Last modified: March 31, 2003

News

SGML and XML News January - March 2003

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[March 28, 2003] XACML XML DSig Profile Supports Authentication of XACML Schema Instances. The OASIS Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) TC has published a draft XACML XML DSig Profile specifying the use of the W3C XML-Signature Syntax and Processing Standard in providing authentication and integrity protection for XACML schema instances -- policies, authorization decision requests, and authorization decision responses. The draft profile attempts to be consistent with the SAML profile wherever possible. A normative section of the draft profile specifies guidelines for the construction of XACML schema instances that are to be signed. These guidelines apply to XMLDSig digital signatures as well as to other digital signature formats. Another section describes the formats for an XMLDSig <Reference> element that references an XACML schema instance. The OASIS XACML TC has been chartered to "define a core schema and corresponding namespace for the expression of authorization policies in XML against objects that are themselves identified in XML." [Full context]
[March 28, 2003] OpenOffice.org Releases Version 1.1 Beta for Open Source Office Productivity Suite. The OpenOffice.org Project has announced the immediate availability of its version 1.1 Beta. This release incorporates many new features and changes introduced with the developer builds over the past year. New functionality includes: (1) additional import/export formats like PDF, Macromedia Flash, DocBook, several PDA Office file formats, flat XML and XHTML; (2) support for Complex Text Layout (CTL) and vertical writing languages, such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew; (3) enhanced integration with Java, with up to 10 times better performance; (4) support for Accessibility throughout the entire suite; (5) support for add-on components; (6) initial support for recovering damaged OOo files; (6) support for a new data source type [MySQL]; (7) improved online help. OpenOffice.org is "an open source, community-developed office productivity suite. It includes key desktop applications such as word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing programs. An open source version of StarOffice, OpenOffice.org is a multi-platform suite and runs on the Solaris Operating Environment, Microsoft Windows, and the Linux platforms. It works with a variety of file formats, including Microsoft Office. Available at no cost, this open source productivity software is ideal for small businesses, schools, or any organization that runs mixed operating systems." [Full context]
[March 25, 2003] NIST HumanID Evaluation Framework Uses XML for Biometrics. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced the published results of vendor test of facial recognition technology. The NIST HumanID Evaluation Framework (HEF), constitutes "an effort to design, implement, and deploy standards for the robust and complete documentation of the biometric system evaluation process. It incorporates an attempt to leverage contemporary technologies, specifically XML, for the formal description of such tests. The HEF was used to facilitate the administration of the 2002 Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT 2002). HEF defines a suite of XML-based markup formalisms for the inputs to, and outputs of, recognition systems. Unlike the XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF), the focus of the HEF is the evaluation of biometric systems, and not the biometric information itself. The HEF is designed to facilitate off-line, black-box empirical testing. A recognition engine takes two sets of biometric signatures, the enrolled and the unknown test samples, and produces some form of identification data. Currently, the HEF assumes that this output data is a collection of scores, with each score indicating the similarity between a pair of signatures. The primary objective of FRVT 2002 was to provide performance measures for assessing the capability of automatic face recognition systems to meet real-world scenarios -- verification of identity, identification of an unknown individual, and detection of an individual on a watch list." HEF XML Schemas defining formats for describing identification, verification, and watchlist scenarios have been developed and are being made public. [Full context]
[March 25, 2003] W3C Publishes Recommendations for the XML Pointer Language (XPointer). Three specifications from the W3C XML Linking Working Group have been released as W3C Recommendations, signifying public review and approval by W3C as stable, normative documents designed to enhance the functionality and interoperability of the Web. XPointer Framework, XPointer element() Scheme, and XPointer xmlns() Scheme are "intended to address a core subset of the original XPointer requirements, and to serve as all or a foundational part of a fragment identifier syntax for the XML Media types." The XPointer Framework specification "defines the XML Pointer Language (XPointer) Framework, an extensible system for XML addressing that underlies additional XPointer scheme specifications. The framework is intended to be used as a basis for fragment identifiers for any resource whose Internet media type is one of text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, or application/xml-external-parsed-entity. Other XML-based media types are also encouraged to use this framework in defining their own fragment identifier languages. The XPointer element() scheme is intended to be used with the XPointer Framework to allow basic addressing of XML elements. The XPointer xmlns() scheme is intended to be used with the XPointer Framework to allow correct interpretation of namespace prefixes in pointers, for instance, namespace-qualified scheme names and namespace-qualified element or attribute names appearing within scheme data." The XPointer xpointer() Scheme specification is still a W3C Working Draft. [Full context]
[March 19, 2003] W3C Releases Proposed Royalty-Free Patent Policy for Review. The W3C has issued Patent Policy Working Group Royalty-Free Patent Policy as a W3C Proposed Policy and invites public comment through 30-April-2003. "The W3C Director's decision on the final policy, which takes into account the full range of feedback, is expected in May 2003." The W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy "governs the handling of patents in the process of producing Web standards. The goal of this policy is to assure that Recommendations produced under this policy can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. The Patent Policy Working Group (PPWG) is part of the W3C Technology and Society Domain; its mission is to advise W3C on the means to address the growing challenge that patent claims pose to the development of open standards for the Web." Paraphrasing the key terms of the Proposed Policy: those participating in the development of a W3C Recommendation must agree to license essential claims (viz., patents that block interoperability) on a royalty-free (RF) basis. WG participants may exclude specifically identified patent claims from the Royalty-Free commitment; these exclusions are required shortly after publication of the first public Working Draft, reducing the likelihood that surprise patents will jeopardize collective Working Group efforts. Patent disclosures regarding essential patents are required from W3C Members and requested of anyone else. Patent claims not available with terms consistent with the W3C Patent Policy will be handled by a dispute resolution process. [Full context]
[March 18, 2003] DMTF Publishes Three Final XML Specifications for Web-Based Enterprise Management. The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) has published 'final status' versions of three WBEM Specifications. Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments. The Common Information Model (CIM) is an object-oriented information model defined by the DMTF which provides a conceptual framework for describing management data. Specification for the Representation of CIM in XML, Specification for CIM Operations over HTTP, and CIM XML Document Type Definition represent the core set of standards defining the WBEM infrastructure. "These standards describe the encoding of the Common Information Model (CIM) using XML (xmlCIM), and define operations and the transport mechanism for the encoded data (CIM Operations over HTTP). CIM is defined by a Specification, which describes its basic modeling concepts and meta-schema design, as well as the Managed Object Format (MOF) language in which it is rendered; and a Schema, which defines the semantics for a wide range of managed objects and relationships between them. CIM serves as the data model for the WBEM Specifications, and enables applications to manage a networked environment end-to-end." [Full context]
[March 17, 2003] BEA Releases Web Services Specifications Supporting Asynchrony, Reliable Messaging, Metadata. A communiqué from David Orchard describes the release of three Web Services specifications from BEA Systems. WS-Acknowledgement, WS-Callback, and WS-MessageData have been issued as royalty-free specifications supporting asynchrony, reliable messaging, and general message data. These specifications and others are now supported in BEA Systems' flagship product, WebLogic 8.1. The Web Service Acknowledgement Protocol "is designed to support reliable message exchange between services by providing for at-least-once and exactly-once SOAP message transfer guarantees." The WS-CallBack Protocol "consists of the CallBack SOAP header and an associated WSDL definition; WS-CallBack is used to dynamically specify where to send asynchronous responses to a SOAP request. To enable the re-use of meta-data about a message across SOAP extensions, Web Services Message Data (WS-MessageData) introduces the MessageData header. As new types of message meta-data are standardized it is hoped that they will be placed inside of the MessageData header so as to more easily enable re-use. The WS-MessageData specification also introduces two specific types of message meta-data, MessageId and RefToMessageId. MessageID is used to provide a Message ID, a URI that uniquely identifies a particular message. RefToMessageId allows one message to identify another message it is associated with by providing the associated message's Message ID. The BEA specifications are intended to provide input to the larger Web services community as it moves towards open and royalty free standard for asynchrony, reliable messaging, security, and transactions." [Full context]
[March 14, 2003] NISO Releases Proposed OpenURL Metadata and Linking Standard. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released a review draft of The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, Part 1: ContextObject and Transport Mechanisms. The specification "defines the general framework to bundle specific packages of contextual metadata and transport them over the network." Public comment on the draft is invited. The NISO Standards Committee AX anticipates that this document will be officially designated for a trial use period on April 15, 2003. NISO Draft Standards released as Draft Standards for Trial Use allow implementers to test the standard; at the end of the trial period (sometimes 12-18 months) the standard may be balloted, revised or withdrawn. Part 2 of the OpenURL specification Initial Registry Content is also planned for immediate release. Part 2 "details the core properties that can be used in actual instantiations of the general framework. It can be used by some communities to implement an instantiation of the OpenURL Framework; other communities may use this Part as a guideline for the definition and implementation of other instantiations." [Full context]
[March 13, 2003] New Web Services Specifications for Reliable Messaging and Addressing. Two new specifications have been published as part of the Global XML Web Services Architecture (GXA) platform being developed by Microsoft, IBM, and others. The Web Services Reliable Messaging Protocol (WS-ReliableMessaging) specification from BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and TIBCO "allows messages to be delivered reliably between distributed applications in the presence of software component, system, or network failures. The primary goal of this specification is to create a modular mechanism for reliable message delivery. It defines a messaging protocol to identify, track, and manage the reliable delivery of messages between exactly two parties, a source and a destination. It also defines a SOAP binding which is required for interoperability. Additional bindings may be defined. This mechanism is extensible allowing additional functionality, such as security, to be tightly integrated. This specification integrates with and compliments the WS-Security, WS-Policy, and other Web services specifications. Combined, these allow for a broad range of reliable, secure messaging options." The Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing) specification from BEA, IBM, and Microsoft defines "provides transport-neutral mechanisms to address Web services and messages. Specifically, this specification defines XML elements to identify Web service endpoints and to secure end-to-end endpoint identification in messages. This specification enables messaging systems to support message transmission through networks that include processing nodes such as endpoint managers, firewalls, and gateways in a transport-neutral manner." [Full context]
[March 10, 2003] Draft Requirements Document on Topic Maps Published Subjects. A posting from Bernard Vatant (Chair, OASIS Topic Maps Published Subjects TC) announces the publication of a final review working draft for Published Subjects: Introduction and Basic Requirements. The document provides an introduction to Published Subjects and specifies requirements and recommendations for publishers of PSI sets. The TC welcomes all relevant and knowledgeable comments from domain experts in information technology areas impacted by the requirements draft, viz., experts in RDF, Semantic Web, Controlled Vocabularies, and Ontologies; also Librarians, Taxonomists, and others who manage the legacy that is likely to provide the main source of Published Subjects. Published Subjects as defined in the draft Specification "provide an open, scaleable, URI-based method of identifying subjects of discourse. They cater for the needs of both humans and applications, and they provide mechanisms for ensuring confidence and trust on the part of users. Published Subjects are therefore expected to be of particular interest to publishers and users of ontologies, taxonomies, classifications, thesauri, registries, catalogues, and directories, and for applications (including agents) that capture, collate or aggregate information and knowledge." The OASIS Topic Maps Published Subjects Technical Committee has been chartered "to promote Topic Maps interoperability through the use of Published Subjects. A further goal is to promote interoperability between Topic Maps and other technologies that make explicit use of abstract representations of subjects, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), DAML+OIL, and the Web Ontology Language (OWL)." [Full context]
[March 10, 2003] Microsoft Ships Beta 2 Version of Microsoft Office System. Microsoft has announced the worldwide distribution of some 500,000 copies of Microsoft Office System Beta 2 to customers and partners. Final versions of the product are planned for release in Summer 2003. The Microsoft Office System is described as "a set of programs, servers, and services designed to better connect people with each other and their organizations, information and business processes, to transform information into business impact." Key system components include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office FrontPage, Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft Office OneNote, Microsoft Office Publisher, and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. FrontPage is said to include the world's first WYSIWYG XSLT editor; InfoPath 2003 "streamlines the process of gathering information by allowing users to create and complete dynamic forms and submit them to the XML-enabled systems and business processes that need the information." The XML Software Development Kit (SDK) included in the Beta 2 package supports customized enterprise solutions based upon XML Web services. Intranet collaboration tools are supported by the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. [Full context]
[March 07, 2003] ISDA Publishes Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) Version 2.0. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has published a Version 2.0 Recommendation for Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) specification. FpML is an "XML-based, freely licensed, e-commerce standard supporting OTC trading of financial derivatives. As a business information exchange standard for electronic dealing and processing of financial derivatives instruments, FpML establishes the industry protocol for sharing information on, and dealing in, financial swaps, derivatives and structured products over the Internet. pML Version 2.0 extends interest rate product coverage to include interest rate options including swaptions, caps and floors, and extends the swap definition to include FX resetables, cancelables and early termination provisions. The Recommendation reflects consensus within FpML as represented by approval from the Standards Committee. The Standards Committee considers that the ideas and technology specified by a Recommendation are appropriate for widespread deployment and promote the mission of FpML. While the Recommendation for version 2.0 thoroughly covers interest rate derivatives, upcoming versions will focus on equity and credit derivatives, as well as messaging." The FpML Validation Working Group has also released a draft technical note for the FpML Validation Language Requirements. [Full context]
[March 06, 2003] Government Agencies Join Liberty Alliance to Support Digital Identity Standards. Liberty Alliance has announced support from two key U.S. government agencies that are looking to the open Liberty Alliance Project to address digital identity challenges. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) "have joined the Liberty Alliance in its pursuit to develop open and interoperable standards for electronically managing identity information. The GSA and DoD join other Liberty Alliance members from both the private and public sectors, representing various countries around the world. The global collaboration of government organizations, corporations and consumer interest groups will prove invaluable to helping solve the complex technical and business issues associated with network identity that the Liberty Alliance is currently working to address." [Full context]
[March 06, 2003] I3A Announces CPXe Interoperability Specifications and UDDI-Based Picture Services Network. The International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) has announced the availability of a suite of CPXe interoperability specifications and the creation of the Picture Services Network (PSN). Working in concert, the Common Picture eXchange Environment (CPXe) specifications and the PSN Directory Service will simplify for consumers and businesses the process of finding, accessing and using Internet-connected and retail photo services. CPXe is providing the industry with an extensible and open technology platform on which any imaging device can seamlessly exchange digital images and order and commerce information with any networked imaging application or service, regardless of manufacturer, service provider or geography. A private UDDI-based directory of photo services, the PSN Directory Service is the heart of the CPXe system architecture. As a subsidiary of I3A, the new not-for-profit membership corporation will autonomously manage and operate the Picture Services Network." The CPXe Initiative Group (Phase 2) was formed in July 2002 and is supported by Agfa-Gevaert N.V., Eastman Kodak Company, Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Company, Konica Corporation, Noritsu Koki Co. Ltd., Phogenix Imaging, Olympus America, Inc., Pixology Limited, Shutterfly, Inc., Silverwire, Inc. (formerly FotoWire), and Telepix Imaging. [Full context]
[March 04, 2003] UDDI Version 2 Specification Submitted for Approval as an OASIS Open Standard. On behalf of the OASIS UDDI Specifications Technical Committee, TC Co-Chairs Tom Bellwood and Luc Clément have submitted the UDDI v2 Committee Specifications for consideration as an OASIS Open Standard. UDDI v2 components include the UDDI Version 2 API Specification, Data Structure, XML Schema, Replication Specification, XML Replication Schema, XML Custody Schema, Operator's Specification, WSDL Service Interface Descriptions, and UDDI tModels. "Universal Description, Discovery and Integration, or UDDI, is the name of a group of web-based registries that expose information about a business or other entity and its technical interfaces (or APIs). These registries are run by multiple Operator Sites, and can be used by anyone who wants to make information available about one or more businesses or entities, as well as anyone that wants to find that information. There is no charge for using the basic services of these operator sites." [Full context]
[March 04, 2003] HR-XML Consortium Approves Specifications for Background Checks and Payroll Deductions. The HR-XML Consortium has introduced architectural changes in its human resource data exchange schemas and has announced the approval of two key specifications. All of the Consortium's XML schemas are now under a single namespace, making it easier for implementers to use the Cross-Process Objects outside of the HR-XML specifications. The "much-expanded 2.0 version of the HR-XML Consortium Background Checking specification improves upon the previous version of the specification by supporting the return of very detailed, discretely fielded search results. The types of screenings supported by the specification include criminal records, education, employment, military service, professional licenses, administrative/professional sanctions, and credit. The specification is extensible so that customized search types also can be supported. The newly approved HR-XML Consortium Payroll Instructions specification supports the submission of payroll deduction requests and other payroll change instructions to an organization that processes payrolls. The HR-XML Payroll Instructions specification is useful for handling deductions related to medical insurance, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, short and long term disability insurance, accident insurance, savings accounts such as 401(k), and employee stock purchase plans." [Full context]
[February 26, 2003] RosettaNet Software Interoperability Trials Test RNIF Connectivity Software. RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF) connectivity software from ten vendors was tested in recent RosettaNet Software Interoperability Trials. The successful completion of the trials is expected to accelerate "mass adoption of RosettaNet Standards through reduced time and costs. The trials are part of the RosettaNet Interoperability Program, which seeks to improve software and implementation interoperability within the RosettaNet trading network through collateral, education and testing activities. During the RosettaNet Software Interoperability Trials, each of the ten participating companies was required to successfully perform a suite of thirty-six (36) test scenarios with every other participant. The scenarios were created based on extensive feedback from current users of RosettaNet, and ranged from sending and receiving generic test RosettaNet Business Messages over HTTP, to adding incremental security layers, and supporting message attachments. In the self-testing phase of the trial, participants ran tests with the RosettaNet Ready self-test kit, an application that provides a reference model and tests required to measure compliance with RNIF and RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes (PIPs)." PIPs are specialized system-to-system XML-based dialogs which define business processes between trading partners; define the document exchange choreography and the XML schemas for the individual business documents involved. RosettaNet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council (UCC). [Full context]
[February 25, 2003] OASIS Technical Committee Addresses Management of Web Services. A new Web Services Distributed Management Technical Committee is being formed by OASIS members. This TC's goal, distinct from that of the Management Protocol TC, is to define web services management. The scope includes using web services architecture and technology to manage distributed resources. Working in alliance with the W3C, the TC will define explicit manageability for the components of the Web Services Architecture (WSA) as defined by the W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group. The new WSDM TC will also develop the model of a web service as a manageable resource. It will collaborate with various other standards groups, including the Distributed Management Task Force (especially with DMTF's technical work groups regarding relevant CIM Schema), and the Global Grid Forum (e.g., OGSA Common Resource Model and OGSI with respect to infrastructure). The WSDM TC will liaise with other OASIS TCs in security- and management-oriented areas. The TC co-chairs are Heather Kreger (IBM) and Winston Bumpus (Novell). The first meeting of the Web Services Distributed Management TC will be held 2-April-2003. [Full context]
[February 25, 2003] Microsoft Announces Windows Rights Management Services (RMS). Microsoft has announced its upcoming release of a Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) technology for Windows Server 2003 that "will work with applications to support a platform-based approach to providing persistent policy rights for Web content and sensitive corporate documents of all types." The RMS technology uses "tested and proven security technologies, including encryption, digital certificates, and authentication. Putting persistent protections in the documents themselves helps customers control and protect digital information both online and offline, inside and outside the perimeter of the firewall. Because Rights Management policy expressions can remain within files during and after transit, rather than residing on a corporate network, usage policies can be enforced even when rights-managed information leaves the network. Policies can be used to control forwarding, copying and printing, as well as establishing time-based expiration rules. Permissions can be set to expire at a specific point in time, such as a number of days after publishing or at regular intervals, requiring acquisition of a new license. Using Windows Rights Management Services, applications such as information portals, word processors, or e-mail clients can be built so that users will be able to easily designate both who can have access to specific content and what kinds of access rights they can have." RMS technology uses ContentGuard's XrML (Extensible Rights Markup Language). "Microsoft will release two software development kits in the second quarter of 2003 to enable developers to begin to build rights management capabilities into a broad range of intra-enterprise solutions and applications for Windows clients." [Full context]
[February 20, 2003] Altova Offers Free Software License for Authentic 5 Browser Enabled XML Document Editor. An announcement from Altova Inc. describes the public availability of Altova's XML document editor product AUTHENTIC 5 under a free software license. "AUTHENTIC 5 is a customizable, light-weight, and easy-to-use XML document editor, that allows business users to create and edit content through a web-enabled interface that resembles a word processor. AUTHENTIC 5 features full support for standard internet protocols and file transfer interfaces, including WebDAV, HTTP; a browser plug-in that enables a business user to access and edit XML content on the Web, spell checking capabilities in 14 languages including a medical & legal dictionary, real-time document validation, built-in templates for over 15 industry standard XML content formats including NewsML, NITF, DocBook, and many more. AUTHENTIC 5 can be used in conjunction with the leading XML content repositories, including Oracle XML DB, Microsoft CMS 2002 via the AUTHENTIC Content Management Server Placeholder Control Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Software AG Tamino Server, IXIASOFT TextML Server, Global XML GoXML DB, Lightspeed Interactive Astoria, X-Hive/DB, iLevel Software Insite Server, NeoCore XMS, and many others. AUTHENTIC 5 can also be easily deployed in custom XML editing applications as a custom control for ASP.NET." [Full context]
[February 19, 2003] XSL-FO Implementation in the Sun xmlroff XSL Formatter SourceForge Project. A communiqué from Eduardo Gutentag describes the release of the Sun xmlroff XSL formatter as a SourceForge project. The xmlroff XSL Formatter "is written in C and currently produces PDF output using the PDFlib library. It uses libxml2 and libxslt plus the GLib, GObject and Pango libraries that underlie GTK+ and GNOME, although it does not require either GTK+ or GNOME. xmlroff represents Sun's newest open source donation is an implementation of the W3C's Extensible Stylesheet Language specification, also known as the Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects specification (XSL-FO). Drawing on previous work in CSS2 and DSSSL and and other information formatting standards, XSL-FO defines a collection of page layout semantics in XML -- such as page numbering -- that makes it easier for data to be both easily navigable through Web-based readers, such as Web browsers or PDF readers, as well as cleanly read when printed. Sun's open source XSL-FO engine helps developers to create consistent formatting results for published data across an array of languages, which equals lower costs through reduced development time and minimized errors and is designed to support full internationalization. [Full context]
[February 18, 2003] Sun Microsystems Releases Open Source XACML Implementation for Access Control and Security. Sun Microsystems Laboratories has published an open source implementation of the OASIS Open Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) Standard. The implementation is written in the Java programming language and is available from SourceForge. XACML, recently approved as an OASIS Open standard, is "an XML-based language for access control that has been standardized in OASIS. XACML describes both an access control policy language and a request/response language. The policy language is used to express access control policies (who can do what when). The request/response language expresses queries about whether a particular access should be allowed (requests) and describes answers to those queries (responses). XACML contributes to the simplification and cost reduction of developing and deploying secure web services -- or any application that requires secure access control. The Sun project provides complete support for all the mandatory features of XACML as well as a number of optional features. Specifically, there is full support for parsing both policy and request/response documents, determining applicability of policies, and evaluating requests against policies. All of the standard attribute types, functions, and combining algorithms are supported, and there are APIs for adding new functionality as needed. There are also APIs for writing new retrieval mechanisms used for finding things like policies and attributes. The project was developed in Sun Microsystems Laboratories, part of Sun Microsystems, Inc., and is part of an ongoing project on Internet Authorization in the Internet Security Research Group." The project team welcomes additional involvement from developers. [Full context]
[February 17, 2003] W3C Publishes Working Draft Specifications for Full-Text Search. Members of the W3C XML Query Working Group and XSL Working Group have released two initial public working drafts for Full-Text Search. XQuery and XPath Full-Text Requirements and XQuery and XPath Full-Text Use Cases have been produced as part of the W3C XML Activity. "Full-Text Search" in this context involves "an extension to the XQuery/XPath language. It provides a way to query text which has been tokenized, i.e., broken into a sequence of words, units of punctuation, and spaces. Tokenization enables functions and operators whch work with the relative positioning of words (e.g., proximity operators). Tokenization also enables functions and operators which operate on a part or the root of the word (e.g., wildcards, stemming)." The Requirements document specifies (initially) that: XQuery/XPath Full-Text functions must operate on instances of the XQuery/XPath Data Model; Full Text need not be designed as an end-user UI language; while XQuery/XPath Full-Text may have more than one syntax binding, one query language syntax must be convenient for humans to read and write while XQuery/XPath Full-Text may have more than one syntax binding, one query language syntax must be expressed in XML in a way that reflects the underlying structure of the query; if XQuery/XPath Full-Text supports search within names of elements and attributes, then it must distinguish between element content and attribute values and names of elements and attributes in any search. The Use Cases document "illustrates important applications of full-text querying within an XML query language. Each use case exercises a specific functionality relevant to full-text querying; a Schema and sample input data are provided. The full-text queries in these use cases are performed on text which has been tokenized." The W3C working groups welcome public comments on the draft documents and open issues. [Full context]
[February 17, 2003] Education XML Technical Committee Formed at OASIS. OASIS has announced the formation of an Education XML Technical Committee to support eLearning standards for the international PK12 community, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. "The primary deliverables of the Education XML TC are the documentation of a coordinated set of PK12 requirements, which will enable the development of XML vocabularies, schema, and web services interfaces for implementation of eLearning infrastructure. These implementations will enable the PK12 community of practice to: (1) deliver eLearning applications and content to end users through a diversity of deployment channels; directly to a browser or mobile or handheld device, indirectly through a portal, or by embedding into web applications and devices; (2) create eLearning applications that can be easily modified, adapted, aggregated, integrated, coordinated, or synchronized by simple means to leverage worldwide eLearning application components." The TC Chair is Thomas Vreeland of OpenVES. [Full context]
[February 14, 2003] IMS Global Learning Consortium Releases Learning Design and Digital Repositories Specifications. Final Version 1.0 specifications for IMS Learning Design and IMS Digital Repositories have been published by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, together with XML schemas. The IMS Global Learning Consortium develops open specifications to facilitate online distributed learning activities such as locating and using educational content, tracking learner progress, reporting learner performance, and exchanging student records between administrative systems. IMS uses XML-Schemas as the primary control documents for the IMS specifications' XML bindings. The IMS Learning Design specification approved by the Technical Board in February 2003 supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies in online learning. Rather than attempting to capture the specifics of many pedagogies, it does this by providing a generic and flexible language; this language is designed to enable many different pedagogies to be expressed, exhibiting a good balance between generality and pedagogic expressiveness. The IMS Digital Repositories specification defines digital repositories as being any collection of resources that are accessible via a network without prior knowledge of the structure of the collection. Repositories may hold actual assets or the meta-data that describe assets. This specification is intended to utilize schemas already defined elsewhere (e.g., IMS Meta-Data and Content Packaging), rather than attempt to introduce any new schema." The Digital Repositories Specification includes a Core Functions Information Model, XML Binding Specification, and Best Practices & Implementation Guide. [Full context]
[February 13, 2003] OASIS Members Form Technical Committee for Web Services Reliable Messaging. OASIS has announced a new Web Services Reliable Messaging TC, formed with the goal of creating a generic and open model for ensuring reliable message delivery for Web services. "Reliable message delivery" in this context means the ability to guarantee message delivery to software applications, whether Web services or Web service client applications, with a chosen level of quality of service (QoS). The TC will address the following aspects of message delivery: "message persistence, message acknowledgement and resending, elimination of duplicate messages, ordered delivery of messages, and delivery status awareness for sender and receiver applications. The specification to be created will provide WSDL definitions for reliable messaging and the message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body content. The resulting specification must be programming language-neutral and platform-neutral. The TC hopes to establish: (1) a standard and interoperable way of achieving a known, acceptable, and defined level of reliability at the SOAP messaging level, and (2) a common vocabulary for describing reliable message exchange patterns. Key deliverables include a reliability requirements document (use cases for WS-RM in EAI, B2B, and wireless scenarios) and a WS-Reliability specification, including description of WS-Reliability bindings to transport protocol(s)." Technical specifications approved by the TC will be issued under royalty-free terms. [Full context]
[February 11, 2003] XACML 1.0 Specification Set Approved as an OASIS Standard. OASIS has announced the successful balloting and approval of the Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) a new OASIS Open Standard. Formal definitions for the XACML language are provided in XML Schema Definitions (a Policy Schema and a Context Schema ). Chaired by Carlisle Adams (Entrust) and Hal Lockhart (BEA Systems), the XACML TC has created an XML specification for expressing policies for information access over the Internet. XACML is designed to enable the expression of well-established ideas in the field of access-control policy. Such a common policy language, "if implemented throughout an enterprise, allows the enterprise to manage the enforcement of all the elements of its access control policy in all the components of its information systems. Managing an authorization policy may include some or all of the following steps: writing, reviewing, testing, approving, issuing, combining, analyzing, modifying, withdrawing, retrieving and enforcing policy." [Full context]
[February 10, 2003] Happy Birthday XML. We commemorate the progress of "markup" in modern times on two special days: October 15, 1986 marked the official publication of ISO 8879: Standard Generalized Markup Language, while February 10, 1998 saw the official publication of SGML's (hitherto) most successful profile, the W3C Recommendation Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0. Originally conceived as means of allowing "generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML," XML has expanded far beyond the boundaries of its original intent, coming to serve many purposes other than structured data interchange. Dave Hollander and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, participants in the W3C XML Working Group which produced the first W3C XML Recommendation, have written a "Happy Birthday, XML!" article which reflects upon the progress of the Extensible Markup Language . They conclude with a question that now occupies the mind of many: "So, now that XML is five, where do we go from here?" [Full context]
[February 06, 2003] OGC Announces OpenGIS Geography Markup Language Implementation Specification (GML 3). The Open GIS Consortium has released an approved version 3.0 for the OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) Implementation Specification. GML "is an XML grammar written in XML Schema for the modelling, transport, and storage of geographic information; it provides a variety of kinds of objects for describing geography including features, coordinate reference systems, geometry, topology, time, units of measure and generalized values. New additions in GML 3.0 include support for complex geometries, spatial and temporal reference systems, topology, units of measure, metadata, gridded data, and default styles for feature and coverage visualization. The GML 3.0 modular structure means that developers choosing to use GML can literally pick out the schemas or schema components that apply to their work. GML 3.0 also includes a sample packaging tool that creates a tailored schema containing only the required components from the GML core schemas. The normative parts of the specification use the W3C XML Schema language to describe the grammar of conformant GML data instances. The specification also uses the Recommended XML encoding of Coordinate Reference System definitions prepared by the CRS SIG of OGC. OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 240 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support interoperable solutions that 'geo-enable' the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT." [Full context]
[February 06, 2003] OAGI Releases Open Applications Group Integration Specification Version 8.1-Beta-1. The Open Applications Group (OAGI) has announced the public review phase for the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) Version 8.1-Beta-1, supporting additional interoperability points between business applications. Additional Logistics capabilities include ShipUnit, CarrierRoute, and the extension of Shipment to new processes. Version 8.1 incorporates refinements of the modeling of the business messages to identify common pieces. It makes full use of the ebXML CoreComponent Specifications and includes full support for the UN Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) version 1.90. On-line shopping capabilities have been added to the Cart family of BODs; new Financial Settlement model added to the Payment family of BODs allows organizations to make electronic payment of goods and/or services. The Beta distribution contains some 3953 files, including 430 BODs and 545 XML schema files. The Open Applications Group is a "non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and processes based on XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration." The principal notion in OAGIS is the BOD (Business Object Document), supporting a common horizontal message architecture. BODs are "the business messages or business documents that are exchanged between software applications or components; between companies; across supply chains; and between supply chains." [Full context]
[February 06, 2003] OASIS XML Common Biometric Format Moves Toward Standardization. A posting from Phillip H. Griffin (OASIS XCBF TC Chair) announces that the XML Common Biometric Format specification from the XML Common Biometric Format Technical Committee has been approved as an OASIS Committee Specification. The TC has also voted to begin the CS public comment period required for to move the specification forward toward approval as an OASIS Standard. The public review period extends from January 28, 2003 through February 28, 2003. The TC has invited comment from its external liaison affiliates and other expert bodies, including X9F, ISO TC68/SC2, INCITS T4, INCITS M1, ASN.1 Consortium, ASN.1 ITU-T list, and the Biometric Consortium. "Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. They are used to recognize the identity of an individual, or to verify a claimed identity. The XCBF specification defines cryptographic messages represented in XML markup for the secure collection, distribution, and processing, of biometric information. These messages provide the means of achieving data integrity, authentication of origin, and privacy of biometric data in XML based systems and applications. Mechanisms and techniques are described for the secure transmission, storage, and integrity and privacy protection of biometric data." [Full context]
[February 04, 2003] W3C Announces Creation of a New XForms Activity. A new XForms Activity has been created as part of the W3C Interaction Domain. The XForms Activity currently "hosts a single Working Group, and focuses on the development of W3C specifications for the next generation of Web forms. More flexible than previous HTML and XHTML form technologies, W3C XForms separate purpose, presentation, and data. The Activity is producing advanced forms logic, improved internationalization, and rich user interface capabilities. Whereas the current design of Web forms does not separate the purpose from the presentation of a form, XForms are comprised of separate sections that describe what the form does, and how the form looks. This allows for flexible presentation options, including classic XHTML forms, to be attached to an XML form definition." [Full context]
[February 03, 2003] ISO Working Group Publishes Committee Draft for DSDL Standard, Part 4. An ISO Committee Draft for Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) -- Part 4: Selection of Validation Candidates has been released by members of the ISO DSDL Project. The DSDL standard is being published as a multi-part specification; it "brings together multiple schema languages into a single framework that allows them to work together." The DSDL Validation Candidate Selection Language (VCSL) is an "XML-based language for controlling selection of validation candidates. DSDL allows specific parts of an XML document to be extracted and then validated; different schema languages and validators may be applied to different candidates. Descriptions in DSDL VCSL may be independent XML documents or they may be embedded in other XML documents. Specifically, when a DSDL framework is represtented by an XML document, it may reference to or contain descriptions in DSDL VCSL." DSDL Part 4 has been produced under the direction of project editor MURATA Makoto through within ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34/WG1 (Information Technology -- Document Description and Processing Languages -- Information Description). [Full context]
[January 31, 2003] OGC Working Group Issues Draft Specification for Sensor Model Language (SensorML). The Open GIS Consortium Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) Working Group has released a draft specification for Sensor Model Language (SensorML) for In-Situ and Remote Sensors, together with fifteen XML Schemas. SensorML "provides an XML schema for defining the geometric, dynamic, and observational characteristics of a sensor. Sensors are devices for the measurement of physical quantities. There are a great variety of sensor types from simple visual thermometers to complex electron microscopes and earth observing satellites... The standardization of a Sensor Model Language (SensorML) and the availability of SensorML documents for all Earth observing sensors will allow for significant opportunities for software systems to support the processing, analysis, and visual fusion of multiple sensors. SensorML does not provide a detailed description of the hardware design of a sensor but rather it is a general schema for describing a functional model of the sensor. The schema is designed such that it can be used to support the processing and geolocation of data from virtually any sensor, whether mobile or dynamic, in-situ or remotely sensed, or active or passive. This allows one to develop general, yet robust, software that can process and geolocate data from a wide variety of sensors ranging from simple to complex sensor systems. SensorML supports both rigorous sensor models and mathematical sensor models. A rigorous sensor model is defined here as one that describes the geometry and dynamics of the instrument and provides specialized with the ability to utilize this information along with position and orientation of the platform in order to derive geolocation of the sensor data. sensor models are typically derived using a rigorous model, perhaps augmented by human interaction. These mathematical models typically hide the characteristics of the sensor, and allow for geolocation of sensor data through the use of polynomial functions." [Full context]
[January 30, 2003] WS-I Publishes Supply Chain Management Candidate Review Drafts. The Web Services-Interoperability Organization (WS-I) has released a collection of Candidate Review Draft documents which "model a simple supply chain management application and serve to demonstrate all of the scenarios in the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 and how a Web services application might be designed, implemented and deployed to conform to the Basic Profile." The draft WS-I Basic Profile is designed as a set of non-proprietary Web services specifications along with clarifications which promote interoperability. The new documents include a Sample Application Supply Chain Management Architecture, Supply Chain Management Use Case Model, and WS-I Usage Scenarios. The "advancement of these documents to Candidate Review Drafts is an invitation to the Web services community to provide technical feedback. This second wave of deliverables from WS-I represents a significant milestone as it prepares to release the final version of the Basic Profile 1.0 in the second quarter of 2003. Availability [of the documents] will help define best practices for using the Basic Profile 1.0 and provide the real-world implementation guidance and support necessary for customers deploying Web services." Supporting resources for the Supply Chain Management Sample Application (source code, WSDL files, etc) are in preparation and will be posted to the WS-I website. [Full context]
[January 29, 2003] W3C Advances VoiceXML Version 2.0 to Candidate Recommendation Status. The W3C's Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version 2.0 specification has been released as a Candidate Recommendation, together with an explicit call for implementation. "VoiceXML is designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed initiative conversations. Its major goal is to bring the advantages of web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications." Comments on the CR specification are invited through 10-April-2003, when the VoiceXML specification is expected to enter the Proposed Recommendation phase. [Full context]
[January 27, 2003] UBL Technical Committee Releases First Draft of XML Schemas for Electronic Trade. A posting from Jon Bosak (UBL TC Chair) announces the publication of XML Schemas and related documentation for the Universal Business Language (UBL), released as the "first draft of a royalty-free data representation standard" for electronic business documents. "Intended to become international standards for electronic trade, the UBL schemas contained in the review package specify machine-readable XML representations of familiar business documents. The seven basic documents covered in this release include Order, Order Response, Simple Order Response, Order Cancellation, Despatch Advice, Receipt Advice, and Invoice. Together, they can be used to implement a generic buy/sell relationship or supply chain whose components fit existing trade agreements and are immediately understandable by workers in business, supply-chain management (SCM), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), accounting, customs, taxation, and shipping. These generic schemas are intended to work in a wide variety of business contexts through custom extensions. Automated context configuration will be addressed in a later phase of the effort. The schemas are also designed be used in their generic form in many ordinary business contexts without further modification." The OASIS UBL Library Content Subcommittee requests implementation feedback on these schemas based upon experimental prototypes; the comment period extends through April 14, 2003. [Full context]
[January 24, 2003] W3C Charters Timed-Text Working Group (TTWG). W3C has announced the creation of a new Timed Text Working Group (TTWG) as part of the Synchronized Multimedia Activity (SYMM). The mission of the Timed Text Working Group is to develop an XML based format used for the representation of streamable text synchronized with some other timed media, like audio and video. Working Group members envision that the Timed Text specification will cover "all necessary aspects of timed text on the Web. Typical applications of timed text are the real time subtitling of foreign-language movies on the Web, captioning for people lacking audio devices or having hearing impairments, karaoke, scrolling news items, or teleprompter applications. On the Web, there is no standard method for displaying text which is synchronized with other elements, such as video and audio. The three most popular multimedia players -- Apple's QuickTime Player, Microsoft's Windows Media Player and RealNetworks' RealPlayer -- support only their own proprietary text formats (QText, SAMI and RealText, respectively). As a result, multimedia authors must write synchronized text files in multiple formats if they wish to support more than one player. A standardized timed-text format would eliminate this duplication of work. It would also simplify the creation and distribution of synchronized text for use with a multitude of devices, both software and hardware, such as multimedia players, caption encoders and decoders (EIA-608, 708 and TeleText, for example), character generators, LED displays and other text-display devices." [Full context]
[January 23, 2003] Trang Multi-Format Schema Converter Supports DTD to W3C XML Schema Conversion. A posting from James Clark to the XML-DEV List announces a new release of Trang, Clark's Multi-Format Schema Converter based on RELAX NG. The conversion tool supports several schema languages for XML, including RELAX NG (XML syntax), RELAX NG compact syntax, XML 1.0 DTDs, W3C XML Schema. With one exception, Trang will convert between any of these formats (W3C XML Schema is supported for output only, not for input). "Trang is written in Java, and available under a BSD-style license. In this release, [Clark has] added an input module for DTDs based on his DTDinst program; this implies that Trang can now convert directly from DTDs to W3C XML Schema (XSD)." Clark identifies three unique features of Trang: "(1) it can reliably turn parameter entities into the higher-level semantic constructs available in XSD (simple types, groups, attribute groups) -- even in the presence of arbitrarily deep nesting of parameter entity references within parameter entity declarations; (2) it supports namespaces, including DTDs that mix multiple namespaces; (3) it can create good-quality, idiomatic XSD, which takes advantage of features such as substitution groups." [Full context]
[January 23, 2003] OASIS LegalXML Member Section Forms Lawful Intercept XML Technical Committee. A new Lawful Intercept XML Technical Committee has been formed within the OASIS LegalXML Member Section, supporting the activities of the seven existing LegalXML TCs. The TC is chartered to produce a structured, end-to-end LegalXML Lawful Interception Process framework consisting of XML standards and authentication mechanisms, including the development and harmonization of identifiable related XML standards and XML translations of ASN.1 modules, including proprietary ones made available in accordance with IPR policies. The TC members hope to "develop a universal global framework for supporting rapid discovery and sharing of suspected criminal and terrorist evidence by law enforcement agencies. The LI-XML Technical Committee was formed to meet critical needs emerging from several national and intergovernmental mandates around the world, including the recently passed United States Homeland Security Information Sharing Act of 2002, the new Lawful Intercept additional protocol of the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, and e-Government mandates in Europe and the United States." The TC Chair is Anthony M. Rutkowski (Verisign). [Full context]
[January 21, 2003] IFX Specification Version 1.4 Supports ATM, POS and Other Financial Channels. The IFX Forum has released version 1.4.0 of the Interactive Financial Exchange Business Message Specification, incorporating new features to support ATM, POS and other financial channels. The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) is a mature, well-designed XML-based, financial messaging protocol, built by financial industry and technology leaders incorporating decades of combined experience and best of breed design principles. IFX contains many messages that are required today and in the future for use at ATMs (e.g., deposit, withdrawal, balance inquiry, transfer, bill presentment, bill payment, valuable media service, terminal management and monitoring. The updated message specification brings more openness and flexibility to the ATM industry, allowing financial institutions to apply a common message standard to support not only multi-vendor ATM environments but also other delivery channels. The new version builds on IFX's multi-channel capabilities, such as enabling customers to deposit, withdraw and transfer funds, and allows financial institutions to exchange essential information with their customers, their service providers, and other financial institutions. IFX v1.5 is slated to include such functions as pre-paid phone recharge capabilities, person-to-person payments, POS transactions, and several check-related and money order purchase features." [Full context]
[January 21, 2003] SMS Forum Releases Review Draft for the Mobile Message Access Protocol Specification (MMAP). A communiqué from Kieran Dolan reports on the release of an initial public review draft for Mobile Message Access Protocol Specification (MMAP), produced by the SMS Forum XML Protocol Group. Mobile Messaging Access Protocol (MMAP) is a "SOAP protocol that provides a framework for web application access to mobile messaging services. It provides a mechanism whereby applications can initiate 'one-shot' requests or more complex peer sessions over SOAP and HTTP. MMAP provides support for service identification and billing and defines a standard way of supporting session-oriented communication. MMAP is a generic access protocol which now subsumes and extends the SMS Forum's original XML protocol specification, called SMAP. SMAP is now an application part of MMAP, providing a transport-independent set of XML primitives for handling Short Messages. SMAP provides XML operations for: (1) Submission of short messages to a short message centre; (2) delivery of short messages and delivery receipts to an application; (3) managment of messages after submission." XML Schemas for the MMAP Modules and SMAP modules are provided in section 9 of the specification. A pre-release draft of this new MMAP XML-based Message Protocol is available for download; the SMS working group requests feedback from application developers on this draft. [Full context]
[January 16, 2003] Sun ONE Identity Server 6.0 Supports Liberty Alliance and SAML Specifications. Sun Microsystems has announced general availability of the Sun ONE Identity Server 6.0, described as "the industry's first open-standards based network identity solution. It provides a standards-based implementation that leverages Java technology, Liberty Alliance federated identity, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), and other industry standards (Java Authentication and Authorization Service - JAAS, JDK Logging, SOAP, HTTP/HTTPS, XML DSIG). A key component of Sun's overall identity management solution, Sun ONE Identity Server is built on top of the Sun ONE Directory Server which provides a central repository for storing and managing identity profiles, access privileges, and application and network resource information. It leverages the consolidation capabilities of the Sun ONE Meta Directory which consolidates and integrates identity information spread throughout the computing environment into a single profile. Core services include access management, identity administration, federated authentication, and service management. A key capability of the Sun ONE Identity Server is the ability to federate identities, via either SAML or the Liberty Specification (Single Sign-On and Federation Protocol; Federation Termination Notification Protocol; Name Registration Protocol; Single Logout Protocol; Identity Provider [IDP] Introduction Protocol), both internal and external to the organization's firewall." [Full context]
[January 14, 2003] W3C Creates Web Services Choreography Working Group. W3C has announced the creation of a Web Services Choreography Working Group as part of the W3C Web Services Activity. "Choreography describes linkages and usage patterns between Web services. The Working Group is chartered to create the definition of a choreography, language(s) for describing a choreography, as well as the rules for composition of, and interaction among, such choreographed Web services. The language(s) should build upon the foundation of the WSDL 1.2 (Web Service Description Language Version 1.2)." According to the published Charter, the Working Group will consider various input documents to refine the scope and factorization of the choreography space: Web Services Architecture and Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) 1.0 will be given formal consideration. The choreography specifications produced by the group are minimally to define behavior and language constructs for the following choreography concepts: (1) Composition features (recursive composition model, definition of the choreography's externally observable behavior, stateful choreographies, definition of the identity of an instance of an execution of a choreography, life-cycle management, message exchange interactions between Web services, behavior definitions, scoping rules, activities); (2) Associations (roles based on Web service use, linkages between Web services, references to Web services); (3) Message exchanges (conversations, correlations and their life cycle management, correlation relationships with choreography instances and state); (4) State Management (definition, manipulation, query capabilities). [Full context]
[January 14, 2003] W3C Publishes Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG as Recommendations. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the release of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification and Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic as W3C Recommendations. "SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes (e.g., paths consisting of straight lines and curves), images and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. The SVG 1.1 specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as a modularized language; the DTD is now divided up into smaller, more flexible functional building blocks that can be reassembled in different ways for different purposes. The Mobile SVG Profiles document defines two mobile profiles of SVG 1.1. The first profile, SVG Tiny, is defined to be suitable for cellphones; the second profile, SVG Basic, is suitable for PDAs." [Full context]
[January 10, 2003] OASIS Members Form Emergency Management Technical Committee. Affiliates of seven OASIS member companies (Blue292, Inc., E Team, Inc., SunGard Planning Solutions, DMI-S, NC4, Wells Fargo N.A., Ship Analytics) have created a new Emergency Management Technical Committee to "advance the fields of incident preparedness and response in addition to emergency management." Blue292, Inc. intends to contribute a notification specification and form data collection specification to the technical committee at its first meeting for consideration as the basis for work. The TC members will "design, develop, and release XML Schema-based standards that begin to solve associated 'real-world' problems of data communication and technology interoperability. These standards will not only provide a framework for data exchange, but also for functionality and service accessibility, all with the common goal of seamless application and data interoperability. The TC's scope of activity is to include: unified incident identification; emergency GIS data accessibility and usage; notifications methods and messages; situational reporting; source tasking; asset and resources management; monitoring and data acquisition systems; staff, personnel and organizational management." The TC Chairs include Allen Wyke (Blue292, Chair) and Rick Carlton (E Team, Inc., Vice Chair). [Full context]
[January 10, 2003] W3C Working Draft Specification for XML Schema Component Designators. The W3C XML Schema Working Group has released an initial working draft for XML Schema: Component Designators. The specification defines a system for designating XML Schema components. The document addresses a range of problematic issues in the use of a QName to designate schema components as defined in the W3C XML Schema Recommendation. "The schema-as-a-whole schema component may represent the amalgamation of several distinct schema documents, or none at all. It may be associated with any number of target namespaces, including none at all. It may have been obtained for a particular schema assessment episode by deferencing URIs given in schemaLocation attributes, or by an association with the target namespace or by some other application-specific means. In short, there are substantial technical challenges to defining a reliable designator for the schema-as-a-whole, particularly if that designator is expected to serve as a starting point for the other components encompassed by that schema. The editors propose to divide the problem of constructing schema component designators into two parts: defining a designator for an assembled schema, and defining a designator for a schema component, understood relative to a designated schema." [Full context]
[January 09, 2003] Web Services Vendors Publish Royalty-Free WS-Reliability Specification. Six leading vendors have contributed to the working draft of a Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) specification designed to support reliable Web services messaging. WS-Reliability is a "specification for open, reliable Web services messaging including guaranteed delivery, duplicate message elimination and message ordering, enabling reliable communication between Web services. The reliability features are based on extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), rather than being tied to the underlying transport protocol. The specification will allow a variety of systems to interoperate reliably in a platform- and vendor-neutral manner. Following collaboration on the specification draft, the companies plan to submit WS-Reliability to a standards body on a royalty-free basis. Reliable message delivery means the ability to ensure delivery of a message with the desired level of quality of service. Some examples of this quality of service level for message delivery are: (1) Message sent at least once -- guaranteed delivery; (2) Message sent at most once -- guaranteed duplicate elimination; (3) Message sent exactly once -- guaranteed delivery and duplicate elimination." The specification has been produced by Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Sonic Software Corporation, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. [Full context]
[January 08, 2003] Xerox Announces Circus-DTE Programming Language for Document Transformation. An experimental programming language developed at the Xerox Research Centre of Europe in Grenoble, France has been released for testing. Circus-DTE is a "new, innovative programming language designed for document transformation processing. Circus-DTE natively supports XML (DTDs) and is particularly suited to data processing or the transformation of structured documents: it automatically validates the results produced so that input into another application is sure to function properly. XRCE scientists believe that Circus-DTE could be especially useful when there are multiple document transformations, such as document content processing, Internet publishing, publishing on handheld devices and database-to-XML conversions. For example, processing a customer order requires a series of transformations -- data must be input into applications that check inventory and availability, that prepare shipping documentation, that generate an invoice, that process payments and perhaps even publish to the Web so a customer can track progress online. Circus-DTE is a mixture of functional, imperative and declarative programming styles. It is a type-safe compiled language with an embedded interpreter for compile-time evaluation of testing clauses. Circus-DTE incorporates structural matching operators that operate on all types of data. Matching operations involve typechecked filters which are combined up to arbitrary complex levels. Circus-DTE also offers a Linda-like Coordination Memory. Such a model relies on a few basic synchronization primitives and an associative memory that together simplify complex synchronization schemes." The software is downloadable; it runs on Win32, Linux, or Solaris/SunOS platforms. [Full context]
[January 08, 2003] OASIS Forms Extensible Resource Identifier (XRI) Technical Committee. OASIS members have formed a new technical committee to establish a common identification scheme for distributed directory services. The Extensible Resource Identifier (XRI) Technical Committee purposes to create a URI scheme and a corresponding URN namespace for distributed directory services that enable the identification of resources (including people and organizations) and the sharing of data across domains, enterprises, and applications. XNS Public Trust Organization (XNSORG) will contribute the Extensible Name Service (XNS) specifications to the TC to serve as a basis for the OASIS committee work. The committee "will define a Uniform Resource Identifer (URI) scheme and a corresponding Uniform Resource (URN) namespace that meet these requirements, as well as basic mechanisms for resolving XRIs and exchanging data and metadata associated with XRI-identified resources." The TC Co-Chairs are Drummond Reed (OneName) and Gabe Wachob (Visa International). [Full context]
[January 06, 2003] Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Provides XML Interchange Format for Public Safety Reports. A draft version 0.6 of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) has been published by the CAP Techincal Working Group, including an XML Schema, data dictionary, and related documentation. The Common Alerting Protocol "is an open, non-proprietary standard data interchange format that can be used to collect all types of hazard warnings and reports locally, regionally and nationally, for input into a wide range of information-management and warning dissemination systems. The specification has been under development since 2001 through the efforts of an international ad-hoc Common Alerting Protocol Technical Working Group composed of technical and public safety experts. The developers have implemented the protocol in a number of prototype demonstrations. The chief benefits for public safety include (1) better coordination of warnings to the public across the wide range of available warning and notification systems; (2) reduction of workload on warning issuers, since a single warning message is compatible with all kinds of warning delivery systems; (3) enhanced situational awareness, since CAP will permit the aggregation of all kinds of warning messages from all sources for comparison and pattern recognition." [Full context]

Previous Stories from 2002

[December 31, 2002] Connexions Markup Language (CNXML) Used for Modular Instructional Materials. An interdisciplinary project at Rice University is developing the Connexions Markup Language (CNXML) as part of the Connexions Project. CNXML is "a lightweight XML markup language designed primarily for marking up educational content. The language is concerned with the structure and semantic content of the information and encourages separation of content and presentation. Connexions is an open-source educational technology project that enhances teaching and learning by (1) facilitating collaborative development of educational content in a broad range of disciplinary communities, (2) providing free access to distributed repositories of educational content and curricula, and (3) empowering diverse cultural communities to join in the development of knowledge. Two primary components of the Connexions system are a Content Commons repository of collaboratively developed material, and an open-source software toolset that allows users to exploit the materials in the repository for their needs. Connexions features a synergistic mix of both software and content, and our solutions involving community development, modularization, XML markup, editorial lenses, and intellectual property cater directly to the needs of the academic community. The Connexions Project is being developed in collaboation with MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative and with the Creative Commons Project. All Connexions software and tools will be open-source, available free-of-charge." [Full context]
[December 28, 2002] GEDCOM XML Specification Supports XML Encoding of Genealogical Data. A beta version of the GEDCOM XML Specification Release 6.0 has been published, including a chapter dedicated to the GEDCOM XML Document Type Definition. GEDCOM (Genealogical Data Communication) is widely considered the de facto standard for structured genealogical information, being designed "to provide a flexible, uniform format for exchanging computerized genealogical data." Having evolved over fifteen years, GEDCOM XML uses Unicode instead of the 8-bit ANSEL character set. It makes use of unidirectional (ID - IDREF) links that can be specified in only one way instead of the GEDCOM bidirectional linking mechanism. [Full context]
[December 26, 2002] NYSE Market Data Group and FISD Release VRXML Schema for Billing and Reporting. The version 1.0 specification for Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML) has been published on the VRXML website. The release includes an XML Schema, sample document, and UML diagrams for the VRML conceptual model. VRXML 'XML for Market Data Billing' is "an XML-based interchange format and common data dictionary on the fields needed for market data billing, reporting and inventory management. The initial draft was developed by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to improve the quality, timeliness, and efficiency of reporting information from vendors. The objective of VRXML is to define and normalize all of the data elements required throughout the billing and reporting information chain with the objective of enabling all segments to produce, transmit, receive, and process invoices and reports in a common XML format. FISD (Financial Information Services Division of the Software and Information Industry Association - SIIA) has now assumed ownership and maintenance of the specification and is actively exploring its extension to support the full range of industry requirements associated with billing and reporting. FISD members support the migration to an industry-wide XML reporting format and have confirmed their interest in using VRXML as a component of the overall billing and reporting initiative." [Full context]
[December 24, 2002] Open GIS Consortium Issues RFC for Web Coverage Service Implementation Specification. The Open GIS Consortium OGC) has published a Request for Comment on a proposal for technologies and needed interfaces required for OpenGIS Web Coverage Service (WCS) Implementation Specification. The specification document "explains how WCS serves to describe, request, and deliver multi-dimensional coverage data over the World Wide Web. WCS emphasizes 'simple' coverages (defined on some regular, rectangular grid or tesselation of space) and anticipates other coverage types defined in the OpenGIS Abstract Specification. This includes pixel and point grids, including aerial and satellite images and digital terrain models. Web Coverage Service provides access to intact (unrendered) geospatial information, as needed for client-side rendering, multi-valued coverages, and input into scientific models for advanced rendering and visualization clients." [Full context]
[December 20, 2002] US Library of Congress Releases Encoded Archival Description DTD Version 2002. A posting from Randall K. Barry (U.S. Library of Congress) announces the release of the EAD DTD Version 2002. The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard is used by digital libraries to create machine-readable finding aids. Archival finding aids are "descriptive bibliography or metadata tools which take the form of inventories, registers, indexes, guides, and similar resources created by museums, libraries, repositories, and other kinds of archives." The Version 2002 EAD DTD "is designed to function as both an SGML and XML DTD. It conforms to SGML/XML specifications and has been thoroughly tested using a wide variety of existing SGML/XML software. To be used as an XML DTD, 'switches' have been included in the DTD for turning off features used only in SGML applications, and turning on features used in XML applications." Complete documentation for use of the EAD DTD is provided in the form of a Tag Library. The EAD DTD Version 2002 has been prepared by the Encoded Archival Description Working Group of the Society of American Archivists and the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress. The MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) acts as the maintenance agency for the EAD standard. At least 75 institutions are registered as users of the EAD DTD. [Full context]
[December 19, 2002] UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical Specification Approved for Implementation Verification. The UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodology Group (TMG) recently approved the version 1.90 UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Components Technical Specification for Step 6 'Implementation Verification' as defined in the UN/CEFACT/TRADE/22 Open Development Process for Technical Specifications. The Step 6 verification review period "is the most critical part of the development process as problems and issues are identified; the editing group collects the problems and issues identified from the implementors in order to further refine and improve the specification." According to a posting from Mark Crawford, Editor of the UN/CEFACT Core Components specification, "the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL), OAG, EAN-UCC, SWIFT, UN/CEFACT, ANSI ASC X12, and a host of other standards organizations are already using this new [Core Components] approach as the basis for building interoperable XML business standards; the Department of the Navy has included aspects of this specification in its XML Developers Guide, and it is referenced in the Federal XML Developers Guide as well." CCTS addresses the "lack of information interoperability between applications in the e-business arena. Traditionally, standards for the exchange of business data have been focused on static message definitions that have not enabled a sufficient degree of interoperability or flexibility. CCTS seeks to define a flexible and interoperable way of standardizing Business Semantics. The UN/CEFACT ebXML Core Component solution described in the CCTS specification presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies." [Full context]
[December 18, 2002] Microsoft and IBM Publish Six New Web Services Security and Policy Specifications. Six new Web services specifications "aimed at advancing security capabilities and streamlining business policy for organizations implementing Web services" have been published by Microsoft and IBM, together with authorship contributions from BEA, RSA, and SAP. This second wave of security and policy specifications includes WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Policy, WS-PolicyAttachment, and WS-PolicyAssertions. "Using broadly accepted standards and specifications around Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), security, transactions and discovery, the new specifications represent the next step in delivering a comprehensive model of advanced Web services capabilities that integrate currently available technologies with the evolving requirements of emerging applications. IBM, Microsoft and industry partners are now delivering against a previously announced road map with six new specifications. Providing a framework that is extensible and flexible and maximizes existing investments in a Web services infrastructure, these new specifications make it easier to apply business policy and implement security for a wider range of applications." [Full context]
[December 17, 2002] W3C Publishes User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as a Recommendation. W3C has announced the release of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 specification as a Recommendation, together with a companion document Techniques for User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Written mainly for software developers, UAAG 1.0 "addresses requirements such as accessibility of the user interface, rendering of accessibility information, and user choice in configuring browsers and media players. These guidelines also address interoperability of mainstream browsers and multimedia players with assistive technologies used by people with disabilities. UAAG 1.0 is third in a complementary set of Web accessibility guidelines which already include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) and the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG 1.0). All three guidelines (UAAG, WCAG, ATAG) have been developed by W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Over the past five years WAI has become recognized as the leading international authority on Web accessibility, addressing accessibility issues for users with visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, and neurological disabilities through device-independent, multimodal design. Together these three WAI guidelines help Web developers deliver on the promise of a universal Web that is accessible to all. UAAG 1.0 addresses a variety of user agent types including HTML and XHTML browsers, multimedia players, graphics viewers, and assistive technologies. Software that conforms to UAAG 1.0 is expected to be more flexible, manageable, extensible, and beneficial to all users." [Full context]
[December 17, 2002] US National Coffee Association Creates XML Schemas for Global Trade. In the interest of paperwork reduction, support of innovative trading relationships, and expeditious delivery of fresh coffee, the National Coffee Association of America has created XML Traffic Documents for the global coffee industry. In cooperation with ExImWare, Inc., NCA has developed "a set of XML formatted e-commerce documents for the Association's four coffee industry Standard Traffic Documents (Shipping Advice, Sample Order, Delivery Order and Invoice). In December 2001, NCA conducted a market survey that explored coffee industry's perception of where greater adoption of Internet technologies may benefit the trade; subsequently, supported by industry sponsorship, NCA has developed the draft coffee industry standard XML documents." NCA will present the XML Schemas to the trade in a January 2003 seminar. NCA anticipates that the use of coffee industry standard XML documents will promote more productive ways of generating and exchanging contract and traffic documents with suppliers and customers. [Full context]
[December 16, 2002] Creative Commons Project Offers RDF-Based Licenses for Rights Expression. The Creative Commons Project has announced its first official product in the form of machine-readable copyright licenses which support a distributable, royalty-free, legally clear, XML-based mechanism for digital rights expression. Creative Commons licenses "allow copyright holders to easily inform others that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions. The licenses cover several kinds of creative works, including websites, published scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, and courseware. Fundamental legal concepts that inspire Creative Commons are documented on the project website: the public domain, the commons, open content, and intellectual property conservancies. Creative Commons is working to provide simple RDF descriptions of its licenses. These descriptions will put the important points of the license in a way that makes it easy for machines to process and work from. Unlike Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which tries to restrict use of digital works, Creative Commons is providing ways to encourage permitted sharing and reuse of works." Users of the system select from a list of licenses or public domain dedications and receive support to express these declarations in three formats: "(1) a Commons Deed is a simple, plain-language summary of the license, with corresponding icons; (2) the Legal Code incorporates the fine print needed to fine-tune the copyright statements; (3) the Digital Code consists of a machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify the work by its terms of use." [Full context]
[December 11, 2002] Sun Microsystems Contributes OpenOffice.org XML File Format Specification to TC. A posting from Michael Brauer to the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee mailing list contains the OpenOffice.org XML file format specification and DTD files that Sun Microsystems, Inc. will contribute to the OASIS TC. The contribution will be discussed at the TC's first meeting on December 16, 2002. The XML specification consists of a 571-page OpenOffice.org XML File Format - Technical Reference Manual and 22 modularized XML DTD files. The design goal in the OpenOffice.org XML file format was to have a complete specification encompassing all OpenOffice.org components and to provide an open standard for office documents. The single XML format applies to a wide range of document types created by office tools. The specification is being made available to OASIS under a reciprocal Royalty-Free License, as explained in the communiqué. [Full context]
[December 10, 2002] Workflow Management Coalition Publishes XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) Version 1.0. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has announced the release of its Workflow Standard XML Process Definition Language - XPDL 1.0. "Together with other WfMC standards, XPDL provides a framework for implementing business process management and workflow engines, and for designing, analyzing, and exchanging business processes. XPDL is the culmination of a fifteen-month effort by multiple vendors and users to provide a standard that satisfies the needs of diverse organizations. One of the key elements of the XPDL is its extensibility to handle information used by a variety of different tools. Based upon a limited number of entities that describe a workflow process definition ('Minimum Meta Model'), XPDL thus supports a number of differing approaches. The specification is intended for use by software vendors, system integrators, consultants and any other individual or organization concerned with the design, implementation, and analysis of business process management systems as well as with interoperability among workflow systems." [Full context]
[December 10, 2002] XML Encryption and Decryption Specifications Published as W3C Recommendations. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the publication of XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform for XML Signature as W3C Recommendations, signifying a "cross-industry agreement on an XML-based approach for securing XML data in a document. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption." The Encryption document "specifies a process for encrypting data and representing the result in XML. The data may be arbitrary data (including an XML document), an XML element, or XML element content. The result of encrypting data is an XML Encryption element which contains or references the cipher data." The Decryption Recommendation "specifies an XML Signature 'decryption transform' that enables XML Signature applications to distinguish between those XML Encryption structures that were encrypted before signing (and must not be decrypted) and those that were encrypted after signing (and must be decrypted) for the signature to validate." [Full context]
[December 09, 2002] COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee Adopts LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Specifications. A posting of 2002-12-08 from John M. Greacen to the OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC announces that the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee on 2002-12-05 adopted the TC's Electronic Court Filing Query and Response Standard and Electronic Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard XML specifications as Proposed Standards for public comment and experimental use. The LegalXML TC's proposed specifications are vetted through the US National Consortium for State Court Automation Standards, a subcommittee of the Joint Technology Committee of the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) and National Association for Court Management (NACM). The National Consortium further vets the Technical Committee's recommendations through a 'Joint Standards Development (JSD) Team' comprised of representatives of state and local courts and private sector service providers interested in and knowledgeable about electronic court filing." The draft Electronic Court Filing 1.1 Proposed Standard provides an XML DTD required for Court Filing, updated in light of agreements specified in 'Principles of XML Development for Justice and Public Safety.' The Electronic Court Filing Query and Response Standard "describes the metadata that would be required for electronic retrieval of information available from a court that complies with this standard and to detail the structure that information would have. It also supplies a set of standard queries that it highly recommends courts support to facilitate electronic filing." [Full context]
[December 04, 2002] OASIS Announces Formation of e-Gov Technical Committee. OASIS announced that an e-Gov Technical Committee has been created, "providing an international forum for governments to voice their needs and requirements with respect to XML-based standards." The TC Chair will be John Borras (Assistant Director Interoperability and Infrastructure, Office of the e-Envoy, Cabinet Office, UK). "Bringing together government representatives from around the world, the OASIS e-Gov Technical Committee will support the modernization of government and assist in the electronic delivery of services to citizens and businesses through the coordination and adoption of XML standards. The OASIS e-Gov Technical Committee will identify and organize plans for the development of new standards. Their recommendations and requirements will be formally submitted to appropriate working groups within OASIS. New technical committees may be formed for needs that are not currently being addressed. Resources created through the TC will serve as a clearinghouse of information related to applicable specs/standards as well as activities and projects being conducted by Governments in the adoption of XML-based systems and standards." [Full context]
[December 03, 2002] IBM WebSphere Voice Application Access Supports VoiceXML. IBM has announced the WebSphere Voice Application Access middleware product designed to simplify "building and managing voice portals and to more easily extend web-based portals to voice. Leveraging the scalability, personalization, and authentication features of IBM's WebSphere Portal, it enables mobile workers to more easily access information from multiple voice applications -- using a single telephone number. This new offering includes IBM's WebSphere Voice Server as well as ready-to-use email, personal information management (PIM) functions, and sample portlets. It also supports VoiceXML and Java -- including development tools based on Eclipse, the open-source, vendor-neutral platform for writing software -- and uses open-standard programming languages to create voice-enabled applications that will interoperate with a range of web servers and databases. Building on the VoiceXML standards allows IBM WebSphere Voice Application Access to work with third party browsers and their associated underlying speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies. As the VoiceXML 2.0 specification nears final approval, IBM WebSphere Voice Application Access will move quickly to support it." [Full context]
[December 03, 2002] ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement 2.0 Approved as OASIS Open Standard. OASIS announced that its members have voted to approve the ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement (CPPA) Version 2.0 as an OASIS Open Standard. TC Chair Dale Moberg (Cyclone Commerce) said: "ebXML CPPA ensures interoperability between two parties, even organizations that use software from different sources. The CPP defines a party's message-exchange capabilities and the business collaborations that it supports. The CPA defines the way two business parties will interact in performing the chosen business collaborations." According to Brian Gibb (Sterling Commerce) the specification "addresses a major issue with the rapid deployment of Internet B2B e-commerce -- the absence of a standard definition of technical parameters for communication and security that business partners need to agree upon. Representing these configuration parameters in the standard format of the ebXML CPPA specification will greatly accelerate users' integration processes. In addition to this immediate value, version 2.0 of the specification sets the stage for the standardized CPA negotiation process to come." The OASIS technical commmittee was chartered to continue the work of ebXML on Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPPs) and Collaboration Protocol Agreements (CPAs). [Full context]
[December 03, 2002] Last Call Working Draft for W3C Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML). The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the "Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.0." This specification describes markup for generating synthetic speech via a speech synthesizer, and forms part of the proposals for the W3C Speech Interface Framework. The Voice Browser Working Group has sought to develop standards to enable access to the Web using spoken interaction. The Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification is part of this set of new markup specifications for voice browsers, and is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications. The essential role of the SSML markup language is to provide authors of synthesizable content a standard way to control aspects of speech such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate, etc. across different synthesis-capable platforms. SSML is based upon the JSGF and/or JSML specifications, which are owned by Sun Microsystems, Inc.; a related initiative to estabilish a standard system for marking up text input is SABLE." An informative Appendix B provides the XML DTD for SSML; the normative Appendix C defines the SSML XML Schema. [Full context]
[November 27, 2002] Aries Systems Proposes Submission and Manuscript Exchange Format (SMXF) for STM Publishing. Aries Systems Corporation has announced a new initiative that would "formulate a publishing industry standard to support the exchange of scientific manuscripts between differing online manuscript tracking systems." The proposal calls for the creation of an XML-based, system-neutral standard for the exchange of manuscript metadata and content. The Submission and Manuscript Exchange Format (SMXF) would support the needs of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) journals publishers who "have identified that the Internet provides an excellent medium for the submission and tracking of scientific manuscripts. The broad adoption of such a standard would provide key benefits to STM publishers; for example, a journal would be able to download SMXF data from one conforming system, and upload it into another, thereby ensuring continuity of service and data security. The SMXF standard could also be used to build functionality, enabling cooperating journals to share in-process manuscripts even if they use systems from different vendors." The developers envision that SMXF standard would "build on top of existing XML initiatives such as PRISM and the Dublin Core by making additional provisions for in-process manuscript data such as reviewer commentary, status terms, and editor decision letters." [Full context]
[November 26, 2002] New OASIS Translation Web Services Technical Committee. OASIS has issued a Call for Participation in a new Translation Web Services Technical Committee. The purpose of the Translation Web Services TC is "to define industry standard business process terminology which will then drive the development of an industry standard WSDL file and UDDI business service entries. The TC will define the service types that are relevent to the software/content localisation and translation industry. These will be defined and published within a specification with a public call for comment. A key objective of the Translation Web Services TC will be to establish a set of business process terminology that the software/content localisation and translation industries shall find to be comprehensive and complete. For example it is possible that a publisher would like a document translated and wants to use Web Services to achieve this. One vendor could use the text 'translation' for the translation task, another might use 'trans' another 'trns'. The TWS business process terminology specification will ensure that when a publisher submits a document to be translated they use one set of terminology that is universally understood by all vendors providing the service." The TC Chair is Peter Reynolds (Bowne Global Solutions). The first meeting of the TC is January 16, 2003. [Full context]
[November 26, 2002] W3C Announces New Generation of Markup Validator Tool. A new version of the W3C Markup Validator tool has been released, available as source code and through an online forms-based interface. Maintained by members of the W3C QA Activity Team and external collaborators, the Markup Validator is a free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. The forms allow one to enter a URI or to upload files from a local computer and have the documents validated. When using the simple form, the validator attempts to detect the document type and encoding automatically; the advanced interface allows one to specify the document type and encoding. The enhanced Markup Validator tool has improved and more accessible interfaces, support for more document types, better internationalization support, restructured code and design, and other features. Noteworthy changes and additions include: (1) Support for MathML is back in good shape; (2) Support for application/xhtml+xml; (3) Support for XHTML+MathML and XHTML+MathML+SVG; (4) Support for SVG and image/svg+xml; (5) Support for XHTML 1.0 Second Edition and XHTML 1.1. [Full context]
[November 26, 2002] Entrust Contributes Digital Signature Protocol Specifications to OASIS DSS TC. A posting from Robert Zuccherato (Entrust) to the OASIS DSS TC list announces the contribution of three technical specifications from Entrust germane to the work of the OASIS Digital Signature Services Technical Committee. An X-KISS Extension for Digital Signature Verification defines an extension to the XKMS X-KISS protocol that supports the verification of digital signatures. The document Digital Signature Web Service Interface "describes an RPC interface for a centralized digital signature web service that enforces policy controls on who can request signatures for specific transactions. The signature is calculated using a private key owned by the web service for the purpose of producing an 'organization' signature. Thus, anyone within the organization authorized to obtain an 'organization' signature can obtain it simply by request to the web service." A third document Tokens and Protocol for the Temporal Integrity Markup Language (TIML) "defines an XML schema for a timestamping protocol. Its schema is based upon the RFC 3161 ASN.1 timestamping protocol, but uses the XML Signature standard for signature formatting." These three protocols developed at Entrust are believed to meet the requirements for three particular deliverables sketched in the TC's provisional Statement of Purpose. [Full context]
[November 26, 2002] ZING Initiative Publishes Search/Retrieve Web Service (SRW) Version 1.0. A posting distributed on behalf of the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency announces the release of SRW and CQL Version 1.0 specifications. SRW (Search/Retrieve Web Service) protocol "aims to integrate access to various networked resources, and to promote interoperability between distributed databases, by providing a common utilization framework. SRW features both SOAP and URL-based access mechanisms to provide for a wide variety of possible clients ranging from Microsoft's .Net initiative to simple Javascript and XSLT transformations. It leverages the CQL query language which provides a powerful yet intuitive means to formulate searches. XCQL is the CQL query language expressed in an XML form, designed to be part of a SOAP structure; it encodes the structure of the CQL within 'searchClause' and 'triple' elements. The SRW protocol mandates the use of open and industry-supported standards XML and XML Schema, and where appropriate, XPath and SOAP. SRW has been developed by an international team, minimizing cross-language pitfalls and other potential internationalization problems. SRW defines a web service combining several Z39.50 features, most notably, the Search, Present, and Sort Services. Additional features/services may be added later or defined later as new web services. The SRW and CQL version 1.0 specifications will remain stable for a six- to nine-month implementation-experience period." [Full context]
[November 21, 2002] XMLA Advisory Council Announces XML for Analysis Specification Version 1.1. Hyperion, Microsoft Corp., and SAS have announced "a new release of the XML for Analysis (XMLA) specification. XML for Analysis Specification Version 1.1 provides an updated specification and API standard for vendors to access multidimensional databases as a Web service. XML for Analysis provides a set of XML Message Interfaces that use the industry standard Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to define the data access interaction between a client application and an analytical data provider (OLAP and data mining) working over the Internet. Version 1.1 is the first version of the XMLA specification to be created in conjunction with members of the XMLA Advisory Council, a standards group that was formed after Hyperion and Microsoft released XML for Analysis Specification Version 1.0 in 2001. The XMLA Advisory Council also announced that it has added seven new members. The new council members -- Crystal Decisions, INEA, MIS AG, MJM Consultant Corp., Panorama Software Systems, SAP AG and Silvon Software, Inc.-- bring additional analytics expertise to the group. Several member companies recently hosted an interoperability workshop in Vancouver, British Columbia (November 6-8, 2002) to demonstrate the new XMLA standard working on an open, integrating platform for the analytics and business intelligence marketplace. On May 13, 2003, some 20 member companies of the XML for Analysis (XMLA) Council will participate in the worlds first public XMLA interoperability demonstration at The Data Warehouse Institute World Conference in San Francisco, CA." [Full context]
[November 21, 2002] RELAX NG Compact Syntax Published as an OASIS Committee Specification. The OASIS RELAX NG Technical Committee has released a committee specification for RELAX NG Compact Syntax. Edited by James Clark, the committee specification describes a compact, non-XML syntax for the RELAX NG Specification (OASIS Committee Specification 3-December-2001). The compact syntax is specified by a grammar in BNF; the translation into the XML syntax is specified by annotations in the grammar. "The goals of this compact syntax are to: (1) maximize readability; (2) support all features of RELAX NG -- it must be possible to translate a schema from the XML syntax to the compact syntax and back without losing significant information; (3) support separate translation -- a RELAX NG schema may be spread amongst multiple files, it must be possible to represent each of the files separately in the compact syntax, and the representation of each file must not depend on the other files. The compact syntax has similarities to W3C XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics, to Regular Expression Types for XML (XDuce), and to the DTD syntax of XML 1.0. The body of the document contains an informal description of the syntax and how it maps onto the XML syntax. Developers should consult Appendix A for a complete, rigorous description. The non-normative Appendix B presents an example compact syntax RELAX NG schema for RELAX NG." [Full context]
[November 20, 2002] OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) Publishes XML Specification Version 2002B. The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) has announced a Version 2002B release of its Extensible Markup Language (XML) specification for public review and comment. OTA develops XML-based communications specifications to support the efficient and effective exchange of travel industry information via the Internet. This Version 2002B specification "expands on the messages previously published, offering additional opportunities for trading partners within the travel industry to communicate with one another." Messages have been re-defined according to OTA's published Best Practices Guidelines for all of its XML data assets. The general OTA guideline approach is "to maximize component (elements/attributes) reuse for the highly diverse and yet closely related travel industry data; this is accomplished by building messages via context-driven component assembly. The application of best practices design and the re-definition of the XML component constructs to the specification supports a path of seamless integration and enhanced interoperability within all disciplines of the travel sector. With over 150 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OTA is comprised of representatives from the airlines, car rental firms, hotels, leisure suppliers, service providers, tour operators, travel agencies, and trade associations. Together with an OTA interoperability committee to coordinate WG efforts, the OTA working groups develop open Internet-compatible messages using XML." [Full context]
[November 20, 2002] W3C Releases New Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Specifications. A communiqué from Chris Lilley (INRIA/Sophia-Antipolis, W3C Graphics Activity Lead) reports on the release of three W3C specifications for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Both Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification and Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic have been been advanced to W3C Proposed Recommendations, and are open for comment through December 20, 2002. The specifications have been produced by members of the W3C SVG Working Group as part of the W3C Graphics Activity within the Document Formats Domain. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is "a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes (e.g., paths consisting of straight lines and curves), images and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. The feature set includes nested transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, filter effects and template objects. SVG 1.1 separates the SVG language into reusable building blocks, while Mobile SVG re-combines them into two profiles optimized for cellphones and pocket computers." The W3C SVG Working Group has also released an initial public Working Draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.2. "Potential areas of new work identified in SVG 1.2 include integration with other XML formats, and text wrapping, printing, streaming, painting, rendering model, and DOM enhancements." [Full context]
[November 19, 2002] Liberty Alliance Releases Draft Version 1.1 Specifications for Public Review. The Liberty Alliance Project has released a public review draft of its version 1.1 specifications. This maintenance update incorporates feedback received from members and non-members during the last three months. The version 1.1 document suite is the first to be issued by the Liberty Alliance for public input. The Liberty Alliance Project represents "an alliance of more than 130 technology and consumer organizations formed to develop and deploy open, federated network identification specifications that support all current and emerging network devices in the digital economy. Its specifications focus on enabling interoperability between technology systems to make it easy for businesses to provide opt-in account linking and simplified sign-on functionality to partners, customers and employees." The version 1.1 draft specification suite includes two XML Schema files corresponding to the Protocols and Schema Specification and the Authentication Context Specification. The Liberty Bindings and Profiles Specification defines concrete transport bindings and usage profiles for the abstract Liberty protocols. Supporting documents include an Overview, Glossary, and Implementation Guidelines. In addition to the editorial changes, the v1.1 specification fixes a vulnerability in a Liberty-enabled Client/Proxy Profile and includes minor enhancements to provide additional flexibility in the specifications for identity and service providers. The public review period extends through December 16, 2002. [Full context]
[November 18, 2002] IBM alphaWorks Releases Web Services Toolkit for Mobile Devices. The IBM alphaWorks Web Services Tool Kit for Mobile Devices "provides tools and run-time environments that allow development of applications that use Web Services on small mobile devices. Its Java Web service run-time environment is supported on PoctketPC, Palm, and BlackBerry; the C Web service run-time environment is supported on the Palm." The Java toolkit version uses the kSOAP SOAP API built upon kXML, and implements a subset of the SOAP 1.2 specification. kXML provides "an XML pull parser and writer suitable for all Java platforms including the Java 2 Micro Edition (CLDC/MIDP/CDC); because of its small footprint size, it is especially suited for Applets or Java appications running on mobile devices like Palm Pilots or MIDP enabled cell phones." The C implementation uses gSOAP compiler tools which "provide a unique SOAP/XML-to-C/C++ language binding to ease the development of SOAP/XML Web services and clients in C and/or C++; gSOAP is an application-centric low-memory-overhead toolset suitable for Web service and client executables." [Full context]
[November 16, 2002] ISO SC34 Publishes Draft Reference Model for Topic Maps (RM4TM). A posting from Steven R. Newcomb announces the availability of a first public draft of The Reference Model for Topic Maps (RM4TM), produced by members of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 Topic Map Models Project. The Reference Model defines "an abstract graph structure for the representation of relationships between subjects, rules for defining Applications of the Topic Maps paradigm, and rules for processing the information contained in topic maps. The primary objective of the Topic Maps paradigm is to make everything known about every subject accessible from a single location." In Newcomb's summary, the draft document "shows how to regard any data content notation, database schema, etc., as a topic map notation, so that its knowledge content can be automatically and losslessly amalgamated with all other kinds of knowledge content into a comprehensive topic map that honors the Subject Location Uniqueness Objective. The Subject Location Uniqueness Objective is to have one single subject per node, and for every participating subject to have one single node, even after any number of diverse topic maps have been merged together." ISO SC34 is also creating two new topic map standards: ISO 18048 "Topic Maps Query Language (TMQL)" provides a kind of SQL (or XML Query) for topic maps; ISO 19756 "Topic Maps Constraint Language (TMCL)" provides a schema or constraint language for use in constraining what is allowable to say in the topic map. [Full context]
[November 15, 2002] W3C Patent Policy Working Group Issues Last Call Royalty-Free Patent Policy Working Draft. The W3C has released a last call working draft for the Patent Policy Working Group Royalty-Free Patent Policy. The draft policy "governs the handling of patents in the process of producing and implementing W3C Recommendations." Comments from W3C members and the public are invited during the Last Call review period, which ends on 31-December-2002. From the announcement: "The primary goal of the W3C Patent Policy Working Draft is to enable W3C Recommendations to be implemented on a royalty-free basis, and to encourage disclosure by both W3C Members and others when they are aware of patents -- their own or others -- that may be essential to the implementation of W3C Recommendations. In simple terms, all who participate in the development of a W3C Recommendation must agree to license essential claims (patents that block interoperability) on a royalty-free (RF) basis. Patent disclosures are required for W3C Working Group participants and anyone else who sees the technical drafts and is aware of patents that may be essential. The Working Group has developed a process for resolving disputes in the event patent claims are identified that are not available royalty-free. Options including designing around the patents, investigating the validity of the patents, or transitioning the work to another organization that is willing to produce RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory terms) standards. The Policy does not require giving up one's entire patent portfolio; it concerns only those patent claims that are essential to implement a standard that one participates in developing at W3C. W3C is clear in aiming to solve a specific problem -- to remove the threat of blocking patents on key components of Web infrastructure." [Full context]
[November 13, 2002] BPMI.org Publishes BPML 1.0 and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Working Draft. The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) has announced the release of the final draft for the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML 1.0) and the first public working draft for the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). The two business process management (BPM) specifications are made publicly available under royalty-free terms, and are represented as offering "the first business process modeling language to provide a graphical notation that can be used by business analysts for the modeling of executable and manageable business processes." The Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) specification "provides an abstract model for expressing business processes and supporting entities. BPML defines a formal model for expressing abstract and executable processes that address all aspects of enterprise business processes, including activities of varying complexity, transactions and their compensation, data management, concurrency, exception handling and operational semantics." The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) specification "provides a graphical notation for expressing business processes in a Business Process Diagram (BPD). The objective of BPMN is to support process management by both technical users and business users by providing a notation that is intuitive to business users yet able to represent complex process semantics. The BPMN specification also provides a mapping between the graphics of the notation to underlying the constructs of execution languages, such as BPEL4WS and BPML." [Full context]
[November 12, 2002] W3C XForms 1.0 Advances to Candidate Recommendation Status. The W3C XForms Working Group published a Candidate Recommendation version of the XForms 1.0 specification. XForms 1.0 "provides a new platform-independent markup language for online interaction between a person (through an XForms Processor) and another, usually remote, agent. XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts -- XForms model, instance data, and user interface -- it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing -- reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG. The Candidate Recommendation provides an opportunity for these changes to be reflected in implementations, and for the XForms Working Group to collect test cases and information about implementations. The WG expects that sufficient feedback to determine its future will have been received by 05-March-2003." [Full context]
[November 12, 2002] Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Version 1.0 an OASIS Open Standard. The OASIS membership recently voted to approve version 1.0 of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) as an OASIS standard. SAML is "an XML-based framework for Web services that allows the exchange of authentication and authorization information among business partners. SAML enables Web-based security interoperability functions, such as single sign-on, across sites hosted by multiple companies. SAML incorporates industry-standard protocols and messaging frameworks, such as XML Signature, XML Encryption, and SOAP. The specification can be easily integrated in standard environments such as HTTP and standard Web browsers. Likewise, other security environments can use SAML as an authentication and authorization layer. SAML complements Web services standards, such as SOAP, which lack inherent security features. The OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee, for example, is profiling SAML as one of its set of security tokens." [Full context]
[November 12, 2002] Processing XML with Java: A Guide to SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, and TrAX. Addison-Wesley has published Elliotte Rusty Harold's substantial volume Processing XML with Java: A Guide to SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, and TrAX, also provided online by the author. "Written for Java programmers who want to integrate XML into their systems, this practical, comprehensive guide and reference shows how to process XML documents with the Java programming language. It leads experienced Java developers beyond the basics of XML, allowing them to design sophisticated XML applications and parse complicated documents. Processing XML with Java provides a brief review of XML fundamentals, including XML syntax: DTDs, schemas, and validity; stylesheets; and the XML protocols XML-RPC, SOAP, and RSS. The core of the book comprises in-depth discussions on the key XML APIs Java programmers must use to create and manipulate XML files with Java. These include the Simple API for XML (SAX), the Document Object Model (DOM), and JDOM (a Java native API). In addition, the book covers many useful supplements to these core APIs, including XPath, XSLT, TrAX, and JAXP. The book supplies over two hundred examples that demonstrate how to accomplish various important tasks related to file formats, data exchange, document transformation, and database integration. The reader will learn how to read and write XML documents with Java code, convert legacy flat files into XML documents, communicate with network servers that send and receive XML data, and much more." [Full context]
[November 11, 2002] OASIS Members Form Tax XML Technical Committee. A new OASIS 'Tax XML' Technical Committee is being formed to "focus on developing a common vocabulary that will allow participants to unambiguously identify the tax related information exchanged within a particular business context. The Tax XML TC will begin by creating a framework for ongoing development of a robust Tax vocabulary, the XML artifacts and a repository for managing these definitions, and documentation. It is expected that a subset of the overall tax information arena will be selected for the greatest return on investment and will be expanded as appropriate. Eventually, it is expected that working groups and possibly additional TCs will be formed to address an expanded scope of tax information... Tax XML will rely heavily on incorporating the XML standards that are defined for the common business vocabulary. Since tax related information spans many business interests and is mostly either an extension of common business documents or a repackaging of business information for tax compliance documents, any existing or in progress standards for business information will be examined and incorporated as appropriate. It is expected that this coordination and collaboration will be conducted with XBRL (The Extensible Business Reporting Language), and other leading initiatives as needed." [Full context]
[November 11, 2002] W3C Publishes XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 as W3C Recommendation. The XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 specification produced by the IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has been released in its final publication stage as a W3C Recommendation. The Working Group "believes the specification is sufficient for the creation of independent interoperable implementations as demonstrated in the Interoperability Report. The XML Signature Recommendation (XML-Signature Syntax and Processing) defines standard means for specifying information content to be digitally signed, including the ability to select a portion of an XML document to be signed using an XPath transform. The XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 specification describes a new signature filter transform that, like the XPath transform, provides a method for computing a portion of a document to be signed. In the interest of simplifying the creation of efficient implementations, the architecture of this transform is not based on evaluating an XPath expression for every node of the XML parse tree, as defined by the XPath data model. Instead, a sequence of XPath expressions is used to select the roots of document subtrees -- location sets, in the language of XPointer -- which are combined using set intersection, subtraction and union, and then used to filter the input node-set." [Full context]
[November 09, 2002] OpenI18N Announces Common XML Locale Specification. An announcement from the OpenI18N (Free Standards Group Open Internationalization Initiative) describes the release of an XML specification for common XML locale data, available from the Common XML Locale Repository project. The goal of the Common XML Locale Repository project "is to devise a general XML format for the exchange of culturally sensitive (locale) information for use in application and system development, and to gather, store, and make available data generated in that format." The XML specification has been produced by members of the LADE (Linux Application Development Environment) Workgroup. A Locale Data Markup Language specification describes an XML vocabulary for the exchange of structured locale data. Source files containing locale/culture information are converted to be compliant to the Common Locale XML specification, validated by the accompanying Common Locale XML DTD. The LADE Workgroup "has finalized the XML specification of the culture information data to be shared by the application developers creating globalized software. It is also in the process of creating a set of modular standards such that the culture information repertoire can be used based on one or more components or as a whole, depending on the end users' needs." [Full context]
[November 08, 2002] W3C Publishes Guide to the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The W3C Web Ontology Working Group has produced a Version 1.0 working draft document Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide documenting key concepts and uses of the OWL language. Building upon the foundations of the DAML+OIL specification, the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) "is intended to provide a language that can be used to describe the classes and relations between them that are inherent in Web documents and applications. The new Guide demonstrates the use of the OWL language (1) to formalize a domain by defining classes and properties of those classes, (2) to define individuals and assert properties about them, and (3) to reason about these classes and individuals to the degree permitted by the formal semantics of the OWL language. Document sections are organized to present an incremental definition of a set of classes, properties and individuals, beginning with the fundamentals and proceeding to more complex language components." The development of the Web Ontology Language is motivated by a recognition that the World Wide Web "as it is currently constituted resembles a poorly mapped geography. Our insight into the documents and capabilities available are based on keyword searches, abetted by clever use of document connectivity and usage patterns. The sheer mass of this data is unmanageable without powerful tool support. In order to map this terrain more precisely, computational agents require machine-readable descriptions of the content and capabilities of web accessible resources. These descriptions must be in addition to the human-readable versions of that information." [Full context]
[November 08, 2002] Public Review for OASIS Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) Specification. Members of the OASIS Extensible Access Control Markup Language Technical Committee recently approved a version 1.0 Committee Specification for the XACML specification and voted to move the document forward for standardization. The motivation behind XACML is to express well-established ideas in the field of access-control policy using an extension language of XML. The XACML specification defines an XML schema consistent with this goal. The XACML 1.0 Committee Specification is now "undergoing a public review period in preparation for submission to OASIS for consideration as an OASIS Standard; the public review period will extend from Friday, November 8, 2002 until Sunday, December 8, 2002 (inclusive)." [Full context]
[November 07, 2002] IEEE Computer Special Issue on Web Services Computing. The IEEE Computer Society has issued a call for papers in connection with a special issue of Computer dedicated to Web Services Computing. IEEE "invites articles relating to integration architectures for Web Services and/or application case studies that use Web Services technology." This issue will be guest edited by co-chairs of the IEEE Computer Society Task Force on Electronic Commerce (TFEC). The special issue will be published August 2003. Papers should be submitted by January 15, 2003 and may address any of these topics: (1) Web Services architecture and security; Frameworks for building Web Service applications; Composite Web Service creation and enabling infrastructures; (2) Web Services discovery; Resource management for web services; Solution Management for Web Services; (3) Dynamic invocation mechanisms for Web Services; Quality of service for Web Services; Web Services modeling; UDDI enhancements; SOAP enhancements; (4) Case studies for Web Services; E-Commerce applications using Web Services; Grid based Web Services applications." [Full context]
[November 05, 2002] PKI Forum Continues Security Advocacy as an OASIS PKI Member Section. OASIS has announced the expansion of its Member Section Program to include the PKI Forum. The newest OASIS Member Section, PKI Forum "will continue to advance the use of the Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) as a foundation for secure transactions in e-business and Web services applications. As a security advocacy group, the PKI Forum brings technology and service providers, integrators and end-users together to accelerate the adoption and use of PKI applications, digital certificates and other real world solutions, as well as to facilitate interoperability through multi-vendor testing of industry standards and educational outreach. Established in 1999, PKI Forum serves as a global information resource for PKI and advocates cooperation and market awareness enabling organizations to understand and exploit the value of PKI in applications relevant to their businesses. Under the new organizational structure, members of PKI Forum will join OASIS and be eligible to contribute to all OASIS technical work. Existing OASIS members will have the option to participate in PKI committee activities without additional membership dues. PKI committees will be formed and operate under the OASIS technical process. The PKI Forum Executive Board will continue to guide the alliance as the OASIS PKI Member Section Steering Committee. Members include Derek Brink of RSA Security, Peter Doyle of Baltimore Technologies, John Sabo of Computer Associates, Mitch Arnone of Schlumberger Network Solutions, Patrick Gen Kanaishi of Neucom, Terry Leahy of Wells Fargo, and Jeff Stapleton of KPMG." [Full context]
[November 05, 2002] UK e-GIF Publishes XML Schemas For Use in Local Elections. XML Schemas for use in local elections have been published as part of the UK e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF). These XML Schemas have undergone public consultation and have been agreed by the Office of the e-Envoy. The Schemas represent a UK adaptation of the EML International Schema developed by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. The distribution contains some 33 XML Schema (.xsd) files and an overview document EML: Customisation for UK Local Elections. The specification includes an introduction on (optional) validation of EML-UK document using Schematron schemas. [Full context]
[November 04, 2002] OASIS Technical Committee for Open Office XML File Format. OASIS has issued a Call for Participation in a new 'Open Office XML Format Technical Committee'. The TC members intend to create an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications. Michael Brauer (Sun Microsystems) will chair the TC. The proposed XML file format is to be "suitable for office documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents." It will be compatible XML v1.0 and W3C Namespaces. The file format will "retain high-level information suitable for editing the document and keep the document's content and layout information separate such that they can be processed independently of each other." For interoperability, it must be "friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar XML-based languages or tools. The design will borrow from similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted. Since the OpenOffice.org XML format specification meets these criteria and has proven its value in real life, this TC will use it as the basis for its work. Sun Microsystems intends to contribute the OpenOffice.org XML Format to this TC at the first meeting of the TC, under reciprocal Royalty Free terms. TC work will be done in two phases, each resulting in a Committee Specification that includes (1) a set of XML DTDs/schemas setting the vocabulary, constraints and semantics of the file format in question, and (2) a set of written specifications that describe the elements and attributes of the DTDs/schemas in plain English." [Full context]
[November 04, 2002] IETF Charters Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Working Group. A posting from Pete Resnick announces that IETF's Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) approved the charter for a new Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Working Group. XMPP is "an open, XML-based protocol for near real-time extensible messaging and presence. It is the core protocol of the Jabber Instant Messaging and Presence technology which is currently deployed on thousands of servers across the Internet and is used by millions of people worldwide. The XMPP working group will adapt the XMPP for use as an IETF Instant Messaging and Presence technology." Three IETF Internet Drafts for XMPP will serve as a basis for the deliverables of the IETF working group: XMPP Core describes the core features XMPP which is used by the servers, clients, and other applications that comprise the Jabber network; XMPP Instant Messaging describes the specific extensions necessary to create a basic instant messaging and presence application; XMPP CPIM Mapping describes a mapping of XMPP to the IETF Common Presence and Instant Messaging specification. "The main focus of the Working Group will be on XML streams (including stream-level security and authentication), the core data elements (<message/>, <presence/>, and <iq/>), and the namespaces required to achieve basic instant messaging and presence." [Full context]
[November 01, 2002] IBM Infoprint XML Extender for z/OS Supports XSL Stylesheets and XSL-FO. A communiqué from Bob Schloss (IBM) reports on the availability of software to perform "high quality printing of XML documents using XSL stylesheets and the XSL-FO vocabulary, using the existing AFP (Advanced Function Printing) support for z/OS. The Infoprint XML Extender for z/OS enables XML applications to be printed on AFP printers using standard XSL formatting. AFP is the de facto standard solution for mission critical business output in many large enterprises. Producing an AFP document from XML data is a two-step process. First the XML document is transformed using an XSL style sheet into an intermediate XML document, referred to as an XSL Formatting Object (XSL-FO) document. The XSL-FO document is then composed by Infoprint XML Extender into an AFP document. Because of this two step process, Infoprint XML Extender can accommodate either XML documents with companion XSL style sheets or XSL-FO documents as input into the production of AFP, providing a highly flexible formatting solution for XML-based applications." [Full context]
[October 29, 2002] OASIS Members Propose TC for User Interface Markup Language (UIML). An OASIS technical committee for User Interface Markup Language (UIML) is being formed based upon a proposal from interested members. The purpose of the TC "is to develop a specification for an abstract meta-language that can provide a canonical XML representation of any user interface (UI); the language should be capable of specifying the requirements, design, and implementation of any UI. The committee will use the UIML version 3.0 specification created by Virginia Tech's Center for Human Computer Interaction, Harmonia, Inc., and other organizations on uiml.org as a starting point" for the TC work. According to the announcement, a "general motivation for a canonical UI representation language is to accelerate the development of tools for UI development. If practitioners from these fields build tools with UIML, then the tools can interoperate. Just as XML made toolbuilders more efficient (because tools built for XML work for any XML vocabulary), so can UIML make UI toolbuilders more efficient (because tools built for UIML work for any vocabulary representing any concrete UI implementation language). Thus the TC's work will serve to assemble the jigsaw puzzle pieces of UI and HCI technology that have been created." [Full context]
[October 29, 2002] Diffuse Final Conference Focuses on Web Services, Grid Services, and Semantic Web. A communiqué from Martin Bryan (Technical Manager, The Diffuse Project) announces the program for the Diffuse Final Conference, to be held December 12, 2002 in Brussels. The conference title is: "Convergence of Web Services, Grid Services and the Semantic Web for Delivering e-Services?" Organized by the IST Diffuse Project and hosted by the European Commission, the conference will feature keynote presentations by Erkki Liikanen (Member of the European Commission responsible for Enterprise and Information Society), Carl Kesselman (a Founder of the Grid), Bruce Perens (Primary Author of the Open Source Definition), and Guus Schreiber (Co-Chair, W3C Web Ontology WG). Vendors' Perspectives will be presnted by David Orchard (BEA Systems), Steve Holbrook (IBM), and Simon Phipps (Sun Microsystems). "The conference will review, explore and discuss the strategic issues concerning and surrounding the three interrelated technologies of Web Services, Grid Services and the Semantic Web from a broad perspective. It will identify their synergies or otherwise, examine the drivers for development and implementations, chart current development paths and debate likely future directions." [Full context]
[October 29, 2002] CIMI Consortium Releases SPECTRUM XML Schema Version 1.5 for Testing. The Consortium for Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) has announced a public release of the Version 1.5 CIMI XML Schema for SPECTRUM, together with an implementation and testing forum. CIMI is a consortium of cultural heritage institutions and organizations that encourages open, standards-based approaches to creating and sharing digital information. The CIMI Schema for SPECTRUM enables the XML encoding of individual items in museum collections, across the full scope of Edition 2 of SPECTRUM: The UK Museum Documentation Standard. The Schema v1.5 release includes CIMI XML Schema for SPECTRUM: Supporting Documentation. Section 5.1 of this document describes the test-bed datasets which demonstrate the potential of the CIMI Schema to encode data from a wide range of museum collections. Examples are provided. Section 5.2 supplies guidance on the use of the XML Schema within specific areas. "The examples illustrate areas of the Schema relating to complex issues in the description of museum objects. Implementers requiring further details are invited to post queries on the XML Discussion List, where CIMI staff and members will be happy to respond." [Full context]
[October 25, 2002] Sun Secure Trading Agent Technology Preview Supports ebXML MS and CPA. Sun Microsystems has announced a Technology Preview for the Sun ONE Integration Server Secure Trading Agent (STA). STA Version 1.0 Beta "implements a standards-based, secure, reliable system that provides for the exchange of business documents between trading partners, according to an agreement between the trading partners. This support for electronic business transactions is based on emerging ebXML standards, which are geared toward helping small to medium-sized companies use the Internet for conducting business transactions with their trading partners. This version supports both the ebXML Message Service Specification v2.0 and ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Specification v2.0. This Beta release of Secure Trading Agent enforces the following security measures specified in an ebXML agreement: (1) Transport Security: Security measures for the transport of ebXML messages, including business documents attached to the message. Transport security can be implemented using a combination of secure transport protocols (such as SSL), digital certificates, and digital signatures. (2) Document Security: The encryption and digital signing of business documents attached to an ebXML message, providing measures for authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality. (3) Authorization: Verification by Secure Trading Agent that persons acting in roles for parties are authorized to perform those roles. Authorization of user roles is not implemented in the Beta release of Secure Trading Agent. (4) Nonrepudiation: A guarantee that a message arrives and also a guarantee of the contents of the message. Nonrepudiation includes being able to provide a history of transactions for auditing purposes and proof of delivery for each transaction." [Full context]
[October 24, 2002] Microsoft XSD Inference Tool Creates Schemas from XML Instances. A posting from Dare Obasanjo announces the availability of a Microsoft XSD Inference utility. The Beta 1 XSD Inference Tool "is used to create an XML Schema definition language (XSD) schema from an XML instance document. The input must be a well-formed XML instance document, and not an XML fragment. The output is an XML schema that can validate the instance document. When provided with well-formed XML file, the utility generates an XSD that can be used to validate that XML file. You can also refine the XSD generated by providing the tool more well-formed XML files." An interface to the tool is available online, and a binaries may be downloaded for use with Microsoft .Net Frameworks. For the online version, the total size of the file must not exceed 1 MB. Related utilities from the Microsoft 'GotDotNet' XML Tools Team include the Microsoft XML Diff and Patch tool and an XSD Schema Validator. [Full context]
[October 24, 2002] Sun Microsystems Announces Java Architecture for XML Binding Beta Implementation. Sun Microsystems has announced the availability of a JAXB beta Reference Implementation, version 0.75 Public Draft Specification, API documentation, and User's Guide. JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding) "provides an API and tools that automate the mapping between XML documents and Java objects. It is a Java technology that enables you to generate Java classes from XML schemas, providing an efficient and standard way to map between XML and Java code. With JAXB, you can quickly bind XML schemas to Java representations, making it easy to incorporate XML data and processing functions in your Java applications. JAXB makes XML easy to use by compiling an XML schema into one or more Java technology classes. The combination of the schema derived classes and the binding framework enable one to perform the following operations on an XML document: (1) unmarshal XML content into a Java representation; (2) access, update and validate the Java representation against schema constraint; (3) marshal the Java representation of the XML content into XML content. The current specification release provides several enhancements, including support for a subset of W3C XML Schema and XML Namespaces, more flexible unmarshalling and marshalling functionality, and validation process enhancements." [Full context]
[October 22, 2002] Enhanced Adobe Document Servers Support XML-Based Workflow and Digital Signature Facilities. Adobe Systems has announced a new server and solutions product line, including Adobe Document Server and Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions. The Adobe Document Server automates the production of complex Adobe PDF documents by assembling XML data with professionally formatted templates incorporating rich visual content. By using form fields that are defined in Adobe PDF documents, Document Server supports the customization of documents down to the individual user. With the Adobe Document Server for Reader Extensions, "agencies can automate electronic forms and document processes -- reducing reliance on inefficient paper-based workflows. They can give their constituents the ability to apply digital signatures using industry-standard technologies, and finally submit the filled-in form electronically, completely eliminating paper from the forms workflow. Completed Adobe PDF forms and forms data in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) can also be easily integrated with an organization's backend systems to enable round-trip transactional workflows." [Full context]
[October 21, 2002] EAN.UCC Global Data Dictionary (GDD) Supports Standards Development Framework. The EAN.UCC Global Data Dictionary (GDD) was recently announced by EAN International and the Uniform Code Council (UCC) as a new tool providing a common framework for global standards development. "Developed by the UCC, EAN International, and global users representing a wide range of industries, the GDD is a relational database of names, terms, and definitions that support the standards of the EAN.UCC System. This online repository supports the definitions and references associated with all data components and entities of EAN.UCC standards. The GDD also supports cross-reference to external standards organization entities, including ebXML, X12, and EANCOM. The dictionary will provide a foundational information tool for the EAN.UCC Global Standards Management Process, which provides a single-pass source for the development of open, global standards for users of the EAN.UCC System. By providing a clear and common framework, the dictionary will help eliminate ambiguity from the terms used in EAN.UCC business messages and XML standards. The development of new e-business standards by EAN and UCC has created a critical need to store, reuse and share precise core components and business definitions and their equivalent representations in targeted standards such as EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), XML (Extensible Markup Language), or AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture). The EAN.UCC Global Data Dictionary functions as a core components repository for this data. The dictionary provides a single, global source for the names, terms, and definitions that support EAN.UCC standards and will greatly enhance the ability of users to understand and implement the standards." [Full context]
[October 18, 2002] Web Services Interoperability Organization Publishes Basic Profile Version 1.0. WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization) has released a working group draft specification for WS-I Basic Profile Version 1.0. Produced by the WS-I's Basic Profile Working Group, the document defines the WS-I Basic Profile, consisting of a set of non-proprietary Web services specifications, along with clarifications to those specifications which promote interoperability. The Basic Profile "dictates how a selected set of specified Web services technologies should be used together in an interoperable manner. They are: (1) Messaging -- the exchange of protocol elements, usually over a network, to effect a Web service; (2) Description -- the enumeration of the messages associated with a Web service, along with implementation details; (3) Discovery -- metadata that enables the advertisement of a Web service's capabilities; (4) Security -- mechanisms that provide integrity, privacy, authentication and authorization functions. The profile mandates the use of a particular technology (or technologies), when appropriate, for each of these components." [Full context]
[October 18, 2002] ComCARE Alliance Publishes XML-Based Emergency Incident Data Set Recommendation. An announcement from the ComCARE Alliance (Communications for Coordinated Assistance and Response to Emergencies) reports on the completion of a recommended data set for electronic emergency incident data. The draft vehicular emergency incident data set recommendation was produced by the ComCARE Alliance Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) Data Set Working Group. The data set is designed to enable the electronic flow of emergency information from telematics service providers to multiple public safety agencies, hospitals, transportation agencies, and EMTs dispatched to the incident scene. "More than 20 organizations participated in the development effort, including safety leaders of the Northern Shenandoah Valley Initiative, OnStar, ATX Technologies, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), the National Association of State EMS Directors, the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch (NAED), and others. The participation and leadership of OnStar and ATX represents more than 95 percent of the existing telematics market. The ComCARE Working Group will now present the data set to numerous other safety and medical organizations, government, companies, and standards development organizations that may be interested in the topic. The Working Group plans to work with these groups to get their input and endorsement of the data set and begin discussing implementation. Once implemented by users, the data set will enable efficient, national electronic transmission of crash and other emergency information from telematics service providers, as well as other data from emergency response agency and private sources related to vehicular emergencies." [Full context]
[October 18, 2002] International Press Telecommunications Council Approves NewsML Version 1.1 Specification. A posting from David Allen announces the approval of the NewsML Version 1.1 specification by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). A revised XML DTD and XML Schema are available on the project website. The NewsML Schema Version 1.1 represents the same document structure as the NewsML DTD version 1.1; in addition it provides control over element and attribute content in accordance with the NewsML Specification. IPTC has also published an updated V1.1 NewsML Functional Specification and IPTC NewsML NewsAgency Implementation Guidelines document. NewsML is "a compact, extensible and flexible structural framework for news, based on XML and other appropriate standards and specifications. It supports the representation of electronic news items, collections of such items, the relationships between them, and their associated metadata. It allows for the provision of multiple representations of the same information, and handles arbitrary mixtures of media types, formats, languages and encodings. It supports all stages of the news lifecycle and allows the evolution of news items over time. Though media-independent, NewsML provides specific mechanisms for handling text. It allows the provenance of both metadata and news content to be asserted." [Full context]
[October 17, 2002] IBM alphaWorks Releases WSDL Explorer Web Application. The IBM alphaWorks developers have released a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Explorer to assist in analyzing candidate web services. It is available as an online viewer and as a standalone application. The WSDL Explorer "is a Web application that displays WSDL files, generates views of operations, allows invocation of operations, and allows viewing of sample message flow. It enables users to compare and contrast Web services without going through the time and trouble of importing them into a heavy development tool. WSDL Explorer provides the ability to browse WSDL files, and it offers immediate access to Web service operations. WSDL Explorer displays the port types and operations as a tree in a navigation frame, and it displays a form view for a selected operation in a content frame. Data may be put in the form view and the operation invoked. Formatted results are displayed in an output frame. WSDL Explorer also displays the actual request and response messages. The WSDL Explorer is an innovative application of dynamic HTML combined with JSP technology. WSDL files are analyzed on the server; however, all tree navigation and operation invocation takes place on the client using JavaScript. Because all SOAP requests come from the client, this approach prevents an organization's servers from unwittingly participating in a denial-of-service attack." [Full context]
[October 16, 2002] OASIS Members Propose Digital Signature Services Technical Committee. Representatives from five OASIS corporate members (Entrust, Datum, NIST, webMethods, TIBCO) have proposed the creation of a new Digital Signature Services Technical Committee to develop techniques to support the processing of digital signatures. According to the proposal, the OASIS DSS technical committee will "define an interface for requesting that a web service produce and/or verify a digital signature on a given piece of data and techniques for proving that a signature was created within its private key validity period. The TC will develop a protocol for a digital signature creation web service. Providing digital signatures via such a web service facilitates policy-based control of the provision of the signatures. The TC will also develop a protocol for a centralized digital signature verification web service that can verify signatures in relation to a given policy set. Finally, the TC will develop an XML-based protocol to produce cryptographic time stamps that can be used for determing whether or not a signature was created within the associated public key's validity period or before revocation. This is required as part of the signature verification algorithm." Robert Zuccherato of Entrust Inc. will serve as the DSS TC Chair. [Full context]
[October 16, 2002] W3C Publishes Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation. W3C has released Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation specification, signifying "that the document is believed to be stable, and to encourage implementation by the developer community. The specification addresses Unicode, control character, and line ending issues. Everything that is not forbidden is permitted in XML 1.1 names." XML 1.1 was known earlier as 'XML Blueberry'. The document "takes the form of a series of alterations to the XML 1.0 Recommendation, and its numbered sections correspond to those of the XML 1.0 Recommendation. Sections of that Recommendation that do not appear in this document remain unchanged in XML 1.1. It is likely that the final XML 1.1 Recommendation will take the form of an integral revision of the XML 1.0 specification." Interoperable implementations are being sought, and the W3C XML Core Working Group invites public comment on the draft. [Full context]
[October 15, 2002] Storage Vendors Announce CIM Product Rollout and Joint Interoperability Testing. Four storage vendors have announced a new coordinated effort "dedicated to the promotion and progress of SNIA's Common Information Model (CIM), Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) technology, and Storage Management Initiative (SMI) specifications for Storage Area Network (SAN)-based storage management. As part of this effort, the four companies are also announcing their individual plans to roll out CIM/WBEM-based products in calendar year 2003. CIM/WBEM has been endorsed by SNIA as the technology to help enable simplified multi-vendor management of storage networks. Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Sun, and VERITAS are active members of SNIA and contributed to drafting the SNIA-adopted Bluefin/SMI specifications. These specifications define how CIM technology is used to manage storage environments. The companies are also actively encouraging all other storage vendors to join them in supporting CIM/WBEM standards. Participating companies would be expected to: (1) Ship CIM/WBEM based storage management software commercially in calendar year 2003; (2) Support the emerging SMI specifications endorsed by SNIA; (3) Make their CIM Providers (SMI Agents) available to others for testing; (4) Conduct joint interoperability testing and qualifications; (5) Support the CIM/WBEM interface as specified by SNIA's Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The CIM specification is the language and methodology for describing management data; the CIM XML schema includes models for Systems, Applications, Networks (LAN) and Devices." [Full context]
[October 10, 2002] ISDA Announces New FpML Working Groups for Energy and Validation. A communiqué from Karel Engelen (FpML Project Manager) announces ISDA's call for participation in two new working groups for the Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) standard. FpML "is the XML-based, freely licensed, e-commerce standard supporting OTC trading of financial derivatives." The new FpML Validation Working Group will work to "enable the extension of the FpML product definitions to include semantic or business validation rules through the use of a validation rule language. A Business Rule Definition effort will build on the standards definition work in each of the FpML product working groups to start the plain English definition of the relevant business rules for each version of the FpML standard. A related Rule Language Definition activity will document the requirements for a FpML validation rule language and describe unambiguous business validation rules for the different versions of the FpML standard." The new Energy Derivatives Working Group will "extend the product coverage of the FpML standard to include products for the following energy markets while ensuring that the design will accommodate other commodities. The scope includes Financial Oil, Financial Natural Gas, Physical Natural Gas, Financial Power, and Physical Power." FpML is "a business information exchange standard for electronic dealing and processing of financial derivatives instruments. It establishes the industry protocol for sharing information on, and dealing in, complex financial products over the Internet. It is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), the standard meta-language for describing data shared between applications. Currently focusing on interest rate derivatives, FX, equity derivatives and credit derivatives, FpML will eventually cover all categories of privately negotiated derivatives." [Full context]
[October 09, 2002] PayCircle Releases WSDL Specification Version 1.0 for Mobile Payment. An announcement from PayCircle describes the release of the PayCircle Payment Web Service Specification 1.0 for public review. The specification contains WSDL sources, XML schema definitions, and supporting documents, together with use case scenarios. PayCircle is "a vendor-independent non-profit organization; its main focus is to accelerate the use of payment technology and to develop or adopt open payment APIs based on XML, SOAP, Java and other Internet languages. The PayCircle API specifications provide standard payment interfaces for merchants, content and application service provider with the expectation of making payment transaction easier for mobile users, which is essential for future market growth. The PayCircle consortium was formed January 2002 to define standard APIs for mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by application or service providers. Currently the large number of incompatible payment systems has hindered the growth and uptake of m-commerce. PayCircle defines open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards." [Full context]
[October 09, 2002] Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas. Microsoft officials have announced a new 'XDocs' Office product with scheduled availablity in the middle of 2003. XDocs "looks and feels like a traditional word-processing program, but has all the sophisticated data-capture capabilities of a forms package. Built from the ground up to work with XML, 'XDocs' can gather information that has been generated from documents in which customers can define their own schema, or the structure and the type of content that each data element can contain. 'XDocs' can then integrate that information with existing databases and servers, making it easier to reuse data across the enterprise or via XML Web services." According to Microsoft XML Architect Jean Paoli, XDocs represents "an end-user product that at its core understands XML using customer-driven schema." XDocs exemplifies "the vision behind Microsoft's overall XML Web Services strategy: to make it easy to create, access, and share XML data between different systems on the network... Because XDocs understands XML at its core, customers can define their own business-specific schema using the latest XML standards... it lets organizations determine for themselves what kind of data they want to gather. Native support of XML also means XDocs can send data using these customer-defined schemas to backend systems via XML Web services. XDocs is the first tool that can gather and send, or receive and read, XML data from a Web service without having to first translate the data to the .xml file format. The benefits of this are enormous: because XML is the native file format of all information that is gathered, XDocs reduces translation errors and the need to do custom programming, thus reducing development time and costs. This level of support in XDocs also lowers the cost of developing solutions that use this data, because the data is represented and structured the way you need it from the very beginning." [Full context]
[October 08, 2002] Entrust Announces New Secure Transaction Platform and Proposed Security Standards. Announcements from Entrust on 2002-10-07 outline a comprehensive vision and product delivery roadmap for web services security, to be offered through the Entrust Secure Transaction Platform. "Developed using open industry standards, these services initially include: (1) the Entrust Identification Service, designed to enable validation of federated and non-federated identities across a spectrum of standards-based identification methods, including digital certificates and UserID/passwords. This capability enhances Web services application security by managing multiple identification methods; it also allows organizations to centrally specify which identities are accepted for Web services transactions; (2) The Entrust Entitlements Service, which implements the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard protocol that enables applications to validate that an identity has a right to interact with specific Web services; (3) The Entrust Verification Service, which supports accountability and integrity for more trusted transactions through centralized digital signature and time stamping capabilities, implemented using standards-compliant XML Digital Signatures." Entrust announced that it has submitted a set of related security standards proposals for Web services to OASIS. "These standards proposals specify open, XML protocols for digital signature and timestamping services operating in a Web services context." [Full context]
[October 08, 2002] Exchangable Faceted Metadata Language (XFML) Version 1.0. A communiqué from Peter Van Dijck announces the version 1.0 release of the XFML Core - eXchangeable Faceted Metadata Language. XFML Core "is an open XML format for publishing and sharing hierarchical faceted metadata and indexing efforts. XFML is a model to express topics, organised in hierarchies or trees within mutually exclusive containers called facets. It also expresses indexing efforts: metadata you have assigned to pages. It lets you publish this information in an open, XML based format. Finally, XFML lets you build connections between different XFML maps, by indicating that a topic in one map is equal to a topic in another map (we call this connecting topics), or that a topic is described on a certain resource (a webpage usually; we call this published subject indicators). Facetmap, an application to browse faceted metadata, was the first application to import XFML... The real power of XFML lies in the concept of connecting topics. This allows you to reuse indexing efforts. It means you don't have to index the entire web yourself, you can reuse parts of other XFML maps. Metadata authoring applications that take advantage of this concept are being developed." [Full context]
[October 08, 2002] HR-XML Consortium Announces Employee Stock Plan Interface Standard. A new specification produced by the HR-XML Consortium Employee Share Plans Workgroup has been approved as an HR-XML Recommendation. The Employee Stock Plans Interface 1.0 specification defines standard, vendor-neutral data definitions for the transfer of stock plan data. The standard "promises new efficiencies and cost savings for employers, third-party administrators, brokers, and other stakeholders involved in the administration of stock-based compensation programs. In addition, the specification will enable easy compilation of data required for reporting and compliance." The Version 1.0 release includes ten XML schemas as well as primary prose document. This initial version of the specification is designed to support the administration of stock option programs. It describes the elements required to exchange data related to the administration of employee share plans, including the expected usage of those elements, and the business processes meant to be supported. A future version will address employee stock purchase plans and other types of plans. [Full context]
[October 08, 2002] NTT Communications Launches Asia's First UDDI Registry. NTT Communications Corporation has announced the October 9, 2002 launch of "Asia's first UDDI Business Registry based on the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) specifications, joining IBM, Microsoft and SAP in providing a completely open public registry with a standard access method for companies to register their services and search for business partners' services online." In July 2002 NTT Com and IBM announced a collaborative arrangement for building NTT Com's UDDI Business Registry using IBM's WebSphere and DB2 products and technologies. "The UDDI Business Registry is an online directory that enables companies to register, search and dynamically share information completely free of charge. NTT Com joined the UDDI Operators Council in December 2001 to become Asia's first UDDI Business Registry node operator. Information is registered in a unified format as defined by the UDDI specifications. Information registered in the database of each registry node operator is regularly copied to the other operators' databases, assuring a consistent, worldwide network of registered information. As part of registering its own services in the registry, NTT Com plans to develop new business-to-business (B2B) Web Services and thereby establish the company as a new leader in this field. Like the registries currently operated by IBM, Microsoft and SAP, NTT Com's registry will be based on the UDDI Version 2 specifications." [Full context]
[October 07, 2002] W3C Specifications for XML Encryption Released as Proposed Recommendations. The W3C XML Encryption Working Group has released Proposed Recommendation specifications for XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform for XML Signature. Pending review of comments from the W3C Advisory Committee Members and the public, the specifications may reach Recommendation status after November 14, 2002. The XML Encryption document "specifies a process for encrypting data and representing the result in XML. The data may be arbitrary data (including an XML document), an XML element, or XML element content. The result of encrypting data is an XML Encryption element which contains or references the cipher data." The Decryption document "specifies an XML Signature 'decryption transform' that enables XML Signature applications to distinguish between those XML Encryption structures that were encrypted before signing (and must not be decrypted) and those that were encrypted after signing (and must be decrypted) for the signature to validate. XML Encryption is a method whereby XML content can be transformed such that it is discernable only to the intended recipients, and opaque to all others. There are many applications for such a specification given the increasing importance of XML on the Internet and Web including the protection of payment and transaction information." [Full context]
[October 02, 2002] New Website for Layered Markup and Annotation Language (LMNL). A communiqué from Jeni Tennison announces an online collection of resources for the Layered Markup and Annotation Language (LMNL), first introduced at the 2002 Extreme Markup Languages Conference 2002 in Montréal. Project principals include Jeni Tennison, Gavin Thomas Nicol, and Wendell Piez. LMNL, pronounced 'liminal', "is an experimental approach to digital text encoding that supports, in SGML/XML terms, overlapping elements (ranges in LMNL) and structured attributes (annotations in LMNL)." The Extreme paper by Tennison and Piez presented LMNL as a solution to the challenge of representing multiple hierarchies within a single document and annotating existing tree structures with type information (as in the PSVI). The layered data model is based on the Core Range Algebra investigated by Gavin Nichol; this data model views documents as strings over which span a number of named ranges, each of which can themselves have associated metaranges with their own internal structure. The development team has now published a simple tutorial for LMNL and continues to address the "interesting challenges of extracting tree models, writing schema, query, and transformation languages." Initial online specifications cover; (1) the core LMNL Data Model, (2) a Reified Data Model which is used to describe physical documents that represent LMNL documents, and (3) a draft LMNL Object Model (LOM) API which specifies an object-oriented API for the LMNL data model. A public mailing list is dedicated to the discussion of LMNL and its applications. [Full context]
[October 01, 2002] UN/CEFACT Releases ebXML Core Component Technical Specification for Second Public Review. A posting from Hartmut Hermes (UN/CEFACT Core Component Project Team Lead) and Klaus-Dieter Naujok (Techniques and Methodologies Group Chair) announces the release of the UN/CEFACT - ebXML Core Component Technical Specification Version 1.85 for Public Review provided by its Open Development Process. Under the UN/CEFACT Open Development Process, all interested parties have the opportunity to review, comment on, and contribute to Technical Specifications. The public review period ends 22-November-2002. The ebXML Core Component solution described in the specification "presents a methodology for developing a common set of semantic building blocks that represent the general types of business data in use today and provides for the creation of new business vocabularies and restructuring of existing business vocabularies. The Core Components User Community consists of business people, business document modellers and business data modellers, Business Process modellers, and application developers of different organisations that require interoperability of business information. This interoperability covers both interactive and batch exchanges of business data between applications through the use of Internet and Web based information exchanges as well as traditional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems." [Full context]

What Was New in 1995 - 2002

Other SGML/XML news items recorded for 1995 and later may be found in separate online documents:


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