Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Thursday, 06 December 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:
SAP AG http://www.sap.com

Headlines

XML Conference 2007 Second Day
OGC Seeks Comment on OGC Candidate KML 2.2 Standard
Software Components: Coarse-grained Versus Fine-Grained
Nokia Cell Phone Comes With E-Mail, XHTML Browser
Microsoft Furnishes Financial Statements Using New Interactive Data Tags
DataDirect Updates XML Converters and XQuery Engine
Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...

XML Conference 2007 Second Day
Keith Fahlgren, O'Reilly Technical

This is the continuation of blogging from XML Conference 2007. There are, of course, a lot of folks blogging about the conference. (1) Dorothy Hoskins: Outside-In XML Publishing... What role can XML play at the prettiest end of the print production spectrum? Instead of struggling with XSL-FO in these cases, develop XML outside of your formatting system and then eventually import your content near the end. Both InDesign and FrameMaker are good options for this route. FrameMaker 8 has good integration with DITA, in particular. (2) Lisa Bos: Current Trends in XML Content Management Systems... Since 2000, publishers have grasped the importance of XML, but in the early days there were not any solutions that fit them well. Today, there are a huge numbers of XML products targeted toward publishers, some of which is actually helpful. (3) Robin Doran and Matthew Browning: BBC iPlayer Content production: The Evolution of an XML Tool-Chain... The iPlayer is being developed to allow streaming of scheduled BBC TV and Radio shows. The scheduling information itself is quite complex and delivered in the emerging XML standard called TVA, which the BBC is helping along. (4) Micah Dubinko WebPath: Querying the web as XML Web Tools... Pulling random XML off of the web rarely works as promised, though some have exaggerated this problem. (5) Mark Birbeck: XForms, REST, XQuery, and skimming... The client in web applications is too thin and provides insufficient technology to make building web applications easy. XForms explicitly allows these functions to be broken discretely apart. With XForms, as with Ajax, automatic UI updates without reloads are possible, but this bit is well publicized. Less commonly talked about is the ability to drive the UI with data types—datetimes with a date selector.

See also: Elliotte Rusty Harold blog

OGC Seeks Comment on OGC Candidate KML 2.2 Standard
Staff, Open Geospatial Consortium Announcement

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. announced a call for public comment on a draft OpenGIS Encoding Standard (OGC KML) for KML 2.2, a XML-based encoding schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future web-based online maps (2D) and Earth browsers (3D). The draft OGC KML 2.2 standard formalizes the KML 2.2 model and language while remaining backwards compatible with existing KML 2.2 files. In comparison with the Google KML 2.2 Reference, the draft standard defines: (1) the KML 2.2 geometry encoding and interpolation model; (2) an extension model in support of application profiles; (3) conformance requirements and test cases. The submission of KML into the OGC consensus process by the RFC Submission team led by Google and Galdos Systems Inc. ensures that KML will be aligned with international best practices and standards, thereby enabling greater uptake and interoperability of Earth browser implementations. The public comment period will remain open until January 4, 2008.

See also: the text of KML 2.2

Software Components: Coarse-grained Versus Fine-Grained
Michael Beisiegel, Dave Booz, Mike Edwards (et al.), IBM developerWorks

SOA is about providing software capabilities through interfaces called services and supporting the business concept known as service orientation, where applications are built as sets of services with service users unaware of how or where services are implemented. Beyond the interfaces (which are a key part, but not the only part of a good SOA) are software components and component models. Component models are useful for building new SOA services from the ground up, but they're also useful for creating SOA services from legacy IT assets. You can use component models to provide abstraction of legacy services and to re-engineer existing legacy assets, especially when the component model supports language neutrality. This article asserts that coupling is only one aspect of granularity, but does support the current industry thinking that, in general, loosely coupled components are coarse grained, while tightly coupled components are more likely to be fine grained. It gives you a set of guidelines for categorizing software component technology in the context of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), positioning the various component technologies that are prevalent in the industry today. The authors explain why Service Component Architecture (SCA) offers a natural model for coarse-grained components. SCA provides a natural model for coarse-grained components. SCA supports a wide variety of component implementation technologies and is capable of connecting between those heterogeneous technologies. Asynchronous and synchronous interaction styles are supported, along with a wide range of communication technologies.

Nokia Cell Phone Comes With E-Mail, XHTML Browser
Elena Malykhina, InformationWeek

T-Mobile on Tuesday began offering the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 6263, a classic clamshell cell phone with enhancements, such as e-mail capability and a XHTML browser. The T-Mobile Nokia 6263 is a classic clamshell phone that comes with e-mail capability and a XHTML browser. The Nokia 6263 is not a costly multimedia device like the ones recently launched by Nokia as part of its Nseries, but it does fulfill most basic functions required by mobile users. For example, the phone is capable of receiving e-mail with attachments and it can be used for Internet browsing via a built-in XHTML browser. According to the announcement: "For the productivity-minded owner, the Nokia 6263 includes e-mail capability with support for attachments, a powerful XHTML browser, support for Java and Flash Lite content, and can easily be synchronized to a desktop by using Nokia's PC Suite software, which can be downloaded for free."

Microsoft Furnishes Financial Statements Using New Interactive Data Tags
Staff, Microsoft Announcement

Microsoft Corp. announced that it has "filed a Form 8-K furnishing financial information from its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2007, in interactive data format. With this filing, Microsoft was the first company to provide financial information using newly issued sets of interactive data tags ("taxonomies") that use Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) technology. Microsoft furnished a full set of financial information including its financial statements, footnotes, and Management's Discussion and Analysis using the latest U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles taxonomy released by XBRL US on December 5, 2007. In providing interactive financial information under the newly released taxonomies, Microsoft continues its long-standing support of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) vision to offer investors the power of financial information in XBRL. Microsoft has been a pilot participant in the SEC's voluntary XBRL filer program since 2005.

DataDirect Updates XML Converters and XQuery Engine
Staff Writer, Computer Business Review Online

Connectivity software developer DataDirect Technologies has launched version 3.1 of the XML converter and XQuery engine at the XML 2007 conference and exposition in Boston. According to DataDirect, the new version of XML converters for Java and .NET provide bi-directional, programmatic access to non-XML files, including electronic data interchange (EDI), flat files and other legacy formats. It also offers API support to dynamically fetch the XML schema for conversion and standard exchange format (SEF) support for custom EDI needs. The company said that the converters also support B2B integration standards such as X12, EDI for administration commerce and transport, international air transport association (IATA), and Health Level Seven (HL7). From the text of the announcement: "DataDirect XML Converters plug into the DataDirect XQuery product, an enterprise-grade XQuery processor that supports the W3C standard and allows data to be easily transformed, aggregated and enriched—providing seamless integration for all data formats supported by the DataDirect XML Converters. DataDirect XQuery version 3.1 includes expanded database support for both the Enterprise and Community edition of MySQL server and full update support for relational data including Oracle 11g, Informix, and PostgreSQL. Featuring extended file type support and output enhancements, DataDirect XQuery version 3.1 further simplifies the performance of combining and processing heterogeneous data sources. The product now supports the ability to query new office document standards like OpenDocument Format, Office Open XML and XML-based versions of PDF."

See also: the announcement

Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...
Larry Wall, O'Reilly Perl.com

I think, to most people, scripting is a lot like obscenity. I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it. Here are some common memes floating around: Simple language; "Everything is a string"; Rapid prototyping; Glue language; Process control; Compact/concise; Worse-is-better; Domain specific; "Batteries included." ...I don't see any real center here, at least in terms of technology. If I had to pick one metaphor, it'd be easy onramps... If you allow a language to mutate its own grammar within a lexical scope, how do you keep track of that cleanly? Perl 5 discovered one really bad way to do it, namely source filters, but even so we ended up with Perl dialects such as Perligata and Klingon. What would it be like if we actually did it right? Doing it right involves treating the evolution of the language as a pragmatic scope, or as a set of pragmatic scopes. You have to be able to name your dialect, kind of like a URL, so there needs to be a universal root language, and ways of warping that universal root language into whatever dialect you like. This is actually near the heart of the vision for Perl 6. We don't see Perl 6 as a single language, but as the root for a family of related languages... Among the generalists, the conventional wisdom is that the worse-is-better approach is more adaptive. Personally, I get a little tired of the argument: My worse-is-better is better than your worse-is-better because I'm better at being worser! Is it really true that the worse-is-better approach always wins? With Perl 6 we're trying to sneak one better-is-better cycle in there and hope to come out ahead before reverting to the tried and true worse-is-better approach.


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