs 1.0
XML CMS is described as "ideal for budget conscious organizations
seeking solutions in technical publication, content management, web
content management and E-Learning. XDocs 1.0 is a DITA (Darwin
Information Technology Architecture) enabled CMS that is also
configurable to any other XML vocabulary, whether standard or
proprietary. Key features of XDocs 1.0 XML CMS are full text search,
web-site builder, desktop and web authoring, meta data management,
link management, and instant or export batch publishing. XDocs manages
XML and binary content; publication formats include html, pdf, rtf,
IMS content packages and others. Xdocs 1.0 ships with a native XML
database and works with any XML editor currently available on the
market. This user friendly CMS is a Java application capable of
running on Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris. XDocs has customers
in various industries such as Oil and Gas, Software Development,
and E-Learning to name a few. Recently XDocs has been nominated for
a technology innovation award by British Columbia Educational
Technology User Group (ETUG).
See also: DITA references
Microsoft Calls IBM's Bluff on Patent Pledges
James Governor, MonkChips Industry Blog
What can I say about Microsoft's decison to offer a patent covenant
around web services and identity protocols? [...] What about Mike
Milinkovich from Eclipse, otherwise known as .NET's worst nightmare?
[Mike says:] "It was particularly interesting to read the community
feedback and realize that Microsoft has been consciously and
conscientiously working with the open source community to develop this
document. That's an important step forward for them, as it demonstrates
they believe the open source community is now integral to the broad
adoption of technologies they care about." Of course RedMonk long ago
recognised the huge changes at Microsoft with respect to open
intellectual property models, but its more interesting coming from
Mike. My question is: what does IBM do to up the ante? If there is
one war I will sign up to enthusiastically its the war for open
standards, unencumbered by potential chilling effects. So come on IBM
lets see you really nail it. The 500 OSS patent pledge was just a
tester. Lets see more irrevocable stuff. You could argue IBM covenants
are not a bluff, but I have yet to see anything as clear and domain-
specific as Microsoft's new policy.
See also: other industry precedents and players
Web Services RM Specs Available for Public Review
Sanjay Patil, SAP Blog
Sanjay Patil, Co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable Exchange
(WS-RX) TC, describes "another significant milestone [that] has been
reached by the Web services community — the Web Services Reliable
Messaging (WS RM) specifications are now available for public review...
I had the pleasure of co-chairing this TC, which got formed in Jun 2005
and received one of the broadest industry participations in the
standards community. Over 140 members belonging to some 50 plus
companies were subscribed to the TC. Typical number of members
attending the weekly conf-calls was about 50. A significant number
of companies (including SAP) have participated in interoperability
testing of early implementations of the Committee Drafts. The first
round of Interop testing was held in March 2006 and was quite successful.
Efforts for the second round of Interop to test the latest drafts are
currently ongoing in parallel to the public review. From a technical
standpoint, standardization of Web services reliable messaging is a
critical step towards the maturity and enterprise readiness of Web
services. In a nutshell, as the name suggests, reliable messaging is
to allow the higher layers to rely upon the messaging layer for
assuring delivery of the messages to their destination. Resending each
message until an Ack is received, detecting duplicates, and ensuring
ordering of the messages are the typical challenges in this regard.
WS-RM is a Web services based protocol to enable implementations to meet
these challenges in an interoperable manner, that is, the actual
endpoints exchanging messages may be hosted on different
platform/runtimes or even across enterprise boundaries. Besides the
core functionality, the WS RM specifications support scenarios such
as reliable messaging with clients behind a fire wall and also address
the security aspects. So, please take some time to review these
specifications and make sure to submit your comments before the Public
Review deadline, October 21, 2006.
See also: the OASIS PR drafts
Google Enriches Earth Mapping Service
Juan Carlos Perez, InfoWorld
Google is partnering with Discovery Networks, the U.S. National Park
Service, and others to enrich its Google Earth mapping application
with text and multimedia about geographic locations. With its Featured
Content for Google Earth, Google will provide links to articles, images,
blog postings and videos that inform about topics like the environment,
cities, attractions, parks and landmarks. Other partners include the
United Nations Environmental Program and the Jane Goodall Institute.
This is the latest in a string of enhancements for Google Earth, one
of the company's most popular products. In recent months, Google ported
the application to Linux and the Mac OS and integrated it with the
company's SketchUp 3D design tool. Google Earth Version 4.0 uses the
Keyhole Markup Language — XML grammar and file format for modeling and
storing geographic features such as points, lines, images, and polygons
for display in Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile.
A KML file is processed in much the same way that HTML (and XML) files
are processed by web browsers. Like HTML, KML has a tag-based structure
with names and attributes used for specific display purposes. Thus,
Google Earth and Maps act as browsers for KML files. You can use KML to:
(1) Specify icons and labels to identify locations on the planet surface;
(2) Create different camera positions to define unique views for each
of your features; (3) Use image overlays attached to the ground or
screen; (4) Define styles to specify feature appearance; (5) Write HTML
descriptions of features, including hyperlinks and embedded images;
(6) Use folders for hierarchical grouping of features; (7) Dynamically
fetch and update KML files from remote or local network locations;
(8) Fetch KML data based on changes in the 3D viewer; (9) Display
COLLADA textured 3Ds.
See also: KML description
Sun Java System Identity Manager 7.0 Integrates Identity Auditing and User Provisioning
Sun Microsystems, Announcement
At Digital ID World, Sun Microsystems announced enhancements to its
identity management software suite that are "the first to combine the
capability to prevent inappropriate user access to systems and
applications while detecting violations in the company's user access
policies. By automating these compliance processes, enterprises can
implement sustainable and repeatable practices, which reduce the cost
of maintaining compliance." By combining these capabilities, Sun
enables customers to avoid managing two separate processes, bridging
the gap between IT security and auditors, internal and external,
responsible for compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. The
new offering supports the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and extends
its market leading security capabilities; this enables control of
identities across the operating system, applications, data and physical
locations. Identity Manager standards support includes interface support
for Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) version 2.0 and
workflow implementation in accordance with the WfMC TC-1003 Workflow
Reference Model. This allows identity business processes to be easily
integrated into broader business process functions. Standards support
also ensures out-of-the-box integration with existing and future
technology infrastructure investments.
See also: Sun and Identity Standards
Introduction to XForms, Part 1: The New Web Standard for Forms
Chris Herborth, IBM developerWorks
XForms is the next generation of Web-based data processing. It replaces
traditional HTML forms with an XML data model and presentation elements.
XForms is gaining momentum rapidly, with support available for common
browsers using extensions or plugins, and through things like the IBM
Workplace Forms technology. Its flexibility and power make it attractive
to Web developers, and its small footprint and client-side processing
make it attractive to systems administrators. The W3C is currently
reviewing XForms 1.1 as a Working Draft document (1.0 is an official
Internet Recommendation, which puts it on par with things like XHTML,
PNG, and CSS), and IBM is currently spearheading an effort to merge
competing XML-based forms' standards with the features and abilities
of XForms. In this three-part series, you'll be introduced to XForms
and its capabilities, including the basic XForms model and form, the
various types of controls, and basic and advanced form submission.
This article explains the evolution of forms from simple text searches
to today's interactive masterpieces and explains the next step in Web
forms, XForms. It explains what makes XForms different and gets the
user ready for Part 2 by setting up his or her environment.
See also: XML and Forms
New Asterisk Set to Ring
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com
Asterisk has been a disruptive force in the telco world since at least
its 1.0 release. And now with version 1.4, the first major release of
the open source VoIP IP-PBX in almost a year, as well as a looming
hardware appliance, Asterisk and its corporate sponsor Digium are
hoping to disrupt the telco world ever further. New features in version
1.4 include Jabber, Jingle and GoogleTalk protocol compatibilities
enabling Asterisk users to collaborate with peers on those Jabber/XMPP-
based instant messaging networks. IPFAX capabilities are also part of
Asterisk 1.4 as is Unified Messaging that provided for integration of
all faxes, e-mails and voicemails into a single mailbox that can be
retrieved using any Internet-capable communications device. A new
feature called Whisper Paging enables what Digium describes as
"selective, pre-programmed call interruption with controlled volume
levels and muting capabilities." Performance has also been improved
in the new release with memory, SIP call transfer interoperability
and enhanced media stream capabilities. Digium is also announcing a
new Asterisk Appliance and an Asterisk Appliance Developer Kit to help
bridge the gap between software and hardware.
See also: Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)
RSS and AJAX: A Simple News Reader
Paul Sobocinski, XML.com
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
are two technologies that have taken the Web by storm. Most commonly,
RSS is used to provide news to either people or other organizations.
This is done by serving an "RSS feed" from a website. An RSS feed is
simply a link to an XML file that is structured in a certain way. The
RSS specification tells us the expected structure of the XML file. For
example, the title, author, and description tags are required, and so
all RSS XML files will have at least these three tags. The RSS
specification that we will be using is 2.0, which is both the newest
and most widely used of the three specifications (0.98, 1.0, and 2.0).
Fortunately, RSS 2.0 is far less complex than RSS 1.0, so you can
quickly familiarize yourself with RSS 2.0. Why are we using Ajax to
parse our RSS? By using Ajax, we are passing over the work of processing
the RSS XML file to the web browser, thus reducing server load. Also,
Ajax allows the user to have a more seamless web experience, because we
are able to fetch the entire RSS XML file from the server without having
to refresh the page. Lastly, Ajax is designed to handle XML files, so
it's able to parse RSS in a simple and elegant way... The Ajax RSS
parser has been tested in IE 6.0 and Firefox 1.5.0.6 for Windows XP.
The RSS2Channel object does not support all of the elements in the RSS
2.0 specification. The ones that have been omitted are cloud, textInput,
skipHours, and skipDays. For the most part, these RSS elements are
only useful on the server side, so it wouldn't make sense to include
them in a client-side parser.
See also: RSS and Atom compared
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