Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Friday, 08 June 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:
BEA Systems, Inc. http://www.bea.com

Headlines

Apache Synapse 1.0: Supporting SOA and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Simple Sharing Extensions for Atom and RSS
A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Package and Data Format for Describing Files
JavaOne 2007: Prodigal Sun Returns to the Client
DMTF DASH Follow-on Standard Mirrors Server-Focused SMASH Initiative
IBM Undeterred By Setbacks to ODF Adoption
Adapting Legacy Systems for SOA
Staples Tries Reusable RFID Tags

Apache Synapse 1.0: Supporting SOA and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Paul Fremantle, Blog

The Apache Synapse team is pleased to announce the first full release of Apache Synapse with the 1.0 release. Apache Synapse is a simple and highly effective Web Services intermediary and SOA framework. It can be added to your existing network very simply either as a services gateway or as an HTTP proxy. Once Apache Synapse is mediating your service requests it can perform many functions including routing, load-balancing, transformation and protocol switching. Apache Synapse can be used to build an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Apache Synapse has been designed to support very fast XML routing with a streaming XML design based upon Apache Axiom. in addition, the use of a completely asynchronous architecture and non-blocking IO based on Java NIO ensures that Synapse has very low overhead and can scale to support thousands of concurrent clients without dropping messages. The main features of Synapse include [excerpt]: (1) Support for XML/HTTP, JMS, SOAP 1.1/1.2, WS-Addressing, MTOM binary attachments; (2) Simple protocol switching between XML/HTTP (POX) and SOAP, JMS and HTTP; (3) Built in support for XPath and Regex based routing, XSLT-based transformations; (4) High-performance non-blocking HTTP and HTTPS support (based on Apache HttpCore) -- millisecond-level routing, supports thousands of concurrent connections; (5) Load-balancing, failover and throttling support; (6) Support for advanced Web Services standards: WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Security, WS-Policy; (7) JMS support including text, binary, XML and SOAP/JMS. From the project description: "Apache Synapse is a easy-to-use and lightweight XML and Web Services management and integration broker that can form the basis of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Apache Synapse offers a wide range of mediation capabilities, including support for a number of open standards, including XML, XSLT, XPath, SOAP, HTTP, JMS, Web Services Security, Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM), SMTP and Web Services Addressing. Synapse supports a number of useful functions out-of-the-box without programming, but it also can be extended using popular programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and Groovy. "

Simple Sharing Extensions for Atom and RSS
Steven Lees, Atom Syntax Posting

Steven Lees (CSA Concept Development Team, Microsoft) wrote on the Atom Syntax list: "I'm seeking feedback on a specification that works in conjunction with Atom. I'm part of the team at Microsoft that is developing Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE). Adding SSE information to a feed enables loosely coupled data synchronization between multiple endpoints that are sharing the feed. The original version of SSE supported RSS as a feed format, and I've just posted to the web the latest version of the spec, which adds a binding for Atom feeds. The SSE spec is designed so that an SSE-annotated Atom feed is valid and can be consumed by any feed reader, even if that reader doesn't participate in sync. The ability to sync data across endpoints in a loosely coupled way enables some interesting end user scenarios. Simplicity is one of the main design points for SSE, which means that the spec is suitable for implementation on relatively small devices as well as larger ones. The spec is released under a Creative Commons license, and our goal is to encourage a range of implementations of the spec for a wide variety of computing environments." Simple Sharing Extensions for Atom and RSS 0.93 overview: "The scope of Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) is to define the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely-cooperating applications to use XML-based container formats such as Atom and RSS as the basis for item sharing—that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous synchronization of new and changed items amongst two or more cross-subscribed feeds."

See also: the SSE FAQ document

A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Package and Data Format for Describing Files
Miguel Garcia-Martin and Marcin Matuszewski (eds), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Session Initiation Proposal Investigation (SIPPING) Working Group have released an initial draft for "A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Package and Data Format for Describing Files." This document specifies the format and semantics associated to a 'file' event package that allows SIP endpoints to publish the availability of files. A file can be, for example, images, video files, audio files, etc. File descriptors are provided in an Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) 'file-metadata' document. This event package also allows SIP endpoints to subscribe to changes in the availability of files, or perform searches for the availability and location of a given file. Support for partial notifications and publications is also accomplished by using XML patch operations. There are scenarios where a SIP endpoint has a number of available files that can be offered for public disposal or for a limited number of authorized users. One of these cases is, for example, when Alice takes some pictures with her camera phone and she wants to share them within a community. This requires a mechanism that allows Alice to describe the files she wants to share. Alice might be interested in finding out the availability of a given file, defined by a set of parameters. Or Alice may be trying to find pictures of the bowling tournament that took place recently in her home town. This implies a mechanism whereby Alice can perform searches of available files. The user who performs the search identifies one or more aspects of the file she is searching, but probably she is not able to provide a full description of the file. SIP provides an extensible event mechanism that is suitable for our needs. We enable the above scenarios by defining a SIP event package for file metadata publication and search. An Event State Compositor aggregates shared files available at different endpoints. The Event State Compositor (ESC) that receives the PUBLISH request processes 'file-metadata' documents according to a well defined strategy. For example, the ESC can be a centralized intermediary facilitator for a given community, or it can be a super-node of a SIP Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network.

See also: the SIPPING WG Charter

JavaOne 2007: Prodigal Sun Returns to the Client
Elliotte Harold, IBM developerWorks

Last month marked the twelfth iteration of Sun Microsystems' annual JavaOne extravaganza. What started as a small spinoff of Software Development West back in 1996 has become possibly the single largest developer conference still standing. Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people spent a week listening to their peers and colleagues talk about subjects as diverse as Scala, REST, Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), rich Internet applications (RIA), robotics, Swing, Blu-ray, and more. In hindsight, the message that emerged from the show is that the server side has peaked, at least on the Java platform. JEE and related technologies like Hibernate, Spring, and servlets are old news. Sure, developers are still using them, but they're almost legacy code at this point. Little if anything new was said about Java-based server-side technologies at the conference, and they were almost completely absent from the keynotes. Instead, Java developers who focus on the server side are looking to Ruby, Rails, and REST for salvation. Undeniably, in the Java space, the action has shifted back to the client. The single biggest announcement of JavaOne this year was Chris Oliver's JavaFX Script, a declarative language for writing Flash-like rich Internet applications. JavaFX Script takes advantage of Java 2D to create non-standard widgets like burning flames, rotating color wheels, and buttons fashioned after the head of your favorite pop star. This article discusses some of the highlights from JavaOne 2007.

See also: JavaFX Script

DMTF DASH Follow-on Standard Mirrors Server-Focused SMASH Initiative
Michael Caton, Network Computing

The DMTF's desktop and mobile architecture for System Hardware aims to help administrators avoid some of the problems of out-of-band management. The DMTF's desktop and mobile architecture for System Hardware, introduced in early March, aims to help admins avoid some of the problems of remote workstation management, such as having desktop and mobile computers hang during an update. The group plans to build a standards-based approach to make remote management easier using its Web Services for Management, or WS-Management, specification. With DASH, a remote-management application could, for instance, let admins know what software is installed on a system while the system is off or reboot one that has hung. DASH also could let a system developer create a preboot state in which a remote-management application could read installed software version information using the CIM (Common Information Model) schema. SMASH 1.0 was released in December 2006 and includes similar capabilities for remotely managing servers with an eye toward out-of-band management. Part of SMASH is a command-line interface for remote management. DASH has three main architectural elements: the client, the MAP (Manageability Access Protocol) and the managed system. The client represents the administrator's remote-management application. MAP encompasses the protocols and services needed to access new DASH-enabled functionality in the conventional DMTF CIM and WS-Management methodology. DMTF's president, Winston Bumpus, says the DASH framework defines 60 to 80 new profiles. These profiles not only address sensors and hardware controls for system elements, such as power and thermal characteristics, but also define how security for authentication, authorization and auditing is handled via WS-Management.

See also: the earlier news story

IBM Undeterred By Setbacks to ODF Adoption
China Martens, InfoWorld

Last week, California became the latest U.S. state to stall or shelve proposed legislation to require its agencies to adopt open file formats like ODF instead of Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. Similar bills in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and Oregon have met with the same fate, while Minnesota only passed legislation after it was changed from a mandate to use an open format to a call for the state's IT department to investigate the issue. Massachusetts, the first and so far only, U.S. state with a policy on using open formats, shifted that position somewhat last year to order the adoption of plug-ins to enable Office users to create and save files in ODF. You might think the steady defeat of bills in several U.S. states to mandate the use of free interoperable file formats might dampen the spirits of IBM, one of the prime supporters of ODF (OpenDocument Format). Bob Sutor, IBM's VP of standards and open source, takes the long view of ODF adoption and claims there is no rivalry with Microsoft. Bob Sutor, IBM's VP of standards and open source, takes the long view of ODF adoption and claims there is no rivalry with Microsoft. Sutor sees the recent news as par for the course in the evolution of any open standard. "We've seen this before around open standards. Take the Web itself. It went mainstream in about 1994 to 1995. If you trace it back, the Web was starting in the late 1980s. It takes most technology standards between 5 to 10 years to become established. They start in committees, come into their own, and then commercial interests come in. Web services kicked off in 2000, and we saw SOA in 2004 to 2005. Now, no one doubts that SOA is big business. In the same way, if you look back at ODF, you can go back to 2003 or 2005. It's still very, very early. We wouldn't have thought it possible in 2005 that in 2007 there would even be any legislative considering of ODF. It's great that people are even talking about this in the first place. It's extremely early. Legislative committee talks take time."

See also: ODF references

Adapting Legacy Systems for SOA
Calvin Lawrence, IBM developerWorks

"Legacy" refers to existing IT assets that have been deployed in the past. These assets could have been installed anywhere from yesterday to twenty years ago, and in many cases, the legacy investment is running critical business processes. Legacy software and applications are often considered to be a "cash cow" for the enterprise, generating unusually high profit margins and thus, are responsible for a large amount of a company's operating profit. This profit typically far exceeds the amount necessary to maintain the legacy asset, and the excess is sometimes used by the company to fund other strategic initiatives. In addition, legacy software or applications may have come into the enterprise as a result of a merger or acquisition. In many cases, the people responsible for development and management of the application are no longer responsible for its life cycle. Legacy systems generally consist of invaluable assets with embedded business logic representing many years of coding, developments, enhancements, and modifications. However, they are often undocumented, tightly coupled, and relatively closed and inflexible. In most cases they were developed independently without a consistent underlying architecture, resulting in overlapping and redundant functionality and data. This article discusses the business and IT advantages to using SOA to transform an existing legacy investment, as well as key architectural patterns for leveraging legacy mainframes. It explores several approaches and styles for legacy transformation and ways you can adapt existing legacy-based systems to SOA environments. Selecting the right pattern to solve the right problem is key and ultimately determines the level of success in meeting your stated business objectives.

Staples Tries Reusable RFID Tags
Evan Schuman, eWEEK

The traditional argument against item-level RFID is that it only makes economic sense for products costing more than $100, but that assumes one-time use. In a trial with reusable tags, Staples is throwing out all the old rules. Staples in late May started its trial at one of its Montreal stores, selectively tagging about 2,000 items, representing some 300 SKUs out of the 7,500 SKUs in a typical location, said Joe Soares, director of process engineering for Staples and Business Depot. Typically, Soares said, RFID (radio-frequency identification) passive tags are used for the supply chain. But Staples' Canada operation receives all products as they are shipped directly from various suppliers. "We therefore have no warehousing so, for us, improving the supply chain doesn't give us a huge advantage," he said. The need comes in the store when an associate wants an accurate inventory as well as the precise current location for a product. With every item using an active tag, "it is 100 percent accurate," Soares said. It also tracks merchandise as it moves through the store, knowing that when it passes through the POS, it changes from saleable inventory to a sold item, but it also retains all of the movement history [and] flags all of the exceptions. The cost change that makes this trial unusual is the store's ability to repeatedly reuse the tags; if over a five-year term, you get 200 uses out of it, it comes down to 3 cents a use.


SEARCH \| ABOUT \| INDEX \| NEWS \| CORE STANDARDS \| TECHNOLOGY REPORTS \| EVENTS \| LIBRARY

Headlines

Sponsors