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XML and Web Services In The News - 25 September 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by Innodata Isogen
HEADLINES:
OASIS Members Create New Forest Industries Technical Committee
Staff, Announcement
OASIS has issued a Call for Participation in connection with the
formation of a new Forest Industries Technical Committee. The
chartered purpose of the OASIS Forest Industries TC is to develop
specifications for the electronic transfer of forest industry
data from forest to customer. There are currently two standards
in use covering electronic trading (eFIDS), and the transfer of
spatial data (GIS data transfer standard). One of the major hurdles
to the widespread use of e-Business within Forestry was the lack of
standard structured formats for the exchange of data between
organisations within the industry. This meant that any e-Business
solutions were restricted to the respective parties involved and
were not easily applicable industry-wide. This problem now may be
overcome with the development of the e-Forestry Industry Data
Standards (eFIDS). eFIDS will provide the basis for the
implementation of a range of e-business applications. Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) are used widely throughout the Forestry
Industries to help manage and plan forestry related information.
Over the last 15-20 years many different GIS systems have been
adopted, with different methods of data storage being used. It is
difficult to transfer information between these systems, leading
to many isolated "islands" of forestry data. The GIS Data Transfer
Standard (GIS DTS) is a mechanism to facilitate information exchange,
making the Industry more efficient and competitive. The scope of the
work is to maintain, improve and promote two standards already
developed, and develop new standards for the industry according to
needs as additional use cases are brought to light.
See also: the CFP
Open Geospatial Consortium Approves Four Sensor Related Standards
Sam Bacharach, OGC Announcement
The Open Geospatial Consortium recently announced that its membership
has approved four standards that will allow sensors to better
interoperate with the Web and other information technology assets.
Common sensors found everyday include imaging cameras traveling on
aircraft, "sniffers" that determine pollutions concentration in the
air, "listeners" that keep track of noise and temperature sensors that
ensure that produce traveling in trucks remains fresh. The OGC has been
working for several years to find ways in which these and other sensors
can publish information about their existence, report their locations
and share their information in a standard way. Sensor Model Language
(SensorML) Implementation Specification describes an information model
and encodings that enable discovery and tasking of Web-resident sensors,
and exploitation of sensor observations. SensorML allows scientists to
find and communicate with sensors to assign specific jobs. SensorML is
built on XML and can describe any process, including measurement by a
sensor system, as well as post-measurement processing. The OpenGIS
TransducerML (TML) Implementation Specification is a method and message
format for describing information about sensors and actuators and
capturing, exchanging, and archiving live, historical and future data
received and produced by them. TML, also built on XML, provides a
mechanism to efficiently and effectively capture, transport and archive
transducer data, in a common form, regardless of the original source.
The OpenGIS Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Implementation Specification
provides access to observations from sensors and sensor systems in a
standard way that is consistent for all sensor systems including remote,
in-situ, fixed and mobile sensors. The OpenGIS Sensor Planning Service
(SPS) Implementation Specification defines interfaces for requesting
information describing the capabilities of a sensor to determine the
feasibility of a sensor planning request.
See also: Geography Markup Language (GML)
GeoBliki: Sensor-Data Node Publisher
Brady, O'Reilly Radar Blog
At FOSS4G, Pat Cappelaere described a new Open Source project called
GeoBliki. As you may guess from the name it's a blog-wiki application
that is tailored towards geospatial collaboration. The project was
inspired by some of the issues that came up around data sharing when
Katrina struck. The goal is to provide first-responders immediate
access to relevant geodata and a platform to collaborate on: A GeoBliki
is an Open Source Ruby-on-Rails application that integrates many other
open source components including Community MapBuilder and supports many
of the OGC web services: WFS, SAS, WNS, SPS, WPS... A GeoBliki is a
sensor-data node publisher. Data can be published in various forms,
which can be made accessible to local or remote users for free or for
a fee. Users can register to existing subscriptions around areas of
interest and be notified via email/IM or GeoRSS feeds when new data,
comments/annotations on the existing data become available. Typo (an
RoR blogging tool) is being used to publish GeoRSS - part of the beauty
of using an established blogging platform is that they can leverage the
existing blog syndication ecosystem for notifying their users as data
becomes available. Hieraki is providing the wiki functionality. WildFire,
an XMPP server, is being used for notifications. The maps are being
built with Community MapBuilder. RForum is being used to provide
discussion forums - specifically around the quality of the data. The
project is due out in 12/2006. It is being sponsored by NASA, Goddard,
Naval Research Lab, and OGC. The source code will be hosted on
geobliki.com.
xnsdoc 1.2: XML Schema Documentation Generator
buldocs Ltd, Open Source Software Announcement
Developers at buldocs Ltd have announced the release of xnsdoc 1.2, an
XML Schema Documentation Generator tool. Release 1.2 fixes all known
bugs and comes with improved integration into eclipse, Apache Maven and
Apache Ant. For educational purposes and Open Source projects, the
company offers a license of xnsdoc at no cost. xnsdoc is a documentation
generator for XML namespaces defined by W3C XML Schema in a JavaDoc
like visualization. The xnsdoc tool supports all common schema design
practices like chameleon, russian doll, salami slice, venetian blind
schemas or circular schema references. It supports multiple cross-linked
clearly laid out HTML pages, browser independent documentation, full
facet support for simple types including all fundamental facets, XML
instance model description, hierarchical documentation of nested elements
(particles), attribute summaries and details with their exact types,
resolved substition group affiliations, usage reference, type hierarchy
and index; full support for included and imported schemas. xnsdoc can
be used from the command line, as an Apache Ant Task, as an Apache Maven
Plugin, as an eclipse plugin or integrated as a custom tool in many
XML development tools such as StylusStudio, 'oXygen/'XML , JBuilder,
or XMLWriter. The tool passes 100% of the valid schema files of the W3C
XML Schema Test Suite, and provides documentation for all properties of
all schema components of the XML schema specification except notation
element. Popular examples generated using xnsdoc include documentation
related to XML Schema for XML Schema, UDDI V2.0, and SOAP.
See also: SGML/XML and Literate Programming
Sun Releases NetBeans Version for Beginners
Scott Ferguson, eWEEK
Sun Microsystems, along with the NetBeans community and the University
of Kent, has announced the general availability of a new version of the
NetBeans integrated development environment, the NetBeans IDE/BlueJ
Edition. The NetBeans IDE/BlueJ Edition, like the original NetBeans IDE,
is a free, open-source IDE. The BlueJ Edition is an educational tool
that provides a migration path for students transitioning from
educational tools to a full-featured, professional IDE. BlueJ is a
programming environment developed at the University of Kent, United
Kingdom, and Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, aimed at helping
to train beginning programmers in Java. The platform provides
educational tools, such as visualization and interaction facilities
that help developers learn object-oriented programming concepts. The
academics initially released BlueJ in 1999, and it is now used in more
than 600 colleges and universities around the world, Sun said. In an
interview with eWEEK in March 2006, James Gosling, a Sun vice president
and the creator of the Java language, said: "The hottest thing in tools
right now that I can think of is around the folks from BlueJ and the
folks from NetBeans getting together, to not only get people started
with development, but to then take them from novice stages to serious
development." Sun's Laurie Tolson: "While BlueJ allows teachers to
instruct students on object oriented development — now the standard
introductory phase of learning to program — the NetBeans/BlueJ edition
provides a logical next step enabling students to extend their
applications beyond simple models while learning to use a professional
development environment.
See also: the announcement
Web 2.0 Entering Corporate World Slowly
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
Notions of Web 2.0 are creeping inside corporate firewalls, but
companies still lag consumers in adoption of those technologies because
of system complexity and concerns of control, said speakers at the New
Internet conference here on Wednesday. Technologies such as AJAX-style
Web development, RSS and blogs are being used within businesses,
typically in small-scale or experimental deployments. The social
aspects of wikis, tagging and Web-enabled social networking can also
improve collaboration among workers, speakers said. In addition,
corporations have thorny integration issues dealing with already-
installed monolithic applications, panelists said. For example,
populating a wiki with information from a customer support system
could require hand-coding and ongoing maintenance chores. Front-end
tools for interactive Web platforms, such as AJAX (Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML), Flash and Adobe's Apollo, will make it easier
for businesses to use Web standards and technologies to get to back-end
data. Control issues Allowing employees to share information through
blogs or mashups with outside Web services poses significant security
challenges for corporate customers. Promoting ad hoc collaboration
and multiple modes of communication can be beneficial, but employees
need policies and IT administrators need tools to govern those
policies — said John Crupi, CTO of JackBe, which makes AJAX tools.
Corporations, in general, are also leery of working with Web start-ups.
And many Web 2.0 business models are not fully proven.
SOAs Help Improve Dialogue Between IT, Business Users
Heather Havenstein, ComputerWorld
Shaygan Kheradpir, CIO at Verizon Communications Inc., gets several
mostly cordial instant messages a day from line-of-business workers
— like customer service representatives — asking for help with their
IT systems. Kheradpir, whose IM address is available to all of the
company's 250,000 employees, largely credits the company's four-year-old
service-oriented architecture (SOA) for a comfortable relationship
between IT and Verizon business groups. He said the SOA has eased
low-level technical work, giving IT developers more time to work with
end users when building applications. Verizon's CIO spoke at the
BEAWorld 2006 conference, held here this week, where he and other users
said they are expanding their focus on SOA and eyeing an emerging set
of tools that promise to even better nurture what has long been an
often-thorny relationship between business and IT. At the conference,
San Jose-based BEA brought out a new middleware offering, SOA 360,
that includes components aimed specifically at improving companywide
collaboration on development projects. Core to the new middleware is
WorkSpace 360, a unified set of SOA tools designed to bring business
analysts, architects, developers and IT personnel into a shared work
space for collaboration and interaction, according to BEA. WorkSpace
also includes the SOA metadata repository BEA gained with its
acquisition of Flashline Inc.
See also: SOA references
British Library Calls for Digital Copyright Action
Tom Espiner, IBM developerWorks
The British Library has called for a "serious updating" of current
copyright law to "unambiguously" include digital content and take
technological advances into account. In a manifesto released Monday at
the Labor Party Conference in Manchester, the U.K.'s national library
warned that traditional copyright law needs to be extended to fully
recognize digital content. "Unless there is a serious updating of
copyright law to recognize the changing technological environment, the
law becomes an as*," said Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the
British Library. Digital rights management (DRM) technologies and
licensing agreements currently can impose restrictions on copying
content that go beyond the requirements of copyright law. This needs
legal clarification, according to the British Library. Brindley: "DRM
is a technical device, but it's being used in an all-embracing sense.
It can't be circumvented for disabled access or preservation, and the
technology doesn't expire (as traditional copyright does). In effect,
it's overriding exceptions to copyright law." The library is keen
to protect statutory exceptions and fair dealing, which enable
libraries to make and preserve copies of content, and make them
available for research purposes and for disabled access. "This is a
global, international issue," Brindley said. "We have to have the same
balance as in traditional print. We are seeking a triage ensuring
creators are rewarded, but also that the public good is served." The
Open Rights Group, a digital civil rights organization, said it
"whole-heartedly supported" the British Library's call for a
clarification of copyright law.
See also: DRM references
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