Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Wednesday, 11 July 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

IBM Issues Interoperability Specifications Pledge
SOA standards WS-Policy, SCA and SDO Advancing Rapidly
Interview Series: Building an Event-Driven SOA
CalDAV Scheduling Requirements Version 1.1
Oracle Launches 11g Database With Nearly 500 New Features

IBM Issues Interoperability Specifications Pledge
Staff, IBM Announcement

IBM announced that "it is granting universal and perpetual access to certain intellectual property that might be necessary to implement more than 150 standards designed to make software interoperable. One likely result of the pledge to commercial and open source communities is that it will be easier for more computing devices and software to be compatible with one another. The move, which IBM believes is the largest of its kind, is also designed to spur industry innovation, while discouraging litigation. The software specifications and protocols involved in the pledge underpin industry standards, such as those reflected in Web Services: programming, transactions and data exchanged on the Internet and Web. These are typically under, or moving toward, stewardship by standards groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS... IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party—not just IBM—over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards. Previously, all adopters of these specifications and protocols needed to secure royalty-free licensing terms from IBM. This move clarifies and makes more consistent the intellectual property usage rules, encouraging even wider implementations of open standards. IBM hopes that others companies and intellectual property holders make similar commitments." The "List of Covered Specifications" dated July 10, 2007 included 220 specification titles.

See also: the Patent Pledge

SOA standards WS-Policy, SCA and SDO Advancing Rapidly
Rich Seeley, SearchWebServices.com

Emerging service-oriented architecture (SOA) specifications are moving closer to becoming standards. WS-Policy 1.5 reached proposed recommendation status this week in the W3C standards process, and at OASIS technical committees are forming this month to work on Service Component Architecture (SCA). Another OASIS technical committee for the C and C++ versions of Service Data Objects (SDO) specification is expected to form later this month and coordinate with work being done on the Java version of SDO in the Java Community Process (JCP). While work is expected to begin on standardizing SCA and SDO in September 2007 at OASIS, Web Services Policy 1.5 will be nearing a final vote for approval as a W3C standard by then. Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C architecture domain leader of Web Services Policy 1.5: "We expect it to become a recommendation at the beginning of September... the specification already has been implemented and tested by the vendors supporting it including IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Corp., BEA Systems Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc..." [Also:] This month, six technical committees are forming in OASIS to work on various components of SCA, said Jeff Mischkinsky, director of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Web services standards at Oracle Corp., and chair of the OASIS Open Composite Services Architecture (CSA) Member Section. While the road to OASIS standardization may take from nine to 18 months, Mischkinsky said the standards will be stable enough for developers to begin implementing them soon after the work begins.

See also: the Proposed TCs for SCA

Interview Series: Building an Event-Driven SOA
Anne-Christine Strugnell and Robin Smith, BEA Arch2Arch

The author talks about Event-Driven SOA (EDSOA): Every day, companies face the challenges of processing the continually growing amount of business intelligence flowing through the enterprise. They have to handle large volumes of complex data in real time simply to operate. They'd like to improve their ability to anticipate future events in real time, and they know that all this data on current events, even if it seems unrelated, may contain information that would help them predict what might happen next. All businesses are event-driven... and event-driven SOA addresses all the capabilities organizations need to respond to these real-time business dynamics. Event-driven SOA combines the send/reply paradigm of service oriented architecture (SOA) and the event sense/respond paradigm of event-driven architecture (EDA). Together, these design principles result in extreme agility, enabling the enterprise to conduct business at light speed.By supporting events as services, event-driven SOA enables architects to map an application design to the exact business problem, which typically consists of requirements for both a send/response paradigm and for an event sense/respond paradigm... One can think of complex event processing (CEP) as analogous to the database management of structured data —but backwards. Rather than the information remaining static with queries being executed ad-hoc across the data, in an event-driven application the queries remain static and the data is continuously changing. The CEP engine continuously filters, correlates, and manages causality and aggregation, with all this evaluated in real time... CEP is relevant to all industries. It enables companies to manage manufacturing processes using RFID and WiFi tagging data streams to monitor humidity, heat, and weight, among other variables. Telecommunication companies can use it with VOIP or video streaming events. We are also seeing military use cases now for asset tracking or field tactical analytics. In the airline industry there is a growing need for matching event patterns that can occur from several event sources, such as passenger activity, boarding information events, baggage movement events, and flight status events..."

See also: CEP engines

CalDAV Scheduling Requirements Version 1.1
Dave Thewlis, Calconnect Announcement

A posting from Dave Thewlis (Executive Director of Calconnect, The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium) to the IETF Calendaring and Scheduling Standards Simplification (CALSIFY) list reports on the publication of "CalDAV Scheduling Requirements Version 1.1." The document presents a list of features in the form of requirements for the scheduling extensions to CalDAV (RFC 4791), that is, the extensions to the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol to specify a standard way of exchanging and processing scheduling messages based on the iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) as defined in RFC 2446. The document has two parts: Free Busy Requirements (Free Busy Access, Free Busy Management, Free Busy Access Control) and Scheduling Requirements (Generic, Organizer, Attendee/Recipient, Scheduling Access Control). CalDAV (Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV) defines protocol to specify a standard way of accessing, managing, and sharing calendaring and scheduling information based on the iCalendar format. CalDAV uses XML markup notation.

See also: the IETF CALSIFY WG

Oracle Launches 11g Database With Nearly 500 New Features
Charles Babcock, InformationWeek

Oracle launched the 11g version of its database for its core Unix server market, adding nearly 500 technology features in a major new release. A Linux version of Oracle 11g ships later this quarter; Windows will have to wait. The 11g database includes an advanced feature, Real Application Testing, that's expected to help customers migrate applications to the new database with less pain than previous migrations. From the announcement: "The next-generation capability for storing large objects (LOBs) such as images, large text objects, or advanced data types—including XML, medical imaging, and three-dimensional objects—within the database. Oracle Fast Files offers database applications performance fully comparable to file systems. Oracle Database 11g includes significant performance enhancements to XML DB, a feature of Oracle database that enables customers to natively store, and manipulate XML data. Support for binary XML has been added offering customers a choice of XML storage options to match their specific application and performance requirements. XML DB also enables manipulation of XML data using industry standard interfaces with support for XQuery, Java Specification Requests (JSR)-170 and SQL/XML standards. Oracle Database 11g offers developers a choice of development tools, and a streamlined application development process that takes full advantage of key Oracle Database 11g features. These include new features such as Client Side Caching, Binary XML for faster application performance, XML processing, and the storing and retrieving of files. In addition, Oracle Database 11g also includes a new Java just-in-time Compiler to execute database Java procedures faster without the need for a third party compiler; native integration with Visual Studio 2005 for developing .NET applications on Oracle; Access migration tools with Oracle Application Express; and SQL Developer easy query building feature for fast coding of SQL and PL/SQL routines."

See also: the announcement


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