Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Friday, 29 October 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:
Microsoft Corporation http://www.microsoft.com

Headlines

EMC Releases DITA XProc Pipelines Library for Processing DITA Topics and Maps
ApacheCon 2010 This Week: Servers, Innovation, and Cloud
Portable Symmetric Key Container (PSKC) Published as Proposed Standard
W3C Creates a Web Events Working Group
SWIFT to Upgrade Global Financial Messaging Platform

EMC Releases DITA XProc Pipelines Library for Processing DITA Topics and Maps
Jerry Silver, Software Announcement

EMC has announced the release of 'DITA XProc Pipelines' as a library of XProc pipelines for processing OASIS DITA topics and maps to XHTML and PDF. The specification XProc: An XML Pipeline Language was published as a W3C Recommendation in May 2010. XProc "defines a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. An XML Pipeline specifies a sequence of operations to be performed on a collection of XML input documents. Pipelines take zero or more XML documents as their input and produce zero or more XML documents as their output. A pipeline consists of steps, and like pipelines, steps take zero or more XML documents as their inputs and produce zero or more XML documents as their outputs."

The DITA XProc Pipelines Library released by EMC "is based on the OASIS DITA Standard Version 1.1, with some DITA version 1.2 feature proposals. The pipelines use standard XProc features as much as possible, so with little or no effort, users should be able to use them with any compliant XProc implementation. The pipelines have been tested with EMC Documentum XProc Engine (Calumet) version 1.0.12... Open architecture: Plug-ins can extend the XProc Engine and customize the default behavior of the processor or provide new functionality, such as extension XProc steps. The XProc Engine distribution contains a set of plug-ins that can be used with the processor. Software developers can use the XProc Engine API to create custom plug-ins.

In one example, the pipelines provide functions for loading DITA maps and topics, map/topic schema validation, map/topic links validation, DITA processing, and for rendering the output to HTML/PDF. Sample pipelines are included, to demonstrate basic usage, and to help users who want to develop their own pipelines or customize the existing ones... The pipeline first loads all DITA maps and topics in the data set and validates them against DITA XML schemas to check structural validity and to insert default attributes into the content. The next (optional) step is link validation, during which the pipeline checks the integrity of links in the data set. The pipeline then proceeds with the actual DITA content processing consisting of steps for conditional filtering, keyref and conref resolution, metadata manipulation, etc. In the final phase, the processed content is transformed to XHTML using an XSLT stylesheet.

The EMC library provides reusable pipelines that implement the following functionality: (1) conref: conref processing where both simple conref references and conref ranges are supported; (2) conref push; all conref actions (mark, pushbefore, pushafter, and pushreplace) are supported; (3) ditaval: conditional processing using ditaval profiles (only exclude operation is supported: (4) keyref: indirect content addressing using keyrefs; (5) map link: generate related links for topics referred to in a map; (6) map pull: generate link metadata for topic references in maps; (7) mapref: merge other maps into the main map; (8) move metadata: from maps to referenced topics; (9) render: produce XHTML and XSL-FO (for PDF generation) output; users can use either the provided stylesheets, or their own; (10) topic merge: consolidate content before XSL-FO generation; (11) topic pull: pull metadata for topic links; (12) schema validation: validate content against an XML schema; (13) link validation: check integrity of topic references, related links, cross-references, conrefs, and keyrefs..."

See also: DITA references [TOC]

ApacheCon 2010 This Week: Servers, Innovation, and Cloud
Sam Dean and Sally Khudairi, Apache Software Foundation Guest Blog

The three main themes of this year's ApacheCon NA are Servers, Innovation and, almost unavoidably in the current climate, The Cloud... In many organizations, Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat sit silently in the infrastructure stack and just work, but there are less and less organisations where they don't sit. And despite being infrastructure staples, Apache HTTP Server and Apache Tomcat are far from static technologies...

Outside of the eighty plus top-level projects at the Foundation, the Apache Incubator is responsible for raising the next generation of Apache technologies. The Foundation itself typically refrains from publicising its 'podlings', as the incubating projects are termed, preferring to wait until they have developed and proven themselves as viable projects with a sustainable community. However, at ApacheCon the podlings are given a rare chance to shine, show off their wares and attract new community members.

One of the promising Incubator projects at show this year is Apache Chemistry. A guaranteed star of the packed content management track, the project is an implementation of the OASIS approved CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) standard.

At its most basic, Chemistry opens up structured enterprise content which was previously locked into proprietary data silos and content management systems. This not only allows systems integration and migration in a market previously characterized by heavy vendor lock-in, it also has the potential to enable the development of a whole new generation of innovative applications which use the output of existing content management software as their starting point..."

See also: CMIS references [TOC]

Portable Symmetric Key Container (PSKC) Published as Proposed Standard
Philip Hoyer, Mingliang Pei, Salah Machani (eds), IETF RFC

IETF announced that an approved Standards Track RFC (Request for Comments, #6030; ISSN: 2070-1721) has been published as a Proposed Standard: Portable Symmetric Key Container (PSKC). This specification was produced by members of the IETF KEYPROV Working Group, chartered "to define protocols and data formats necessary for provisioning of symmetric cryptographic keys and associated attributes. The group has considered use cases related to use of Shared Symmetric Key Tokens. In particular, the ability to provision symmetric keys and associated attributes dynamically to already issued devices such as cell phones and USB drives is highly desirable..."

The specification 'Portable Symmetric Key Container (PSKC)' "defines a symmetric key format for the transport and provisioning of symmetric keys to different types of crypto modules. For example, One-Time Password (OTP) shared secrets or symmetric cryptographic keys to strong authentication devices. A standard key transport format enables enterprises to deploy best-of-breed solutions combining components from different vendors into the same infrastructure."

From the Introduction statement: "With the increasing use of symmetric-key-based systems, such as encryption of data at rest or systems used for strong authentication, such as those based on One-Time Password (OTP) and Challenge/Response (CR) mechanisms, there is a need for vendor interoperability and a standard format for importing and exporting (provisioning) symmetric keys. For instance, traditionally, vendors of authentication servers and service providers have used proprietary formats for importing and exporting these keys into their systems, thus making it hard to use tokens from two different vendors."

Portable Key Container Entities Overview and Relationships: "The portable key container is based on an XML schema definition and contains the following main conceptual entities: (1) KeyContainer entity: representing the container that carries a number of KeyPackage entities, where a valid container MUST carry at least one KeyPackage entity. (2) KeyPackage entity: representing the package of at most one key and its related provisioning endpoint or current usage endpoint, such as a physical or virtual device and a specific CryptoModule. (3) DeviceInfo entity: representing the information about the device and criteria to identify uniquely the device. (4) CryptoModuleInfo entity: representing the information about the CryptoModule where the keys reside or to which they are provisioned. (5) Key entity: representing the key transported or provisioned. (6) Data entity: representing a list of metadata related to the key, where the element name is the name of the metadata and its associated value is either in encrypted or plaintext form..."

W3C Creates a Web Events Working Group
Staff, W3C Announcement

W3C has announced the launch of a new Web Events Working Group as part of the Rich Web Client Activity, designed to provide methods to enable the use of multi-touch and pen-tablet input on devices of all types. The initial WG Chair is Arthur Barstow (Nokia), and Doug Schepers will serve as the W3C Team Contact.

From the Scope statement: "Web browsers and mobile devices are making increasing use of touch-sensitive inputs, such as with a screen, trackpad, or tablet interface, as the primary or supplementary interface for web applications. This enables web developers to build more intuitive and sophisticated applications that fit naturally with the device being used. Touch interfaces have a long history going back to the 1960s, and faster, less expensive hardware and recent deployment on mobile devices have led to a proliferation of different approaches to software interface design. Touch interfaces frequently make use of custom gestures to signal user intent... There are four conceptual layers for touch and pen-tablet interactions: physical; gestural; representational; and intentional.

With touch-sensitive inputs, web developers to build more intuitive and sophisticated applications that fit naturally with the device being used. Touch interfaces have a long history going back to the 1960s, and faster, less expensive hardware and recent deployment on mobile devices have led to a proliferation of different approaches to software interface design. Touch interfaces frequently make use of custom gestures to signal user intent.

A related class of devices, including drawing tablets, interactive surfaces, pen devices, digital whiteboards, and spatial sensors, are also becoming more Web-enabled, driving the need to account for a wider range of capability than simple touch interfaces. The aim of this group is to determine an appropriate set of functionality to standardize, and to define those features in way that may be deployed quickly, widely, and interoperably. Touch events are simple, but may have characteristics different than mouse events, including pressure sensitivity. Pen tablets may add hovering and modal aspects to touch events. Multitouch events add yet another layer, allowing a user to use two or more fingers to accomplish a task, and may even permit multiple users to manipulate the user interface using the same input device, such as a screen input..."

SWIFT to Upgrade Global Financial Messaging Platform
Lucas Mearian, ComputerWorld

"The Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), the financial messaging provider for more than 9,500 financial firms in 209 countries, will release the 7.0 version of its platform that will affect both messaging and connectivity. Version 7.0 of its messaging platform, SWIFTNet, will be available in December 2010, and will include an upgrade in security as well as moving from a file format for storing messaging information to an Oracle database. SWIFT said the upgrade also supports disaster recovery by allowing firms to mirror messaging data between data centers..."

According to the announcement: "SWIFT functions as the central nervous system of global financial services. This update is the equivalent of an upgrade to global finance's OS. We are introducing new functionality that our customers have requested whilst aligning on technology and new messaging features. Release 7.0 features are designed to meet customers' needs and will translate into benefits such as reduced cost and risk, better control and more value. Features include A more modern, web-based graphical user interface (GUI) framework (the Alliance Web Platform) for the entire Alliance family; Automated operations; A customer-hosted database; Support for disaster site recovery; Easier installation/ configuration management; Easier integration of FileAct flows; New web services to query the messages and events in Access... Release 7.0 will also align the SWIFT community on new messaging features such as RMA (Relationship Management Application) support for FileAct and InterAct messages."

SWIFT's ultimate goal "is a single standard for the financial industry. Strongly committed to ISO 20022, SWIFT acts as the ISO 20022 Registration Authority, uses the ISO 20022 modelling methodology in its standards development, and promotes its adoption within the global financial community. The ISO 20022 standard provides the financial industry with a common platform for the development of messages in a standardized XML syntax, using a modelling methodology (based on UML) to capture in a syntax-independent way financial business areas, business transactions and associated message flows; [and] a set of XML design rules to convert the messages described in UML into XML schemas.

SWIFT's Standards Developer Kit helps developers implement SWIFT and ISO standards easily and efficiently using up-to-date technology. The Standards Developer Kit extends the documentation of standards that SWIFT has always provided to include processable content that can help in many phases of standards implementation, from analysis through to design, build, document and test It uses a common XML approach for MT and MX, with an MX Repository, MT/XML Schema Library, and MT-MX Translation Reference, including machine consumable standards definitions, working examples, source code, and XML documents and schemas..."

See also: the SWIFT announcement [TOC]


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