Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Thursday, 04 June 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:
Primeton http://www.primeton.com

Headlines

W3C POWDER Specification Suite Advances to Proposed Recommendation
Supporting Degradation: Towards a Workable Open Packaging Standard
AtomClip: A Web Clipboard
Devices Profile for Web Services Version 1.1 Proposed as a Standard
NIST Processes to Help Build Next-Generation Nuclear Plants
W3C Call for Implementations: SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0
Best Current Practice for Communications Services in Support of Emergency Calling
White House Preparing Data.gov Version 2.0
Spring 3.0 Jumps on Java
FSTC Merges with the Financial Services Roundtable

W3C POWDER Specification Suite Advances to Proposed Recommendation
Phil Archer, Andrea Perego (et al, eds), W3C Technical Reports

Members of the W3C Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group have published a collection of three specifications as Proposed Recommendations. A W3C Proposed Recommendation is a mature technical report that has been sent to the W3C Advisory Committee for final endorsement after wide review for technical soundness and implementability. The Protocol for Web Description Resources suite facilitates the publication of descriptions of multiple resources such as all those available from a Web site. Public comment on the PR documents is invited through July 5, 2009.

"Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Grouping of Resources" describes how sets of IRIs can be defined such that descriptions or other data can be applied to the resources obtained by dereferencing IRIs that are elements of the set. "POWDER Description Resources" details the creation and lifecycle of Description Resources (DRs), which encapsulate POWDER metadata. "POWDER: Formal Semantics" describes how the relatively simple operational format of a POWDER document can be transformed through two stages: first into a more tightly constrained XML format (POWDER-BASE), and then into an RDF/OWL encoding (POWDER-S) that may be processed by Semantic Web tools.

Supporting Degradation: Towards a Workable Open Packaging Standard
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Technical

The author explains how namespace relations could allow better fallback and graceful degradation. "One of the most interesting areas opening up in the last few years in markup has been the increasing adoption of XML-in-ZIP (XIZ) file formats: interesting in particular because it opens up many doors for adressing versioning and fallback issues. We need a standard Open Packaging technology. That this packaging, writ large, is something where there is wide agreement on a base and a need for consolidation and layering above this, seems exactly the fertile ground for a standard: enabling technologies without much of the competitive angle that so pollutes the waters for application standards... IS29500's OPC (Open Packaging Conventions) is of course the current leading example in this, and it would be the obvious contender for sourcing technology for such a standard. Recently thinking through some issues with ODF and OOXML maintenance and some other standards, I think the list of technologies that are needed in order to provide an adequate base can be filled out a little better... I think we are missing, or have now arrived at the stage where we need, a way to declare relationships between different namespaces..."

AtomClip: A Web Clipboard
James R. Fuller, IBM developerWorks

Even after 20 years, the Web continues to redefine itself. The Internet is transforming from a hypertext document system to something that resembles a full-blown operating system. In this article, focus on a critical functionality missing in the emerging cloud-based operating system: The existence of a standards-based Web clipboard. In this article, you discover what a Web clipboard might look like using AtomPub and the AtomClip XUL Firefox extension... My goals for AtomClip are modest: implement a Web clipboard using open standards and existing technologies to clip simple content and provide a foundation for more sophisticated data types and objects. I use a Firefox extension as the client application and an Atom XML feed, provided by eXist XML database, as Web storage... A Web clipboard using open standards and technologies that are currently deployed has good adoption characteristics. For a Web clipboard to provide more sophisticated functionality, a simple scenario must first be addressed. With a combination of XUL, Atom XML feeds, and AtomPub, you have a powerful set of technologies based on what is popular on the Web right now.

See also: Atom references

Devices Profile for Web Services Version 1.1 Proposed as a Standard
Dan Driscoll and Antoine Mensch (eds), OASIS Committee Specification

OASIS announced that the "Devices Profile for Web Services Version 1.1" Committee Specification has been proposed for standardization by a vote of the OASIS membership. The document has been produced by the OASIS Web Services Discovery and Web Services Devices Profile (WS-DD) Technical Committee. This profile was designed to meet the following requirements: (1) Identify a minimal set of Web service specifications needed to enable secure messaging, dynamic discovery, description, and eventing; (2) Constrain Web services protocols and formats so Web services can be implemented on peripheral-class and consumer electronics- class hardware; (3) Define minimum requirements for compliance without constraining richer implementations... The Web services architecture includes a suite of specifications that define rich functions and that may be composed to meet varied service requirements. To promote both interoperability between resource-constrained Web service implementations and interoperability with more flexible client implementations, this profile identifies a core set of Web service specifications for sending secure messages to and from a Web service, dynamically discovering a Web service, describing a Web service, as well as subscribing to, and receiving events from, a Web service. In each of these areas of scope, the profile defines minimal implementation requirements for compliant Web service implementations.

See also: the OASIS announcement

NIST Processes to Help Build Next-Generation Nuclear Plants
Staff, Science Blog

"Information exchange processes developed by NIST will be at the center of the effort to design and build the next generation of modern, highly efficient nuclear power plants. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is leading the effort to develop this needed capability for new nuclear plant projects. EPRI assessed the results of the NIST-led Automating Equipment Information Exchange (AEX) project and adopted the AEX methodologies and specifications as foundational technology for achieving this new level of integrated and interoperable configuration management for critical equipment in new nuclear power plants. AEX provides a common mechanism for designers and manufacturers using varied software applications to exchange data required to engineer, manufacture and install equipment ranging from fans, pumps, valves, heat exchangers and pressure vessels. The AEX XML specifications are used to automate information exchange among various software systems that support capital facility equipment engineering, procurement, construction, and operations and maintenance work processes.

According to "Automating Equipment Information Exchange (AEX) - Roadmap Element 3," the NIST-sponsored AEX project is "developing, demonstrating and deploying Extensible Markup Language (XML) specifications to automate information exchanges for the design, procurement, delivery, operation and maintenance of engineered equipment... The AEX project works with FIATECH members, equipment manufacturers, software suppliers and industry associations to demonstrate interoperability through the use of AEX XML schemas - thereby accelerating the adoption across various equipment supply chains. The AEX project works with the American Petroleum Institute (API), Process Industry Practices (PIP) and the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) to ensure that the AEX solutions support industry requirements, equipment datasheets and standards. The Hydraulic Institute, the industry association for pump manufacturers and related equipment and software suppliers collaborates with the AEX project on pump schemas, industry standards and guidelines and interoperability demonstrations."

See also: NIST AEX Roadmap Element 3

W3C Call for Implementations: SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0
Phil Adams, Peter Easton (et al., eds), W3C Technical Report

The specification "SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0" has been issued as a W3C Candidate Recommendation, concurrent with a call for implementations. Members of the W3C SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group intend to submit this document for consideration as a W3C Proposed Recommendation after 31-August-2009, provides that following exit criteria are met: (1) At least two implementations have demonstrated interoperability of each feature; (2) All issues raised during the CR period against this document have received formal responses.

The work described in this and related documents is aimed at a set of standards for the transport of SOAP messages over JMS (Java Message Service). The main purpose is to ensure interoperability between the implementations of different Web services vendors. It should also enable customers to implement their own Web services for part of their infrastructure, and to have this interoperate with vendor provided Web services. The main audience will be implementers of Web services stacks; in particular people who wish to extend a Web services stack with an implementation of SOAP/JMS. It should enable them to write a SOAP/JMS implementation that will interoperate with other SOAP/JMS implementations, and that will not be dependent on any specific JMS implementation. A motivational example is a customer who has different departments that use Web services infrastructure from two different vendors, VendorA and VendorB. The customer has a need for reliable Web services interaction between the departments. Where both these vendors provide support for SOAP/JMS according to this standard, it should be possible for a client running using VendorA to interoperate with a service using VendorB. The standards will also be of interest to providers of Web services intermediary services such as routing gateways; or SOAP/HTTP to SOAP/JMS gateways.

Best Current Practice for Communications Services in Support of Emergency Calling
Brian Rosen and James Polk (eds), IETF Internet Draft

A revised IETF BCP (Best Current Practice) specification for "Communications Services in Support of Emergency Calling" has been released for review. The IETF and other standards organization have efforts targeted at standardizing various aspects of placing emergency calls on IP networks. This memo describes best current practice on how devices, networks and services should use such standards to make emergency calls. BCP succinctly describes the requirements of end devices and applications, access networks (including enterprise access networks), service providers, and PSAPs to achieve globally interoperable emergency calling on the Internet. The document also defines requirements for "Intermediate" devices which exist between end devices or applications and the access network. For example, a home router is an "Intermediate" device. Reporting location on an emergency call may depend on the ability of such intermediate devices to meet the requirements... This document focuses on the case in which all three steps in the emergency calling process—location configuration, call routing, and call placement—can be and are performed by the calling endpoint, with the endpoint's Access Service Provider supporting the process by providing location information. Calls in this case may be routed via an application-layer Communications Service Provider (e.g., a Voice Service Provider), but need not be. The underlying protocols can also be used to support other models in which parts of the process are delegated to the Communications Service Provider.

White House Preparing Data.gov Version 2.0
Wyatt Kash, Application Development Trends

U.S. White House officials plan to release Version 2.0 of the new government data portal, Data.gov, in the next couple of months, federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced. The federal Web site, which makes government data available for public reuse, will likely feature new tagging capabilities and an expanded array of information tools... Data.gov, which debuted May 21, 2009, has 87,000 data feeds from various government agencies. That number is expected to top 100,000 by next week. In the long run, Kundra wants to continue to move agencies away from warehousing the data they collect and toward a model in which agencies can publish data in real time, much like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration does now with its weather data.

Spring 3.0 Jumps on Java
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com

"Version 3.0 of the open source Spring Java framework is nearing completion and is set to offer Java developers new capabilities to rapidly develop applications... Spring is a popular open source Java framework with more than 8 million downloads, according to Johnson. Spring 3.0 will add a new expression language and project Roo for rapid code generation, and it will also boost support for annotations and REST. The new Spring 3.0 release, which is set to be finalized soon, comes as Java standards settle on the new JavaEE 6 specification and developers consider their Java application development choices... SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson explained that the expression language works with Java annotations so that developers can write and point to their configurations without the need to write separate XML files [but] noted that Spring will continue to support XML in Spring 3.0... Spring 3.0 will also significantly expand the Web Services capabilities of the framework with full REST support..."

FSTC Merges with the Financial Services Roundtable
FSTC Staff, Consortium Announcement

The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) and the Financial Services Roundtable announced today a merger, in which the FSTC has become a division of The Roundtable. The merger creates a Roundtable Technology Group that will allow the best practices and technology policy developed by The Roundtable's BITS division to be translated into technical solutions by the FSTC division, providing full stewardship to member companies. The Financial Services Roundtable represents 100 of the largest integrated financial services companies providing banking, insurance, and investment products and services to the American consumer... BITS is the technology policy division of the Roundtable, leveraging intellectual capital to address emerging issues at the intersection of financial services, operations and technology. BITS focuses on strategic issues where industry cooperation serves the public good, such as critical infrastructure protection, fraud prevention, and the safety of financial services.

See also: BITS Consumer Information


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