Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Wednesday, 30 May 2007

A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS and Sponsor Members
Edited by Robin Cover

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

Headlines

Extreme 2007: International Workshop on Markup of Overlapping Structures
Understanding WS-Federation
NAC 2007 Spring Conference: OASIS XACML Update
WS-Addressing Metadata Interoperability Scenarios
Google Improves AJAX Apps Toolkit
OASIS TC Creates DITA Semiconductor Information Design Subcommittee
Complex Events: BEA WebLogic Event Server
OGC in Biodiversity Science and Education

Extreme 2007: International Workshop on Markup of Overlapping Structures
Staff, Extreme Markup Languages 2007 Announcement

Organizers of the Extreme Markup Languages 2007 Conference have announced a full-day (pre-) conference workshop bringing together the proponents of some of the major proposals for markup, representation, extraction, display, and validation of semantic overlap to summarize the systems they are developing and discuss topics of common interest. While XML and SGML have revolutionized the representation of structured information, not all information structures map easily into systems of hierarchically nested elements. Markup of overlapping structures is a perennially hot topic, reinvented and reimagined as often as it is solved. The "International Workshop on Markup of Overlapping Structures" schedule will include a morning of formal presentations, followed by a full afternoon of free-ranging discussion. After an introduction to the problem of overlap, several methods for working with overlap will be discussed, including: Goddag structures, LMNL, Trojan Horses and other XML milestone-tagging techniques, Topic Mapping Overlap, and Multiple Annotations and XConcur. Discussions of the similarities, differences, unresolved gaps and problems, and potential symbiosis between and among these approaches will involve both the speakers and the audience. The "Overlapping Structures" Workshop will be held Monday, August 6, 2007. Extreme 2007 is "is an open marketplace of theories about markup and all the things that they support or that support them: the difficult cases in publishing, linguistics, transformation, searching, indexing, and storage and retrieval." The main conference is August 7-10, 2007, in Montreal, Canada. Proposals for late-breaking presentations must be received by June 15, 2007.

Understanding WS-Federation
Marc Goodner, Maryann Hondo, et al., Industry White Paper

This Microsoft/IBM paper in a series "Global XML Web Services Specifications" is intended to help the reader understand the features of WS-Federation by describing the use of the specification in selected application scenarios. WS-Federation extends WS-Trust to provide a flexible Federated Identity architecture with clean separation between trust mechanisms, security token formats, and the protocol for obtaining tokens. This architecture enables a reusable security token service model and protocol to address the identity requirements of both web applications and web services in a variety of trust relationships. The features of WS-Federation can be used directly by SOAP clients and web services. WS-Federation also defines syntax for expressing the WS-Trust protocol and WS-Federation extensions in a browser based environment. The intention of this functionality is to provide a common model for performing Federated Identity operations for both web services and browser-based applications. The paper briefly reviews WS-Trust and then describes how WS-Federation builds upon the Security Token Service model defined in that standard. A basic overview of the features of WS-Federation is provided. Key concepts are explained by examples of usage in application scenarios. An 'Enterprise Scenario' is centered on one organization offering a Request for Proposal (RFP) via an online service and another organization accessing this service and placing bids. This scenario demonstrates the use of the following WS-Federation features: Federation Metadata to enable automated service configuration, Application-specific Policy and Metadata to convey additional security semantics, Authorization Context to inform security token service decisions when issuing tokens and Common Claim Types to promote interoperability. A 'Healthcare Scenario' focuses on a patient record access in an emergency situation. This scenario demonstrates the use of the following WS-Federation features: Federation Metadata, Application-specific Policy and Metadata, Authorization Context and Common Claim Types. It demonstrates the use of Privacy Protection by a requestor to indicate that a sensitive claim which may be issued in a security token should be protected by encryption as well as the use of federated Sign Out.

See also: the WSFED TC

NAC 2007 Spring Conference: OASIS XACML Update
Hal Lockhart, Conference Presentation

This presentation was prepared for the Network Applications Consortium (NAC) 2007 hosted by Cisco in San Jose, CA, USA on April 24-26, 2007. The presentation covered the following topics: Overview of Policy and Authorization; XACML Overview; XACML Concepts; Policy Evaluation; XACML Profiles; XACML 3.0; XACML Interoperability Demo. "Information security" refers to technologies and procedures intended to implement organizational policy in spite of human efforts to the contrary. It concerns policy determination (Expression: code, permissions, ACLs, Language; Evaluation: semantics, architecture, performance) and Policy enforcement (Maintain integrity of Trusted Computing Base - TCB; Enforce variable policy). OASIS XACML TC was chartered to define a core XML schema for representing authorization and entitlement policies. Target: any object, referenced using XML. It provides fine grained control, characteristics - access requestor, protocol, classes of activities, and content introspection; it is consistent with and building upon SAML. Current work in XACML 3.0: Administration/Delegation; Schema generalization; WS-XACML; Obligation combining rules; Policy provisioning; Metadata/vocabulary advertisement; Closely coupled PDP/PEP. WS-XACML [Web Services Profile of XACML] defines XACML-based policy assertions for authorization and privacy. These can be used in a WS-Policy instance along with other types of web services policy assertions, or can be used as independent service meta-data. The profile defines two new assertion types, one for authorization and another for privacy. An XACML Interoperability Demonstration is planned for the Burton Catalyst Conference in San Francisco (June 25-29, 2007); tentative participants include BEA, IBM, Jericho Systems, Oracle, Securent, and Symlabs.

See also: the XACML TC

WS-Addressing Metadata Interoperability Scenarios
Ram Jeyaraman, Test Results

"IBM and Microsoft participated in interoperation testing of Web Services Addressing Metadata 1.0 specification at the WS-Policy F2F held in Ottawa, Canada during May 23-25, 2007, and tested the various test scenarios. The results are described [online]. I am pleased to announce that all the test scenarios were exercised and PASSED successfully..." These tests cover functionality that have been newly added to the WS-Addressing Metadata specification, since the publication of the WS-Addressing WSDL Binding Candidate Recommendation. "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Metadata" defines how the abstract properties defined in "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core" are described using WSDL, how to include WSDL metadata in endpoint references, and how WS-Policy can be used to indicate the support of WS-Addressing by a Web service. Web Services Addressing Core defines a set of abstract properties and an XML Infoset representation of Web service endpoint references (EPRs) and to facilitate end-to-end addressing of endpoints in messages.

See also: the Scenarios

Google Improves AJAX Apps Toolkit
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Google is offering a release candidate for Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.4, an upgrade to the company's framework for writing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications in Java. The toolkit is intended to make it easier to write AJAX applications such as Google Maps and Gmail. No date has been set for the general release of version 1.4 "This is undoubtedly the biggest GWT release yet," said Bruce Johnson, a developer of the toolkit, in a blog. "In addition to 150-plus bug fixes, GWT 1.4 RC includes a ton of new features, improvements, and optimizations." An ImageBundle capability in version 1.4 creates a single composite image from many small ones, allowing for consolidation of HTTP requests. This improves application responsiveness, the company said. The composite image is permanently cacheable, which means users' time is not spent on bytes they already have, Google said. Version 1.4 also features an enhanced UI library with widgets that make it easier to build user interfaces. A RichText widget provides a simpler way to add sophisticated text-editing capabilities to applications while a SuggestBox widget offers auto-complete functionality that can be tailored to any need, Google said. HorizontalSplitPanel and VerticalSplitPanel capabilities enable resizing of portions of the user interface. Benchmarking functions in the toolkit integrate with the JUnit testing framework, so developers can record and compare the speed of code snippets across different parameters. Internationalization and localization support has been improved with NumberFormat and DateTimeFormat capabilities, which allow developers to parse and format numbers, dates, and times for users worldwide.

OASIS TC Creates DITA Semiconductor Information Design Subcommittee
Staff, OASIS Announcement

Members of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture Technical Committee have formed a new DITA Semiconductor Information Design Subcommittee. The goals are to identify data patterns that are consistent and/or specific to the semiconductor industry. Examples may include: features; instruction sets data - which may not have standard/native syntax/data structure; register data; signals data; mechanicals data; electrical characteristics; timing data; and thermal characteristics. Most of these content types/structures are well-defined by other standards, such as IP-XACT, IEC-61360, IEEE-P1685, etc.; but others are not. The subcommittee will define how information stored in standards-based formats will interact with DITA systems. The group will provide recommendations for the 'role of DITA' in semiconductor information design. It will determine which content types/patterns justify the creation of a DITA specialization, create specializations, establish guidelines and XSLT for transforming specialized data, create metadata guidelines, and provide high-level perspective of how DITA systems should interface with RTL, Verilog, design flow tools, and other relevant tools, processes, and standard data formats. members will consider the role of SVG, TDML, MATHML and characterize how they should interact with DITA. The recommendations of this committee should have enough weight to re-energize ownership and development of neglected domains. Ths SC should provide justification for standardizing semiconductor industry and propose business benefits of participation.

See also: DITA references

Complex Events: BEA WebLogic Event Server
Clint Boulton, InternetNews.com

BEA Systems takes complex computing events very seriously, making this clear with the announced BEA WebLogic Event Server, a Java application server geared to handle loads of streaming data and complex event processing (CEP) in real time. WebLogic Event Server collates information from distributed systems on the fly and applies rules to discern patterns and trends that typically go unnoticed. The software is essentially another tool companies can use to find and respond to opportunities and threats. WebLogic Event Server "fits perfectly because it uses Java", which doesn't require compilations every time the customer wants to change a rule. The software handles 50,000 complex events per second and applies 10,000 rules against those events. This lets customers build their applications on the platform without integrating a CEP engine with a separate general purpose platform; in this regard, the server saves businesses the acquisition costs of having to buy a separate CEP engine. WebLogic Event Server also supports simple Java (POJO) programming and the Spring Framework, as well as an Event Processing Language (EPL) that augments and extends SQL for event processing. More broadly, the move underscores BEA's embrace of event-driven architecture (EDA), which lets businesses absorb copious and unpredictable data flooding, and make intelligent business decisions around that data. WebLogic Event Server, the first BEA product to be completely based on the company's microService Architecture (mSA), goes into public beta for WebLogic Event Server tomorrow, with general availability this summer [2007].

See also: Event-Driven SOA

OGC in Biodiversity Science and Education
Mark Reichardt, OGC Newsletter President's Message

"For more than a decade, leading biologists and scientific organizations have stated that if present trends continue, it is highly likely that as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change, half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years. If we are to avoid this ecological disaster, a critical requirement is that scientists, researchers and policy makers have good information about these trends and about the habitats and distributions of the world's millions of species of plants and animals. Not surprisingly, almost all of this information has a geospatial context. An organization called Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and the OGC recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work together. Biodiversity Information Standards is a scientific and educational association focused on development of standards for the exchange of biological and biodiversity data. The organization's Geospatial Interest Group (GIG) works to facilitate adoption and integration of standards, specifications, best practices, and technology between the biological and geospatial communities. The GIG will work closely with the OGC's Earth Observation, Natural Resources and Environment Working Group to share standards documentation, develop profiles and schema based on OGC standards, pursue joint interoperability initiatives, and participate in joint outreach activities. This collaboration will benefit from two ongoing OGC initiatives—an OGC Architecture Implementation Pilot and the OGC Trilateral Agreement Pilot. These are being led by collaborating European, Canadian and US agencies, as well as the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), to advance a standards-based architecture based on OGC specifications..."

See also: OASIS/IUCN Workshop


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