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XML and Web Services In The News - 24 October 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by IBM Corporation
HEADLINES:
Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL)
Dan Connolly, W3C Working Draft
W3C has announced the publication of a First Public Working Draft for
the specification "Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of
Languages (GRDDL)." The specification is said to forge an important
link between Semantic Web and microformats communities. With GRDDL
(pronounced "griddle"), software can automatically extract information
from structured Web pages to make it part of the Semantic Web. Those
accustomed to expressing structured data with microformats in XHTML can
thus increase the value of their existing data by porting it to the
Semantic Web, at very low cost. The GRDDL Working Draft introduces
markup for declaring that an XML document includes gleanable data and
for linking to an algorithm, typically represented in XSLT, for
gleaning the resource descriptions from the document. The markup
includes a namespace-qualified attribute for use in general-purpose XML
documents and a profile-qualified link relationship for use in valid
XHTML documents. The GRDDL mechanism also allows an XML namespace
document (or XHTML profile document) to declare that every document
associated with that namespace (or profile) includes gleanable data
and for linking to an algorithm for gleaning the data. GRDDL is the
bridge for turning data expressed in an XML format such as XHTML into
Semantic Web data. With GRDDL, authors transform the data they wish to
share into a format that can be used and transformed again for more
rigorous applications. The recently published "GRDDL Use Cases"
document provides insight into why this is useful through a number
of scenarios, including scheduling a meeting, comparing information from
various retailers before making a purchase, and extracting information
from wikis to facilitate e-learning. Once data is part of the Semantic
Web, it can be merged with other data (for example, from a relational
database, similarly exposed to the Semantic Web) for queries, inferences,
and conversion to other formats.
See also: the announcement
Oracle Upgrades SOA Offerings
Darryl K. Taft, eWEEK
Oracle opened its Oracle OpenWorld conference with a series of SOA-
related announcements, including the availability of Oracle SOA Suite
10g Release 3. With service-oriented architecture as one of the themes
of the event, Oracle opened the conference on October 23 [2006] in San
Francisco with the new component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. The new
version of Oracle SOA Suite 10g includes enhancements that simplify
SOA deployment and installation, including a one-click install; an
enhanced ESB (Enterprise Service Bus); expanded human workflow
capabilities; enhanced Web services security and interoperability
facilities; and new SOA governance support. The product's enhanced ESB
can reduce the amount of programming required to connect heterogeneous
services and applications in an SOA, the company said. Meanwhile, the
suite's orchestration component, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, delivers
expanded human workflow capabilities that provide a simplified workflow
designer and new algorithms for managing complex task routing and
escalation. This component also includes a new testing framework that
automates process testing and service simulation for SOA applications.
In addition, Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3 includes facilities to
identify, categorize, version and publish services to an Enterprise
Service Registry; facilities to securely view services within the
enterprise and to govern the provisioning of new services; facilities
to centralize the management of security polices and service-level
agreements; out-of-the-box functionality to implement governance
requirements for business process auditing; and metadata repository
services to capture and track service interactions and store SOA
artifacts and metadata for Web services.
Microsoft Releases Antispyware Tool
James Niccolai, InfoWorld
Microsoft released the final version of its Windows Defender antispyware
tool on Tuesday, while security rivals squabbled about whether the
company has given them sufficient access to Windows Vista to build
competing products. The release of the final version suggests that
Microsoft thinks Windows Defender is sufficiently stable and bug-free
for mainstream use. The final release fixes about 400 bugs in beta 2
of the product, which was released in February. Beta versions of the
program were downloaded 34 million times, a Microsoft spokeswoman said.
Along with the bug fixes, customers using Windows XP and Windows 2003
get two free support calls for Windows Defender. The product is no
longer supported for Windows 2000 users, since support for that OS
ended in June [2006]. The software is available free of charge. It's
in English now, with German, Japanese, and other languages to follow
shortly. It competes with free tools from Lavasoft, Spybot (Safer
Networking), and others. Windows Defender is also included with
Microsoft's new antivirus product, Windows OneCare, which went on
sale in June for $49.95 per year. Security vendors have been riled
by Microsoft's entry into their market. McAfee and Symantec say they
are being locked out of the 64-bit version of Vista by a kernel-level
security feature in the OS called PatchGuard. Microsoft has dragged
its feet in providing access to the kernel, they complain, which could
prevent them from fully protecting their customers.
Working XML: Serve Friendlier RSS and Atom Feeds
Benoit Marchal, IBM developerWorks
RSS and Atom feeds offer a very effective solution for visitors to
subscribe to your site and be notified when new items are made
available. They are growing in popularity because visitors are
increasingly concerned about their privacy and have become wary of
spam. Atom and RSS allow visitors to keep in touch with your site
without requiring them to provide any personal data. RSS became very
popular with blogs but it is not limited to blogs: every site benefits
from building a loyal readership. One of the challenges for webmasters
is that RSS and Atom are still very new and few people have heard of
them, fewer still understand how to use them and have the right
software installed. Specifically the challenge is that you must place
a link to the RSS or Atom file on your Web site for visitors to
subscribe to but when they click on it, many visitors are presented
with XML code... which not a very friendly sight. Web syndication is
in a transition period. The benefits are already here and it is
worthwhile to build RSS into your Web site, but it remains that many
users are not yet properly equipped to subscribe to RSS feeds. Apple
Safari was the first major browser with built-in RSS support (in 2005).
It was soon followed by Firefox (version 1.5), Internet Explorer
(version 7) and Opera (version 9). By this time next year, every major
browser will boost excellent support for RSS. It might take another
year or two before the majority of users upgrade though so it will
be a few years before you can safely assume that all your visitors
have RSS-capable browsers. In the meantime, you can provide an
alternative that works with almost every browser.
See also: Atom references
Fedora Core 6 Gets Real
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com
Fedora Core 6 (FC 6) is now available, offering Red Hat users a view
of the latest and greatest in open source technologies. It could also
be seen as a preview of what is coming in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
(RHEL) 5, though Fedora is now a well-established Linux distribution
in its own right. The somewhat delayed FC 6 release follows version 5
by seven months, and it comes just days ahead of the next Ubuntu
release, an event that the Fedora project leader has called coincidental.
The new release includes support for the AIGLX graphics framework
which is Red Hat's competitive project to Novell's XGL. AIGLX provides
enhanced 3-D graphics capabilities by leveraging the power of graphics
acceleration hardware. Performance is also improved in FC 6 by as much
as 50 percent, thanks to dynamic linking for application using
DT_GNU_HASH. And security is made a bit easier with a new graphical
troubleshooting tool for SELinux. First introduced in Fedora Core 2 in
2004, SELinux implements mandatory access controls on the kernel. FC 6
will also improve upon its support for Xen Virtualization, which was
introduced in the current Fedora Core 5 build. FC 6 includes a GUI
virtualization manager that makes it easier than before to setup and
manage virtual machines. The new GUI virt-manger in FC 6 changes that
and makes virtual machine creation user-friendly. It's likely that the
new GUI virtualization manager will also be part of Red Hat's upcoming
RHEL 5 release, according to [Max] Spevack, Red Hat's Fedora project
leader.
Abstract Syntax Notation X (ASN.X) Representation of Encoding
Instructions for the Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER)
Steven Legg (ed), IETF Internet Draft
Abstract Syntax Notation X (ASN.X)is an Extensible Markup Language
(XML) representation for Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1)
specifications. The ASN.X representation for the ASN.1 basic notation
(X.680) is described elsewhere. The grammar of ASN.1 also permits
the application of encoding instructions (X.680-1), through type
prefixes and encoding control sections, that modify how abstract
values are encoded by nominated encoding rules. The generic notation
for type prefixes and encoding control sections is defined by the
ASN.1 basic notation, however the notation for specific encoding
instructions i.e., the EncodingInstruction and
EncodingInstructionAssignmentList productions of the notation,
are defined separately for each set of encoding rules using encoding
instructions. This document specifies the ASN.X representation for
EncodingInstructionAssignmentList and EncodingInstruction as they
are defined for the Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER). ASN.X is
defined in terms of rules for translating from an ASN.1 specification.
This does not preclude an ASN.X document being written directly
without a pre-existing ASN.1 specification, however such an ASN.X
document is considered valid if and only if there exists, in principle,
an ASN.1 specification that when translated would yield the ASN.X
document. By design, an ASN.X document is also the Robust XML
Encoding Rules (RXER) encoding of an ASN.1 abstract value. The
ASN.1 type definitions for such abstract values, insofar as they
pertain to the ASN.1 basic notation, are provided in ASN.X; however
this document provides the ASN.1 type definitions for representing
GSER encoding instructions as abstract values.
Microsoft Opens Access to Its Sender ID Specification
Peter Galli, eWEEK
Microsoft has made the Sender ID framework specification for e-mail
authentication available to users at no cost and with the guarantee
that it will never take legal action against them. The Sender ID
specification will now be available to anybody wanting to use it
under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. The Redmond, Wash.-based
software maker issued the promise on its Interoperability Web page
September 12 [2006], when the company promised not to take any legal
action against developers or customers who use any of 35 Web Service
specifications. "There have been lingering questions from some
members of the development community about the licensing terms from
Microsoft and how those terms may affect their ability to implement
Sender ID," said Brian Arbogast, the corporate vice president of
Microsoft's Windows Live Platform Development Group. In 2005 the
Apache Software Foundation said that the licensing policies around
Sender ID were not compatible with Apache's own policies, and the
open-source organization decided not to implement Sender ID. This
latest Microsoft move is part of an ongoing effort to promote further
industry interoperability among commercial software solutions and
ISPs that utilized e-mail authentication, including open-source
solutions. Over the past four months Microsoft has announced a number
of key interoperability activities focused on business and technical
activities, including the establishment of an Interoperability
Customer Executive Council, the Open XML Translator Project, and the
strategic relationship with XenSource for the development of technology
to provide interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Windows
Server virtualization. Sender ID has been deployed worldwide to more
than 600 million users over the past two years, and more than 36
percent of all legitimate e-mail sent worldwide uses Sender ID.
See also: earlier news
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