Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Thursday, 11 February 2010

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:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

Headlines

Associating Schemas with XML Documents 1.0 (First Edition)
eXo Platform Introduces xCMIS Open Source CMIS Implementation
Conference Information Data Model for Centralized Conferencing (XCON)
W3C Invites Comment on First Draft of Web Services Event Descriptions
Efficient Extensible Markup Language (XML) Interchange (EXI)
Salesforce Puts Process Development in the Cloud

Associating Schemas with XML Documents 1.0 (First Edition)
Paul Grosso and Jirka Kosek (eds), W3C Editors' Draft

Members of the W3C XML Core Working Group have published an initial working draft for the specification Associating Schemas with XML documents 1.0 (First Edition). The document defines a method to allow schemas using any schema definition language to be associated with an XML document by including one or more processing instructions with a target of xml-model in the document's prolog.

As described in the comment by Paul Grosso and Henry Thompson: "The XML Recommendation reserves the use of all names beginning with the letters 'xml'. Because of this clause, the need to be able to provide hints for associating schemas with XML documents, and the desire for parallelism with the xml-stylesheet processing instruction (PI) used to associate stylesheets with XML documents, ISO's SC 34/WG1 has requested to be able to use xml-model for a PI target in an optional processing instruction that would allow the association of schemas with XML documents... Due to the desire to maximize interoperability for such a feature and due to the fact that an ISO publication could not be made freely available, the XML Core WG decided to work with SC34 representatives to develop a mutually acceptable specification and publish it as a freely available WG Note, whose basic contents may also be published in parallel by ISO. Therefore, the XML Core WG has developed a draft First Edition of 'Associating Schemas with XML documents' which is expected to become a WG Note... This specification draws heavily on the parsing of processing instruction pseudo-attributes as described in the latest Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents Version 1.0 2nd Edition Draft PER..."

Excerpt: "There are several document schema definition languages in common use today that can be used to specify one or more validation processes performed against Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents. Some schema languages provide their own syntax for associating schemas with documents (DTD, W3C XML Schema) and some languages (RELAX NG, Schematron) do not provide schema association mechanisms at all. The purpose of this specification is to define a common, schema-agnostic syntax for associating schema documents written in any schema definition language with a given XML document...

This specification defines the syntax and processing expectations for an xml-model processing instruction (PI). Such processing instructions associate one or more schemas with the XML document in which they are present. The associated schemas may be written in any schema definition language. Applications can use the associated schemas for any purpose including those such as document validation, content completion in interactive editors, or creating models for data binding... specification provides a way to associate multiple schemas with a given XML document. Furthermore, there exist other ways certain schemas can be associated with a given XML document. Regardless of the association method, this specification does not prescribe the processing order when multiple schemas are associated with a given XML document..."

eXo Platform Introduces xCMIS Open Source CMIS Implementation
Alexey Zavizionov, Blog

"eXo Platform has introduced xCMIS, an open source implementation of the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. Fully compliant with the latest CMIS 1.0 - CD06 specification, xCMIS supports eXo's standards-based Java content repository (JCR) and works with third-party CMIS clients as well as a new eXo CMIS client based on Google Web Toolkit (GWT). The xCMIS server is being released as open source code under the LGPL...

eXo's new GWT-based CMIS client offers the flexibility of building both standalone web applications and Google gadgets. Applications or gadgets created with this framework can be loaded from a remote location or integrated into a portal such as GateIn, the portal runtime co-developed by eXo and JBoss. The eXo CMIS client comes bundled in the xCMIS download, and will be accessible as a remote gadget leveraging GWT client libraries... xCMIS supports all the features specified in the CMIS core definition as well as both REST AtomPub and Web Services (SOAP/WSDL) protocol bindings. In addition to architecture supposed to provide an ability to a plug any third party content repository thanks to Storage Provider Interface layer...

Benjamin Mestrallet, CEO of eXo Platform: "eXo was founded on open standards, which remain core to our DNA. We started with the industry's first Java portlet container, one of the first open source Java content repositories, one of the first enterprise OpenSocial implementations and now one of the most complete CMIS implementations available. In line with this commitment to open standards, we're making xCMIS widely available as open source to ensure that any developer can have access to a first-class CMIS server with which to write their applications."

The xCMIS server is available as a community beta release today with a production-ready version planned when the final CMIS 1.0 spec is ratified. Commercial support for xCMIS will be included in the next enterprise version of the eXo Platform, version 3.0, which will be based on GateIn..." See also the press release.

Conference Information Data Model for Centralized Conferencing (XCON)
Oscar Novo, Gonzalo Camarillo, David Morgan, Jari Urpalainen (eds), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Centralized Conferencing (XCON) Working Group have released an updated version of the specification Conference Information Data Model for Centralized Conferencing (XCON). The document defines an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based conference information data model for centralized conferencing (XCON). A conference information data model is designed to convey information about the conference and about participation in the conference. The conference information data model defined in this document constitutes an extension of the data format specified in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Package for Conference State...

Conference objects are a fundamental concept in Centralized Conferencing, as described in the Centralized Conferencing Framework, defined in RFC 5239. A conference object contains data that represents a conference during each of its various stages (e.g., created/creation, reserved/ reservation, active/activation, completed/completion). A conference object can be manipulated using a conference control protocol at a conference server. The conference object represents a particular instantiation of a conference information data model. Consequently, conference objects follow the XML format defined in this document. A conference object contains the core information of a conference (i.e., capabilities, membership, call control signaling, media, etc.) and specifies by whom, and in which way that information can be manipulated.

The data model specified in this document is the result of extending the data format defined in RFC 4575 ('A Session Initiation Protocol - SIP: Event Package for Conference State') with new elements. Examples of such extensions include scheduling elements, media control elements, floor control elements, non-SIP URIs, and addition of localization extensions to text elements. This data model can be used by conference servers providing different types of basic conferences. It is expected that this data model can be further extended with new elements in the future in order to implement additional advanced features...

The logical functional elements of a conference server as defined by the Centralized Conferencing Framework. They are a Conference Control Server, a Floor Control Server, a number of Foci, and a Notification Service. A conference control protocol provides the interface between a conference control client and the conference control server. A floor control protocol (e.g., BFCP) provides the interface between a floor control client and the floor control server. A call signaling protocol (e.g., SIP, H.323, Q.931, ISUP, etc.) provides the interface between a call signaling client and a Focus. A notification protocol (e.g., SIP- based event notifications) provides the interface between the conferencing client and the Notification Service. Within a conference, the conference control server, floor control server, and focus can modify the information in the conference object..."

W3C Invites Comment on First Draft of Web Services Event Descriptions
Doug Davis, Ashok Malhotra, Katy Warr, Wu Chou (eds), W3C Technical Report

Members of the W3C Web Services Resource Access (WSRA) Working Group have published the First Public Working Draft for "Web Services Event Descriptions (WS-EventDescriptions)." The specification describes a mechanism by which an endpoint can advertise the structure and contents of the events it might generate. The WD document is being published for the purpose of soliciting public comment.

"In the Web Services context, there are many use cases in which it is necessary for an endpoint to advertise the structure and contents of the events that it might generate. For example, a subscriber might wish to know the shape of the events that are generated in order to properly formulate a filter to limit the number of notifications that are transmitted, or to ensure it can successfully process the type of events that are transmitted.

There are many ways in which an endpoint could describe and advertise the structure of the events for which it will issue notifications. To provide a basic level of interoperability, this specification defines the mechanism 'Event Types and Event Descriptions' for describing and advertising event information. This specification only defines a mechanism by which events can be described and advertised. How these events, and the properties of these events that are described within an Event Descriptions document, are serialized for transmission is out of scope of this specification; but are expected to be fully described in any specification that uses this one...

A key concept in the description and advertisement of event information is the "Event Type". An Event Type is a description of the syntactic structure and value space of the set of events that share that type. Event Types are independent of the pub/sub protocol used and the format of the notifications used to transmit those events. Event Types are described within an EventDescriptions element where they contain a complete description of an event. A key aspect of this description is the associated XML Schema Global Element Declaration (GED) for each event... Although there are many ways in which an endpoint can make its EventDescriptions available, this specification recommends the use of the mechanisms described in WS-MetadataExchange..."

Efficient Extensible Markup Language (XML) Interchange (EXI)
Dave Rader, Bob Slaski, Adrian Withy; IJIS Institute Briefing Paper

"The IJIS Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mission- critical information sharing for justice, public safety, and homeland security, announces the release of a whitepaper on Efficient Extensible Markup Language (XML) Interchange (EXI).

This emerging technology paper considers Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) as an emerging technology applicable to integrated justice and public safety data sharing. The need for efficient or binary XML has risen dramatically with the increased use of XML. EXI was identified as an efficient XML solution through of the extensive and open process that was used by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This W3C effort was performed by the XML Binary Characterization Working Group and later by the EXI Working Group. In the absence of EXI, simple compression solutions such as Gzip have been used to achieve some of the goals of EXI.

The paper provides a brief overview and summary of the implications of EXI in the context of the Justice Reference Architecture (JRA) and the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). This document draws heavily on the materials and content developed and published by the W3C EXI Committee and the authors hereby acknowledge their contributions. XML has gained significant use and adoption within many information technology-related fields; integrated justice and public safety are no exception... The Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) and NIEM provide a common data model within the integrated justice and public safety industry; however, they are based on XML which increased the size and complexity of exchanges; this increase in size impacts network load, processing (parsing) time, and storage (memory and physical storage) of systems which process the XML data.

EXI is a specification for encoding XML messages into a binary representation which provides two primary benefits: (1) Reduction in the size of the XML documents which use less network bandwidth and require less storage space. (2) Efficient encoding of the XML documents which improves processing speed, is less susceptible to processing issues (e.g., requiring escaping of special characters... Competing solutions, notably Gzip and Fast Infoset, are already available and deployed. Fast Infoset is based on the widely used ASN.1 data standard and available in the open source Sun Glassfish. Gzip is very simple, open source and very effective way to address compression but does not address more efficient compression. EXI is very much still emerging and there is not a clear consensus on the EXI standard. Commitment to EXI should be limited until at least the W3C has approved EXI as a W3C Recommendation..."

Salesforce Puts Process Development in the Cloud
Charles Babcock, InformationWeek

"Salesforce technologists have put Salesforce.com applications in the cloud. Now they think it should be possible to build business processes based on that business logic—and run them in the cloud as well. The company is now offering Visual Process Manager for its Force.com platform, a means of visually designing business processes, equipping them with wizards that help the end user through the business process, and executing the business process in the product's Real-time Process Engine. The engine enforces business rules governing the process, according to Ariel Kelman, Salesforce.com VP of platform marketing.

Examples of business processes that might be designed and run in the cloud include setting the script that a sales professional will follow when visiting a prospect, handling customer service issues or product returns, managing contracts, and managing Sarbanes Oxley compliance...

The Visual Process Manager also includes a Process Simulator that lets a business process developer simulate a newly designed process for the purpose of identifying bottlenecks and streamlining future versions. It should make automating processes a whole lot easier...

Business processes can be built using parts of customized applications on the Force.com platform as well. Salesforce.com offers Apex as a business logic language for building database-centric applications to run on Force.com. By deploying a business process in the cloud where it's designed, the designer "eliminates the infrastructure burden that stands between a customer and the business process they want to automate..."


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