Cover Pages: SGML and XML News. Q2 April

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[June 30, 2000] XML Encoding of SPKI Certificates. An IETF Internet Draft was recently published on the XML Encoding of SPKI Certificates. Reference: "draft-paajarvi-xml-spki-cert-00.txt", by Juha Paajarvi (First Hop Ltd., Finland). The IETF Internet Draft proposes "a standard form for encoding SPKI certificates in XML as opposed to the original s-expression encoding defined in [SPKI: Simple Public Key Certificate, by C. M. Ellison et al., draft-ietf-spki-cert-structure-06.txt]. The standard form is defined as an XML document type definition (DTD). The main emphasis is on the XML-encoding of an authorization certificate that is the basic SPKI certificate form. This draft provides also a brief introduction to XML and a short discussion about the benefits of choosing XML as the certificate encoding format. In addition, this draft discusses the problems of automatic processing of tags (attributes and authorizations transferred by a certificate are called tags in SPKI) when reducing certificates. An example of encoding Java permissions in an SPKI certificate is given to demonstrate the problem and, finally, a solution to this problem is suggested. The actual semantics and theory of SPKI certificates are discussed in more detail in RFC 2693, "SPKI Certificate Theory." The already expired draft "Simple Public Key Certificate" defines s-expression structures for SPKI certificates. The major difference is the use of XML-encoding. In addition, a problem in SPKI tag processing is discussed and a solution is proposed." Background: Cryptography is surely the most difficult technology that must be mastered in implementing certificate tools. Another difficulty often faced by programmers is the encoding format required for certificates. X.509 certificates are encoded as ASN.1 data structures, and SPKI certificates utilize s-expressions as their encoding format. Neither of these encoding formats are widely used in the Internet. This raises the question: 'Could there be a simpler, more widely used format for encoding certificates?' This draft suggests the use of XML as the encoding format for certificates and represents a standard form for encoding SPKI authorization certificates in XML. There are a number of reasons why XML is a good choice for encoding certificates. . ." See (1) the SPKI XML DTD and (2) the reference document "XML Encoding of SPKI Certificates."
[June 29, 2000] Building-Construction Extensible Mark-up Language (bcXML). eConstruct, a 'pan-European group of construction-related organizations', recently announced an initiative to create XML-based standards and applications for the building and construction industry. "The eConstruct project aims to develop, implement, demonstrate and disseminate a new Communication Technology for the European Building-Construction industry, called Building-Construction eXtensible Mark-up Language (bcXML). This Communication Technology will provide the European Building and Construction industry with a powerful but low cost communication infrastructure that: (1) Supports electronic business between Clients, Architects and Engineers, Suppliers (of components, systems and services), Contractors and Subcontractors, (2) Is integrated with eCommerce and Design/Engineering applications, and (3) Supports virtual construction enterprises over the boarders of the individual European member states. The objective of the eConstruct project is to help the European Building and Construction industry to build faster, cheaper and better, by developing, demonstrating and disseminating a new Communication Technology (CT) that is specifically tailored to the needs of the industry. Although Internet (plus Intranet and Extranet) potentially forms the ideal open, low-cost communication platform for the BC industry, in practise Internet is currently only used in a limited way. The most important reasons are: insecurity, insufficient bandwidth and insufficient structuring of information. Especially 'insufficient information structuring' because the current Internet language HTML only supports freeform data exchange. eConstruct will develop the Internet (XML)-based Building-Construction eXtensible Mark-up Language (bcXML) that will address all problems mentioned above by providing the right information infrastructure for this industry. Moreover, eConstruct will contribute to the development of a true European Building and Construction industry. This objective will be realised by supporting national language and classification specific views on the project information for project partners of different member states, and a common Virtual Reality front-end for Concurrent or Co-operative design, engineering and construction of large-scale (inter)national projects that is real-time accessible by all the parties involved. eConstruct wants to develop such an XML vocabulary, called bcXML including a number of national flavours specific for the European BC industry. bcXML is semantically rich and supports many of the notions used in practise. The semantics included in bcXML will support electronic business communication about construction products, resources, work methods, regulations and much more. Though developed as part of bcXML, the semantics, including the language translations will be developed in a separate part that acts as a 'neutral' classification system providing classification-neutral object identifications. This component will help to solve one of the biggest obstacles the European Building and Construction industry is facing, i.e., the fact that the Information Systems (all the information and knowledge related to building and construction) of all the European countries are different. These differences stem from language differences and from differences in the national classification systems which define the BC semantics. If eConstruct is successful in developing a tool that supports both language and classification conversion and this tool (or tool set) can be applied in bcXML-based communications co-operation and electronic business between participants in international projects will be greatly stimulated." For description and references, see "Building Construction Extensible Markup Language (bcXML)." Compare "aecXML Working Group - Architecture, Engineering and Construction."
[June 28, 2000] Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Publishes Implementation Specification Version 1.0. A recent announcement from The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) reported on the publication of the XML-based SIF specification for K-12 instructional and administrative data. "The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), an initiative uniting more than 80 software publishers, technology providers and integrators, and schools and school districts, today released its first technical interoperability specifications for K-12 instructional and administrative software. SIF is expected to revolutionize the way information is stored, accessed, updated and transferred -- sharply reducing administrative burdens that take a significant toll on a school's human and financial resources. Most importantly, SIF will aide parents, teachers, students, building administrators, school boards, central administration, and the community at large by sharing data among applications and enabling them to do what they do best. Through the release of SIF Implementation Specification v.1.0, SIF participants are encouraging education technology administrators from schools throughout the nation to consider becoming involved with the initiative as early as possible. The initial specification defines software implementation guidelines that will directly impact infrastructure, student information services, data analysis and reporting, exceptionalities, food services, grade book, human resources, financial management, instructional management, library automation, and transportation. The SIF specification is based on the W3C endorsed standard Extensible Markup Language (XML). It defines common data formats and high-level rules of interaction and architecture, and is not linked to a particular operating system or platform." The specification, including the XML DTD, is available from the Web site. For additional details and references, see (1) the text of the announcement "Information Revolution Coming to a School Near You. Initiative to Streamline Information Flow in Educational Environments Passes Critical Milestone." and (2) the reference document, "Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)."
[June 28, 2000] Extreme Markup 2000: Conference Program Details. Program details were recently announced for the upcoming 'Extreme Markup 2000 Conference', to be held August 15-18, 2000 in Montréal, Canada. "The Graphic Communications Association (GCA) today announced details of Extreme Markup Languages 2000, a new technical conference focused on the abstractions that underlie the family of markup languages, including white-hot XML and Topic Maps. Extreme is an unabashedly hard-core conference for technically-oriented members of the information interchange community: a place where information management and markup professionals can gather to learn from each other, exchange ideas and form alliances, challenge their preconceptions, argue, and increase the range of their knowledge and skills. Extreme provides a unique forum where technical ideas can be communicated, explained, examined, and refined. Conference papers have undergone extensive peer review - and revision based on that review - to ensure the highest technical quality. Eight slots on the program have been saved for late-breaking news: material that is developing and changing too rapidly for the results to be reported in time for peer review. Extreme reaches the philosophical heights (markup and semantics, the limitations of the descriptive/procedural distinction, and what we lose by modeling data as an ordered hierarchy of content objects); plumbs the practical depths (using UML to define XML document types, XSL stylesheet generation, managing web relationships); and embraces the hottest topics (what is and should be the relationship between Topic Maps and RDF). Overviews for managers and introductions for beginners are absent by design. 'Extreme is not for the faint of heart,' commented conference co-chair Tommie Usdin of Mulberry Technologies, Inc. 'It's a highly technical conference that concentrates on the evolving abstractions that underlie modern information management solutions, how those abstractions enhance human productivity, how they are being applied today, and how they'll be leveraged tomorrow.' 'We're looking at abstract and concrete information models, systems built on them, and the software that exploits them," according to co-chair Steve Newcomb of TechnoTeacher, Inc. "Of course we'll cover XML, but we'll also focus on SGML, XSL, Topic Maps, XLink, schemas, query languages, and other markup-related topics'." See other references in the main conference entry.
[June 27, 2000] Sun Microsystems Releases Free XSLT Compiler to Developer Community. From a recent company announcement: "Sun Microsystems today announced the free availability of an early access version of its XSLT Compiler technology, downloadable later this week at http://www.sun.com/xml. This new technology, developed by Sun's XML Technology Center, will greatly improve application communication between XML schemas and significantly speed up transformation of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) files. XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) is becoming an extremely popular technology to support business-to-business integration and device-based Web access. Because of its unique use of the Java platform for actual code translation, Sun's new XSLT Compiler performs better and requires less memory than existing XSLT processors. Sun also plans to donate the XSLT Compiler to the Apache Software Foundation. Along with the Java platform's portable code, XML is quickly becoming a key infrastructure element for e-commerce applications because of its ability to deliver portable data. Currently, industry groups are developing XML vocabularies, or schemas, for standard business-to-business communication. These consensus-based schemas will enable clear and easy XML data transfer between companies. Yet even with these XML schemas, applications at individual companies need to receive data in a specific format that is usually different from the industry schema. XSLT transforms documents into the different formats required by applications. As businesses begin to rely more and more upon business-to-business communications, the need for fast, efficient XML data transformations will become even more critical. Sun's XSLT Compiler provides a fast, efficient means of performing these conversions. In addition to business-to-business integration, XSLT is also commonly used to allow a Web site to support a variety of Internet access devices, such as desktops, pagers, phones, and PDAs. A single XML document can be transformed into any number of display formats to support the different screens and capabilities of these devices. Some of these devices have limited memory and processing capabilities. The small footprint of Sun's XSLT Compiler enables client processing and transformations of XML data even on these small devices. 'The XSLT Compiler is a boon for application developers and XML users who are increasingly faced with cumbersome and slow XML data transformations with existing products,' said Bill Smith, engineering manager of Sun's XML Technology Center. 'With Sun's XSLT Compiler, developers can quickly convert XML files using a fast, lean Java technology-based program that doesn't waste server resources. Furthermore, since the output of the compiler is so small, developers can now perform transformations on small devices that before now had no ability to transform an XML file. These improvements will further drive new market opportunities for application developers using Java technology and XML'." For related software, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[June 27, 2000] BizTalk Framework 2.0 Adopts the SOAP 1.1 Specification. From a recent company announcement: "Furthering its commitment to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and open industry standards, Microsoft Corp. today released a draft of the Microsoft BizTalk Framework version 2.0. This newest version of the BizTalk Framework has been redefined to be SOAP 1.1 (Simple Object Access Protocol) compliant, thereby allowing BizTalk Framework XML documents to travel over a network in the form of SOAP messages. In addition, version 2.0 has been extended to include specifications for reliable server-to-server messaging, guaranteeing exactly-once delivery of business documents over the Internet. Multi-Part MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) encoding guidelines also have been added to the framework to support the inclusion of one or more non-XML attachments within a BizTalk message. Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 will support BizTalk Framework 2.0 as the protocol for reliable interoperability over the Internet. 'BizTalk Framework 2.0 enhances one of the industry's most popular frameworks for XML-based integration over the Internet,' said Chris Atkinson, vice president of the Windows DNA and Web Services Group at Microsoft. 'Among the enhancements is support for SOAP, an emerging standard for integrating applications and services over the Internet.' The BizTalk Framework takes advantage of standard Internet technologies such as XML and MIME to provide the specifications for XML-based integration within and between organizations. The support for the SOAP 1.1 specification, which was recently submitted to and acknowledged by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will allow developers to create applications and services that can be more easily integrated, independent of operating system, programming model or programming language. The new reliable messaging capabilities defined in BizTalk Framework 2.0 allow organizations to reliably transmit information via the Internet using standard transport protocols such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). The inclusion of support for Multi-Part MIME, an alternative to inline encoding of binary information, provides guidelines for encoding and decoding of one or more non-XML attachments within a BizTalk XML message. The BizTalk Framework 2.0 specification is available for review at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/. The BizTalk Initiative represents the collective set of investments that Microsoft is making to facilitate business process integration within and between organizations using Internet-standard protocols and formats. It includes the BizTalk Framework, the BizTalk.org community and business document library, as well as BizTalk Server 2000, a business process orchestration server and tools for developing, executing and managing distributed business processes. These investments are being made in conjunction with industry standards groups, technology and service providers, as well as key global organizations. Introduced in March 1999, the BizTalk Framework is an open specification for XML-based data routing and exchange. The BizTalk Framework makes it easy to exchange information between software applications and conduct business with trading partners and customers over the Internet. Microsoft, other software companies and industry-standards bodies are using the BizTalk Framework today to more quickly and easily enable B2B processes between systems, independent of operating system, programming model or programming language." For details, see (1) the full text of the annuncement, "Microsoft Unveils BizTalk Framework 2.0. New Version Adopts SOAP 1.1 Specification, Supports Non-XML Attachments and Reliable Messaging." and (2) the document "BizTalk Framework 2.0 Draft: Document and Message Specification." See also, from Satish Thatte, the descriptive note with a BTF2 example. For other references, see "BizTalk Framework."
[June 24, 2000] Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) Project. The Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) Project of the American Hotel and Motel Association (AH&MA) and the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) recently announced that they had reached an agreement to cooperatively develop and maintain XML-based standards technically relevant to their industries. "The agreement will turn responsibility for the Central Reservation System (CRS) standards over to OTA, while HITIS will maintain the responsibility for all standards not involved in the CRS environment. OTA, which began in May 1999, now has over 125 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, including air, car rental, hotel, travel agencies, technology providers and related suppliers. . . This cooperative agreement culminates a three-year industry-wide effort led by AH&MA in developing electronic reservation booking and distribution standards. More than 130 contributors from all aspects of the hospitality industry were responsible for developing the HITIS standards." In July, 1999, "the HITIS Advisory Committee unanimously endorsed the recommendation to designate the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), as the primary platform mapping for the HITIS standards. . . Both the WHIS and JHIS groups recommended to AH&MA the endorsement of a third mapping, the conversion of the object interface to XML. An interface protocol in XML will provide a common denominator that provides interoperability without the need for bridging technology between the two original mappings. . . All HITIS standards are based on the Interface Specifications, which provides the definition of the basic data types used, naming conventions and general practices found throughout the suite of the 15 individual interface standards. The Interface Specifications, Data Dictionary and Glossary of Terms are found in the HITIS Correlation and Interface Standard document. The XML mapping is enhanced by the use of the HITIS models in Unified Modeling Language (UML) and associated object-oriented documentation that defines the business scope of each of the standards and descriptions of the individual data elements. The UML model serves as an electronic description of the HITIS standards and a basis for developers to use to build applications in an object oriented architecture." As of June 2000, the HITIS Initiative "has completed the extension of Phase I Standards to eXtensible Markup Language (XML)." The goal of HITIS "is to identify general functions (of property management systems) and standardize their implementation. In addition, a common data dictionary for hospitality relevant data is to be developed. HITIS provides an object standard and therefore specifies standardized interfaces for objects providing the identified functions. [Through its Advisory Committee], the HITIS mission is to create computer interfacing standards that will accelerate the hospitality industry's technology usage and lower automation costs. The HITIS Project's mission is to direct a non-proprietary, consensus based process to develop voluntary standards for the integration of evolving computerized system and sub-system transactions in the hospitality industry." For description and references to the HITIS XML standards, see "Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) Project." See also the full text of the announcement.
[June 23, 2000] Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages. A fourth revised draft of Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages has been issued by the Unicode Consortium and W3C. Reference: DRAFT Unicode Technical Report #20; W3C Working Draft 23-June-2000. By Martin Dürst and Asmus Freytag. This W3C Working Draft is being developed jointly by the W3C Internationalization Working Group/Interest Group in the context of the W3C Internationalization Activity and by the Unicode Technical Committee. The revised draft document "contains guidelines on the use of the Unicode Standard Version 3.0 in conjunction with markup languages such as XML. . . it now covers all affected characters in the Unicode Standard, Version 3.0." Background: "The Unicode Standard is the universal character set. Its primary goal is to provide an unambiguous encoding of the content of plain text, ultimately covering all languages in the world. Currently in its third major version, Unicode contains a large number of characters covering most of the currently used scripts in the world. It also contains additional characters for interoperability with older character encodings, and characters with control-like functions included primarily for reasons of providing unambiguous interpretation of plain text. Unicode provides specifications for use of all of these characters. For document and data interchange, the Internet and the World Wide Web are more and more making use of marked-up text such as HTML and XML. In many instances, markup provides the same, or essentially similar features to those provided by format characters in the Unicode Standard for use in plain text. Another special character category provided by Unicode are compatibility characters. While there may be valid reasons to support these characters and their specifications in plain text, their use in marked-up text can conflict with the rules of the markup language. Formatting characters are discussed in chapters 2 and 3, compatibility characters in chapter 4. The issues of using Unicode characters with marked-up text depend to some degree on the rules of the markup language in question and the set of elements it contains. In a narrow sense, this document concerns itself only with XML, and to some extent HTML. However, much of the general information presented here should be useful in a broader context, including some page layout languages. . . There are several general points to consider when looking at the interaction between character encoding and markup: (1) Linearity of text vs. hierarchy of markup structure; (2) Overlap of control codes and markup semantics; (3) Coincidence of semantic markup and functions; (4) Extensibility of markup; (5) Markup vs. Styling. . ." For related references, see "XML and Unicode."
[June 23, 2000] An Online Generic Context-Free Parser in Java. Khun Yee Fung has announced a pre-alpha release of 'An Online Generic Context-Free Parser in Java'. It takes as (text) input an arbitrary context-free grammar specified in XML. If the text file is a valid instance of the grammar, it returns the parse tree (or one parse tree if the grammar is ambiguous). The author plans to make it into an XT extension, and will issue it 'probably' under Apache or GPL license. The distribtion is currently in Java source and classes; it needs Xerces 1.1.0 and later. The code has been tried with JDK 1.2.2 and 1.3. See the Web site for details.
[June 22, 2000] Updated Working Draft for the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) Boston Specification. The W3C has published a new working draft for the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) Boston Specification. Reference: W3C Working Draft 22-June-2000, edited by Jeff Ayars (RealNetworks), Dick Bulterman (Oratrix), Aaron Cohen (Intel), Erik Hodge (RealNetworks), Philipp Hoschka (W3C), Eric Hyche (RealNetworks), Ken Day (Macromedia), Kenichi Kubot, et al. The working draft document "specifies the 'Boston' version of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced 'smile'). SMIL Boston has the following two design goals: (1) Define a simple XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL Boston, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. (2) Allow reusing of SMIL syntax and semantics in other XML-based languages, in particular those who need to represent timing and synchronization. For example, SMIL Boston components should be used for integrating timing into XHTML. SMIL Boston is defined as a set of markup modules, which define the semantics and an XML syntax for certain areas of SMIL functionality. All modules have an associated Document Object Model (DOM)." This version represents the fourth Working Draft of the specification for the next version of SMIL code-named 'Boston'. It has been produced as part of the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Activity, and was authored by the SYMM Working Group. This draft updates the previous version of February 25, 2000. The specification is presented formally in several DTDs, including (e.g.,) SMIL Animation Document Type Definition (DTD), Document Type Definition (DTD) for Level 0 [Level 1 , Level 2] SMIL Layout Document Type Definition (DTD), SMIL Linking Document Type Definition (DTD), SMIL Media Object Document Type Definition (DTD), SMIL Streaming Media Object Document Type Definition (DTD) SMIL Basic Profile Document Type Definition (DTD), as well as an XML Schema for Metadata.
[June 22, 2000] Microsoft's New ".NET" Internet Platform Features Core XML Technologies. On June 22, 2000 Microsoft Corporation "unveiled the vision and road map for its next generation of software and services: the Microsoft .NET ('DOT-NET') platform. The new family of Microsoft .NET products and technologies replaces the previous working title of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS) and includes software for developers to build next-generation Internet experiences as well as power a new breed of smart Internet devices." Some of the XML statements featured in the announcement are as follows: ".NET is based on Internet protocols and standards for interactions between devices and services, and in particular relies on the Extensible Markup Language (XML). . . [Bill Gates said] 'With the emergence of standards like XML, we now have the opportunity to revolutionize the way computers talk to one another on our behalf just as the browser changed the way we interact with computers' . . . The .NET platform includes a new set of technologies for building next-generation user experiences, including the new Universal Canvas XML-based compound information architecture, natural user interface, integral digital media support, privacy-enabling technologies for management and control of personal information, and the new Dynamic Delivery system for secure and seamless installation, updates, roaming and offline operation. . . The .Net 'Infrastructure and Tools' include an implementation of the new XML-based programming model [which] helps developers build, deliver, integrate, operate and federate Web services. Visual Studio 7.0, a new version of the world's most popular developer toolset, will provide comprehensive, high-productivity support for XML-based Web service development, including the 50 percent of the world's developers who use the Visual Basic development system. The new BizTalk Orchestration tool dramatically simplifies business process integration over the Internet. The .NET Infrastructure and Tools build off the XML-enabled family of Windows DNA 2000 servers. . . The .NET device software will XML-enable any device, support intelligent interaction with the network and .NET services and serve as a foundation to bring .NET User Experience technologies to non-PC devices such as Pocket PCs, set-top boxes, cellular phones and game consoles. . ." For other details, see the full text of the announcement: "Microsoft Unveils Vision for Next Generation Internet. Company Introduces .NET Generation of Software."
[June 22, 2000] Annotations on Markup Languages: Theory and Practice Volume 1, Issue 4. The journal Markup Languages: Theory and Practice (MIT Press) continues as the only academic journal dedicated to markup language technology, so I have prepared (belatedly) an annotated Table of Contents document for Volume 1, Issue 4 (Fall 1999). The document provides extended abstracts/summaries, and some additional links. Issue 1/4 of Markup Languages: Theory and Practice contains five feature articles and three book reviews. The 'Squib' from Michael Sperberg-McQueen describes a contest (valid through June 30, 2000) for regex experts. The subscription price for the journal ($50 annual/individual) is very reasonable as technical journals go; readers are therefore encouraged to subscribe and to consider publishing in the journal. Details of editorship and publication are available in: (1) the journal publication information for Volume 1, Issue 4; in (2) the journal description document; and in (3) the overview of the serials document, Markup Languages: Theory & Practice. See also the annotated TOCs for previous issues 1/1, 1/2, and 1/3.
[June 22, 2000] New UNICODE Version of W3C/LTG XML Schema Validator Released. Henry S. Thompson (W3C XML Schema Structures Co-Editor; HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh) recently announced an updated release of the online W3C/LTG 'XML Schema Validator, XML Output Version'. "The original 8-bit-only, text output version of XSV has been retired, as signalled last week. The full UNICODE version, with text/xml output, is now the main line public version, and it's at a new address, http://www.w3.org/2000/06/webdata/xsv. The usage of XSV is up -- running at roughly 100 validations a day, with a high of nearly 200 last Friday. Thanks to those who tick the 'Contribute' box -- I'm about to harvest recent contributions and expand the regression test suite to reflect the increase in breadth of usage. The latest version has a number of bug fixes and improved compliance in the area of enforcing content-model determinism. Of the not-yet-implemented-by-XSV aspects of XML Schema, I would welcome feedback on what users are most keen to see covered first, [from among]: (1) Simple type conformance, other than enumerations and max/min for numeric types; (2) Detailed enforcement of derivation by restriction; (3) Full XPath expressions for identity constraints; and (4) Post-schema-validation infoset contributions." Readers are invited to note, in this connection, activity on the xmlschema-dev@w3.org discussion list, which is publicly archived on the W3C server. Henry Thompson announced this public list on April 07, 2000 with a message "'XML Schema Developers List Launched': To accompany the XML Schema Last Call drafts, the W3C is pleased to announce the opening of a public mailing list for XML Schema implementation developers, xmlschema-dev@w3.org. To subscribe, send mail to xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org with 'subscribe' as the subject." For references to W3C XML Schema development, see "XML Schema Definition Language - W3C XML Schema Working Group."
[June 21, 2000] Open Group Announces Publication of Architecture Description Markup Language (ADML) Specification. The Open Group has released an announcement for ADML: "The Open Group Announces Publication of Architecture Description Markup Language (ADML) Version 1. A Standard XML-Based Language for Describing Software Architectures to Enable Their Representation, Evaluation, and Analysis." The text of the announcement, in part: "The Open Group, a vendor and technology-neutral consortium dedicated to enterprise interoperability, today announced the availability of ADML Version 1, the first release of the Architecture Description Markup Language, an XML-based mark-up language for describing system architectures. A software architecture describes the structural properties of the software, typically the components and their interrelationships and guidelines about their use. ADML provides a means of representing an architecture that can be used to support the interchange of architectural descriptions between a variety of architectural design tools. ADML is based on Acme, a software architecture description language developed at Carnegie Mellon University and the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. ADML is an XML-based version of Acme developed by the Micro-electronics and Computer technology Consortium (MCC) as part of its Software and Systems Engineering Productivity (SSEP) project. MCC joined The Open Group Architecture Program Group and its members, including NCR and the U.S. Department of Defense, to develop ADML into an Open Group Technical Standard." Documentation for the ADML DTD contains an Overview, User's Guide, Customizer's Guide, and Technical Reference. "SGML Architectures (as opposed to software architectures defined in ADML) allow automatic transformation of an XML document conforming to one DTD into an XML document conforming to a second DTD, by providing a mapping between the elements in the two DTDs. Such mappings of ADML documents can be used to define views of an ADML document. . .Beyond notation, ADML development intends to service a wider set of needs placed on industrial grade modeling tools. These needs can be simply summarized by the following list: (1) Representation - a model must be captured in a format which insures 'shelf life' and a format usable by multiple tools. (2) Views - a model must have the ability to 'morph' other views, including logical, physical, and organization views. (3) Collaboration - a model must have the ability to be partitioned across geograhically dispersed work groups. (4) Repository - a model must have fine-grained persistence. XML is an excellent format for providing these additional capabilities. See "The Merit of XML as an Architecture Description Language Meta-Language" for a more detail description of XML's use as a format for an architectural description language. Because ADML is a large DTD, it is quite common for organizations to use only a subset of its markup model. Similarly, because individual organizations often have specific needs that an industry DTD cannot reflect, many users also extend ADML's markup model. As a result, we expect that ADML will evolve as it is applied to more models, as more XML tools come into use, and as users gain more experience in working with it." For further description and references, see "Architecture Description Markup Language (ADML)."
[June 20, 2000] Phase One of XML.ORG Open Registry & Repository for XML Specifications. The first phase of an 'Open Registry & Repository for XML Specifications' was recently announced by XML.ORG: "OASIS, the non-profit XML interoperability consortium, today announced public access to the first phase of the XML.ORG Registry (http://www.xml.org/registry), an open registry and repository for XML specifications and vocabularies. Designed to foster collaboration and enhance communication within industries, the XML.ORG Registry provides the community with a resource for accessing the fast-growing body of XML specifications being developed for vertical industries and horizontal applications. Committed to open industry standards, the XML.ORG Registry offers a vendor-neutral forum for developers and standards bodies to publicly submit, publish and exchange XML specifications and vocabularies. Operated as a non-commercial venture, the XML.ORG Registry is a self-supporting resource created by and for the community. 'The XML.ORG Registry is something that has never existed before. It is the only independent clearinghouse for XML resources,' explained Laura Walker, executive director of OASIS. 'The XML.ORG Registry is not intended to be the one and only resource for XML schemas. Rather, it is designed to serve as a model for an extensible network of XML registries and repositories distributed across the Internet.' 'The XML.ORG Registry belongs to the XML community at large,' said Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems), organizer of the working group that created XML. 'This first phase is a call for participation, an opportunity to experience the potential of an open XML registry and an invitation to the community to help shape its evolving functionality.' Industry groups and other organizations that have developed XML specifications can freely register their work at the XML.ORG Registry. The OASIS 'no strings attached' submission policy ensures that developers receive the benefits and recognition they deserve while retaining all the rights to their work and control over its use. . . Today, the XML.ORG Registry is in its first phase of development. It is offered as a call for participation, an opportunity to experience the potential of an open XML registry and an invitation to the community to help shape its evolving functionality. The XML.ORG Registry is designed to serve as a model for an extensible network of XML registries and repositories distributed across the Internet. Developers of the XML.ORG Registry continue to work with the OASIS Registry & Repository Technical Committee to define a specification for a global network of repositories. This specification is intended to allow interoperable registries to be created for use within industry organizations, communities and corporations. Ultimately, the XML.ORG Registry will link to standards-compliant repositories as they become available, as well as provide resources on its own site." See the full text of the XML.org announcement and the web site description, "About the XML.ORG Registry." For related references to XML registry/repository design, see "XML Registry and Repository."
[June 20, 2000] DocScope: Open Source XML Healthcare Project. At least twelve (12) technical papers were delivered on "XML and Healthcare" topics at the recent XML Europe 2000 Conference, testifying to the heavy concentration of work toward design and development of XML technologies in the medical and health care fields. Recently, Brian Bray posted an announcment and call for participation in the DocScope project -- a 'Standard for Physician Friendly Medical Records'. "DocScope will be a free medical information tool that is as natural and easy for physicians to use as the spreadsheet is for accountants. The software products produced as a result of this project will be made freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and/or other open source licenses where appropriate. The tool will enable physicians to: (1) view standard medical records, (2) create custom views of the information to match personal needs, (3) structure and organize this information, (4) include rich text and multimedia components into the medical record, (5) create personal forms, templates, and boilerplate text for data entry, (6) sequence data entry, analysis, and viewing actions, (7) add customized behaviour through high-level scripts, (8) extend the classes of information stored, (9) integrate the record with data sources and software agents, (10) securely access the information anywhere, anytime, including mobile devices. We plan to eventually operate the project bilingually in English and French using automated translation tools and manual translation. While automated tools are far from perfect, we hope that this will enables wider participation. This project is enabled by the convergence of health care standards and open source tools on the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) document format for information interchange. This convergence has created an opportunity for applying commonly available tools to the problem of patient records to deploy systems that are simple, transparent, flexible, and standards based. Specifically, XML is core technology that: (1) is the basis of HL7 version 3; (2) is the basis of the European prestandard prENV 13606 (CEN TC.251) -- the prENV 13606 (CEN TC.251) (pre)standard already has a complete definition of a medical record defined in XML terms; (3) has a growing body of tools, both proprietary and open source; (4) has 'universal viewers, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and open source Mozilla; (5) has unlimited extensibility through standard and custom schemas. A conceptual diagram of the proposed architecture for DocScope is [provided in the project white paper]. In this model, a patient record is conceptually a file in XML format. The file represents an object model that can be manipulated using the Document Object Model (DOM) Application Programming Interface (API). All of the processing blocks in the diagram transform XML input into XML output. Many of the individual transformations are quite simple and can be easily expressed using a variety of programming languages with implementations of the DOM API. Conceptually, data from the Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR) is filtered and transformed based on the users current view and access rights. Style sheets and further transformations determine how the structured XML information is presented on the screen and in reports. Physician input is via forms and rich text controls sequenced by scripts. Input event generate transactions -- expressed again in XML. Transactions can result in both changes to the EHCR and triggering external events. The transaction processor can accept transactions from external sources as well. . ." For other references, see the Web site and "DocScope: Open Source XML Healthcare Project."
[June 20, 2000] Infozone Project Supports Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) Application Development. "The Infozone project is an open initiative based on the collaboration between several Open Source projects, private companies, and individual developers for the creation of an open source, Java and XML based framework of components that allows programmers to create complex Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) applications. Enterprise Information Portals are applications that integrate all kind of data sources and provide users a single gateway to personalized information needed to make informed business decisions. EIP systems contain Content Management, Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, Data Management, and Publishing technologies. These components are combined to build actual applications. EIP software has to be a toolset of software components and technologies that fit into a central framework. A diagram on the Infozone web site shows all the Java and XML components of Infozone and the data flow between the components. Infozone mainly consists of the Resource/Adapter layer, the Prowler CMS, business logic frameworks and modules, the actual application code, and various front-end systems (especially Apache and Cocoon for web applications). Adapters provide on uniform XML view on all available data sources. Adapters are responsible for converting the content of a particular data source into XML and may cache the converted XML data. There is a special Content Adapter - the Document Adapter. The Document Adapter deals with data sources that are able to handle XML data nativly, such as XML repositories and databases. The Adapter layer allows applications to handle, store and query all its data via XML, regardless where the information are actually stored. Central part of Infozone is the Content Management System (CMS) Prowler. Prowler manages all Resources and their corresponding Content Adapters in a transactional environment. This allows applications to execute the business logic in an application server and accessing the results via one or more Content Adapters within one single transaction. . . An alpha release of the Prowler CMS is already available for download. Other Infozone projects will be setup soon. The Infozone Group exists to provide support for the Infozone open-source software projects. It is a membership-based, not-for-profit organisation in order to ensure that the Infozone projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers." Interested parties are welcome to join the project by using the software, writing code, discussing ideas, etc.; the work is supported by a public mailing list.
[June 20, 2000] SOAP 1.1 Implemented at Frontier.Userland.Com. Dave Winer (Userland) recently announced that "we have SOAP 1.1 running in Frontier, alongside XML-RPC..." The article "Introducing SOAP for Frontier" by André Radke on Soap.Weblogs.Com provides an overview: "On June 20th, 2000, UserLand released the first version of SOAP support for Frontier. This release implements a client and a server for performing remote procedure calls (section 7 of the SOAP 1.1. spec) over HTTP (section 6) using the SOAP encoding for parameters and return values (section 5). This version has not yet been tested for interoperability with other implementations, so all we can claim right now is interoperability with our own implementation. However, we expect to demonstrate interoperability with the IBM-SOAP implementation in the near future. We plan to set up a public test server later today. Our implementation currently has the following known limitations: (1) All parameters and return values must contain an appropriate xsi:type attribute indicating the type of the value. (2) Only a single return value is supported. Additional return values (out parameters) are currently ignored. (3) Arrays (5.4.2) are limited to one dimension only. Partially Transmitted Arrays (5.4.2.1) and Sparse Arrays (5.4.2.2) are supported. (4) Generic compound types are not supported, if they contain several accessors with the same name. (5) Only the following simple types can be successfully decoded: string, base64, boolean, float, decimal, double, unsignedByte, byte, unsignedShort, short, int, integer, nonPositiveInteger, negativeInteger, long, nonNegativeInteger, unsignedLong, unsignedInt, positiveInteger, timeInstant. (6) Only the following simple types will be encoded: string, base64, boolean, byte, double, int, short, timeInstant. (7) There is currently no API for processing SOAP headers. However, if your client sends SOAP headers with the SOAP-ENV:mustUnderstand attribute set to "1", the server will generate the appropriate SOAP fault. (8) On the server, we support the HTTP protocol binding with or without using the HTTP Extension Framework. The client does not support using the HTTP Extension Framework." See "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."
[June 20, 2000] Sun Microsystems Submits JSpeech Markup Language (JSML) Specification to W3C. Sun Microsystems recently submitted to the W3C a document on the JSpeech Markup Language. Reference: W3C Note 05-June-2000, by Andrew Hunt (Speech Works International). Document abstract: "The JSpeech Markup Language (JSML) is a text format used by applications to annotate text input to speech synthesizers. JSML elements provide a speech synthesizer with detailed information on how to 'speak' text and thus enable improvements in the quality, naturalness and understandability of synthesized speech output. JSML defines elements that describe the structure of a document, provide pronunciations of words and phrases, indicate phrasing, emphasis, pitch and speaking rate, and control other important speech characteristics. JSML is designed to be simple to learn and use, to be portable across different synthesizers and computing platforms, and to applicable to a wide range of languages." Detail: "JSML defines a specific set of elements to mark up text to be spoken, and defines the interpretation of those elements so that there is a common understanding between synthesizers and documents producers of how marked up text will be spoken. The JSML element set includes several types of element. First, JSML documents can include structural elements that mark paragraphs and sentences. Second, there are JSML elements to control the production of synthesized speech, including the pronunciation of words and phrases, the emphasis of words (stressing or accenting), the placements of boundaries and pauses, and the control of pitch and speaking rate. Finally, JSML includes elements that represent markers embedded in text and that enable synthesizer-specific controls." The submitted document "is derived from the Java Speech API Markup Language specification (Version 0.6, October, 1999), which is available from Sun Microsystems's web site. Sun Microsystems wishes to submit this document for consideration by the W3C Voice Browser Working Group towards the development of internet standards for speech technology. We expect the resulting W3C recommendations to be of great importance to the developer community." See also the W3C Submission Request and the W3C Staff Comment). In this connection, see the companion Sun specification for a JSpeech Grammar Format, also published as a W3C NOTE. The JSpeech Grammar Format (JSGF) "is a platform-independent, vendor-independent textual representation of grammars for use in speech recognition. Grammars are used by speech recognizers to determine what the recognizer should listen for, and so describe the utterances a user may say. JSGF adopts the style and conventions of the Java Programming Language in addition to use of traditional grammar notations... The JSpeech Grammar Formatuses a textual representation that is readable and editable by both developers and computers, and can be included in source code. The other major grammar type, the dictation grammar, is not discussed in this [JSGF] document." Sun has submitted this document for consideration by the W3C Voice Browser Working Group. See other references in "Java Speech Markup Language (JSML/JSpeech)."
[June 20, 2000] New XML Base Working Draft. The XML Linking Working Group has released a second 'last call' working draft for the XML Base specification. Reference: W3C Working Draft 07-June-2000, edited by Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft). The Last Call period for this WD begins 7 June and ends 28-June-2000. XBase "proposes a facility, similar to that of HTML BASE, for defining base URIs for parts of XML documents." Description: "The XML Linking Language (XLink) defines XML constructs to describe links between resources. One of the stated requirements on XLink is to support HTML linking constructs in a generic way. The HTML BASE element is one such construct which the XLink Working Group has considered. BASE allows authors to explicitly specify a document's base URI for the purpose of resolving relative URIs in links to external images, applets, form-processing programs, style sheets, and so on. This document describes a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink, but as a modular specification so that other XML applications benefiting from additional control over relative URIs but not built upon XLink can also make use of it. The syntax consists of a single XML attribute named xml:base. The attribute xml:base may be inserted in XML documents to specify a base URI other than the base URI of the document or external entity. The value of this attribute is interpreted as a URI Reference as defined in RFC 2396, after processing ... In namespace-aware XML processors, the "xml" prefix is bound to the namespace name http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace as described in Namespaces in XML. Note that xml:base can be still used by non-namespace-aware processors. The deployment of XML Base is through normative references by new specifications, for example XLink and the XML Infoset. Applications and specifications built upon these technologies will natively support XML Base." For related documents, see "XML Linking."
[June 19, 2000] Data Consortium Sponsors XML-Based Research for Real Estate Industry. A communiqué from John McClure (Principal Engineer, Hypergrove Engineering) reports on the release of documents related to XML-based designs for real estate information; technical feedback on the design approach and implementation is being sought. "The Data Consortium is an open-membership group of more than 50 companies and associations whose goal is an open-source standard namespace for the commercial real estate industry. To that end, a preliminary, annotated DTD has been posted, to be followed by an explanatory guide, and an active glossary and RDFS dictionary. The Data Consortium Namespace (DCN) defines just 13 key elements, whose instances are cross-related in a manner anticipating coordination of XML streams with relational database CRUD functions. These 13 elements are generic: Account, Actor, Document, Entry, Event, Item, Location, Property, Right, Role, Service, System, and Transaction. These 13 elements are specific: by referencing XML Schema and RDF Schema definitions, four levels of categorization, i.e., instance naming, can be simultaneously achieved. In two ways, the DCN extends notions introduced by the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The DCN defines a <list> element that contains a collection of relationships to other resources while RDF's <bag> elements relates a resource to a collection of attribute values. Second, the DCN positions its <Location> element as a building block for RDF's grammatical elements (Sentence, Subject, Predicate). The DCN also defines four property-elements whose names are abstract XML Schema datatypes. Similar to the key elements (above), every instance of a property-element has a naming mechanism coordinated with both an XML Schema and an RDF Schema. Numeric properties may be a numeric range, while all properties may have a keyword value that is a qualified name. Further, the vCard, Dublin Core, MathML, XQL, XLink, and XPointer each have a place within the DCN. We welcome your review of the design and implementation." For other references, see: "Data Consortium (Real Estate Standards)."
[June 16, 2000] Information on SAX2/Java Parsers, Extension Packages, and Applications. David Megginson announced enhanced content pertaining to SAX2 Parsers and Applications on his SAX web site. SAX, the Simple API for XML, "is a standard interface for event-based XML parsing, developed collaboratively by the members of the XML-DEV mailing list, currently hosted by OASIS. SAX2 is a new version of the popular Simple API for XML, incorporating support for Namespaces, for filter chains, and for querying and setting features and properties in the parser. SAX 2.0 was released on Friday 5 May 2000, and is free for both commercial and non-commercial use. A SAX2 companion package, SAX2-ext, is available from the Software page. This package adds support for reporting lexical items like comments and CDATA sections, together with additional DTD declarations." The reference page for parsers and applications includes pointers to existing SAX2/Java Parsers and Drivers (e.g., The Apache XML Project's Xerces Java Parser, David Brownell's SAX2 XML Utilities, Michael Kay's SAXON, ParserAdapter); SAX2/Java Extension Packages (e.g., SAX2-ext, Apache Extensions); SAX2/Java Applications and Utilities (e.g., David Brownell's SAX/XML Conformance Test Harness, Michael Kay's SAXON). Megginson requests information from developers concerning other currently available SAX resources.
[June 16, 2000] Semi-Extensible Markup Language (SEML). A communiqué from Sean Palmer announces the release of SEML Version 1.0. Semi-Extensible Markup Language (SEML) "is a new language similar to XHTML and WML that allows the serving of both WML or HTML from a single source document. This means you only need to have one page for both your WAP and WEB sites, which is then delivered by means of XSL and PHP/ASP scripting. It is being developed by WapDesign ORG U.K. . . . To convert SEML to HTML or WMl, you will need two things. Firstly you need a simple and readily available server side processing language, such as PHP or ASP. If you have this, the only key component you are missing is the two XSL files. See the SEML DTD ("-//WAPDESIGN.ORG.UK//DTD SEML V1.0//EN") and a sample SEML document.
[June 15, 2000] Object Management Group (OMG) Publishes Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) Specification. A recent announcement from the Object Management Group (OMG) reports on the OMG's expanded support for distributed metadata standards through the publication of a Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) Specification. From the text: "In these days of electronic business and marketing, an enterprise's accumulated data have become one of its most significant assets. Analysis of these data not only allows sales and production to be tuned for maximum profitability, but also allows entirely new and profitable products to be discovered and exploited. But it is difficult to merge data into a single warehouse when the originals are spread over a number of different databases, using not only different data models but different metamodels as well. The term 'metadata' refers not only to the set of definitions of the data in the warehouse products, parts, prices, and so on but also to its formats, processing, transformations, and routing from origin to warehouse: everything, that is, except the data elements themselves in the data warehouse. Metadata management, and reconciliation of inconsistent metadata when data from different sources are merged, are the biggest problems facing enterprises working with data warehousing today. OMG's Common Warehouse Metamodel or CWM provides a standard solution to this problem. Building on three existing industry standards the OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML), the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and OMG's XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) the CWM starts by establishing a common metamodel for warehousing but then goes beyond this to also standardize the syntax and semantics needed for import, export, and other dynamic data warehousing operations. Designed to work naturally with object, relational, record-based, multidimensional, and XML-based datastores, the CWM supports data mining, transformation, OLAP, information visualization, and other end user processes. Metamodel support encompasses data warehouse management, process, and operation. The CWM specification extends to application programming interfaces (APIs), interchange formats, and services that support the entire lifecycle of metadata management including extraction, transformation, transportation, loading, integration, and analysis. And, users can resolve specific integration issues by taking advantage of the CWM metamodel's built-in extensibility. CWM combines the power of enterprise data management and object modeling, making them available to data modelers, database designers, data warehouse users and administrators, and corporate portal developers and managers. The Specification was developed through the effort of Submitters including IBM Corporation, Unisys Corporation, NCR Corporation, Hyperion Solutions Corporation, Oracle Corporation, UBS AG, Genesis Development Corporation and Dimension EDI. Supporters included Deere & Company, Sun Microsystems, Incorporated, Hewlett Packard Company, Data Access Technologies, In-line Software, Aonix and Hitachi, Ltd. OMG's CWM Specification documents are available for viewing or downloading." There are four parts to the revised CWMI submission: PDF for Part 1, PDF for part 2, PDF for part 3, PDF for part 4. Contact: Dr. Daniel T. Chang. See the vote tally and general description in "OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) Specification." [Note: (1) the article by Sridhar Iyengar, "Is CWMI the Holy Grail of Meta Data Standards?" and (2) CWM Press Kit 2000-06-19.]
[June 15, 2000] Updates to PassiveTex and TEI XSL Stylesheets for PDF Output. Sebastian Rahtz announced updates to (1) XSL stylesheets for TEI documents, for HTML and XSL FO rendering, and (2) PassiveTex - an implementation of XSL FOs using TeX. PassiveTeX "is a library of TeX macros which can be used to process an XML document which results from an XSL transformation to formatting objects. It provides a rapid development environment for experimenting with XSL FO, using a reliable pre-existing formatter Running PassiveTeX with the pdfTeX variant of TeX generates high-quality PDF files in a single operation. PassiveTeX shows how TeX can remain the formatter of choice for XML, while hiding the details of its operation from the user. PassiveTeX relies heavily on work by David Carlisle (his namespace-aware XML parser written in TeX, xmltex), and was developed from my JadeTeX macros for processing DSSSL via Jade. The TEI stylesheets include "a set of XSLT specifications to transform TEI XML documents to HTML, and to XSL Formatting Objects. I have concentrated on TEI Lite, but adding support for other modules should be fairly easy. In the main, the setup has been used on 'new' documents, i.e., reports and web pages that I have authored from scratch, rather than traditional TEI-encoded existing material. The stylesheets have been tested with the XT, Saxon, Xalan and Oracle XSLT processors; the last of these does not support multiple file output, which means that you cannot use the 'split' feature of the stylesheets to make multiple HTML files from one XML file. If you have not yet installed an XSLT processor, it is probably sensible to pick James Clark's XT, as it appears to be the fastest and most robust." Sebastian writes: "The TEI stylesheets have many small improvements, but remain ongoing work. The PassiveTex application is even closer to the March 2000 draft spec, but still lacking in many areas. Sadly, it is hard to compare the results with FOP and XEP, as they implement an earlier draft. If you have not met PassiveTeX before, it is for you if want to use XSL formatting objects to make nice PDF files from your XML and: (1) you have a TeX setup, and like the cut of its jib; (2) you need multi-lingual hyphenation; (3) you need MathML rendering now (PassiveTeX recognizes the MathML namespace and renders it); (4) you want PDF niceties like bookmarks. It is thus targetted at a different audience from FOP. In this release, the Web pages now have some details of the conformance to the specification." For related resources, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[June 15, 2000] Ux - 'UNIX Meets XML'. Paul Tchistopolskii posted an announcement for 'Ux' in which 'UNIX meets XML'. "The source code of Ux framework version 0.1 is available at http://www.pault.com/Ux/. Summary: (1) Ux is UNIX, revisited with XML. (2) There is Java instead of C. (3) There is XSL instead of sh / awk / perl. (4) There is XML instead of \n and comma-separated ascii files. Ux is a consistent continuation of PXSLServlet project. PXSLServlet is a pipe of 3 components: Sql | XML | XT. In this sense, Ux version 0.1 is a prototype implementation of some universal container for pipes of unlimited length and complexity. If you like, Ux also could be called 'yet another open source XML/XSLT application server', or 'set of extensions to XT' or whatever. My final goal is somewhat re-implementation of UNIX toolbox, re-visiting some concepts of UNIX, XML, XSL and software development in general. The goal of this a bit premature publishing of Ux is to find some other people who may be interested in implementation of some well-known UNIX tools (like diff, grep, sed, etc. ) in XSLT. Version 0.1 is not the end of the story: there will be next versions. Future versions will include things like: extremely smart caching, per-node on-demand validation, plug&play ux-services, realy universal formatting objects, revolutionary efficient XSLT processing, automatic adjustment of the dataflows. To name a few. I don't know how long it will take to implement all of this. This is mostly very hard stuff. . ."
[June 15, 2000] XMLBooster for XML Parser Generation. An announcement was posted to XML-L for XMLBooster -- new tool to generate XML parsers for COBOL, C, Java, etc. XMLBooster is said to "achieve performance comparable with message-specific hand-written parsers by skipping the intermediate step where the message is turned into a generic DOM tree using a generic parser which must take the entire generality of XML into account and support every feature, no matter how obscure. The parsers generated by XMLBooster only recognize the XML features required to parse the message at hand, and produces directly a parser that initializes application-level data structures without going through any time-consuming intermediate representation." Tool features: (1) Generates parsers, which are between 5 and 45 times faster than generic parsers (2) Produce parsers in C, COBOL, Delphi and Java (3) Produces working data structures in the host language, rather than a dynamic and poorly typed generic tree (4) The XML message to parse can come from a file, a message, a socket, a data structure, etc. (5) Produce naturally validating parsers, far beyond the validation possibilities of DTDs." Rationale: "XML is typically used in two different kinds of contexts: It was originally designed to describe large and complex documents in a structured way. XML is a pragmatic evolution of SGML which had proven to be very cumbersome to use in practice. It is more and more used as a neutral language to describe data structures passed among processes in distributed environments. XML then provides a more flexible and neutral communication middle than binary solutions such as RPC (Remote Procedure Call) and CORBA. The former basically requires validators, XML databases, XML query languages, XML transformers, perhaps in the form of style sheets. Basically, the issue is just to store, retrieve and possibly restructure XML documents. The latter needs just parsers, but it puts more stress on performance, since it must compare with statically compiled schemes based on RPCs. Generic XML parsers are now available. As depicted in the figure below, applications commonly use them to take an incoming XML message and turn it into a generic tree structure (Such a tree is typically built according to the DOM standard, defined by the W3C.) Depending on the application, the incoming message can then be validated using a DTD or not. The generic tree is then used by the application to fetch useful information using runtime table lookups in attributes, and tree walkthrough primitives. XMLBooster takes a radically different approach: (1) One first describes the set of acceptable XML messages using an ad hoc formalism. This formalism, hereafter referred to as the meta-definition can, in first approximation, be seen as a DTD extended to describe a data structure that will receive the various parts of the message in addition to the describing the structure of the message itself. (2) Using this meta-definition as input, XMLBooster produces an XML parser as a module in one of the programming languages it supports. This module is generated in source form, and can be used on any platform where a working compiler for the target language is available. (3) The application programmer can then call this module, which will return an error message if the input does not comply with the message format described in the meta-definition, or a fully initialized data structure in the host language if the input has been analyzed successfully." See the evaluation version and the FAQ document.
[June 15, 2000] Merlot Project - A ChannelPoint Extensible XML Modeling Application. Tim McCune (ChannelPoint) recently announced the availability of Merlot version 1.0 beta 1 -- an open-source, Java-based visual XML editor. The Merlot Project is a Java based XML modeling application written to make creating and editing XML files easier. Merlot provides an extensible architecture where developers can plug-in their own editing screens to make editing certain elements of a DTD easier or more specific to their application. Merlot runs on any Java 2 virtual machine (JDK1.2.2 or JDK1.3). The application is extensible via custom editor interfaces that can be added for individual DTDs. Through an easy-to-use graphical interface, users can create and modify any valid XML document. The application is extensible via custom editor plugins that can be added for individual DTDs. Other extensibility features such as custom icons and the ability to control which elements and attributes are available to the user let Merlot easily morph to meet your and your users' needs. It also supports reusable libraries of XML document fragments to speed development time. Merlot has been released under an Apache-style license. The Merlot web site contains links to binaries and source code as well as CVS access and an archived mailing list."
[June 15, 2000] Extensibility Releases XML Instance -- A Schema Driven Data Editor. Extensibility recently announced the release of XML Instance, a 'Breakthrough Schema Driven Data Editor. XML Instance is a schema-driven XML business document editor which provides real-time validation and editing facilities against an XML schema or DTD. XML Instance is the ideal platform for the creation of XML business documents, messages, and configuration files for use in XML-based applications. Organizations can embed their XML-based business rules in an XML Instance document so that internal, trading partner, and industry standards are achieved. XML business documents can be generated and edited conforming to DTDs or schemas in major and emerging XML schema dialects including, XDR, SOX v.2 and a sub-set of XSDL (April 7) processors, bridging diverse e-business environments. . . When opening an existing document with a schema reference, XML Instance automatically locates and loads the schema, producing a template which facilitates fast and accurate document editing. When creating a new document, a schema can be set to create a fresh template. XML Instance supports all major and emerging schema dialects. The support of these dialects creates flexibility when exchanging or receiving XML business documents. XML Instance provides thorough document-building guidance based upon the rules of the schema. Real-time validation facilities ensure accurate data representation and promote seamless and accurate data interchange with your trading partners and industry groups. XML Instance is now available for download. For related resources, see "XML Schemas."
[June 15, 2000] W3C/IETF Working Draft for Canonical XML Version 1.0. The IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has released a new working draft specification for Canonical XML Version 1.0. Reference: W3C Working Draft 13-June-2000, edited by John Boyer (PureEdge Solutions Inc.), with feedback from John Cowan, Martin J. Dürst, Gregor Karlinger, Jonathan Marsh, Joseph Reagle, and Kent TAMURA). Document abstract: "This specification describes a method for generating a physical representation, the canonical form, of an input XML document, that does not vary under syntactic variations of the input that are defined to be logically equivalent by the XML 1.0 Recommendation. If an XML document is changed by an application, but its Canonical-XML form has not changed, then the changed document and the original document are considered equivalent for the purposes of many applications. This document does not establish a method such that two XML documents are equivalent if and only if their canonical forms are identical." Status of the specification: This WD "is the second draft of a proposal that (1) serves as an alternative approach to the Canonical XML specification using the W3C XPath data model, and (2) includes a few substantive changes that affect the canonical serialization of an XML document. It is not necessary for implementations to use XPath to generate the canonical form of an XML document. XPath simply provides a data model that is simplified compared to InfoSet, yet sufficient for the purpose of canonicalization. XPath also provides an expression syntax for describing the desired portion of a whole document. Any variances between that result from this specification's use of the XPath data model and the XML Information Set will be reported to the XML Information Set's comments list. Prior versions of this document were published by the XML Core Working Group (the last of which was the 20000119 draft), which delegated the completion of this specification to the IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group. We expect continued substantive discussion with respect to the treatment of XML namespaces, but hope to address that (any any other issues) quickly such that we can issue a second Last Call at the beginning of July 2000. The XML Signature and XML WGs and other interested parties are invited to comment on this proposed direction, review the specification and report implementation experience."
[June 15, 2000] XML Query Engine as a JavaBean Component. Howard Katz (Fatdog Software) recently announced the development of a JavaBean 'XML Query Engine' and the free availability of a prerelease version. XML Query Engine is a JavaBean component that lets you search your XML documents for element, attribute, and full-text content. It can index multiple documents using a SAX parser of your choice. The index, once built, can be queried using XQL, a de facto standard for searching XML that is, very nearly, a proper subset of XPath. XML Query Engine extends XQL's syntax to provide a full-text capability, something lacking in standard XQL. This lets you say such things as Find me the first paragraph within either a division or a chapter that contains both the words "xml" and "xsl" or Give me a list of all elements containing an href attribute which points to a .com organization. XML Query Engine is an embeddable component that's callable from your application. It requires some straightforward Java programming to wire the query engine to your front-end code. The engine uses a result-listener architecture to deliver its results: You register an XQL result listener with the engine before calling your first query. Once your query's been resolved, the result-set document is delivered to your listener's results() method. Query results can be delivered in one of three formats. Two of these are XML, one of which is a standard result format, similar in structure to that returned by other XQL vendors, while the other is specialized to return 'navigational metadata' describing the nodes it contains in terms of their location within their originating documents. You can use this metadata to easily re-navigate, via either SAX or DOM, back into the original documents for further post-processing if desired. The third result-set format is CSV, Comma-Separated-Values, for particularly fast and compact result delivery of navigational metadata. XML Query Engine uses a traditional inverted index scheme to internally track every element, attribute, and the words contained in each for every document you index. Any document to be queried needs to be indexed first. Indexing is the process of pre-building the internal data structures needed to enable subsequent fast retrieval from the indexed documents. Before you can index, you have to tell the query engine what sorts of things to index or ignore. XML Query Engine is a work in progress. The current version is still pre-beta. I've implemented most of the core XQL features necessary to support full-text capability on top of the standard language. [The tool is] primarily intended for use as a personal productivity tool and on servers with low to medium-volume traffic. There are memory-dependent limitations on maximum index size. The engine is very fast: indexing speed on my 466 box is up to 75,000 words per second. Full technical documentation is available on the website." See the download page. For related resources, see XML and Query Languages."
[June 14, 2000] XML Specification for Financial Research. From a recent announcement: "First Call Corp., a Thomson Financial company, and B-Bop, The XML Platform Company, today released a jointly created 'FAML' Document Type Definition (DTD) for financial research documents utilizing Extensible Markup Language (XML). This FAML DTD for 'Financial Research Documents' ("-//B-Bop Associates//DTD FAML v1.0//EN") provides an initial framework for structuring the content of such documents. First Call and B-Bop are making the DTD available to the public, free of charge, via First Call's institutional Web portal at www.firstcall.com and B-Bop's Web site at www.b-bop.com. XML offers a common and open format for data interchange between business partners and provides the key element for developing interoperable systems over the Internet. To facilitate the exchange of information, a number of industries have sought to adopt standards for specific types of content to ensure information consistency and compatibility. Such a standard is obtained when there is a broad-based adoption of a single DTD within an industry. In developing the DTD and releasing it to the public, First Call and B-Bop seek to promote an open dialogue that will advance the effort to create an XML standard within the financial services industry. To ensure that the needs of the industry are addressed by the standard, the dialogue should involve a wide array of organizations creating, distributing, and receiving financial research. Given the high level of interest in XML by industry participants, First Call and B-Bop look forward to a single, broad and coordinated approach to creating a standard... A broadly accepted XML standard within the financial services industry will ensure that the independent elements included in a research document (earnings estimates, recommendations, analyses, etc.) are structured in a conformant manner across all organizations. This will facilitate the parsing of the research document into separate components. These components can then be distributed to the appropriate end-user, either separately or in various combinations, allowing for truly customized information aimed at meeting the unique needs of each recipient. XML documents can also be easily converted to the format specified by recipients and delivered seamlessly over the Web and to wireless devices and other applications." The XML specification is distributed as a collection of thirteen (13) DTDs in separate files (DTD Defining Metadata in Financial Analysis reports, DTD Defining Ratings and Target Price information, DTD Defining Financial Terms and quantites, DTD Defining Market Data elements, DTD Defining Securities like Common Stock, Bonds etc.). For details, see the online guide and the full text of the announcement: "First Call and B-Bop Unveil Jointly Created XML Specification for Financial Research. Specification, Intended to Promote Coordinated Industry Effort to Create an XML Standard, Now Available." For other references, see "FAML DTD for Financial Research Documents."
[June 14, 2000] IBM's Xeena XML Editor Updated with Support for W3C XML Schema. Xeena 1.2EA from IBM alphaWorks is "an Early Access release with experimental W3C XML Schema support (partial). This release also contains many new features, including DTD to XML-Schema import, search and print capabilities, Keyboard Shortcuts and more. Xeena, a visual XML editor, is a generic Java application from the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory for editing valid XML documents derived from any valid DTD. The editor takes as input a given DTD, and automatically builds a palette containing the elements defined in the DTD. Users can thus create/edit/expand any document derived from that DTD, by using a visual tree-directed paradigm. The visual paradigm requires a minimum learning curve as only valid constructs/elements are presented to the user in a context-sensitive palette. A key feature of Xeena is its syntax directed editing ability. Xeena is aware of the DTD grammar, and by making only authorized elements icons sensitive, automatically ensures that all documents generated are valid according to the given DTD Other Xeena features include: (1) Intuitive viewing and editing of XML documents in a tree control view (2) Editing of multiple XML documents (3) Includes XML source viewer (4) Restricts adding and editing of features according to the DTD, and checks validity of produced documents (5) Easy customization of display . Xeena is a Java application built on top of Swing and XML Parser for Java. The XML attributes of the elements are edited via a table. Each attribute value is entered using an editing GUI component (e.g., combo-box, text-field) which is also derived from the DTD. The editor guides the user in inserting elements into the tree in a correct order (according to the DTD) by making the elements palette sensitive to the current selected tree node and by not allowing to insert elements in an invalid order. The editor is a Multiple Document Interface application (MDI) with full fledged support to edit multiple XML documents and copy, cut and paste from one document into another. . .Xeena is now being used by the web3D consortium to edit Extensible 3D (X3D) graphics files."
[June 14, 2000] Revised IETF Internet Draft for XML Media Types. MURATA Makoto (IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory) recently announced the release of a revised version of the Internet Draft for XML Media Types. Reference: Network Working Group, Internet-Draft 'draft-murata-xml-05.txt', May 2000. By MURATA Makoto, Simon St.Laurent, and Daniel Kohn. Abstract: This document standardizes five new media types -- text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, application/xml-external-parsed-entity, and application/xml-dtd -- for use in exchanging network entities that are related to the Extensible Markup Language (XML). This document also standardizes a convention (using the suffix '+xml') for naming media types outside of these five types when those media types represent XML entities. XML MIME entities are currently exchanged via the HyperText Transfer Protocol on the World Wide Web, are an integral part of the WebDAV protocol for remote web authoring, and are expected to have utility in many domains." Some changes from the previous version: "added XML, MIME, and this document definitions for entity. Added new invalid example. Fixed magic number by adding 'l' to UTF-16 examples. Added IANA considerations. Removed extraneous notes. Made clear that examples are not registrations. Mention the standalone declaration. Removed normative references to XML Base, XLink, and XPointer, since they are still working drafts. Fragment identifiers are still undefined. Mechanisms for embedding the base URI are still undefined. Strengthened and filled out Referencing section, and moved to section 7.1." See "XML Media/MIME Types."
[June 14, 2000] Microsoft Announces XML 'Web Parts' as Reusable Components in the Digital Dashboard. At the recent Microsoft TechEd 2000 conference, Microsoft Corp. "announced a new Internet-standards-based approach for building components, called Web Parts, that deliver content and services to digital dashboards. Web Parts are reusable components that wrap Web-based content such as XML, HTML, and scripts with a standard property schema that controls how the Web Parts are rendered in a digital dashboard. Using the Web Part XML schema, corporate developers and partners can more easily create customizable digital dashboards that bring together personal, team, corporate and external information with single-click access to analytical and collaborative tools." A digital dashboard "is a customized solution that consolidates personal, team, corporate, and external information with single-click access to analytical and collaborative tools. It is designed to integrate well with existing business systems." Microsoft has also announced "the immediate availability of the Digital Dashboard Resource Kit (DDRK) 2.0, which provides sample dashboards, the framework and tools for building Web Parts and a catalog of ready-to-use Web Parts to enable faster dashboard development. Web Parts enable developers to structure the delivery of Web-based content and services, such as e-mail and calendar functionality, customer management data, training information, or news feeds, to a user's digital dashboard using a common schema that controls how the content is presented and how the user can interact with it. Web Parts can deliver any Web-based content such as XML, HTML or script. Developers using Web Parts can build dashboards that provide a high level of end-user customization including the ability to change dashboard layout, add or remove content, or select a personalized style. Because Web Parts share a common schema they can be easily reused across dashboards, and catalogs of Web Parts can be created that allow system administrators to better manage and distribute digital dashboards throughout their organization." For details, see (1) the complete text of the announcement: "Microsoft Announces Web Parts: Internet-Standards-Based Components That Deliver Content and Services to Digital Dashboards. New Resource Kit Provides Tools and Third-Party Web Parts That Accelerate Dashboard Development." (2) "What's New in the Digital Dashboard Resource Kit 2.0."
[June 14, 2000] Microsoft Releases XSL ISAPI Filter Version 2.0. "The Microsoft XSL ISAPI Filter version 2.0 enables server-side XSL formatting for multiple device-types. It features automatic execution of XSL style sheets on the server, choosing alternate style sheets based on browser type, style-sheet caching for improved server performance, the capability to specify output encodings, and customizable error messages." Background: "Web-browsing devices are becoming increasingly more widespread and varied. Witness the variety of Internet-enabled cellular phones, handhelds, voice-enabled browsers, and television- and game-console-based browsers becoming available. What's more, different devices within a form factor may have different markup languages that it interprets. All of this makes the job of the content developer that wants to optimize presentation on each device considerably more complex. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) provide pieces of a solution to this dilemma, whereby content developers can provide their data in XML form and then provide XSL style sheets for each different device that he or she is interested in supporting. The XSL is used to filter and transform the XML for presentation on the appropriate device. However, there are missing pieces to this story, and the Microsoft XSL Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) Filter is a tool that helps bridge this gap..."
[June 14, 2000] New Web Site for RAX. Sean McGrath (Digitome) recently reported that Rael Dornfest has taken over development and maintenance of RAX, which is now available on a new web site. RAX (Record API for XML) is characterized as a "a drop dead simple API allowing 'pull' processing of record-oriented XML. [It] provides a simple, efficient interface for processing the sort of XML often generated from databases. RAX was first described in the article "RAX: An XML Database API", by Sean McGrath. RAX consists of two very simple interfaces. RAX implementations are currently available in Python (rax.py - by Sean McGrath) Perl (XML::RAX - by Robert Hanson), and PHP (PRAX - by Rael Dornfest)."
[June 14, 2000] XHub: A Website for Creating OEB eBooks. The Brown University Scholarly Technology Group has announced the development of a web-based environment to support the creation of OEB ebooks. This 'XHub' resource, which began in November of 1999, is now nearing completion. The Open eBook specification, based upon XML, "is intended to give content providers (e.g., publishers, and others who have content to be displayed) and tool providers minimal and common guidelines which ensure seamless fidelity, accuracy, accessibility, and presentation of electronic content over various electronic book platforms." XHub description: "At the heart of XHub is an online service that converts XML/SGML documents into OEB Publications. XHub simplifies the potentially complicated process of making an OEB ebook. Users are assisted in identifying the document set to be converted, verifying and rearranging the sequence of data files (possibly adding or subtracting files), developing OEB metadata, creating OEB 'fallback' information, making OEB stylesheet selections, and checking the output for conformance. While defaults keep simple conversions simple, XHub also supports complicated conversions and customization. Input formats for the first release are HTML and TEI; support for additional XML/SGML input formats will be added later. In addition to providing conversion services, XHub will also maintain repositories of resources related to OEB ebook production in general. For individual non-commercial users with simple ebook needs XHub will provide free access to OEB CSS stylesheets (for domain-specific 'extended' element sets), sample package files, documentation, worked problems, metadata examples, FAQs, discussion lists, and so on. For commercial users XHub will also be a source of encoding and data extraction tools, XSLT conversion templates for advanced technical element sets, parsers, viewers, validators, and other related software, all of which may be licensed for local use, adaptation, or resale. Non-commercial use of XHub services is free and commercial use, including software licensing, available on a cost recovery basis. We developed XHub as part of STG's R&D program in advanced electronic publishing because we believe that the OEB is the best practical strategy for achieving the combination of interoperability and performance necessary to make the ebook industry flourish, provide new technology of social and cultural value, and improve accessibility both to the disabled and across the digital divide. This is also why we chose the Text Encoding Initiative as one of the first input formats -- the TEI is not only increasingly used by academic publishers, but it is the preferred XML format for important cultural and educational content, but it is widely recognized as the best foundation we have for high performance document systems (providing a lingua franca for semantic interoperability) and is endorsed by the US Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Digital Library Federation as the foundation for the national digital library. Because XHub is part of STG's core research agenda -- exploring fundamental issues in advanced electronic publishing -- it benefits directly from extensive ongoing STG research into XML schemas, transcoding, and knowledge representation. STG will aggressively develop XHub, adding not only new conversion resources and software, but also additional categories of service, such as content location directories, data extraction tools, transcoding applications, metadata pooling, and annotation exchange. The Brown University Scholarly Technology Group is an applied research and development group focusing on advanced topics in XML-based electronic publishing, hypermedia, and digital libraries; In November 1999 STG co-developed the first publicly released OEB software application: an OEB document validator." For additional information, contact Allen Renear (Director, Scholarly Technology Group). See also The Open eBook Initiative."
[June 13, 2000] Geography Markup Language (GML). The OpenGIS Consortium recently published the first public release of a recommendation defining the Geography Markup Language (GML), Version 1.0. The Geography Markup Language (GML) "is an XML encoding for the transport and storage of geographic information, including both the geometry and properties of geographic features. This specification defines the mechanisms and syntax that GML uses to encode geographic information in XML. It is anticipated that GML will make a significant impact on the ability of organizations to share geographic information with one another, and to enable linked geographic datasets. The initial release of this specification is concerned with the XML encoding of what the OpenGIS Consortium (OCG) calls 'Simple Features'. . . The OpenGIS Abstract Specification defines a geographic feature as: 'A feature is an abstraction of a real world phenomenon; it is a geographic feature if it is associated with a location relative to the Earth." Thus a digital representation of the real world can be thought of as a set of features. The state of a feature is defined by a set of properties, where each property can be thought of as a {name, type, value} triple. The number of properties a feature may have, together with their names and types, are determined by its feature type. Geographic features are those with properties whose values may be a geometry. A feature collection is a collection of features that can itself be regarded as a feature. Consequently a feature collection has a feature type and thus may have properties of its own, in addition to the features it contains. . . GML follows the geometry model defined other OpenGIS specifications. For example, the traditional 0, 1 and 2-dimensional geometries defined in a two-dimensional spatial reference system (SRS) are represented by points, line strings and polygons. In addition the geometry model for simple features also allows geometries that are collections of other geometries (either homogeneous, multi point, multi line string and multi polygon, or heterogeneous, geometry collection). In all cases the 'top-most' geometry is responsible for indicating in which SRS the measurements have been made. . ." For description and references to the schemas, see "Geography Markup Language (GML)." For related GIS/XML designs, see "LandXML."
[June 13, 2000] Service Interface Description Language (SIDL). James Snell posted a request for comments on a draft for a proposed service interface description grammar. "I would like to formally submit a request for feedback/comments from the list members regarding the I have posted on the soap-wrc.com site at http://www.soap-wrc.com/sidl.txt. The Service Interface Description Language (SIDL) is an alternative to the Microsoft SDL and IBM NASSL proposals, and serves the purpose of documenting and describing the interfaces and implementations of lightweight protocol-based services such as SOAP and XML-RPC. It is my intention to provide open source reference implementations of a SIDL Parser for the COM and Java environments in the near future as well as to formalize the proposal as an XML Schema document and formal specification. . ."
[June 13, 2000] IBTWSH Draft Version 6.0 Released. John Cowan recently announced the release of the public domain IBTWSH DTD, version 6.0. "I have just released a new version of IBTWSH, the Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Simple Hypertext DTD. This is an XML DTD which describes a subset of XHTML Basic for embedded use within other XML DTDs. It is by intention equivalent (within its scope) to -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN, but is not a derived work in the copyright sense. (Brief excerpts from HTML 4.0 Transitional appear here and there.) It is often convenient for XML documents to have a bit of documentation somewhere in them. In the absence of a DTD like this one, that documentation winds up being #PCDATA only, which is a pity, because rich text adds measurably to the readability of documents. By incorporating this DTD by reference (as an external parameter entity) into another DTD, that DTD inherits the capabilities of this one. Using HTML-compatible elements and attributes allows the documentation to be passed straight through to HTML renderers. Draft 6.0 is seriously incompatible with drafts 5.0 and earlier, but it is a subset of XHTML Basic..." [XML-DEV posting]
[June 13, 2000] IBM alphaWorks Releases P3P Policy Editor. "The IBM P3P Editor provides an easy-to-use interface for creating and updating Web site privacy policies using the P3P language, a standard currently under development at the W3C. The IBM P3P Policy Editor is a visual tool for creating a Web site's privacy policy that can be interpreted by Web browsers and other user agents that support the P3P specification from the W3C. P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) offers a way for users to automate the acceptance or rejection of a Web site's requests for information, based on preferences users can set from their browsers or client devices. This provides assurance to users that their privacy is protected without having to read each Web site's privacy policy. Using P3P, an organization posts an XML-formatted privacy policy (machine-readable) on their Web site that describes their privacy practices, including the type of information collected, how the information is used, and who can get access to the information. The P3P specification for declaring the types of data collected at a site can become complicated, leaving Webmasters susceptible to errors and requiring a lot of time to develop and test. The P3P Policy Editor takes the complexity out of creating the machine-readable policy by hand. The editor includes standard data types and categories that you can quickly drop into your policy. The editor provides error-checking to help you locate elements missing from your policy that are required by the specification. The machine-readable policy is intended to be interpreted only by P3P-compliant user agents. However, these policies also include the location of a privacy policy that is intended to be read by people (human-readable). The P3P Policy Editor creates an HTML-formatted version of the policy that can be used as a base for your own human-readable policy. Or, you can use this version to ensure that your organization's machine-readable policy is consistent with the human-readable one. . ." See also: "Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Project."
[June 12, 2000] W3C XPointer Specification Enters Candidate Recommendation Stage. Daniel Veillard (W3C XML Linking Working Group Co-chair) recently announced the promotion of the W3C XML Pointer (XPointer) specification to 'Candidate Recommendation' status: XML Pointer Language (XPointer) Version 1.0. Reference: W3C Candidate Recommendation 7-June-2000, edited by Ron Daniel Jr. (Metacode Technologies, Inc.), Steve DeRose (Brown University Scholarly Technology Group), and Eve Maler (Sun Microsystems). Feedback from last call working draft has been analyzed, and the disposition of comments is available on-line. The XPointer specification "defines the XML Pointer Language (XPointer), the language to be used as the basis for a fragment identifier for any URI reference that locates a resource of Internet media type text/xml or application/xml. XPointer, which is based on the XML Path Language (XPath), supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. It allows for examination of a hierarchical document structure and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position. . . XPointer supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. It allows for examination of a document's hierarchical structure and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position. In particular, it provides for specific reference to elements, character strings, and other parts of XML documents, whether or not they bear an explicit ID attribute. The structures located with XPointer can be used as link targets or for any other application-specific purpose. This specification does not constrain what uses an application may make of locations identified by XPointers. In particular, implementation of traversal to a resource is not constrained by this specification, and whether user 'traversal' is the purpose of an XPointer at all is application-dependent. A formatted-text browser traversal might scroll to and highlight the designated location; a structure-oriented graphical viewer or a document-relationship display might do traversal in quite a different way; and a search application, parser, archival system, or expert agent might use XPointers for other purposes entirely. (The construction of linking elements in XML documents that associate arbitrary resources, including XML documents and portions thereof, is defined in a related specification, XLink.) XPointer is built on top of the XML Path Language (XPath), which is an expression language underlying the XSL Transformations (XSLT) language. XPointer's extensions to XPath allow it to: (1) Address points and ranges as well as whole nodes, (2) Locate information by string matching, and (3) Use addressing expressions in URI references as fragment identifiers (after URI-escaping)." The XML Linking Working Group intends to "provide more information including an XPointer minimal testsuite, [which] will be published on the public page for the working group at http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking.html." For further reference, see (1) the XLink language with which XPointer


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