Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Tuesday, 21 July 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:
Microsoft Corporation http://www.microsoft.com

Headlines

Ecma TC46 Approves ECMA-388 Open XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Proposed XML Data Model for Exchange of Voter Registration Data
Quantum Adds VMware Data Backup, Encryption Key Management Device
Cloud Providers Preach Open Standards
Introducing WSO2 Web Services Application Server Version 3.1
Coalition to Promote Adoption of Open Source Software in Government

Ecma TC46 Approves ECMA-388 Open XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Staff, Ecma International Announcement

"The two year effort of Ecma TC46 was rewarded on June 16, 2009 in Budapest, Hungary, with the Ecma General Assembly approval of ECMA-388, the Open XML Paper Specification. Work on the OpenXPS Document standard began in June of 2007 with the creation of the Ecma TC46 committee. Ecma members from across the international office and print systems industries, twenty companies in all, joined together to add their expertise to the initial Microsoft offering, upon which the OpenXPS Document standard is based...

OpenXPS describes a set of conventions for the use of XML and other widely available technologies to describe the content and appearance of paginated documents. W3C Schemas and RELAX NG Schemas are distributed in separate packages. OpenXPS is written for developers who are building systems that process OpenXPS content... The format requirements are an extension of the packaging requirements described in the Open Packaging Conventions (OPC) Standard. That Standard describes packaging and physical format conventions for the use of XML, Unicode, ZIP, and other technologies and specifications, to organize the content and resources that make up any document. They are an integral part of the OpenXPS Standard, and are included by reference. Many XML-based building blocks within OpenXPS make use of the conventions described in the Markup Compatibility and Extensibility Standard that is relied upon by the OPC Standard to facilitate future enhancement and extension of OpenXPS markup. As such, that Markup Compatibility and Extensibility Standard is included by reference..."

According to the XPS Team Blog: "This marks a major milestone in the evolution of the XPS format and, like all standards activities, is the result of a lot of hard work and dedication from expert representatives from a range of organizations. In the case of OpenXPS, representatives from 21 organizations met around the world, and virtually on numerous conference calls, over two years to standardize the format..."

See also: the XPS Team Blog

Proposed XML Data Model for Exchange of Voter Registration Data
Staff, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation Announcement

An agreement was announced at the National Civic Summit in Minneapolis by the Open Source Digital Voting (OSDV) Foundation's TrustTheVote Project and Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) for "co-development of a new XML data model for the electronic exchange of voter registration data. The data exchange protocol will significantly streamline, accelerate and improve states' processing of voter registration forms. This online data transfer model will make it possible for States to electronically accept registration form data and then rapidly verify the applicant's record with the physical signed copy as received...

The TrustTheVote Project's open source digital voter registration system is being built for states' free adoption and will have the capacity to accept voter registration data online. Using a scanner, incoming signed registration forms can be immediately reconciled with online data using an XML-based voter registration data model without needing to re-key the printed data. The XML model also allows states to establish standards for the structure, organization and exchange of this data.

Both OSDV and OVF intend to examine other efforts already underway in the definition of voter and election data such as the Elections Markup Language (EML) work of the OASIS Elections and Voter Services Group, and other academic projects... The open source XML voter registration data exchange model will be available by the end of 2009 with iterative preliminary draft reviews available prior to its release..."

Quantum Adds VMware Data Backup, Encryption Key Management Device
Dave Raffo, TechTarget.com

Quantum Corp. is beefing up data protection on its disk and tape storage with a software module that backs up VMware ESX virtual servers for its DXI data deduplication virtual tape libraries (VTLs) and a key management appliance for its Scalar LTO-4 tape libraries. The Quantum esXpress software module is a virtual backup appliance (VBA) that runs inside of Quantum's DXi data deduplication systems, and the Scalar Key Management Appliance is built into Scalar libraries to manage LTO-4's integrated encryption...

The Scalar Key Manager Appliance replaces the Quantum Enterprise Key Management (QEKM) device. Unlike QEKM, the Scalar Key Manager software is integrated with the Scalar LTO-4 libraries. Customers can set encryption policies through the tape library and the key manager will generate, manage and synchronize keys to keep track of encrypted tapes. The key manager also works across remote sites... Quantum product marketing manager for tape automation Todd Farley said Scaler Key Manager is designed to simplify key management for midmarket organizations, in hopes of getting more customers to turn on LTO-4's encryption...

Still, Quantum can't solve the biggest problem with key management -- lack of an industry-wide standard—on its own. Quantum is part of the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) industry initiative to develop a standard, but that process will take time. And until there is a standard, customers will have to manage keys separately for various encryption devices—it can be done in tape, disk, switches, etc. Farley: "This is built with the understanding that KMIP will come to fruition, and we'll be able to open up the software once there's a better grip on those standards."

See also: KMIP references

Cloud Providers Preach Open Standards
Alex Goldman, InternetNews.com

Several companies have announced the release of a new cloud standard, the "Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Federation Specification (CMDBf)," created by the non-profit Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). CMDBs give IT organizations complete visibility into the attributes, relationships, and dependencies of the components in their enterprise computing environments. The federation standard provides a way for accessing IT information in CMDBs distributed across multiple repositories to create a more complete and accurate view of IT information spread out across multiple data sources.

The DMTF Standard (DSP0252) was prepared by members of the CMDB Federation Working Group. Normative Annex A provides a list of URIs and XML Namespaces. "Many organizations are striving to base IT management on a Configuration Management Database. A CMDB contains data describing the following entities: (1) managed resources, such as computer systems and application software; (2) process artifacts, such as incident, problem, and change records; (3) relationships among managed resources and process artifacts. The contents of the CMDB should be managed by a configuration management process and serve as the foundation for other IT management processes, such as change management and availability management... The federated CMDB described in this specification is a collection of services and data repositories that contain configuration and other data records about resources. The term "resource" includes configuration items (for example, a computer system, an application, or a router), process artifacts (for example, an incident record or a change record), and relationships between configuration items and process artifacts. The architecture describes a logical model and does not necessarily reflect a physical manifestation..."

Introducing WSO2 Web Services Application Server Version 3.1
Paul Fremantle, Blog

WSO2 WSAS "is an enterprise ready Web services engine powered by Apache Axis2. It is a lightweight, high performing platform for Service Oriented Architectures, enabling business logic and applications. Bringing together a number of Apache Web services projects, WSO2 WSAS provides a secure, transactional and reliable runtime for deploying and managing Web services. Fremantle is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at WSO2, and co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable Exchange (WS-RX) TC.

"Is WSAS a competitor to a J2EE application server?—The answer is both yes and no. Yes, WSAS offers some of the same capabilities as a J2EE application server. It provides a managed runtime for hosting code, in this case Java Services. You can also deploy AJAX applications and REST services. You can write services as Pure Java (POJO), EJBs, JSR181 annotated classes, or Axis1 and Axis2 services. Why No? WSAS can be run on top of any J2EE server, and our customers use it on top of JBoss, Tomcat, WebSphere and WebLogic. We aren't trying to compete on hosting J2EE applications - what we do compete on is hosting services...

Using p2 (the Equinox provisioning model), you can go to the web repository and install the mediation feature. This pulls down the OSGi bundles from the web, validates all the dependencies are in place, and adds the new capability into the system. Now when you go into WSAS you will have a new option in the UI to enable Mediation against any service. Now you can use XSLT or even simple Javascript/E4X to write a conditional transform that ensures all messages match the existing service logic. Its like having a mini-ESB embedded into your service container, but without the overhead of managing it..."

See also: the WSO2 announcement

Coalition to Promote Adoption of Open Source Software in Government
Staff, Open Source for America Announcement

"A broad cross-section of more than 70 companies, academic institutions, communities, related groups and individuals have joined together to announce the formation of Open Source for America, an organization that will serve as a unified voice for the promotion of open source software in the U.S. Federal Government arena. With the U.S. Federal Government increasingly focused on utilizing and adopting technologies to better serve citizens, there is growing recognition of the freedoms that open source software and open technology solutions can provide—an open, transparent and cost-effective option—for government agencies. Gartner recently estimated by 2011 more than 25 percent of government vertical, domain-specific applications will either be open source, contain open source application components or be developed as community source...

Open Source for America is a coalition of industry leaders, non-government groups and academic/research institutions organized to serve as a centralized advocate, to encourage broader U.S. Federal Government support of and participation in free and open source software. Membership in Open Source for America is open to any individual or entity signing the campaign's mission pledge..."

See also: InternetNews.com


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