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XML and Web Services In The News - 8 November 2006
Provided by OASIS |
Edited by Robin Cover
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by SAP AG
HEADLINES:
Put the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) to Work: Part 2
James Snell, IBM developerWorks
The previous installment in this series presented a brief walk-through
of the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP). In accordance with the charter
of the IETF's Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Working Group, the
Atom Publishing Protocol is designed for the primary use case of
publishing and management of weblog entries. It should come as no
surprise, then, that many blogging software providers such as Google,
SixApart, and Roller have already started to roll out preliminary
support for the protocol. In early August of 2006, Google announced a
long-awaited update to its hosted weblogging service. Among a number
of other features, the service now supports the use of the Atom
Publishing Protocol to create and edit posts. Creating a post is rather
straightforward. The first thing you need to know is the URL of the
Atom collection to which new entries will be sent. For Blogger, the
Atom feed used to syndicate the content of blogs to feed readers and
aggregators doubles as the Atom Publishing Protocol collection. To
find the collection URI then, one needs only look at the alternate
link in the header of their weblogs home page. This article presents
a number of real-world Atom publishing implementations that are
already deployed and in use by thousands of users. To support the
examples provided, this article demonstrates the use of the open
source Apache Abdera project to interact with various blogging,
calendar, and data management services. The next installment of this
series provides a detailed overview of the Apache Abdera project,
including a walk-through of the Feed Object Model API and a range of
features including XPath, XSLT transforms, content filtering, and XML
Digital Signature support.
W3C Charters Common Web Language Incubator (CWL) Group
Staff, W3C Announcement
W3C has announced the creation of the Common Web Language (CWL)
Incubator Group within its Incubator Activity. The W3C Incubator
Activity fosters rapid development, on a time scale of a year or less,
of new Web-related concepts. Target concepts include innovative ideas
for specifications, guidelines, and applications that are not (yet)
clear candidates as Web standards developed through the more thorough
process afforded by the W3C Recommendation Track. The goal of the group
is to develop the CWL (Common Web Language), a common language for
exchanging information through the web and also for enabling computers
to process information semantically. A pilot model of CWL platform
will also be developed on the web. The CWL is used to describe contents
and meta-data of web pages written in natural languages. Then CWL will
realize a language barrier free world in the web and will also enable
computers to extract semantic information and knowledge from web pages
accurately. Initiating members include: Institute of Semantic Computing
(ISeC); National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
(AIST); JustSystems Corporation. The RDF/OWL is used as a basic
description language and can be used to describe texts in web pages.
However, RDF/OWL is originally designed to describe meta-data of
resources, and at this moment, there is no standard set of properties
and vocabulary to cover various web pages. There are some activities
to provide common bases for describing information in the web such as
the WordNet, NICT-EDR Electronic Dictionary for providing lexical bases,
Conceptual Graphs for providing a representation basis. The CWL
initiative is an activity quite different from those activities. The
CWL will provide not only representation scheme but also a vocabulary
with semantic background. It is an initiative to integrate existing and
ongoing activities for providing a common description language with
unambiguous grammar and enough amount of lexicons based on the CDL
(Concept Description Language) scheme aiming at describing every kind
of information understandable for computers. Based on CWL, various kinds
of controlled language can easily be developed because of unambiguous
structure of CWL. Since the CWL is a network structured language, it
can easily be implemented in RDF/OWL.
See also: the W3C Incubator Activity
Microsoft Embraces AJAX, IronPython
Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Microsoft has further embraced dynamic scripting, revealing AJAX-friendly
(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) enhancements planned for the upcoming
Visual Studio "Orcas" tools platforms and a marriage of IronPython and
ASP.Net. Orcas, which goes into a beta release cycle in the first half
of 2007, will have integrated support for Microsoft's ASP.Net AJAX
technology, which is available in a beta release as of this week. Also,
Orcas will feature JavaScript Intellisense functionality, which provides
coding assistance, as well as syntax checking. JavaScript debugging
support also is planned, according to Scott Guthrie, general manager of
Microsoft's Developer Division, during a presentation at the Visual
Studio Connections conference on Tuesday. Other AJAX-friendly features
in Orcas include a greatly improved HTML designer and rich CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) support. Microsoft also will bolster AJAX
extender controls such as its extender for animation. Another function
planned for Orcas is a split-view capability, allowing for a design view
and examination of source code at the same time. .Net LINQ (Language
Integrated Query) capability is planned as well. ASP.Net AJAX supports
several browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.
Opera backing is planned. Microsoft with its AJAX effort is tackling
what has been viewed by some as the user-unfriendliness of JavaScript.
See also: eWEEK
SAP's Open Source Secrets
John Blau, InfoWorld
The entire concept of making code freely accessible for others to view,
use and even modify would appear to clash totally with the commercial
software strategy of SAP AG. So why is the world's largest vendor of
business software so interested in open source? That was a question
being silently mumbled by a few software experts in the coffee breaks
at the Open Source Forum backed by Hasso Plattner, SAP's billionaire
co-founder. And the answers gleaned from a few of these experts were
two-fold: open source is a threat to proprietary software; but it's
also an opportunity. SAP needs to keep abreast of what the open-source
community is doing because the open community approach to developing
software will play a huge role in the future and will impact proprietary
software, according to Adam Jollans, open-source software strategy
manager at IBM Corp. But it's not only open-source startups that the
Walldorf, Germany, vendor [SAP] needs to have on its radar screen;
it's also arch-rival Oracle Corp., according to Don Wight, vice
president of worldwide field operations at open-source business
intelligence software vendor JasperSoft Corp. "There is certainly a
trend in the open-source space, and we're investing," said Jai Das, a
partner in SAP Ventures, the company's venture capital arm, which is
in Palo Alto, California. SAP Ventures has already invested in several
open-source companies including MySQL AB, Black Duck Software Inc. and
Zend Technologies Ltd., as well as social communications and wiki
company Socialtext Inc.
Sun Set to Move on GPL License for Open-Source Java
Stacy Cowley and Barbara Darrow, Computer Reseller News
Sun Microsystems has talked a lot about putting Java into an open-source
license. Now it's ready to move. The company is very close to announcing
that it will put the mobile (ME) and standard (SE) editions of the Java
platform into the GNU General Public License (GPL), with the Java
Enterprise Edition and GlassFish reference implementation (currently
open-sourced under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License,
or CDDL) to follow, several industry sources said. The OpenSolaris
operating system will continue to be offered under the CDDL, according
to several sources. The news could come as early as next week. The GPL
is an intriguing and controversial choice. By requiring derivative works
to also be released as open source, the GPL discourages commercial
forking — a consequence that fits well with Sun's stated goal of
preserving Java's cross-platform compatibility. However, a GPL license
would require those making changes to the core Java platform to freely
release their code.
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