Cover Pages: SGML and XML News 2003 Q4

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[December 31, 2003] W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to Be Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Announcements from Buckingham Palace and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) proclaim that Queen Elizabeth II will make Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). "The rank of Knight Commander is the second most senior rank of the Order of the British Empire, one of the Orders of Chivalry awarded. Tim Berners-Lee, 48, a British citizen who lives in the United States, is being knighted in recognition of his services to the global development of the Internet through the invention of the World Wide Web." Berners-Lee responded: "This is an honor which applies to the whole Web development community, and to the inventors and developers of the Internet, whose work made the Web possible. I accept this as an endorsement of the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralized way; of making best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and without having to pay licensing fees. By recognizing the Web in such a significant way, it also makes clear the responsibility its creators and users share. Information technology changes the world, and as a result, its practitioners cannot be disconnected from its technical and societal impacts. Rather, we share a responsibility to make this work for the common good, and to take into account the diverse populations it serves." [Full context]
[December 31, 2003] Proposed Calendar Server Extensions for WebDAV (CalDAV). IETF has announced the publication of an initial working draft for Calendar Server Extensions for WebDAV (CalDAV). The CalDAV draft been submitted to the IETF CALSCH working group for consideration of the mechanisms designed to enable interoperable calendar access over WebDAV. The draft specification was commissioned at the Fall 2003 Minneapolis meeting of the IETF Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group Working Group and is intended as an exploration of the advantages of using WebDAV as well as a proposal for one way to model calendaring data, with some ideas for how to specify the features that go beyond WebDAV." Under the initial proposal, a CalDAV server would need to support WebDAV Level 1 and 2, WebDAV ACL, DASL (DAV Searching and Locating), and HTTP/SASL; WebDAV DeltaV support would be optional. The document describes certain features that are required for modern enterprise-level calendar systems are not present in HTTP or WebDAV, including fanout (server supports fanning out scheduling requests on behalf of the client), recurrance (support for recurring appointments are common in calendaring applications), and notifications (optimal way for the server to contact the client). "A CalDav repository, or server, is a calendaring-aware engine combined with a WebDAV repository. The CalDAV server or repository is the canonical location for calendar data, state information and semantics. The CalDAV server has significant responsibility to ensure that the data is consistent and compliant. Clients may submit requests to change data or download data. Clients may store the calendar offline and attempt to synchronize when reconnected, but changes to the repository occurring in between are not considered to be automatically disposable and clients should consider the repository to be the first authority on state. HTTP Etags and other tools help this work." [Full context]
[December 29, 2003] LREC Post-Conference Workshop on XML-Based Richly Annotated Corpora. A Call for Papers has been issued in connection with an announcement for the Workshop on XML-Based Richly Annotated Corpora, to be held May 29, 2004 in Lisbon, Portugal as a post-conference event following the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC). LREC 2004 is organized by the European Language Resources Association (ELRA) in cooperation with several other associations, consortia, and international organizations. The Annotated Corpora Workshop organizers recognize that "XML has become a de facto standard for the representation of corpus resources: it is being used for representing speech and text corpora, multimodal and multimedial corpora, as well as, in particular, integrated corpora which combine different modalities. XML-based representations make it easier to work with richly annotated corpora, which include annotations from different levels of linguistic description or from different modalities. A number of tools have also become available, over the last few years, for creating, managing, annotating, querying such corpora and for their statistical exploration. The workshop aims at bringing together XML experts, both theorists and practitioners, as well as linguists and natural interactivity researchers working on the definition of corpus architectures, annotation and resource exchange schemes and on tools for the use of multilevel and/or multi-layer annotated corpora. It will provide a forum for the definition of requirements for corpus representations and pertaining tools, discussing at the same time case studies from linguistics and natural interactivity research." [Full context]
[December 19, 2003] FISD XML Messaging Specification for Real Time Streaming XML-Encoded Market Data. The Software and Information Industry Association's Financial Information Services Division has released a beta version of FISD's XML Messaging Specification: fisdMessage Reference Guide, together with Appendices and Enumerations. The fisdMessage specification defines a standards-based way of delivering XML content like Market Data Definition Language (MDDL) information between a data provider and consumer. The fisdMessage specification is the realization of a standards-based realtime streaming data feed; it defines an industry-standard data feed protocol for transmitting statically formed content. The proper implementation of an fisdMessage enabled data feed thus allows a consumer to accept encoded XML content from any fisdMessage enabled provider. It is intended that applications (via toolkits) that implement this protocol faithfully, consistent with XML processing guidelines, will enable senders to distribute high-volumes of content changes in the lowest possible bandwidth while maintaining the ability to add content without breaking processing applications. This document uses the Market Data Definition Language (MDDL) to illustrate examples and demonstrate the functionality. MDDL is a specification based on the XML standard to enable interchange of data necessary to account for, to analyze, and to trade instruments of the world's financial markets." [Full context]
[December 17, 2003] W3C Publishes First Working Draft for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1. W3C has released an initial public working draft for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1, updating the W3C XSL Version 1.0 Recommendation published on October 15, 2001. This specification and a companion Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 Requirements document have been produced as part of the W3C XML Activity by the XSL Working Group. The Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is "a language for expressing stylesheets. Given a class of arbitrarily structured XML documents or data files, designers use an XSL stylesheet to express their intentions about how that structured content should be presented; that is, how the source content should be styled, laid out, and paginated onto some presentation medium, such as a window in a Web browser or a hand-held device, or a set of physical pages in a catalog, report, pamphlet, or book. New functionality has been added in XSL Version 1.1 to support change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks. Existing functionality has been extended in the areas of graphics scaling, 'markers' and their retrieval in tables to support e.g., partial sums, and page number referencing. A number of errata changes have been incorporated into the text. This document is expected to be taken through the W3C Recommendation track process. Since first becoming a W3C Recommendation, XSL 1.0 has enjoyed widespread support. However, the user community has expressed requirements that have encouraged various implementations to provide extensions to the language. These extensions -- especially those implemented by more than one implementation -- are clear candidates for standardization so as to maximize interoperability. The XSL Working Group has surveyed and analyzed various existing extensions, user requirements, and features intentionally cut from XSL 1.0 due to lack of time. Using the results of this research, the Working Group is developing the XSL 1.1 version that incorporates current errata and includes a subset of relatively simple and upward compatible additions to XSL." [Full context]
[December 16, 2003] New DMTF Server Management Working Group to Evolve CIM Specification. An announcement from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) describes the formation of a new DMTF Server Management Working Group formed by Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Oracle, OSA Technologies, Sun Microsystems, and several other technology companies. The goal of the Server Management Working Group is to "define a platform independent, industry standard management architecture instantiated through wire level protocols built upon IP based technologies. The focus of the WG is management of server system hardware; this includes interactions with the operating system that are necessary to assist in hardware management." The architectural model will "extend the Common Information Model (CIM) schema to represent new server system topologies; it will define the syntax and semantics of a Command Line Interface (CLI) protocol, leveraging the CIM/XML protocol and identifying enhancements as necessary. The group will define profiles for different server system topologies in order to support base-level compliance, and will document an architectural model for understanding the semantic behavior of server management components." Initial deliverables identified for July 2004 include a lightweight command line interface specification, lightweight CIMOM and supported CIM operations specification, and standard server system topology profiles. Phase 2 deliverables for December 2004 include a compliance specification, test cases for interoperability, and interoperability testing data. Liaison relationships are expected to be formed with relevant OASIS TCs, the Storage Management Initiative (SNIA), W3C Working Groups, and the Service Availability Forum. [Full context]
[December 16, 2003] RIXML.org Releases Investment Research Standard RIXML Version 2.1. The RIXML.org consortium of buy- and sell-side financial industry leaders has announced the Version 2.1 release of its RIXML specification, including the RIXML XML Schema and RIXML Users Guide: Data Dictionary Report. The RIXML investment research standard is designed "to provide extensive capabilities to be able to tag any piece of research content, in any form or media, with enough meta-data information for consumers to search, sort and filter through publisher research and quickly provide highly relevant information to their decision makers." RIXML Version 2.1 "adjusts the standard by incorporating taxonomies to address ratings for both equity and fixed income markets. The new User Guide outlines the approach taken in creating the RIXML standard and explains some fundamental concepts such as XML, object modeling, schemas, etc. Diagrams of the RIXML object model are included as are definitions for the elements and attributes. The RIXML XML Schema formally represents the relationships and components as defined by the object model." Members of the RIXML.org consortium include Asset Managers, Investment Banks, and several Associate Members. These financial industry leaders have joined forces to develop an open, global XML-based RIXML standard for the tagging and delivery of investment research. Its goal is to define an open protocol that will improve the process of categorizing, aggregating, comparing, sorting, searching, and distributing global financial research data. RIXML.org has recently enhanced its public web site to include a "new interactive demo and educational section that demonstrates and describes how RIXML works. Additionally, the new site will enable member firms and industry participants to sign up for email updates, view a calendar of past and upcoming industry events, and access membership information." [Full context]
[December 15, 2003] RELAX NG XML Schema Language Published as an ISO Standard (DSDL Part 2). A posting from James Clark announces the publication of the RELAX NG specification as an ISO standard, being Part 2 'Regular-Grammar-Based Validation' of the multi-part ISO 19575 Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL). In Clark's vision, the RELAX NG schema language is "based firmly on the labelled-tree abstraction," distinguished from other XML schema languages by what it leaves out; in RELAX NG, the syntax and minimal labelled-tree abstraction implicit in that syntax are at the center of XML processing." According to the DSDL Part 2 abstract, ISO/IEC 19757-2:2003 "specifies RELAX NG, a schema language for XML. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. The pattern is specified by using a regular tree grammar. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document. ISO/IEC 19757-2:2003 specifies (1) when an XML document is a correct RELAX NG schema and (2) when an XML document is valid with respect to a correct RELAX NG schema." RELAX NG is supported by a growing collection of software tools, including validators, conversion utilities, code generators, and XML editors. ISO/IEC 19757-2:2003 is Part 2 of a planned ten-part ISO standard which will include "Rule-Based Validation: Schematron" (Part 3) as well. The goal of ISO SC34/WG1 (Document Description and Processing Languages, Information Description) in developing Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) is "to create a framework within which multiple validation tasks of different types can be applied to an XML document in order to achieve more complete validation results than just the application of a single technology." [Full context]
[December 12, 2003] Metadata Envelope for IETF MMUSIC Internet Media Guides (IMG). A draft document Metadata Framework for Internet Media Guides: Metadata Envelope has been submitted to the IETF MMUSIC Working Group, together with an XML Schema for the IMG transfer envelope. The IETF Multiparty Multimedia Session Control Working Group was chartered to "develop protocols to support Internet teleconferencing and multimedia communications, focusing upon revisions of current protocols in the light of implementation experience and additional demands that have arisen from other WGs (such as AVT, SIP,SIPPING, and MEGACO), and upon delivery mechanisms for IMGs, generalizing its work on session announcement and discovery protocols (SAP, RTSP, SIP)." An Internet Media Guide (IMG) is "a collection of multimedia session descriptions expressed using Metadata Envelopeor similar session description format used to describe a collection of multimedia sessions. The purpose of the IMG metadata is to provide machine- and human-readable information describing the files, resources and multimedia programs available for streaming or downloading via multicast or unicast. IMG metadata is encapsulated into an IMG transfer envelope before it is passed to an IMG transport protocol, such as MUPPET. The purpose of the transfer envelope is to provide independence of metadata formats from transport protocols, and to enable versioning, updating and expiring of transmitted metadata." Appendix A of the MMUSIC WG's Session Description and Capability Negotiation (SDPng) draft provides the formal syntax specifications in the form of an SDPng Base DTD and SDPng XML-Schema Specification. The SDPng protocol addresses multiparty multimedia conferences, being intended for two-way negotiation and unidirectional delivery; its XML Schema will be extended to harmonize with the XML Schema for the IMG Transfer Envelope. [Full context]
[December 09, 2003] W3C TAG Publishes Last Call Working Draft for Architecture of the World Wide Web. W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has released a Last Call Working Draft for the Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition. The Working Draft is edited by Ian Jacobs, with contributions from Tim Berners-Lee, Tim Bray, Dan Connolly, Paul Cotton, Roy Fielding, Chris Lilley, David Orchard, Norman Walsh, and Stuart Williams. The document "is written for Web developers, implementers, content authors and publishers. It describes the properties that are desired of the Web and the design choices that have been made to achieve them. The architecture document promotes re-use of existing standards when suitable, and gives guidance on how to innovate in a manner consistent with the Web architecture." Three architectural bases of the Web are discussed: Identification (resources identified by URI), Interaction (protocols defining the syntax and semantics of messages exchanged by agents over a network; web agents communicating information about the state of a resource through the exchange of representations), and Formats (representations built from a non-exclusive set of data formats, used separately or in combination)." Public review and comment on the Working Draft are invited through the last call period ending March 05, 2004. [Full context]
[December 05, 2003] HR-XML Consortium Approves Assessments Specification for Skills Evaluation. The Assessments 1.0 specification recently approved by the membership of the HR-XML Consortium features six new XML Schemas supporting order requests to providers of assessment and testing services, and the return of assessment status and results. An assessment in this context "can encompass a wide variety of tests, screenings, and instruments. Assessments can include tests of both hard skills (technical abilities acquired through training and education) and/or soft skills (a diverse range of abilities or personal characteristics such as customer orientation, analytical thinking, leadership skills, team-building skills, listening skills, and diplomacy). The Assessment Order specification is sufficiently generalized to be useful in a wide variety of scenarios. The HR-XML Assessment Workgroup is planning future releases of the standard that will support additional options, such as the discovery of available assessment instruments based on the particular competencies an employer may want to assess." This collection of XML Schemas is the latest suite in a series of related modular specifications designed to "spare employers and vendors the risk and expense of having to negotiate and agree upon data interchange mechanisms on an ad-hoc basis." HR-XML is an independent, non-profit consortium "dedicated to enabling e-commerce and inter-company exchange of human resources data worldwide. Its work centers on the development and promotion of standardized XML vocabularies for HR, with current efforts are focused on standards for staffing and recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and work force management. The Consortium has produced a library of more than 75 interdependent XML schemas defining data elements for particular HR transactions, as well as options and constraints governing the use of those elements." [Full context]
[December 04, 2003] IBM Submits EPAL Version 1.2 Privacy Specification to W3C. W3C has acknowledged receipt of IBM's Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language (EPAL) Version 1.2 as a Member Submission request. The specification includes two parts: a prose description of syntax and semantics, with formal definition of the EPAL syntax presented in an XML Schema. The EPAL technical specification defines a "formal language for writing enterprise privacy policies to govern data handling practices in IT systems according to fine-grained positive and negative authorization rights. It concentrates on the core privacy authorization while abstracting data models and user-authentication from all deployment details such as data model or user-authentication. EPAL is thus an interoperability language for exchanging privacy policy in a structured format between applications or enterprises, supporting the ability to encode an enterprise's privacy-related data-handling policies and practices and providing a language that can be imported and enforced by a privacy-enforcement systems. The goal of EPAL is: (1) to enable organizations to be demonstrably compliant with their stated policies; (2) to reduce overhead and the cost of configuring and enforcing data handling policies; and (3) to leverage existing standards and technologies. Whereas the W3C Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Recommendation defines a global terminology that can be used to describe the privacy promises of an enterprise, EPAL aims at formalizing enterprise-internal privacy policies, which requires a fine-grained vocabulary; it also includes a fine-grained hierarchy of purposes for which an enterprise collects data." While EPAL is not in scope for the W3C P3P 1.1 Specification Working Group as currently chartered, the submission will be brought to the attention of the P3P Coordination Group, the P3P community, W3C's AC, and the PET community. [Full context]
[December 02, 2003] ISTH Initiative Develops Core Payments XML Kernel Transaction Standard. Key players in the financial services area have launched an International Standards Team Harmonization (ISTH) Initiative to develop and promote a "single 'Core Payment XML Kernel' that can be used globally by any corporate, irrespective of size and sector and by any servicing bank, regardless of location." Details of the project are summarized in an agreement between IFX, OAGi, SWIFT, and TWIST; this MOU sets out "the framework of cooperation and coordination in the area of the content and use of a core payment kernel XML transaction." Several banks support the initiative, including ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Citibank, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Nordea, Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo. A pilot version of XML schemas and basic documentation was completed in August 2003; a handbook and final versions of XML schemas to be available in Q2 of 2004, while interim deliverables will be made available for public review. The Core Payment XML Kernel "provides the definition of an XML message that will be used for making a payment or direct debit as indicated in three message types: Payment Initiation; Status and Advice; Reconciliation. Direct Debit and Bank Statement will be addressed in future phases of work, while other types are currently out of scope (Extended Remittance Advice; Working Capital Management and Card Payments). Participating members will "identify and resolve content differences between the messages so a single set of content can be used, recommending a common core payment that can be accepted for use by each of the standards bodies. They will establish a method of interoperability that allows the Core Payment XML Kernel to have extended or related messages packaged with it. The goals are to support straight through processing, to provide reconciliation for corporates, to enhance the transparency of payments, and reduce the costs of a host-to-host file delivery implementation." [Full context]
[December 01, 2003] ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 Publishes Topic Map Query Language (TMQL) Requirements. A posting from Lars Marius Garshol announces the publication of a new draft version of TMQL Requirements, defining informal requirements and feature lists for the upcoming ISO standard TMQL (Topic Map Query Language, ISO/IEC 18048). This language "is intended to be a kind of SQL (or XML Query) for topic maps, and will greatly simplify topic map application development by making it much easier to extract information from topic maps." TMQL is being developed by SC34 in connection with TMCL (ISO 19756: Topic Maps Constraint Language) and the multi-part standard ISO/IEC 13250: Topic Maps. This updated TMQL Version 1.2.0 draft supersedes the August 2003 draft version 1.0.0. ISO/IEC 13250-2 (Topic Maps Data Model) defines the abstract structure of topic maps and provides the foundation for TMQL. The revised TMQL requirements draft "reflects the intentions of the Topic Map community regarding a Topic Map retrieval and manipulation language, and contains the consolidated view of the standards editors. It defines the requirements for the TMQL standard as a whole, and for the query aspect of TMQL in particular; additional requirements for the update part of TMQL will be detailed at a later stage." SC34/WG3 ('Information Association') will be meeting for standards work December 6-8, 2003 in Philadelphia, PA, USA. Special attention is being given to the Topic Map specifications, including the ISO 13250 Roadmap and Primer, XTM (XTM Syntax and Specification), TMDM ( Topic Map Data Model), TMCL, Canonical XTM, TMQL, and the Topic Map Reference Model. [Full context]
[November 28, 2003] UBL Version 1.0 Committee Draft Beta Approved for Public Implementation Testing. The OASIS Universal Business Language Technical Committee has reached a major milestone with the approval of UBL 1.0 Beta as a Committee Draft, now published to enable trial implementations of UBL in realistic business environments. A posting from Jon Bosak (Chair, OASIS UBL TC) announces the results of the TC voting and purpose of the UBL 1.0 Beta draft. The UBL TC was chartered to: "(1) develop a standard library of XML business documents (purchase orders, invoices, etc.) by modifying an already existing library of XML schemas to incorporate the best features of other existing XML business libraries; (2) design a mechanism for the generation of context-specific business schemas through the application of transformation rules to the common UBL source library; (3) produce an international standard for electronic commerce freely available to everyone without licensing or other fees." The UBL 1.0 Beta package approved as a Committee Draft is intended to "provide the specifications needed to begin implementation testing of UBL in advance of its recommendation to OASIS for standardization. Normative components of the CD are intended to represent UBL 1.0 as it will be released in 2004, with the exception of code list validation (which will be addressed by a Code List Subcommittee that has been formed for this purpose) and fixes for any major problems that may be discovered during the implementation phase. The non-normative parts of the draft (e.g., page formatting, illustrations, documentation) will be subject to further editorial work during the implementation phase. The implementation testing phase began as of November 25, 2003 and will end two weeks prior to the UBL TC meeting in Washington D.C., 23-27 February 2004. An implementation subcommittee (UBL ISC) is being formed to coordinate input received during implementation testing." [Full context]
[November 26, 2003] W3C and ISO Publish Final Version of Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification. The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification Second Edition has been published as a W3C Recommendation and as an International Standard, ISO/IEC 15948:2003. PNG is an "extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits. The specification also defines an Internet Media Type image/png. PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications, such as the World Wide Web, so it is fully streamable with a progressive display option. PNG is robust, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors. Also, PNG can store gamma and chromaticity data for improved color matching on heterogeneous platforms. The PNG specification enjoys a good level of implementation with good interoperability. At the time of this publication more than 180 image viewers could display PNG images and over 100 image editors could read and write valid PNG files. Full support of PNG is required for conforming SVG viewers; at the time of publication all eighteen SVG viewers had PNG support. HTML has no required image formats, but over 60 HTML browsers had at least basic support of PNG images." The W3C PNG Recommendation has been produced as part of the W3C Graphics Activity. Related standards include the WebCGM Profile and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a modularized language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. [Full context]
[November 25, 2003] BEA and IBM Publish Service Data Objects (SDO) Specifications. Three specifications describing Service Data Objects (SDO) have been published jointly by BEA and IBM, and will be implemented in upcoming releases of the BEA WebLogic Platform and IBM WebSphere Application Server. The documents "provide programmers with simpler and more powerful ways of building portable server applications." Java Specification Requests (JSRs) are also being filed in the areas of these specifications for formal consideration under the Java Community Process (JCP). Introduced by a whitepaper on Next-Generation Data Programming: Service Data Objects, the principal Service Data Objects document describes SDO as "data programming architecture and API for the Java platform that unifies data programming across data source types, provides robust support for common application patterns, and enable applications, tools, and frameworks to more easily query, view, bind, update, and introspect data. The core concepts in the SDO architecture are the Data Object and Data Graph. A Data Object holds a set of named properties, each of which contains either a primitive-type value or a reference to another Data Object. The Data Object API provides a dynamic data API for manipulating these properties. The Data Graph provides an envelope for Data Objects, and is the normal unit of transport between components. Data Graphs also have the responsibility to track changes made to the graph of Data Objects, including inserts, deletes, and modification to Data Object properties." Related documents include: (1) Work Manager for Application Servers, which provides an API for application-server supported concurrent execution of work items, and (2) and Timer for Application Servers, which defines an API for using timers in an application-server supported fashion. The three specifications have been published under royalty-free terms. [Full context]
[November 24, 2003] Open GIS Consortium Issues RFQ for OGC Web Services Phase 2 Interoperability Initiative. The Open GIS Consortium Inc. (OGC) has announced a Request for Quotations from technology developers in connection with the OGC Web Services Phase 2 (OWS-2) testbed. OGC Web Services make up a the set of OpenGIS Specifications for interfaces, schemas, and encodings that comprise the interoperability framework for the emerging Spatial Web. "OWS-2 is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that rapidly delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release." Participants in the initiative will develop enhancements and compliance tests for current OpenGIS Specifications, including Open Location Services, the Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Object Service (WOS), Catalog Services, and Geography Markup Language version 3.x. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiatives' Sponsors. The sponsors for this OGC initiative include: The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Spot Image (France), Sun Microsystems, and other organizations. The Open GIS Consortium is "an international industry consortium of 257 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. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications." [Full context]
[November 21, 2003] Event-Driven Process Chain Markup Language (EPML) for Business Process Modeling. A communiqué from Jan Mendling (New Media Lab, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration) describes the progress of a standardization initiative within the EPC Community, focused upon development of an Event-Driven Process Chain Markup Language (EPML). Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs) are a method for representation of business process models, popular especially in Germany. EPML is motivated by the goal of supporting data and model interchange in the face of heterogenous Business Process Modeling tools. The chief design principles in EPML are "readability, extensibility, tool orientation, and syntactic correctness. Readability expects EPML elements and attributes to have intuitive and perspicuous names. This is important because EPML documents will be used not only by applications, but also by humans who write XSLT-scripts that transform between EPML and other XML vocabularies. Extensibility reflects the need to provide different business perspectives and views on a process. EPML will be capable of expressing arbitrary perspectives instead of supporting just a pre-defined set. Tool orientation deals with graphical representation of EPCs. This is a crucial feature because BPM tools provide a GUI for developing the models. EPML will be able to store various layout and position information for EPC elements. Finally, syntactic correctness addresses EPC syntax elements and their interrelation." An initial EPML XML Schema and supporting documentation have been published. [Full context]
[November 18, 2003] Microsoft Announces Licenses for Use of Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. Claiming that it may have patents necessarily infringed by implementations reading or writing files conforming to Office 2003 XML Schemas, Microsoft has published the terms of a license allowing third parties to create and distribute "Licensed Implementations" that support the XML Reference Schemas. A "Licensed Implementation" in this context refers to specific portions of a software product that solely read and write files that are fully compliant with the specifications for the Office Schemas. The Microsoft announcement of royalty-free licensing follows a period of "fruitful discussions with the Danish Government" and the publication of a 91-page report on "Open-Source Software in E-Government" from the Danish Board of Technology. XML Schemas and documentation for WordprocessingML, the XML file format for Microsoft Office Word 2003, are now available for download. Additional Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas to be delivered in December 2003 include SpreadsheetML (Microsoft Office Excel 2003) and FormTemplate XML schemas (Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003). The Microsoft schemas define document structures used for presentation and layout of XML data, describing how information is stored when Microsoft Office documents are saved as XML. [Full context]
[November 14, 2003] IETF Draft on Language Tags Defines Mechanism for Private Use Extension. An initial public draft of Tags for Languages presented to the IETF Network Working Group builds upon the current IETF RFC 3066 Tags for the Identification of Languages and defines additional mechanisms for private use extension. The Internet Draft also clarifies how private use, registered values, and matching interact. Identifiers known as language tags are authorized for use in XML and many related computing technologies that need to support language-sensitive and locale-based processing. Current practice regarding the creation, registration, and use of language tags is in a considerable state of confusion and "mess," in the experience of localization experts and software engineers. The goal of the new draft is to work toward a new IETF RFC that replaces RFC 3066. The proposed syntax for construction of a language tag provides for designation of language, script, region, variant, and arbitrary extension (using name/value pairs). Under the new proposal, "all 4-letter subtags are interpreted as ISO 15924 alpha-4 script codes from ISO 15924, or subsequently assigned by the ISO 15924 maintenance agency or governing standardization bodies, denoting the script or writing system used in conjunction with this language. All 2-letter and 3-letter subtags are interpreted as ISO 3166 alpha-2 (or alpha-3) country codes from ISO 3166, or subsequently assigned by the ISO 3166 maintenance agency or governing standardization bodies, denoting the area to which this language variant relates. Region tags must occur after any script tags and before any variants or extensions." A further goal of the new RFC is to provide for stable language tags even in the face of ISO instability. "To maintain backwards compatibility, there are two provisions to account for instabilities in ISO 639, 3166, and 15924 codes: (1) Ambiguity - in the event that one of these ISO standards reassigns a code that was previously assigned to a different value, the new use of the code will not be permitted and the IANA registry, as soon as practical, will register a surrogate value for the new code, based on the year that the new code assignment was made. (2) Stability - all other ISO codes are valid, even if they have been deprecated; where a new equivalent code has been defined, implementations should treat these tags as identical." [Full context]
[November 12, 2003] Liberty Alliance Publishes Final Phase 2 Specifications and Previews Phase 3. An announcement from the Liberty Alliance Project describes the final publication of Phase 2 Specifications in the Liberty Identity Web Services Framework, along with the Liberty Privacy Guidelines for Federated Identity. The announcement also sketches a roadmap for Liberty Alliance Phase 3 deliverables that will benefit from member participation in two new expert groups. A Services Expert Group was formed "to define and manage the process for creating new service specifications," and a Conformance Expert Group (CEG) was formed "to define and manage the process for validating interoperability between vendors' implementations of the Liberty Alliance standards." New Service Interface Specifications planned for Liberty Phase 3 include: (1) a Contact Book Service Interface, providing a "common method for users to manage and share personal or business contacts regardless of contact book provider, enabling service providers to access or automatically update, at the user's request, information like billing or shipping address"; (2) a Geo-location Service Interface, "supporting an interoperable way to automatically identify a person's location, at the user's request, to provide services like weather, news, travel or currency updates or directions to a chosen location"; (3) a Presence Service Interface "defining a common way for users to share presence information. The new Liberty Web Services Framework provides organizations with an open, standards-based way of delivering identity-based web services that can enable new revenue opportunities, cut internal IT costs, and make web services more secure and private. Because the Liberty specifications are built on existing open industry standards such as SAML, SOAP, XML and WS-Security, they can be deployed and supported in any environment and maximize an organizations investment in non-proprietary standards." The announcement identifies five companies that have announced plans to support the Phase 2 Liberty specifications in existing or new products and services. [Full context]
[November 11, 2003] US Federal Trade Commission Report Calls for Patent Law and Policy Reform. Several conclusions and recommendations on software patent reform published in the FTC's recent report seek to restore a proper balance of interests between competition and current patent policy. The 315-page report summarizes the results of extensive Hearings held by the US Federal Trade Commission and the DOJ during 2002. "The Hearings took place over 24 days, and involved more than 300 panelists, including business representatives from large and small firms, and the independent inventor community; leading patent and antitrust organizations; leading antitrust and patent practitioners; and leading scholars in economics and antitrust and patent law. In addition, the FTC received about 100 written submissions." The FTC report observes that questionable patents can deter or raise the costs of innovation, and that in industries with incremental innovation such as computer hardware and software, questionable patents can increase 'defensive patenting' and licensing complications, "creating a 'patent thicket' of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology." The FTC recommends the creation of a new administrative procedure "that will make it easier for firms to challenge a patent's validity at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), without having to raise an expensive and time-consuming federal court challenge. It also recommends allowing courts to find patents invalid based on the mere preponderance of the evidence, without having to find that clear and convincing evidence compels that result. The current standard of 'clear and convincing evidence' undermines courts' ability to weed out questionable patents. This is especially troubling, since certain PTO procedures and rules tend to favor the issuance of patents. The FTC recommends tightening certain legal standards used to evaluate whether a patent is 'obvious'. In appropriate circumstances, the FTC will ask the PTO Director to reexamine questionable patents that raise competitive concerns." [Full context]
[November 10, 2003] Physical Markup Language (PML) Core Specification Version 1.0 for EPC Objects. A PML Core Specification Version 1.0 has been published as an Auto-ID Center Recommendation. The specification documents the core part of the Physical Markup Language (PML Core), explaining details the scope of PML Core and its relation to the Physical Markup Language. The document provides usage scenarios, articulates the requirements, explains design decisions, and supplies XML schemas and sample instance documents. The goal of PML is to "provide a collection of common, standardized vocabularies to represent and distribute information related to EPC Network enabled objects." The EPC Network is "an enabling technology that will transform the global supply chain through a new, open global standard for real-time, automatic identification of items in the supply chain of any company; the EPC Network was developed by the Auto-ID Center, a global research team directed through MIT and affiliated labs around the world, supported by more than 100 leading companies." Examples of EPC objects include observations by sensors such as RFID readers, "configuration files for infrastructure components such as RFID readers or e-commerce documents featuring EPC data such as advanced shipping notices containing EPCs of the items shipped. Although these different vocabularies might have diverse contents, they will be using naming and design rules common to the PML. The PML vocabularies provide the XML definitions of the data exchanged between components in the EPC Network system. XML messages interchanged in the systems should be instantiated from these PML schemas. The PML development is part of the Auto-ID Center's effort to develop standardized interfaces and protocols for the communication with and within the Auto-ID infrastructure. PML does not attempt to replace existing vocabularies for business transactions or any other XML application libraries, but complements these by defining a new library containing definitions about EPC Network system related data." [Full context]
[November 10, 2003] Portlet Open Source Trading (POST) Site for JSR 168 and WSRP Portlets. An open source web site featuring shared resources for implementation of the JCP JSR 168 and WSRP OASIS standards has been announced by Plumtree Software, Documentum, BEA Systems Inc., and Sun Microsystems. The Portlet Open Source Trading Site (POST) "aims to help companies kickstart their portal deployments, leading to faster time to value for all portal customers by providing open source portlets and a forum to exchange and learn about how these emerging new standards. Separate areas within POST are provided for sharing JSR-168 and WSRP portlets. As with any open-source site on SourceForge.net, any registered organization can contribute portlets to POST, which become available to all other members of the open-source community. Using POST, participants can see lists of newly available portlets, post requests to the community for the development of new portlets, search for portlets, upload new portlets, download available portlets, submit modified or enhanced versions of downloaded portlets, and discuss portlet development best practices, issues and solutions. Both the JCP (ava Community Process) and OASIS, the standard bodies that developed JSR 168 and WSRP respectively, have expressed support for the POST open-source site. The site will help companies learn from their industry peers and share best practices for developing standards-based portlets." [Full context]
[November 07, 2003] W3C Public Working Draft on Authoring Techniques for Device Independence. The W3C Device Independence Working Group has published an initial public working draft of Authoring Techniques for Device Independence. The document provides a summary of several techniques and best practices that Web site authors and solution providers may employ when creating and delivering content to a diverse set of access mechanisms. It includes discussions on the features of authoring tools, site creation and maintenance tools, storage, delivery, adaptation, end-user devices and software on such devices. The working draft seeks to identify known, published practices and techniques that address (1) the creation of original, reusable and adaptable content; (2) the representation of author intentions and decisions; (3) creating and adapting navigation features; (4) design and adaptation of interactive content; (5) use and management of contextual information." The W3C Device Independence WG was chartered to "study issues related to authoring, adaptation and presentation of Web content and applications that can be delivered effectively through different access mechanisms. The Working Group has the dual role of monitoring and reviewing the work of other groups from a device independence perspective, as well as proposing solutions for achieving better device independence in areas not already covered by other groups. The long-term objective of the Device Independence WG is to avoid fragmentation of the Web space, making it accessible with various kinds of presentation device. Consistent with this goal, presentation devices should be able to access Web content appropriate for their capabilities and authors should be enabled to create Web content that is deliverable across different presentation devices." [Full context]
[November 07, 2003] CLaRK XML-Based System for Corpora Development. A posting from Kiril Simov of the BulTreeBank Project announces the Version 2.0 release of CLaRK, an XML-based System for Corpora Development. The principal aim of the CLaRK system design is minimization of human intervention during the creation of language resources. It incorporates several XML-based technologies, including a Unicode XML Editor, XPath Engine, XSLT Engine, XML Constraints, and XML Cascaded Regular Grammar Engine. The basic mechanism of CLaRK for linguistic processing of text corpora is the cascaded regular grammar processor. The main challenge to the grammars in question is how to apply them on XML encoding of the linguistic information. The system offers a solution using an XPath language for constructing the input word to the grammar and an XML encoding of the categories of the recognised words. Several mechanisms for imposing constraints over XML documents are available. The constraints cannot be stated by the standard XML technology. The following types of constraints are implemented in CLaRK: (1) Regular expression constraints: additional constraints over the content of given elements based on a context; (2) Number restriction constraints: cardinality constraints over the content of a document; (3) Value constraints: restriction of the possible content or parent of an element in a document based on a context." The CLaRK system is implemented in Java and is available for download. [Full context]
[November 04, 2003] BEA Offers Preview Release of JSR 173 Streaming API for Java (StAX). BEA Systems, Inc. has announced the availability of the "first compliant preview" of the Streaming API for Java (StAX), documented in Java Specification Request (JSR) 173, Streaming API for XML. StAX is "a new Java API designed to improve developer productivity and performance by making it easier to incorporate Extensible Markup Language (XML) into Java. StAX is designed to overcome many of the disadvantages of former methods of accessing and manipulating XML documents from Java applications by providing the efficiency of streaming APIs and the control of tree-based APIs. This new method represents a next generation of APIs -- pull parsing. Unlike SAX and DOM, StAX is bidirectional, and can allow programs to both read existing XML documents and create new ones. Unlike other event-based approaches, developers using StAX for XML document parsing can pull events, rather than handling events in callback, which can enable them to stop processing, skip ahead, or get subsections and, ultimately, help to gain precise control, thereby saving time and reducing overall development costs." The BEA preview release of StAX is designed to provide developers with a suite of tests, tools and documentation designed to allow fully standardized implementation. This StAX preview is freely available online for developers. [Full context]
[November 04, 2003] OASIS Opens Discussion List for Proposed Music Notation XML TC. OASIS has created a public email list for the purpose of discussing the creation of one or more Technical Committees related to machine-processable music notation. According to a draft proposal for discussion, the purpose of the Music Notation XML TC would be "to develop a standard XML format for common Western musical notation. Although there are clearly a number of applications for such an XML standard, the proposed TC would initially focus on an XML standard to serve as an interchange format for score writing, music notation editing, and music publishing products. Many music notation products are already using XML for either interchange or native data storage. For example, interchange between Sibelius and Finale can be done using the MusicXML format. A major goal of the TC would be to minimize migration issues for existing music applications moving to an OASIS music notation standard. The TC would expect to receive and build upon existing music notation XML applications such as MusicXML and MEI as contributions to its work. These applications date back to 2000 and reflect the DTD technology of the time. The work of the TC might include modernizing current applications to improve support for schemas, namespaces, and other W3C and OASIS standards." The discussion list will be active for a maximum of 90 days (through calendar year 2003), during which time the list participants will decide if there is sufficient interest to form an OASIS TC. Public participation in the discussion list is welcome. [Full context]
[November 03, 2003] IBM alphaWorks Releases Snobase Ontology Management System. A new systems management technology known as SNOBASE (Semantic Network Ontology Base) or the Ontology Management System has been released by IBM alphaWorks. The Java-based application provides a "framework for loading ontologies from files and via the Internet and for locally creating, modifying, querying, and storing ontologies. It provides a mechanism for querying ontologies and an easy-to-use programming interface for interacting with vocabularies of standard ontology specification languages such as RDF, RDF Schema, DAML+OIL, and W3C OWL. Internally, the SNOBASE system uses an inference engine, an ontology persistent store, an ontology directory, and ontology source connectors. Applications can query against the created ontology models and the inference engine deduces the answers and returns results sets similar to JDBC (Java Data Base Connectivity) result sets. An ontology defines the terms and concepts used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. The ontology management system allows an application to manipulate and query ontology without worrying about how the ontology is stored and accessed, how queries are processed, how query results are retrieved, etc., by providing a programming interface. An ontology management system is to an ontology what a database management system (DBMS) is to data." The SNOBASE emerging technology was developed by an IBM research team including Juhnyoung Lee, Richard Goodwin, Rama Akkiraju, Yiming Ye, and Prashant Doshi. [Full context]
[October 31, 2003] IETF Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol Specifications Approved. A public message from the Internet Engineering Steering Group announces the approval of five proposed standard IETF Working Drafts from the Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP) WG. These documents include Presence Information Data Format (PIDF), Common Profile for Instant Messaging (CPIM), Common Presence and Instant Messaging: Message Format, Address Resolution for Instant Messaging and Presence, and Common Profile for Presence (CPP). Two key RFCs on instant messaging were published by the IMPP WG earlier: A Model for Presence and Instant Messaging (RFC 2778) and Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements (RFC 2779). The IMPP WG specifications "form the basis for a mechanism by which multiple distinct Instant Messaging applications may pass messages among the different systems while retaining the ability to use end-to-end encryption, integrity protection, and a shared framework for presence information. The work on PIDF (Presence Information Data Format) is already in widespread usage by the SIP-based instant messaging community, as is the message format described." The IMPP working group, now in the process of concluding its work program, is one of three IETF working groups chartered to develop architectuural, protocol, and data format specifications supporting internet-scale end-user presence awareness, notification, and instant messaging systems. The IETF Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) WG is extending current XMPP protocols "to provide finished support for RFC 2779-compliant security mechanisms, including authentication, privacy, access control and end-to-end as well as hop-by-hop message security. XMPP is an open, XML-based protocol for near real-time extensible messaging and presence and is the core protocol of the Jabber Instant Messaging and Presence technology." The SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) WG has produced a number of SIP-related specifications in parallel with the IMPP WG efforts. [Full context]
[October 30, 2003] OASIS Emergency Management TC Approves Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Draft. A Comittee Draft for the Common Alerting Protocol Version 1.0 has been approved by members of the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee and has been released for 30-day public review. The Common Alerting Protocol is "a simple but general format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over all kinds of networks. CAP allows a consistent warning message to be disseminated simultaneously over many different warning systems, thus increasing warning effectiveness while simplifying the warning task. CAP also facilitates the detection of emerging patterns in local warnings of various kinds, such as might indicate an undetected hazard or hostile act. And CAP provides a template for effective warning messages based on best practices identified in academic research and real-world experience." The OASIS TC was chartered to "advance the fields of incident and emergency preparedness and response, to be accomplished by designing, developing, and releasing XML Schema-based core and metadata standards to help facilitate and improve the real-world interoperability problems around incident and emergency management." Public review of the CAP Version 1.0 CD and comments are invited through November 30, 2003. [Full context]
[October 28, 2003] W3C Presents Prior Art Filing to USPTO and Urges Removal of Eolas Patent. A letter from Tim Berners-Lee (Director, World Wide Web Consortium) to the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (James E. Rogan, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property) appeals for a "reexamination of the '906 patent in order to prevent substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of World Wide Web." The Eolas '906 patent granted by the USPTO is described as applicable to Java applets, browser plug-ins, ActiveX components, Macromedia Flash, Windows Media Player, and related "embedded program objects." The W3C letter cites evidence of prior art, described in a "Citation of Prior Art Under 35 U.S.C. § 301 and 37 CFR 1.501 In Relation to U.S. Patent Number 5,838,906," which renders the Eloas patent invalid and justifies reexamination of the '906 patent. The Berners-Lee letter argues that the "impact of the '906 patent reaches far beyond a single vendor and even beyond those who could be alleged to infringe the patent. The existence of the patent and associated licensing demands compels many developers of Web browsers, Web pages, and many other important components of the Web to deviate from the fundamental technical standards that enable the Web to function as a coherent system. In many cases, those who will be forced to incur the cost of modifying Web pages or software applications do not even themselves infringe the patent (assuming it is even valid). Given the interdependence of Web technology, those who wrote Web pages or developed software in reliance on Web standards will now have to retrofit their systems in order to accommodate deviations from standards forced by the '906 patent. These deviations will either reflect individual decisions by developers about how to avoid infringement liability, or will be an effort to be compatible with decisions individual vendors make in the course of their own re-design. What's more, the inevitable fragmentation and re-tooling costs caused by the ability to enforce this patent, which we believe to be invalid, cannot even be remedied by individual parties choosing simply to pay licensing fees to the patent holder." [Full context]
[October 28, 2003] IDEAlliance Working Group Publishes PRISM Aggregator DTD for Online Content. The IDEAlliance PRISM Working Group has announced the publication of a new PRISM Aggregator XML DTD designed for use by publishers "to mark up and transmit magazine and journal content to aggregators and to push data to their internal web sites." Described as a "new standard format for publishers to use in transmitting content for online usage to aggregators and syndicators," the PRISM Aggregator DTD was developed in partnership with commecial publishers and content aggregators. The PRISM Aggregator Message DTD "combines a customization of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XHTML standard and a set of PRISM metadata that augments the widely accepted Dublin Core metadata standard. The current DTD includes basic metadata and structural elements that will be found in any serial publication or web-based editorial. The XML DTD provides an explicit way of describing the article markup and metadata to support processes such as corrections, additions, deletions and updates. Future releases of the DTD will include additional elements to aid searching and to help track copyright ownership, rights and permissions information, and license agreements." The PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) working group "was established in 1999 by a group of companies primarily involved in the production of serial and web-based editorial content. This group includes publishers, other rights holders, systems integrators, software developers and content aggregators." [Full context]
[October 27, 2003] Danish Board of Technology Report Recommends Open Source Software for E-Government. Members of an interdisciplinary working group under the Danish Board of Technology have published the results of a detailed investivation into the usability of open-source software in public administration, including the economic perspectives in a change-over to open-source software. The 91-page report Open-Source Software in E-Government "contains an economic analysis of open-source software and additionally analyses its usability and makes a number of recommendations on how the public sector can promote the use of open-source software." The document concludes that "switching from proprietary software to open source software in Danish public administration has an economic impact of several billion Denmark Kroner (DKK) every year. One reason the open source software is competitive is because it allows users to change, to correct, and to distribute the software and therefore to a greater extent leaves the user in control of changes." The working group report recommends that the state "not put all its eggs in one basket" and that an "initial pilot project must be established in the near future in which open-source software such as StarOffice/OpenOffice is implemented in medium-sized e-government." A larger followup project should be designed "in which a number of administrative units use open-source software, for example switching over to StarOffice/OpenOffice, and utilize previously gathered experience to reduce installation and adaptation costs. The working group recommends that a standard document format be developed, firstly for problem-free exchange of documents and secondly for integration in systems used in e-government. A strategy for the introduction of an open standard for the exchange of word-processed documents is important, because there is no genuine competition at present in the desktop area, largely due to the fact that Microsoft formats also represent de facto standards for electronic document exchange." [Full context]
[October 24, 2003] El Consorcio World Wide Web inaugura la Oficina Española en Oviedo, España. W3C has announced the launch of a new W3C Spanish Office based at the Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigacin Científica y la Tecnología (FICYT) in Oviedo, Spain. FICYT carries out and disseminates applied research in information technologies, both self-financed and on behalf of the private and public sectors. It is a non-profit institution whose goal is to co-operate with industry on important areas of research and development. FICYT's activities include: (1) undertaking and supporting research and development projects; (2) warding individual grants to researchers and scientists; (3) promoting and disseminating technology transfer and collaboration among the scientific, education and research communities and the private and public sectors; (4) contributing to the development of the Information Society. FICYT also has an important network of contacts in Latin America. The new W3C Spanish Office will assist in coordinating with Latin American communities by also disseminating information in Latin America, encouraging and co-ordinating new translations to Spanish, build up press contacts, etc. FICYT meets the criteria for W3C Office selection as a vendor-neutral Member of W3C with an extensive contact network and shared objectives for Web development. Although the primary goal of the new W3C Office is to be dedicated to outreach in Spain, this is also the first W3C Office with active contacts with Spanish-speakers worldwide. It joins the complement of W3C European Offices in The Benelux Countries, Finland, Germany & Austria; Greece; Hungary, Italy; Sweden; and the United Kingdom and Ireland. As its Members work to realize the full potential of the Web, W3C partners with regional organizations wishing to further W3C's mission. The W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, help broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities. W3C currently has 14 Offices in Australia, the Benelux countries, Germany and Austria, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and Ireland. En la fecha actual, existen 13 miembros españoles del World Wide Web Consortium W3C." [Full context]
[October 24, 2003] OASIS Members Form Production Planning and Scheduling Technical Committee. Representatives from Hitachi, Fujitsu, and the PSLX Consortium have joined with other individual members to form a new OASIS Production Planning and Scheduling Technical Committee. The nine members proposing the PPS work will focus on "production planning and production scheduling problems in manufacturing industries. The categories of manufacturers and types of manufacturing processes are not restricted; in scope are production planning and scheduling problems relating to a master production schedule, detail production schedule, material requirement planning, capacity requirement planning, production order management, and loading and dispatching in a shop floor. As a starting point, specifications published by PSLX Consortium will be discussed as one possible contribution to the standardization process. The PSLX Consortium specifications contain wide variety of information about planning and scheduling in manufacturing industries," including abstract models and data dictionaries. Some of these specifications are now being considered for stardization in ISO/TC184/SC5, "Architecture, Communications and Integration Frameworks, as described in SC5 Resolution 448. The OASIS TC will only deal with the XML Specification PSLX-04 which "prescribes how to represent the production planning and scheduling information by XML, and how to implement the interfaces on computers." The initial Committee Draft TC deliverable is expected to provide outlines of target applications of production planning and scheduling problems, list appropriate business execution messages for production planning and scheduling, define rules for an application in responding the business execution messages, and present XML schemas for each business execution message. Specifications produced by the TC will be of interest to system integrators and software vendors focusing on production planning and scheduling problems in manufacturing industries. The PPS TC's first meeting wlll be held December 18, 2003 in Tokyo. The TC Convenor and Proposed Chair is Yasuyuki Nishioka of the PSLX Consortium and Hosei University. [Full context]
[October 22, 2003] Atom as the New XML-Based Web Publishing and Syndication Format. The Atom Project, to the extent that anyone can declare authoritatively what it is, or is quintessentially meant to support, is "an initiative to develop a common syntax for syndication, archiving, and publishing." Sam Ruby (Emerging Technologies Group, IBM) is most often credited for originating the core ideas, and design work spread across several wikis and weblog Internet sites is now being shared by some of the brightest developer minds focused upon the future of Web content creation and distribution. The developers agree that Atom "will be vendor neutral, implemented by everybody, freely extensible by anybody, and cleanly and thoroughly specified." Atom is sometimes characterized as the successor to RSS, which is variably used for headline syndication, website metadata description, and content syndication. Like RSS, Atom is being created through an informal consensus process by volunteers in the Web developer community at large. Sam Ruby appears to recognize that the function of Atom will be revealed in unpredictable ways, escaping any telos imagined by the current designers. The key insights are these: design Atom such that content is not treated as a second class citizen (allow its conceptual model and syntax to blur the subjective distinction between metadata and data); insist upon a uniform mechanism for expressing the core concepts independent of the usage (e.g., allow multiple implementation designs conforming to abstract API requirements, and anticipate multiple schema formalisms for validation); keep the format open and simple (e.g., not requiring special serialization of the XML, implementable using simple POST and GET operations under HTTP). The Atom design is envisioned as extensible for different application areas (license terms, access control, content categorization, versioning, related resources, etc.) The core features are those common to most creations of intellectual works: source/author, editing date(s), resource identifier/location, and content. Given these minimal but central goals, we can understand the simplicity and generality of the abstract for the draft Atom API specification: the API document "presents a technique for using XML and HTTP to edit content." In this context, "edit" means "read, write, modify, delete" (approximately: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). [Full context]
[October 21, 2003] New Microsoft Office System Marketed to Enterprises. Microsoft Corporation has announced the general availability of its new Microsoft Office System with six product suites, eleven products, and four servers. The press kit includes references to several dozen promotional documents (press releases, feature stories, speech transcripts, white papers, and product information datasheets) describing the major components: Office 2003, Exchange Server 2003, Office FrontPage 2003, Office InfoPath 2003, Office OneNote 2003, Office Project 2003, Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Office Visio 2003, and Solution Accelerators. The controversial Windows Rights Management Services solution has been delayed, but is promised for delivery before the end of 2003. Enterprises prepared to pay for the new servers and "professional" editions of the Office software will be able to take advantage of XML and collaboration features. According to Microsoft's Bill Gates, the October 21, 2003 release includes the largest number of products ever released by Microsoft on a single day. [Full context]
[October 20, 2003] UN/CEFACT Announces V1.1 Release of ebXML Business Process Specification Schema. A posting from Klaus-Dieter Naujok (UN/CEFACT/TMG Chair) announces the final release publication of UN/CEFACT ebXML Business Process Specification Schema Version 1.1. This ebXML BPSS specification was "developed in accordance with the UN/CEFACT/TRADE/22 Open Development Process (ODP) for Technical Specifications and has been approved by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) Techniques and Methodologies Group (TMG). It defines a standard language by which business systems may be configured to support execution of business collaborations consisting of business transactions. The document is based upon prior UN/CEFACT work, specifically the metamodel behind the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM) defined in UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology -- Meta Model -- Revision 12. Over the last two years, interested parties from around the world have collaborated in the development of the Specification addressing a number of deficiencies implementers of Version 1.01 identified." As to the TMG's BPSS road map, "as agreed to by the TMG in March 2003, work on Version 2.0 and alignment with the UMM Meta-Model's Business Transaction View (BTV) will commence starting with the upcoming TMG meeting in December. Interested parties are invited to attend the meeting in Waidhofen/Ybbs (Austria), 8-12 December 2003." The UN/CEFACT TMG has also announced commencement of technical work on a Business Collaboration Framework (BCF) based upon the UMM Meta-Model; it is focused on the creation of a new e-business standard using a "technological and implementation neutral approach to the exchange of global information requirements." [Full context]
[October 17, 2003] ODRL International Workshop 2004 Call for Participation. A call for participation has been issued in connection with the ODRL International Workshop 2004, featuring papers and demo presentations on standardized XML exchange formats for rights expressions. The workshop will be held April 21 - 23, 2004, hosted by the Department of Information Systems, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) initiative "was started in 2001 and is today an accepted technology in the field of rights expressions. ODRL has been formally approved by the Open Mobile Alliance (previously, the WAP Forum) as the Rights Language for mobile devices and has also been deployed in various projects (e.g., the COLIS project, and OpenIPMP) and in prototype implementations." The XML-based ODRL specification "supports an extensible language and vocabulary (data dictionary) for the expression of terms and conditions over any content including permissions, constraints, obligations, conditions, and offers and agreements with rights holders. The ODRL specification is freely available and has no licensing requirements. The ODRL International Workshop 2004 has the goal of bringing together people from research and industry to share experiences, and discuss the future develop the language to ensure its timeliness, usability, and future success." Submissions are invited for research and industry papers on experiences with ODRL and for demo presentations on ODRL implementations. The deadline for submissions is December 20, 2003. [Full context]
[October 16, 2003] SPML Provisioning and Identity Management Specification Balloted for Approval. The Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) Version 1.0 has been released in Committee Draft for approval as an OASIS Standard. The OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee (PSTC) was formed in late 2001 "to define an XML-based framework for exchanging user, resource and service provisioning information. The resulting Version 1.0 specification defines the concepts, operations, deployment and XML schema, for an XML based request and response protocol for provisioning. SPML will be of interest to any organization that develops custom built provisioning solutions or is involved in identity management." The Core SPML document is accompanied by Bindings for the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) Version 1.0 (defining protocol bindings and profiles for the use of SPML request-response elements in communications protocols and applications) and the Core XML Schema. The SPML 1.0 specification "supports identifying principles using the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Project Liberty standards. Additionally, the SPML 1.0 specification has been designed to accommodate the use of the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) specification, XML Digital Signatures, and XML Encryption." Implementation code for SPML is provided on the OpenSPML.org web site, dedicated to "the promotion and distribution of an open source client code that supports SPML; OpenSPML is a cooperative initiative by independent software vendors and implementers of the SPML version 1.0 specification. Initially developed in Java, the OpenSPML client code is expected to be available in other languages." [Full context]
[October 14, 2003] World Wide Web Consortium Releases XForms 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C has announced the publication of XForms 1.0 as an approved W3C Recommendation, signifying that the specification is "stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its adoption by the industry. In contrast to HTML forms in which functional and presentation markup are intertwined, XForms lets forms authors distinguish the descriptions of the purpose of the form; the presentation of the form, and how the instance data are written in XML. By splitting traditional HTML forms into three parts -- XForms model, instance data, and the XForms user interface -- XForms cleanly separates presentation from content. This separation brings new advantages: (1) Reuse: XForms modules can be reused independently of the information they collect; (2) Device independence: user interface controls are abstract -- that is, their generic features are the only thing indicated -- so they can easily be delivered to different devices with different capabilities; (3) Accessibility: separation of presentation from content leaves information more readily available for users of assistive technologies; in addition, the user interface controls encapsulate all relevant metadata such as labels, thereby enhancing accessibility of the application when using different modalities. Practically speaking, XForms technologies make it possible to deliver the same form to a PDA, a cell phone, screen reader or conventional desktop machine, without loss of functionality for the end user." The XForms 1.0 Basic Profile has now been published as a standalone W3C Candidate Recommendation. This profile describes a minimal level of XForms processing tailored to the needs of constrained devices and environments. A brief tutorial XForms for HTML Authors has also been released to support authors; it provides an introduction to XForms and shows how to convert existing forms to their XForms equivalent. [Full context]
[October 14, 2003] Opsware and EDS Launch Data Center Markup Language (DCML) for Utility Computing. A new Data Center Markup Language (DCML) has been announced by Opsware and EDS, designed to "help organizations realize the benefits of utility computing: greater operational efficiencies, increased visibility into data center environments and operations and reduced time and cost to implement strategic IT initiatives such as consolidation, disaster recovery, application capacity management, software policy management and data center planning." Opsware and EDS are joined by twenty-some technology companies in support of the DCML "foundation to enable utility computing." DCML is an XML-based standard that "will enable data center environment breakthroughs in three areas: construction, management and visibility. DCML is the first systematic, open language to describe data center environments, dependencies between data center components and the policies governing management and construction of those environments. DCML provides a standard method for data center automation, system management and performance management solutions to interoperate and share descriptions of data center elements, directions on constructing the environment and policies governing their use. Because automation and utility computing systems require a common understanding of the environment under management, DCML is a necessary precursor for realizing the benefits of utility computing. DCML provides the first standard model to describe what is contained within a data center, and specifically how that environment is constructed. This enables systematic reproduction, rebuilding or reprovisioning of any portion of the data center environment. DCML will encompass a wide array of data center elements, including network components, storage components, UNIX, Linux, Windows and other servers, software infrastructure and applications." The organization will submit the DCML specification(s) to a standards body such as DMTF, IETF, OASIS, or SNIA. [Full context]
[October 13, 2003] XML 2003 News Standards Summit Seeks Interoperability and Convergence. A News Standards Summit sponsored by IDEAlliance, IFRA, IPTC, NAA, and OASIS will be held December 8, 2003, in conjunction with the Philadelphia XML 2003 Conference. The organizers are concerned that key specifications for news content representation and dissemination (NewsML, NITF, PRISM, RSS, Atom, ICE, XMP, XHTML, etc.) are being developed in isolation. The News Standards Summit "will bring together major players -- experts on news metadata standards as well as commercial news providers, users, and aggregators. News Summit attendees will analyze the current state and future expectations for news and publishing XML efforts from both the content and processing model perspectives. The goal is to increase understanding and drive practical, productive convergence. All interested parties are welcome to participate. Anyone who develops or implements news exchange standards is strongly encouraged to attend, particularly providers and users of news, online content, mobile communications, newspapers and magazines, and picture libraries. The program will feature presentations from several key news standards efforts, balanced by a requirements overview from a panel of international users." Confirmed speakers include Chet Ensign (LexisNexis), Laurent Le Meur (AFP), Alan Karben (XML Team Solutions), Ron Daniel (Taxonomy Strategies), Dianne Kennedy (IDEAlliance), Sam Ruby (IBM), Ben Hammersley (author of Content Syndication with RSS), John Cowan (Reuters), Peter Meirs (Time Inc), and Patricia Harris (NISO). They will be joined by speakers from Adobe, Associated Press, Dow Jones and Nokia; other well-known participants include Tim Bray, David Megginson, and Mark Walters. [Full context]
[October 10, 2003] Antenna House Issues Major Upgrade to XSL Formatter for High-Quality Print. The XSL Formatter from Antenna House has been released in version 3.0, incorporating "an entirely new formatting engine developed from scratch." The XSL Formatter V3.0 application implements an XSL-FO (Extensible Style Language-Formatting Objects) processor meeting the specifications of the W3C XSL Recommendation. It supports the formatting of XML documents for production-quality printing and output to PDF. According to the announcement, XSL Formatter V3.0 "formats large XML documents, data, and forms with high speed; V3.0 is the fastest XSL Formatter available and is significantly faster than XSL Formatter V2. Version 3.0 has newly developed SVG support to retain the vector information for the output module, thus meeting the increasing demands for SVG delivery and viewing. The new V3.0 formatting engine has been designed to be able to format virtually any size of document; this design overcomes the V2.X limitation of approximately 4,000 pages in a single document so that v3.0 is able to format about 10 times as much content as XSL Formatter V2. The new version supports direct streaming of both the input FO and output PDF; since it does not go through a temporary disk file, system integration is easier and moreover is safer. Command line, COM, .NET, Java, and C++/C interfaces are supported. The XSL Formatter Hyphenation Option makes it possible to hyphenate 40 or more languages without preparing dictionaries. " An evaluation version for XSL Formatter V3.0 is available for download. [Full context]
[October 09, 2003] W3C Publishes Draft Guidelines for Authoring Internationalized XHTML and HTML. The World Wide Web Consortium has issued an initial Working Draft for Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization 1.0. Produced by the Guidelines, Education & Outreach Task Force (GEO) of the Internationalization Working Group, the document describes and illustrates authoring techniques for the creation of "internationalized HTML using XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01, supported by CSS1, CSS2 and some aspects of CSS3." Most of the techniques for completed document subsections are implemented in the latest versions of popular Web browsers, so readers can inspect the source code and observe the visual behaviors, where relevant. In this initial WD, sigla are represented for implementation support in three user agents (Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 7, and Opera 7). The document is organized according to "tasks that a developer of XHMTL/HTML content may want to perform." Document sections at least partially complete include: Document structure and metadata; Character sets, character encodings and entities; Fonts; Specifying the language of content; Handling bidirectional text; Handling data that varies by locale. Subsequent versions of the document will document authoring techniques relating to: Handling vertical text; Text formatting; Lists; Tables; Links; Objects; Images; Forms; Keyboard shortcuts; Writing source text; Navigation; File management; Supplying data for localization. The Working Draft is presented in a full (detail) view, collapsible outline view, and resource view. In the resource view, bibliographic citations are hyperlinked to relevant standards from W3C, IANA, IETF, Unicode Consortium, etc. Icons in the document margins help the reader switch between the detail, outline, and resource views. The W3C GEO Task Force "encourages feedback about the content of this document as well as participation in the development of the techniques by people who have experience creating Web content that conforms to internationalization needs." [Full context]
[October 08, 2003] OpenOffice.org Releases Free, Open Source, Cross Platform Office Productivity Suite. Following several months of beta testing, OpenOffice.org has released the new version of its award-winning OpenOffice.org 1.1 office productivity suite. According to the terms of the LGPL and SISSL open source licenses, the software is "free for all to use, improve, modify, and to redistribute to anyone. OpenOffice.org has tracked "over 20 million downloads" of the software, which is becoming increasingly popular in government jurisdictions, hospitals, schools, and in developing countries where money is not predictably available for software purchase and upgrades. The Version 1.1 OpenOffice.org suite comes complete with word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation and various other components and provides a revolutionary open, future-proof XML file format. The new release introduces many enhancements and new features including native one-click PDF (Adobe Acrobat) export, Macromedia Flash export for presentations and drawings, faster load-time, enhanced MS Office file compatibility, accessibility support, and a smoother look and feel. It supports vertical and bidirectional writing with complex text layout. It comes with a a macro recorder, software development kit, and an XML filter tool including filters for DocBook and XHTML." Downloads are available for for Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Linux (x86 & PowerPC), and Solaris Operating System (SPARC platform edition) in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean and Japanese. Support for other languages is underway; versions for Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris (x86) will be available later in 2003. [Full context]
[October 07, 2003] IBM Releases Web Services Provisioning (WS-Provisioning) Specification. A draft version of Web Services Provisioning (WS-Provisioning) has been presented by IBM/Tivoli as a submission for consideration by the OASIS Provisioning Services TC. The contribution is provided as input to technical work on SPML Version 2, as Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) Version 1.0 is currently out for ballot as an OASIS Standard. The WS-Provisioning specification "describes the APIs and schemas necessary to facilitate interoperability between provisioning systems and to allow software vendors to provide provisioning facilities in a consistent way. The specification addresses many of the problems faced by provisioning vendors in their use of existing protocols, commonly based on directory concepts, and confronts the challenges involved in provisioning Web Services described using WSDL and XML Schema. WS-Provisioning defines a model for the primary entities and operations common to provisioning systems including the provisioning and de-provisioning of resources, retrieval of target data and target schema information, and provides a mechanism to describe and control the lifecycle of provisioned state." The WS-Provisioning authors envision that the technical work of the OASIS PSTC may at some point converge with the IBM specification. [Full context]
[October 03, 2003] ECMA International Publishes CSTA XML Standard for Web Services Call Control. ECMA International has announced the official publication of the ECMA-348 Standard, providing "the world's first complete call control web services specification." Web Services Description Language (WSDL) for CSTA Phase III defines a WSDL for the XML messages defined in ECMA-323. It "builds upon the XML data types and message formats specified in ECMA-323 second edition, supporting all CSTA features, e.g., services and events as specified in ECMA-269 (Services for Computer Supported Telecommunications Applications - CSTA) and in ECMA-323. CSTA provides a protocol independent abstraction layer for applications. It provides a consistent, standards-based messaging interface that can be used with basic first party call control based platforms as well as more complex third party call control (CTI) platforms, or a combination of both. ECMA-323 consists of a set of XML Schemas based upon the W3C XML Schema Language Recommendation; it extensible XML schemas for all of the categories of services defined in ECMA-269. Call control is just one category of services in ECMA-323. Examples of other categories of services are: capability exchange (feature discovery) services, call routing services, services to control a device (e.g., message waiting, writing to display, forwarding settings), and others." ECMA International is "an industry association founded in 1961 and dedicated to the standardization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Systems. For over forty years ECMA has actively contributed to world-wide standardization in information technology and telecommunications. More than 335 ECMA Standards and 85 Technical Reports of high quality have been published, more than 40% of which have also been adopted as International Standards." [Full context]
[October 02, 2003] OAGIS RiskML Work Group Defines XML Vocabulary for Risk and Control Libraries. The Open Applications Group (OAGi) has announced the formation of a new RiskML Work Group to define an XML vocabulary for the definition of risk and control libraries. Formation of the RiskML WG is set against the backdrop of recent Sarbanes-Oxley legislation where "there is increased likelihood of ERP customers and Audit Firms exchanging a great deal of risk and control information. The separation of the External Audit from the Risk Assurance activity will mean that Audit firms will be exchanging risk and control information. Mapping different formats from different audit firms and different ERP solutions is inefficient, expensive and adds no value to the parties involved." The RiskML WG will therefore create a standardized vocabulary to describe a risk and control library facilitating risk library information exchange and a standardized mechanism for publication. It will focus on the Risk and Control structure described in the COSO framework. Key deliverables include a Class Diagram, Use Case Diagram, XML Schema Definition, and corresponding documentation. New OAGIS Business Object Documents (BODs)/Nouns to be added include: Financial Statement, Process, Objective, Risk, Control, and Testing Procedure. The Open Applications Group is "a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and processes based on XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration. Its members have created a consensus based framework for business software application interoperability and have developed a repeatable process for quickly developing high quality business content and XML representations of that content." Other OAGi Content Working Group Projects include: Core Components, CRM XML, Internet Parts Order, Inventory Visibility, Location Services, Logistics XML, Semantic Integration, and STAR (Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail). [Full context]


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