XML and Web Services In The News - 6 October 2006

Provided by OASIS | Edited by Robin Cover

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by SAP


HEADLINES:

 Final Office Open XML Readied
 IBM Donates Open-Source Technology for AJAX, Web 2.0 Development
 JSON Uniform Messaging Protocol (JUMP)
 Web Services Hints and Tips: JAX-RPC vs JAX-WS
 SPARQL Query Language for RDF
 After the Buzz, Ajax Goes to Work
 Top 10 Reasons It's Almost Impossible to Compete with Google
 SAP Achieves Java EE 5 Certification
 Standards to Stimulate E-Voting?

Final Office Open XML Readied
Peter Sayer, InfoWorld
Standards body Ecma International expects to publish the final draft of the Office Open XML file formats specification proposed by Microsoft Corp. as early as Monday [2006-10-09], ahead of a formal vote to adopt the specification as a standard in December. Governments are taking an interest in open-standard document formats as a way to guarantee access to legacy public information, and to avoid dependence on developers of proprietary software. Denmark's government voted in June to mandate the use of open-standard document formats in central government from Jan. 1, 2008. For now, five ministries are testing the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, used in open-source software suite OpenOffice.org, and also in proprietary software including Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice and IBM Corp.'s Workplace. ODF is a rival to Office Open XML. If ECMA approves the Office Open XML format, used by Microsoft in its forthcoming Office 2007 software suite, the Danish ministries could use that instead. The French government is conducting a public inquiry into how to make its computer systems interoperable, but has reached no conclusions yet. However, in a report commissioned by the prime minister, National Assembly Deputy Bernard Carayon called for a law making it compulsory for French government departments to use ODF when they create or distribute documents. He suggested that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved the ODF standard in May, but the Office Open XML specification is still some way off that status. Ecma's General Assembly will vote on the text during its meeting on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8. It cannot amend the text, only accept or reject it. If the final draft of the Office Open XML specification wins the assembly's approval, it will become an Ecma standard, and go on to ISO for fast-track approval, which can take six months to nine months. ISO may request amendments to the standard before voting to approve it. Both Ecma and ISO are based in Switzerland.

IBM Donates Open-Source Technology for AJAX, Web 2.0 Development
Darryl K. Taft, eWEEK
IBM announced that it will make another round of technology contributions to the open-source community to promote the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. At the AJAXWorld conference in Santa Clara, IBM officials said the systems giant will make additional contributions to the Eclipse Foundation's ATF (AJAX Technology Framework) and the Mozilla Foundation. IBM proposed the ATF project in January 2006. The company then led the project and donated code to Eclipse to create ATF. Now the company says ATF project developers will work directly with IBM RAD (Rational Application Developer) 7.0 toolkit, which is slated for availability later in 2006. RAD 7.0, along with the ATF Toolkit, will give developers more advanced JavaScript tooling capabilities and end-to-end enterprise development using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the company said. IBM is contributing technology that will enable clients to run, deploy, debug and configure AJAX technology on any Web server, including WebSphere, Tomcat, Apache, JBoss and WebLogic, IBM officials said. And the technology brings new features to ATF, including enhancements to make it unnecessary to manually refresh a browser to send or receive information over the Web. Meanwhile, IBM also announced that the company has opened a new Web development zone on its developerWorks community site. The Web development zone features technical resources for AJAX, PHP, ATOM, RSS and Ruby development, as well as for Web development frameworks such as Spring, Shale, Struts, Ruby on Rails, and Tapestry.

JSON Uniform Messaging Protocol (JUMP)
Robert Sayre, IETF Internet Draft
R. Sayre of Mozilla Corporation has published an -00 level IETF individual Internet Draft for "JSON Uniform Messaging Protocol (JUMP)." JUMP uses HTTP and a lightweight layout for JSON records to edit the Web. JSON (RFC 4627) provides an interoperable object serialization format capable of representing numbers, strings, arrays, and a wide range of Unicode characters. The JUMP specification defines a loosely-coupled protocol based on a small set of conventions for JSON records and a profile of HTTP.
See also: JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

Web Services Hints and Tips: JAX-RPC vs JAX-WS
Russell Butek and Nicholas Gallardo, IBM developerWorks
Web services have been around a while now. First there was SOAP. But SOAP only described what the messages looked like. Then there was WSDL. But WSDL didn't tell you how to write Web services in Java. Then along came JAX-RPC 1.0. After a few months of use, the Java Community Process (JCP) folks who wrote that specification realized that it needed a few tweaks, so out came JAX-RPC 1.1. After a year or so of using that specification, the JCP folks wanted to build a better version: JAX-RPC 2.0. A primary goal was to align with industry direction, but the industry was not merely doing RPC Web services, they were also doing message-oriented Web services. So "RPC" was removed from the name and replaced with "WS" & which stands for Web Services, of course. Thus the successor to JAX-RPC 1.1 is JAX-WS 2.0 - the Java API for XML-based Web services. JAX-WS 2.0 is the successor to JAX-RPC 1.1. There are some things that haven't changed, but most of the programming model is different to a greater or lesser degree. The topics introduced in this tip will be expanded upon in a series of tips which we will publish over the coming months that will compare, in detail, JAX-WS and JAX-RPC. At a high level though, there are a few reasons why you would or would not want to move to JAX-WS from JAX-RPC. Reasons you may want to stay with JAX-RPC 1.1 [...] and reasons to step up to JAX-WS 2.0...

SPARQL Query Language for RDF
Eric Prud'hommeaux and Andy Seaborne (eds), W3C technical Report
W3C's RDF Data Access Working Group has released an updated Working Draft for the "SPARQL Query Language for RDF." SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. The SPARQL query language consists of the syntax and semantics for asking and answering queries against RDF graphs. SPARQL contains capabilities for querying by triple patterns, conjunctions, disjunctions, and optional patterns. It also supports constraining queries by source RDF graph and extensible value testing. Results of SPARQL queries can be ordered, limited and offset in number, and presented in several different forms. RDF is a flexible and extensible way to represent information about World Wide Web resources. It is used to represent, among other things, personal information, social networks, metadata about digital artifacts, as well as provide a means of integration over disparate sources of information. A standardized query language for RDF data with multiple implementations offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume the results of queries across this wide range of information. Used with a common protocol, applications can access and combine information from across the Web.
See also: W3C Semantic Web

After the Buzz, Ajax Goes to Work
Andy Patrizio, InternetNews.com
Ajax is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. And the big developers have all caught the Ajax religion. Sun recently picked an Ajax architect to lead the company's efforts while IBM has partnered with the Open Source Dojo Foundation to help drive Ajax development. Put JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, and XML together and you have the cure for one of the Web's biggest nuisances -- screen refreshes. Anyone who has shopped online knows that headache. The infinite number of redraws and refreshes can be a major drag on getting your business done. It feels nothing like a desktop application, but Ajax will provide just that. Helmi Technologies of Finland is preparing an open source Rich Internet Applications (RIA) Platform, due for release at the end of the year, which covers both issues. It generates the JavaScript from Java applications, so no scripting has to be written. For security, the Ajax application is actually executed on a proxy server on the back end and then replicated down to the client, so the client is just displaying information. Nothing is executed on it. Nexaweb is working on something similar with its Universal Client Framework (UCF), also announced at the show. UCF allows for wrapping existing applications in an Ajax framework and deploying them on the Web, a common theme among other vendors here, as well.

Top 10 Reasons It's Almost Impossible to Compete with Google
Steve Bryant, eWEEK
The search engine market has metastastized into an online media market. The bar set by the world's largest search engine now includes a heckuva lot more than fancy algorithms running in a data center. So how much is a good piece of Google-killing software worth? Today there's news that a company called Powerset is trying to raise $10M and boasting that its search technology is better than Google's. According to VentureBeat, the company is trying to hype themselves into a $20M valuation, using the promise of Google-killing tech as a lure. But here's the rub: Even if your tech is better, you can't compete with Google just because you have a great search engine. At this point, the search engine market has metastasized into an online media market. The bar set by the world's largest search engine now includes a heckuva lot more than fancy algorithms running in a data center. Today you not only have to have great technology for online searches, you also need to compete in offline media markets as well. Not to mention you need partners (large and small). [We present] ten reasons Google has competitive advantages not easily equalled or surpassed...

SAP Achieves Java EE 5 Certification
Renee Boucher Ferguson, eWEEK
Hoping to land more than a glancing blow against Oracle's claims that SAP is far from standards based, SAP has announced that the latest version of its application server is now certified on Sun's Java EE 5 standard. The certification means that customers and partners can develop Java applications on SAP's NetWeaver platform using Sun's latest Java standard, which passed ratification last May. Graham Hamilton, vice president and Fellow in the Java platform team at Sun describes the Java EE 5 standard in his blog as "by far the biggest developer event of 2006,"since it "radically simplifies" Java J2EE development, especially for Web services and transactional components. SAP does in fact have a proprietary programming language, ABAP. But back around 2002, the company added Java compatibility to its application server, which was furthered with the addition of its NetWeaver integration (and development) platform the following year. The company has since maintained certification with each new Java standard. What's more important to users, however, is that with a combined Java and ABAP application server they can still leverage their investment in SAP by programming in ABAP, but they don't have to: users are also able to build and deploy new applications in a Web services environment using Java. According to the announcement: "SAP is an active contributor to the Java Community Process (JCP) and a member of the JCP SE/EE Executive Committee. SAP contributes to more than 50 Java Specification Requests (JSRs) that drive Web services, portals and user interface technology, systems and content management, robust virtual machine technology, Java supportability, and more."
See also: the announcement

Standards to Stimulate E-Voting?
Candace Lombardi, CNET News.com
The [U.S.] government was quick to trust the Internet with tax returns, but it still has not managed to organize a paperless voting system. What's the holdup? Many voting citizens, whether they consider themselves red, blue or green, have been asking that question since the 2000 election shed light on how inconsistent, and often low-tech, the voting systems are in the United States. Standardization of data fields, interoperability between counties and states, and an unwillingness on the part of local municipalities to embrace change are some of the major obstacles, according to panelists at the Voter Identification/Registration Conference, hosted by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday and Friday. The panel put aside legal issues concerning e-voting machines and, instead, concentrated on how technology could be used to ensure that electronic voter registration and identification is valid and consistently maintained. One of the most basic problems across the states, Brace said, is trying to match and verify data when there is no standardization for reporting voter registration rolls or for constructing data fields. Some states keep both active and inactive voters on the rolls, some states retain only active voters, and some leave the decision up to individual counties. The differences lie not just between states, or between various departments of motor vehicles and voter registration systems, but between counties within the same state. Names, for example, which should be broken out into first-, middle- and last-name fields, appear as one name field in many data sets, according to Brace. Suffixes like Jr. and Sr., and the modern use of hyphenated or two-word last names, has also added to the confusion. Some counties even collapse street address, town, ZIP code and state into one address field rather than breaking them out.
See also: Markup Languages for Names and Addresses


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