Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Tuesday, 17 March 2009

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:
Oracle Corporation http://www.oracle.com

Headlines

Call for Implementations: Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
Sun Challenges Amazon for Cloud Dominance
NETCONF Monitoring Schema
2009 RSA Workshop: Harnessing the Power of Digital Identity
Energy Interoperability Standards: Smart Buildings, Smart Grid
Harness the Power of XML for Open Financial Exchange Files
Spring Tool Suite 2.0 Released with OSGi, Dm Server, and XML Editing

Call for Implementations: Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
Staff, W3C Announcement

W3C has issued a call for implementations in connection with the "SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference" Candidate Recommendation release. SKOS defines a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. Public feedback is invited through April 30, 2009. At Candidate Recommendation stage, W3C believes this technical report is stable and appropriate for implementation; the technical report may still change based on implementation experience. An implementation report will be maintained through the Candidate Recommendation review period. This Candidate Recommendation release signals the Working Group's belief that it has met its design objectives for SKOS and has resolved all open issues. The working groups intend to submit this document for consideration as a W3C Proposed Recommendation after May 01, 2009, having met the following criteria: (1) At least two implementations have been demonstrated that use features of the SKOS vocabulary. Other vocabularies that use SKOS are candidates for inclusion in the implementation report. (2) All issues raised during the CR period against this document have received formal responses... Specification overview (from the companion Primer WD): "The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is an RDF vocabulary for representing semi-formal knowledge organization systems (KOSs), such as thesauri, taxonomies, classification schemes and subject heading lists. Because SKOS is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) these representations are machine-readable and can be exchanged between software applications and published on the World Wide Web. SKOS has been designed to provide a low-cost migration path for porting existing organization systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a lightweight, intuitive conceptual modeling language for developing and sharing new KOSs. It can be used on its own, or in combination with more formal languages such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL). SKOS can also be seen as a bridging technology, providing the missing link between the rigorous logical formalism of ontology languages such as OWL and the chaotic, informal and weakly-structured world of Web-based collaboration tools, as exemplified by social tagging applications. The aim of SKOS is not to replace original conceptual vocabularies in their initial context of use, but to allow them to be ported to a shared space, based on a simplified model, enabling wider re-use and better interoperability..."

Sun Challenges Amazon for Cloud Dominance
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Amazon, the leading provider of cloud services is about to get some serious competition from Sun Microsystems, which made its entrance into cloud computing with plans to offer compute and storage services built on Sun technologies, including OpenSolaris and MySQL. Developers building for the public cloud platform, called Sun Cloud, will be able to leverage Sun's cloud APIs to interoperate with other clouds and cloud-based applications. Sun Cloud is being launched at the CommunityOne developer event in New York City. Sun Cloud will accelerate delivery of new applications, reduce risk, and scale computing capacity to meet demand. The first two services, Sun Cloud Compute and Sun Cloud Storage, will be available this summer. Featured in Sun Cloud are Virtual Data Center (VDC) capabilities acquired through the purchase of Q-layer in January 2009. VDC offers developers a single management interface for staging an application running on OpenSolaris, Linux, and Windows. A drag-and-drop method is used for provisioning compute, storage, and networking resources via a Web browser. Sun anticipates that the cloud scene will feature many clouds, both public and private, that are interoperable and driven by different application types. Applications eyed for deployment on Sun Cloud include Web 2.0 applications, social networking systems, gaming applications, and anything that needs the scale of the Web... Using AWS (Amazon Web Services) and WebDAV protocols, developers can have file access over the Internet. Through prepackaged Virtual Machine Images (VMIs) of Sun's open source software, developers can immediately deploy applications to Sun Cloud. Developers building public and private clouds can access Sun API technology and design for compatibility with Sun Cloud, the company said. Sun's cloud API allows programmatic access to such resources as virtual machines, networks, and virtual storage. The API set is REST-based and features Sun Cloud Storage API, Sun Cloud Storage WebDAV API, and Sun Cloud Storage Object API. They are offered under a Creative Commons license. Developers can use the Java, Ruby, and Python languages with these APIs...

See also: the Sun announcement

NETCONF Monitoring Schema
Mark Scott, Sharon Chisholm, Martin Bjorklund (eds); IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Network Configuration (NETCONF) Working Group have released an updated specification for the "NETCONF Monitoring Schema." The document defines a NETCONF data model (using the W3C XML Schema language) to be used to monitor the NETCONF protocol. The monitoring data model includes information about NETCONF datastores, sessions, locks, subscriptions, and statistics. This data facilitates the management of a NETCONF server. This document also defines methods for NETCONF clients to discover data models supported by a NETCONF server and defines a new NETCONF 'get-schema' operation to retrieve them. Appendix A (YANG module, reference only) is based on YANG specification at the time of publishing and is subject to change as a result of NETMOD work underway to refine YANG. YANG is a data modeling language used to model configuration and state data manipulated by the NETCONF protocol, NETCONF remote procedure calls, and NETCONF notifications. From the 'Introduction': "It provides information about NETCONF sessions and subscriptions. Today, NETCONF capabilities exchange is the only standardized method a client can use to discover the functionality supported by a NETCONF server. This works well for static protocol capabilities but is not well suited for capabilities which could change during a session. Considerations such as different schema formats, feature optionality and access controls can all impact the applicability and level of detail the NETCONF server sends to a client during session setup. Through updated monitoring data NETCONF clients can adjust their capabilities throughout a session. Specifically the details returned can be used by a client to determine whether retrieval of new schema information is required and includes the information required to facilitate the retrieval. The methods defined in this document address the need for further means to query and retrieve schema and NETCONF state information from a NETCONF server. These are provided to complement existing base NETCONF capabilities and operations and in no way affect existing behaviour..."

2009 RSA Workshop: Harnessing the Power of Digital Identity
Staff, Liberty Alliance Announcement

Representatives from the identity and Web communities have announced a public workshop taking place on April 20, 2009 at RSA Conference 2009. The workshop "Harnessing the Power of Digital Identity: 2009 and the Promising Road Ahead" is open to the public and all RSA 2009 Conference participants. The workshop is sponsored by the Concordia Project, DataPortability Project, the Information Card Foundation, Liberty Alliance, the OpenID Foundation and OSIS. The event spotlights current and future trends in digital identity management and illustrates the benefits collaboration in the global identity sector is delivering to businesses and individuals. Designed to provide attendees with insight into how to leverage a variety of successful identity management scenarios both now and as the industry moves forward, the workshop will feature case studies and presentations by identity experts from CA, NTT, Oracle, Ping Identity and RSA, the security division of EMC. OSIS will present interoperability demonstrations including compliance with the OASIS standard versions of WS-Trust and WS-Security Policy; OpenID feature testing; and use of verified claims using Information Cards. The Concordia Project will present use cases and interoperability scenarios leveraging both OpenID and SAML 2.0 identity specifications. At 1:10 p.m., a workshop interactive panel discussion made up of representatives from the business and technology identity communities will focus on the state-of-identity and short and long-term market drivers. Exhibitors during the event include Acxiom, Microsoft, NRI, NTT, the OpenID Foundation, Oracle, Parity, Ping Identity, Privo, RSA and the US General Services Administration (GSA). All participating organizations will have representatives available to discuss applications and demonstrations. Gerry Gebel, vice president and service director at Burton Group: "Identity management technologies and potential new business models are advancing at a rapid pace. The April 20 workshop brings together a distinguished collection of identity community efforts and standards groups to share their recent accomplishments as well as provide a view into future developments."

See also: the workshop web site

Energy Interoperability Standards: Smart Buildings, Smart Grid
Toby Considine, AutomatedBuildings.com

The core of the proposed Energy Interoperability work at OASIS is the definition of XML and Web services interactions for so-called Automated Demand Response, growing out of work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Demand Response Research Center. The proposal comes from the context of many discussions in and related to the OpenADR Technical Advisory Group, GridWise Architecture Council, Grid-Interop, the NIST Smart Grid project, and GridEcon (an upcoming conference on the economics of the Smart Grid). The UCAIug, whose members are largely utilities and their suppliers, is an identified source of requirements, goals, data models and comments. Before chartering, the committee wishes to identify other stakeholders with other perspectives. Collaboration with other groups of stakeholders is actively being sought. Other stakeholders include energy market makers, Independent System Operators, and policy and regulatory groups. Delta Controls Smart buildings are critical to the success of energy interoperability. Owners and integrators of smart buildings are invited to participate. The proposed committees work will be particularly important to those working on Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings. The proposed work offers a path to national and perhaps international markets for energy-responsive systems. Today, such communications are balkanized and suppliers must re-develop all core functionality for each state. A national standard is expected to speed innovation and adoption of new E-Tech products...

See also: the OASIS Blue Initiative

Harness the Power of XML for Open Financial Exchange Files
Colin Beckingham, IBM developerWorks

The ongoing task of bookkeeping is made somewhat easier when financial institutions allow customers to download files for import into their chosen accounting package. These files can pose a problem for financial programmers, however, because they are frequently only available in Open Financial Exchange (OFX) format, which is not XML compatible... My bank provides me as a financial programmer and bookkeeper with a very helpful service: I can download a small file that lists the transactions in one of my accounts during a defined time period. The file contains the account name and number; whether it is a chequing, savings, or other account type; various bits of financial institution information; my balance information; the date and time of my request; and a complete listing of transactions in the account, showing whether they are a deposit or withdrawal, the amount, and the date and time of the transaction. The bank has done much of my data entry for me: All I have to do is programatically transfer it into my local record keeping, boosting the accuracy and easing the reconciliation process. When I log in to my bank's Web site and go to download this file containing the transactions relating to my account, I am offered a choice between a CSV file or a file for Quicken, Intuit QuickBooks, Microsoft Money, or Simply Accounting... I have chosen not to use one of the mainstream accounting programs but my own cloud computing application, so I either have to use the plain CSV option or deconstruct one of the other downloads... Although the CSV option is fine for a fast download into a database or a spreadsheet, deconstructing the other option has some definite advantages. All the other options are in fact the same file but with a different file name extension to suit the package. The file is a plain-text document in OFX format, a structure designed to be informative and accurate when dealing with banking and other financial transactions.

Spring Tool Suite 2.0 Released with OSGi, Dm Server, and XML Editing
Scott Delap, InfoQueue

SpringSource has released version 2.0 of the SpringSource Tool Suite (STS). From the blog article: "For the 2.0 iteration we focused on the two major feature areas that we identified based on the great feedback from our customer base and community: provide the best possible environment for Spring-based application development and provide tools to develop enterprise applications based on OSGi and the SpringSource dm Server... STS 2.0 features many enhancements that are focused on every day developer activities and can help to increase the developer productivity. With the new Visual Spring Configuration Editor it is now possible to create and edit Spring XML configurations more quickly and with minimal hassle due to new user assistance features such as a graphical representation of the XML content, content assist, hyperlinking and integrated documentation. The Visual Editor integrates tabs for each Spring XML configuration namespace and provides means to add and remove namespaces on the fly. To create or edit single XML bean definitions or namespace elements the developer can use UI-elements that will provide guidance on required configuration parameters and inline validation. A New Bean Creation Wizard is also accessible to speed up creation and modification of bean definitions. Furthermore the Visual Editor helps by enabling execution of common tasks with a single click; e.g. exporting a Spring Bean as an OSGi service using the Spring DM configuration namespace and can be easily extended to understand custom Spring configuration namespaces. For those developers that prefer to stay in XML, the SpringSource Tool Suite provides enhancements on top of Spring IDE's XML editing capabilities. STS 2.0 validates the XML content as-you-type, removing the need to save the file to unveil validation problems. In addition to validate as-you-type, STS also provides relevant Quick Fixes for reported validation problems..." Christian Dupuis notes: XML editing features of STS now include items common to Java development such as validation, content assist, and quickfixes. The OSGi development tools include a visual bundle overview, bundle dependency graph, and a view of the live wiring of a running Spring Dm server. Dupuis also mentioned that the new Spring Tool Suite release aligns it with the current version of SpringSource's opensource Spring IDE plugins for Eclipse. Going forward [we] expect that Spring IDE and STS releases will be closer together. He also expects an official Eclipse 3.5 compatible release soon after 3.5 is released later this year. STS support will be added for the SpringSource tc Server this spring. It is also likely that a Spring 3 compatible release will be introduced near the time of the official Spring 3.0 Release Candidates..."

See also: the blog article


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

Headlines

Sponsors