Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Friday, 30 October 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

OMG Issues RFP for Web-Enabled DDS Service Object Model and Mappings
iPhone Native App, CMIS and the Cloud
Revised W3C Working Draft for Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration
Oracle SCA: The Power of the Composite
Amazon Web Services Announces Relational DB Service in the Cloud
Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0
CMIS: A Content Management Standard Worth Backing
Data Losses/Breaches Keep Growing in UK, US, and Around the World

OMG Issues RFP for Web-Enabled DDS Service Object Model and Mappings
Staff, Object Management Group Request for Proposal

The Object Management Group (OMG) is seeking input on a new Web-Enabled DDS RFP, with Letters of Intent due December 15, 2009 and Submissions due June 15, 2010. "The Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) is the Object Management Group (OMG) standard for data-centric publish subscribe. The objective of this RFP is to facilitate the use of DDS from web-client applications. The OMG DDS standard has experienced a record-breaking adoption within the Aerospace and Defense domains, and is swiftly expanding into new domains such as Transportation, Financial Services, and SCADA. To sustain and further propel its adoption, it is essential to expand the kinds of applications and technologies that can easily access DDS data and benefit from DDS's performance and quality of service.

An important class of applications that would greatly benefit from a simple, standards-based access to DDS are web-based applications. Both client-side web applications, such as those programmed using technologies like JavaScript or AJAX, as well as server-side web applications programmed using scripting languages like PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python...

This RFP solicits submissions for (1) a Platform Independent Model (PIM) of how web-clients should access a DDS System, and (2) a set of mappings to specific 'web' Platforms that realize the PIM in terms of standard web technologies and protocols. The PIM is necessary to define the 'Web-Enabled DDS Service Object Model' that is exposed to the DDS clients over the web... Web clients accessing data and services over the web normally use a mix of standard approaches, technologies, and protocols including: RESTful, Web-Services (WSDL/SOAP), RSS, ATOM, and XMPP. Each of these approaches presents advantages and disadvantages; selecting which to use is often driven by business requirements...

The Web-Enabled DDS Object Model must be both an extension and a simplification of the Standard DDS Object Model. It must extend the Standard DDS Object Model in order to include an access control model and a session model to support disconnected clients. This Specification must also provide a collection of mappings describing how the Web-Enabled DDS Object Model can be accessed and manipulated using common Web technologies, such as, RESTful, Web-Services (WSDL/SOAP), RSS, ATOM, and XMPP..."

iPhone Native App, CMIS and the Cloud
Dr. Q, Workshop Blog

"Mike Mahon (President) and Mike Muller (Director, Software Consulting) at Zia Consulting report on development of a native iPhone application Zia has developed that allows mobile access to an Alfresco document repository. This application runs against the most recent Alfresco releases; no additional software needs to be installed on the servers and no configuration of Alfresco is required. It is configured by default to run against an Alfresco instance running in the Cloud. All of the calls to Alfresco to authenticate and pull content are utilizing Alfresco's CMIS API.

We are currently beta-testing the application, called Fresh Docs, for submission to Apple's app store. To be notified when it's available in the app store, or to participate in the beta test, contact iphone@ziaconsulting.com...

Revised W3C Working Draft for Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration
Marcos Cáceres (ed), W3C Technical Report

W3C has announced the publication of an updated working draft for Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. The document is produced by members of the Web Applications WG, part of the Rich Web Client Activity in the W3C Interaction Domain. This version addresses issues reported by implementers and interested parties during the first Candidate Recommendation (CR) phase. This Last Call review period ends on 19-November-2009.

This specification standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. The specification is part of the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications, which together standardize widgets as a whole. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards and packaged for distribution. They are typically downloaded and installed on a client machine or device where they run as stand-alone applications, but they can also be embedded into Web pages and run in a Web browser. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way ...

This specification relies on PKWare's Zip specification as the archive format, XML as a configuration document format, and a series of steps that runtimes follow when processing and verifying various aspects of a package. The packaging format acts as a container for files used by a widget. The configuration document is an XML vocabulary that declares metadata and configuration parameters for a widget. The steps for processing a widget package describe the expected behavior and means of error handling for runtimes while processing the packaging format, configuration document, and other relevant files..."

Oracle SCA: The Power of the Composite
Pat Shepherd, Oracle White Paper

"This white paper introduces the Service Component Architecture standard (SCA) and its capabilities featured in Oracle SOA Suite 11g, which are aimed at reducing the complexity of developing, deploying, and managing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications.

SCA is part of OASIS [technical work], defined as a set of specifications which describe a model for building applications and systems using a SOA. SCA extends and complements prior approaches to implementing services, and SCA builds on open standards such as Web services.

SCA is based on the idea that business function is provided as a series of services, which are assembled together to create solutions that serve a particular business need. These composite applications can contain both new services created specifically for the application and also business function from existing systems and applications, reused as part of the composition. SCA provides a model both for the composition of services and for the creation of service components, including the reuse of existing application function within SCA compositions.

The white paper describes SCA terminology and concepts and delves into how the SOA suite 11g leverages the standard. Specifically covered are the three major parts of Oracle SCA, how to deploy and manage SCA composites, and best practices as well as links for more information..."

Amazon Web Services Announces Relational DB Service in the Cloud
Staff, DDJ

"Amazon Web Services has introduced Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), a web service intended to make it easy to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud... Amazon RDS provides a fully featured MySQL database, so the code, applications, and tools that developers use today with their existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. The service automatically handles common database administration tasks such as setup and provisioning, patch management, and backup—storing the backups for a user-defined retention period. Customers also have the flexibility to scale the compute and storage resources associated with their database instance through a simple API call..."

According to the announcement: "You get full native access to a MySQL database. This means Amazon RDS works with your existing tools, applications, and drivers. You can port an existing database to Amazon RDS without changing a line of code—just point your tools or applications at your Amazon RDS DB Instance and you are ready to go... Amazon RDS provides web service interfaces to configure firewall settings that control network access to your database... Amazon RDS runs on the same highly reliable infrastructure used by other Amazon Web Services. Amazon RDS gives you additional peace of mind by enabling automated database backup. For typical workloads, this allows you to restore your DB Instance to any point in time during your retention period, up to the last five minutes. And, there is no additional charge for backup storage, up to 100% of your primary provisioned storage size... Amazon RDS handles generic, time-consuming database management tasks, such as patch management and backup, which allows you to pursue higher value application development or database refinements..."

Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0
Marc Schroeder (ed), W3C Technical Report

W3C has published a First Public Working Draft for Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. The document was developed by the W3C Multimodal Interaction Working Group, and the Working Group expects to advance this Working Draft to Recommendation Status. The draft specification draws on previous work in the Emotion Markup Language Incubator Group which proposed elements of a generally usable markup language for emotions and related states, as well as on the earlier Emotion Incubator Group (2006-2007) which had identified a comprehensive list of requirements arising from use cases of an Emotion Markup Language... The group expects a process of condensing this document into a simpler, ready-to-use specification which removes unclear parts of the draft and cuts redundancy with related languages such as 'EMMA: Extensible MultiModal Annotation Markup Language'.

"Human emotions are increasingly understood to be a crucial aspect in human-machine interactive systems. Especially for non-expert end users, reactions to complex intelligent systems resemble social interactions, involving feelings such as frustration, impatience, or helplessness if things go wrong. Furthermore, technology is increasingly used to observe human-to-human interactions, such as customer frustration monitoring in call center applications. Dealing with these kinds of states in technological systems requires a suitable representation, which should make the concepts and descriptions developed in the affective sciences available for use in technological contexts...

The present draft specification of Emotion Markup Language 1.0 aims to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness. The language is conceived as a 'plug-in' language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data; (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior; and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior..."

CMIS: A Content Management Standard Worth Backing
Staff, InformationWeek

"The CMIS standard should make integration easier. This new standard aims to make it easier for third-party applications and content management systems to share information, which should allow for easier integration with social business software and collaboration platforms... In October 2009, a public draft of the 1.0 specification of the Content Management Interoperability Services standard was made available by OASIS, the body overseeing the effort. The public comment period runs until December 22. 2009...

[Assertion:] The only products based on the draft standard [now] come from open source content management vendor Alfresco. Open Text is hosting a public-facing CMIS server on the Amazon EC2 platform for public development and testing. EMC has a beta implementation of the specification available for download... While the number of vendors pledging support for CMIS is encouraging (they also include IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP) companies shouldn't expect to see the specification in production until 2010...most vendors likely will wait until after the public comment period and official ratification to move forward with product support. What companies can do now is pressure enterprise content management and collaboration software vendors to support the final standard and move forward with products as soon as possible..."

Data Losses/Breaches Keep Growing in UK, US, and Around the World
Robert Charette, IEEE Spectrum

"An article at The Register states that between November 2008 and September 2009, there were 356 self-reported data losses this year by UK companies and government departments. In the same time frame a year before, there were 190 such incidents reported. The information was compiled by Software AG, which used a Freedom of Information Act request to get the data from the UK Information Commissioner's Office. After a rash of commercial and especially government data losses last year and in 2007, the UK government promised that data security would be improved, including the encryption of personal data...

ComputerWorld reports that CalOptima, an integrated health care system that administers health insurance programs for Orange County, California children, low income families, and persons with disabilities, announced last Friday that 68,000 of its members personal information including member names, home addresses, dates of birth, medical procedure codes, diagnosis codes and member ID numbers, and an unspecified number of Social Security numbers may have been compromised. The information, CalOptima stated, was on several unencrypted CDs that were sent by a claims processing vendor to CalOptima by US Postal certified mail. The mail package containing the CDs showed up, but the CDs were missing..."


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