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XML and Web Services In The News - 19 October 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by BEA Systems, Inc.
HEADLINES:
Microsoft Releases Final IE7 for Windows XP
Elizabeth Montalbano, InfoWorld
Microsoft released the long-awaited version of the Internet Explorer 7
(IE7) browser for Windows XP late Wednesday [2006-10-18]. IE 7 for
Windows XP is available as a free download from Microsoft's Web site,
and it will also be offered as a high-priority update via Microsoft's
Automatic Updates service in November. The browser runs on Windows XP
Service Pack 2, Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Windows Server 2003
Service Pack 1. Initially available only in English, it will be
available in other languages in the coming weeks, Microsoft said. It
is a "subset" of the version of IE 7 that will be included as part of
Windows Vista, the next version of Microsoft's client OS. Vista's
version of IE 7 will contain two additional security features —
protected mode and parental controls — than the version of the browser
that runs on XP. Vista is on track to ship to business customers in
November 2006 and to the general public in January 2007, according to
Microsoft. Some of the new features available in IE 7 include built-in
support for RSS (really simple syndication) feeds, tabbed browsing and
improved security, including an antiphishing filter that helps ensure
users are not providing personal information to known phishing sites.
Microsoft hopes with IE 7 to win back some browser market share it's
lost to Mozilla Corp.'s open-source Firefox browser, and according to
the latest figures from OneStat.com, an Web analytics company, early
releases of IE 7 seem to be doing just that.
See also: the announcement
W3C Web API Working Group Draft Specification for 'File Upload'
Robin Berjon, W3C Technical Report
W3C's Web API Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft
for a "File Upload" specification. It is desirable for Web applications
to have the ability to manipulate as wide as possible a range of user
input, including files that a user may wish to upload to a remote
server or manipulate inside a rich application. This "File Upload"
specification provides application writers with the means to trigger
a file selection prompt with which the user can select one or more
files. Unlike the file upload forms control available to HTML, this
API can be used for more than simply inserting a file into the content
of a form being submitted but also allows client-side manipulation of
the content, for instance to display an image or parse an XML document
from disk. Applications will be able to use this API to trigger a file
selection dialog with which the user can select one or more files in
their local file system. This Working Draft was produced as part of
the Rich Web Clients Activity, which contains the work within W3C on
Web Applications and Compound Document Formats. With the ubiquity of
Web browsers and Web document formats across a range of platforms and
devices, many developers are using the Web as an application environment.
Examples of applications built on rich Web clients include reservation
systems, online shopping or auction sites, games, multimedia
applications, calendars, maps, chat applications, weather displays,
clocks, interactive design applications, stock tickers, currency
converters and data entry/display systems. The group invites comments
on the "File Upload" WD from Web content and browser developers.
See also: W3C Rich Web Clients
A Beginner's Recipe for a Service-Oriented Architecture
Paul C. Zikopoulos, DB2 Magazine
Every vendor has a service-oriented architecture (SOA) story; they just
might not realize it yet, partly because the SOA terminology can be
confusing to the uninitiated. For example, when most people hear the
term SOA, they automatically think Web services. There is a lot more to
SOA than Web services, however. In this article, I give you an
introduction to the IBM approach to the SOA architecture... First of
all, SOA is an architectural style, not a technology. You implement an
SOA architecture using technology, but too many people get lost looking
for some product or technology right off the bat when SOA is primarily
about a thought process. Truthfully, SOA could have been more aptly
named 'Save Our Architecture' because its benefit is a free flow of
business process data, both vertically and horizontally, from the
enterprise to your supply chain and throughout your value net. The
service part of SOA: think about what this company does on a day-to-day
basis to support its business objective. Think of that as its high-level
service, and break that up into the processes that underpin that
operation. This exercise yields repeatable business tasks or components,
called low level-services.
Developing JDBC Applications with DB2's pureXML
Anson Kokkat, DevX.com
The combination of XML features and JDBC has provided Java developers
with more powerful choices for manipulating data within their
applications. Meanwhile, the evolution of Java has spawned many JDBC
drivers — interfaces for connecting with a database and manipulating
data within a Java application — to handle the needs of particular
applications. The version 9 release of IBM's DB2 Universal Database
(UDB) combines the best of these drivers with native XML data storage
to simplify data-intense Java application development. Today, pure
Java drivers (type 4) are the most popular for Java application
development because of their adaptability and natural fit with many
application servers and open source tools. As such, IBM promotes the
JDBC Universal type 4 driver as the primary driver for DB2 V9/ At the
same time, the introduction of native XML data storage in DB2 V9 goes
a long way in simplifying XML utilization in Java applications. This
article explains how you can leverage these DB2 V9 features to choose
the right JDBC driver and easily integrate XML data into your
applications. The introduction of native XML data storage in DB2 UDB
Version 9 goes a long way in simplifying XML utilization in application
development. Before DB2 Version 9, the only way to exploit XML data
was to store the data in CLOB columns and then decompose or shred it
when you needed it. Application development using this shredding
method was quite complicated and made getting to the actual XML data
you needed difficult. Now that the new pureXML technology is
integrated into DB2, database developers can store the data to and
extract it from the database in its purest form, and programmers can
use SQL or XML APIs to work with data in either its relational or
pureXML format. They then can exploit XML data using XPath/XQuery and
SQL/XML.
A Developer's Introduction to Active Directory Federation Services
Keith Brown, MSDN Magazine
ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) is the Microsoft
implementation of the WS-Federation passive requestor profile
protocol. 'Passive' indicates that all the client needs is a cookie-
and JavaScript-capable Web browser — a passive agent that does not
run any special code to help implement the protocol. This article
takes a look at ADFS from the perspective of a developer who is
building a Web application and wants to allow other organizations
to use it. What kind of business-to-business problems am I referring
to? Imagine that a bicycle manufacturer called Fabrikam wants to
expose a Web application that will allow authorized dealers to
purchase bikes and parts at wholesale prices. There are over two
hundred dealers, each with several people who need to use the
application. Fabrikam is going to need a secure logon mechanism.
ADFS is built on standards like WS-Federation, which was coauthored
by Microsoft, IBM, Verisign, BEA, and RSA Security. Different
organizations often run very different software. If Fabrikam uses
Windows Server 2003 R2 with ADFS, but has dealerships running IBM
WebSphere or BEA WebLogic, this really shouldn't be a problem
because WebSphere and WebLogic both implement WS-Federation. End
users also get a better deal with federated identity. Instead of
having to remember yet another password, a purchasing agent at a
dealership can simply point her browser at Fabrikam's application
and immediately start working. If the dealership's authentication
system supports an integrated logon through a browser, as Windows
does with Internet Explorer, the user won't even be prompted for
her credentials; she'll be authenticated silently and the federation
service will translate the local knowledge of her identity into the
signed statement for Fabrikam.
SAP Drives Open Standards to Simplify Enterprise SOA
Staff, Company Announcement
More than 15,000 SAP customers, partners and technical community are
convening at SAP TechEd 2006 to learn how to transform existing
business processes and IT landscapes and take advantage of the power
and flexibility of enterprise service-oriented architecture.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, SAP's largest ecosystem education
event of the year offers more than 900 hours of lecture-driven and
hands-on sessions. SAP's comprehensive strategy is focused on driving
open standards that simplify organizations' evolution to enterprise
SOA and address both technology and business requirements. SAP takes
leadership roles in standards organizations and committees to move
from specifications to ratified standards, works with customers and
partners on developing enterprise services, and catalyzes communities
to drive interoperability best practices. SAP leads and co-authors
specification development efforts around key technologies and
participates in many technical committees and working groups, including
W3C, OASIS, WS-I, Eclipse Foundation, Java Community Process (JCP),
Java Community Process (JCP), Open SOA Collaboration, EPCglobal,
UN/CEFACT, RosettaNet, and others. Patrick Gannon, president and CEO
of OASIS: "The contributions SAP makes to open standards through its
support of OASIS are considerable. As a Foundational Sponsor, SAP
provides resources that enable us to fulfill our mission. SAP
representatives serve on the OASIS Board of Directors and more than
27 OASIS technical committees developing standards for Web services
and eBusiness."
See also: Standards and Enterprise SOA
Experts: Web 2.0 Doesn't Copy Directly to Phones
Nancy Gohring, InfoWorld
Although the mobile industry is keen to duplicate the success of Web
2.0 applications on the Internet, the wholesale transfer of that new
approach over to the mobile world won't work, [some] experts said [at
the Symbian Smartphone Show in London]. David Wood, executive vice
president of research for Symbian: "Beware of naive copying of PC
services; some don't translate." Wood and others said that the inherent
constraints of mobile phones and networks mean that many Web 2.0
services won't work well without some changes to accommodate those
limitations. Web 2.0 describes a new generation of Web sites, many
that enable user-generated content or combine data from various sources.
He used the example of Google Maps, an application initially designed
for the PC. Because the application is built on Ajax, like many other
Web 2.0 services, it pushes data out to the client device in order to
speed up future user requests. On a mobile phone, that process drains
battery life, eats up limited memory and results in potentially very
high data-access charges. Google has introduced a version of the
program designed for mobile phones that eliminates some of that
overhead, improving the mobile user experience. One way that Web 2.0
companies can similarly adjust their services for mobile devices is
by relying less on browser-based applications and more on small
software clients that users can download onto their phones. ShoZu is
an example of a service specifically designed for mobile users that
employs a client on phones to help users upload photos and videos to
the Web. Customers can also use ShoZu to manage their Flickr pages,
by adding comments to photos via their phones, for example.
Beta-2 Release for XML Hammer 1.0
Edwin Dankert, XML-DEV Software Announcement Posting
The XML Hammer application is a free and open-source tool that
simplifies elementary XML actions like checking for well-formedness,
validation, transformation and xpath searches using any JAXP (1.3)
implementation. After all these years of XML, it is still relatively
difficult to simply validate or transform XML files. You are currently
either forced to use extensive, sometimes expensive, and most often
difficult to use tools with a lot of extra functionality unnecessary
for these simple tasks and very often not flexible enough to provide
what you want, or you will have to be almost a programmer and create
your own application or script to handle these elementary XML related
tasks. The XML Hammer basic functionality, allows a user to create a
XML Hammer project, configure all JAXP specific features and
properties, execute the configured project and browse all the errors
and results. Sample Java output is available for all configurations
at any time. XML Hammer 1.0 beta-2 is a major feature release, the
main new features are: (1) Field specific error information; (2)
Search in output; (3) Open files in external editors and browsers;
(4) Run projects from the command-line (head-less); (5) New Project
wizards; (6) Support for XML Catalogs; (7) Better native look and
feel support.
See also: the web site
Developing an OpenLaszlo Application
Sreekumar Parameswaran Pillai, XML.com
XML technology is in its high tide and companies are enthusiastic to
leverage its power and flexibility. Presentation tier technology based
on XML is also gaining momentum in this wave. Database vendors have
been providing implicit support for XML in their DB products for quite
some time. IBM offers XML support with DB2 Express-C software that is
free in all aspects: free for development, production, and even
distribution. OpenLaszlo has come up with an XML-based scripting
framework that is worth notice due to its visual appeal, flexibility,
and efficiency. The foundation block is XML and they form a buddy pair
unlike any other. In this article, we shall develop an addressbook
application end-to-end using OpenLaszlo, DB2 and Java. The functionality
is simple but should be able to demonstrate the integration of
technologies discussed above. This is a sequel to Part 1, "Introducing
OpenLaszlo," which provided a quick-start on setting up a development
environment with Ant and IDE4Laszlo. We will build on this application
using the development environment discussed therein. We achieved the
ideal 100 percent separation between the view and the application code
as expected in a tiered web application, as well as seamless integration
between the two using XML. We also see a solution to increase system
response speed to user actions by manipulating only the changed data
in any situation.
See also: Part 1
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