September 2000

• [September 30, 2000] "Final Messaging Services Specification Due From ebXML. SOAP to play no part in OASIS/UN standard, expected out November 6." By Douglas Finlay. In Software Development Times (October 01, 2000). "The ebXML initiative, a joint venture between the Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the United Nations' CEFACT (UN/CEFACT) body, is set to finalize and release the Messaging Services Specification at its next meeting in Tokyo November 6, 2000. It is the first specification from ebXML's Transport, Routing and Packaging (TRP) group and is intended to standardize how messages are wrapped and sent from business to business in an open environment across the Internet. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) architecture, in which Microsoft has played a leading role and which had been under consideration as a possible transport mechanism for the messages by the TRP group, was rejected as being too closed an architecture for the stated open and collaborative direction of the ebXML initiative (www.ebxml.org). Instead, the ebXML initiative chose MIME-XML technology to wrap and send the message. 'The goal of the ebXML initiative is to facilitate global trade between organizations of any size through a set of XML-based standards defined through an open and collaborative process,' remarked Ed Julson, business development manager for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s XML technologies and a working member of the group. Julson said the ebXML initiative, begun in December 1999 to help companies exchange data over the Internet in a public way at lower cost, would release a number of specifications over an 18-month time frame, and that all of the specifications are entirely platform- and language-independent. Areas in which specifications are currently being worked on include business processes; registry and repository; core components; and trading partners. Two prototypes of the ebXML specification have already been built, and both were spawned from prior ebXML proof-of-concept meetings in Brussels, Belgium, and San Jose, Calif. While Microsoft threw its hat into the open-source ring by submitting its SOAP specification to the ebXML committee for use as a transport mechanism for delivering the messages, Drummond said the TRP working group found that MIME-XML was best suited for the job. Fujitsu and Sun are solidly behind the ebXML initiative and have plans to implement any ebXML specifications as quickly as they become available. Jim Hughes, Fujitsu's director of industry relations, said the company was actively combining its popular reliable messaging technology for its mainframes into a prototype of the messaging spec to get the implementation into its products." See: "Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)."

• [September 30, 2000] "XSL Formatting Objects." Chapter 15 of the XML Bible, by Elliotte Rusty Harold. Announcement posted September 30, 2000. "I'm happy to announce that I've posted a completely updated version of Chapter 15 of the XML Bible, XSL Formatting Objects, at Cafe con Leche. This is the complete chapter, approximately 70 pages with many full examples of XSL-FO. Everything should be up-to-date with the March 27, 2000 Last Call working draft of the XSL-FO specification and FOP 0.14.0. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only comprehensive tutorial covering the current version of XSL-FO. Doubtless there are some errors since I was breaking new ground here and had to work from an incomplete and sometimes contradictory spec document, as well as using unfinished pre-alpha software. Since this is more-or-less what's going to go into the second edition of the XML Bible, as well as likely being the primary source for many new users learning XSL-FO, I'd very much appreciate it if you can inform me of any mistakes you spot so I can fix them." Intro: "XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) is the second half of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). XSL-FO is an XML application describing how pages will look when presented to a reader. Generally, a style sheet uses the XSL transformation language to transform an XML document in a semantic vocabulary into a new XML document that uses the XSL-FO presentational vocabulary. While many hope that Web browsers will one day know how to directly display data marked up with XSL formatting objects, for now an additional step is necessary in which the output document is further transformed into some other format such as PDF." For related resources, see "Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL/XSLT)."

• [September 30, 2000] Harvesting RDF Statements from XLinks. Reference: W3C Note 29-September-2000, edited by Ron Daniel Jr. (Metacode Technologies Inc.). This Note is not a formal product of the W3C XML Linking Working Group, but "is made available by the W3C XML Linking Working Group for the consideration of the XLink and RDF communities in the hopes that it may prove useful." Abstract: "Both XLink and RDF provide a way of asserting relations between resources. RDF is primarily for describing resources and their relations, while XLink is primarily for specifying and traversing hyperlinks. However, the overlap between the two is sufficient that a mapping from XLink links to statements in an RDF model can be defined. Such a mapping allows XLink elements to be harvested as a source of RDF statements. XLink links (hereafter, 'links') thus provide an alternate syntax for RDF information that may be useful in some situations. This Note specifies such a mapping, so that links can be harvested and RDF statements generated. The purpose of this harvesting is to create RDF models that, in some sense, represent the intent of the XML document. The purpose is not to represent the XLink structure in enough detail that a set of links could be round-tripped through an RDF model." [Principles:] "Simple RDF statements are comprised of a subject, a predicate, and an object. The subject and predicate are identified by URI references, and the object may be a URI reference or a literal string. To map an XLink link into an RDF statement, we need to be able to determine the URI references of the subject and predicate. We must also be able to determine the object, be it a URI reference or a literal. The general principle behind the mapping specified here is that each arc in a link gives rise to one RDF statement. The starting resource of the arc is mapped to the subject of the RDF statement. The ending resource of the arc is mapped to the object of the RDF statement. The arc role is mapped to the predicate of the RDF statement. However, a number of corner cases arise, described in [Section] 3, 'Mapping Specification'. RDF statements are typically collected together into 'models.' The details of how models are structured are implementation dependent. This Note assumes that harvested statements are added to 'the current model,' which is the model being constructed when the statement was harvested. But this Note, like RDFSchema, does not specify exactly how models must be structured." See also (1) "XML Linking Language", (2) "Resource Description Framework (RDF)", and (3) "XML and 'The Semantic Web'."

• [September 30, 2000] "Opposing groups merge to develop metadata standard. A new, single standard is expected within six to 12 months." By Dan Verton. In ITWorld (September 29, 2000). "Two opposing camps of database and data warehousing software vendors last week ended a five-year rivalry, deciding to combine forces in search of a single metadata standard aimed at creating a plug-and-play environment for users who are building data warehouses. In a joint announcement, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) in Austin, Texas, and the Object Management Group Inc. (OMG) in Needham, Mass., said the two organizations would merge to work on a combined set of specifications for metadata interoperability among different data warehousing tools. Until now, the two industry groups have supported competing standards for metadata, which functions as a card catalog for warehoused data. The merger signals an end to a political tug-of-war between the Microsoft Corp.-affiliated MDC and the OMG metadata effort, which has been backed by vendors such as Oracle Corp. and IBM Corp. The two groups plan to merge the features of the OMG's recently ratified Common Warehouse Metamodel standard with the MDC's Open Information Model standard, emerging with a single standard within six to 12 months. The resulting specifications should allow companies that run data warehouses to exchange metadata among products developed by different software vendors, improving interoperability." See the announcement of September 25, 2000: ""Competing Data Warehousing Standards to Merge in the OMG." - "Today, the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) and the Object Management Group (OMG), two industry organizations with competing data warehousing standards, jointly announced that the MDC will merge into the OMG. As a result, the MDC will discontinue independent operations and work will continue in the OMG to integrate the two standards. Until this week, there were two major standards for metadata and modeling in the areas of data warehousing and component-based development. Data warehousing is a response to the enterprise need to integrate valuable data spread across organizations from multiple sources. Analysis of an enterprise's accumulated data not only allows sales and production to be tuned for maximum profitability, but also allows entirely new and profitable products to be discovered and exploited..." See (1) "OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) Specification" and (2) "MDC Open Information Model (OIM)."

• [September 30, 2000] "Tools vendors look to simplify XML implementation." By Tom Sullivan. In InfoWorld (September 29, 2000). "EDI (electronic data interchange) has worked in the past, but only for large companies with deep pockets, and its use had been limited primarily to interenterprise information exchanges. EDI is expensive, and the cost has plagued smaller companies. Typically, a large company with an EDI infrastructure will have smaller partners that may use a Web browser to access, for instance, supply-side data. Such a solution may suit that purpose, but it is not data integration. When the large retailer with EDI capabilities in place puts an order in to a third-or fourth-tier supplier that does not have an EDI system, the large retailer has no way of knowing if the supplier has the needed inventory in stock; in other words, there is no guarantee that the order will be filled. If the data is integrated between both companies, however, the retailer could access inventory data and, if the order cannot be filled immediately, request the inventory from a different supplier. 'Companies want to be able to automate that data as deeply as they can, and to enable bidirectional integration into both companies,' said Jon Derome, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, in Boston. To help customers integrate their EDI and XML data, Denver-based New Era of Networks (NEON) last week announced its PaperFree EDI Adapter, which provides an easy connection between XML and EDI formats. Although EDI certainly isn't going away, the industry seems to have agreed on XML as the glue that bonds together disparate systems. 'One of the big benefits of XML in e-commerce is that it is going to level the playing field and let smaller companies that don't have EDI communicate with larger companies,' said Chris Silva, associate research analyst at IDC. To help developers realize that level playing field, a number of vendors are making XML easier for developers to use. Compuware last week, for example, announced that its Uniface 8 supports XML, which the company claims extends development and deployment of multitier e-business applications. Uniface can be used to generate XML and valid DTDs (Document Type Definitions) on request. As a result, no XML skills or DTD knowledge are necessary for e-business application development, and organizations benefit from increased developer productivity, ease of maintenance, and reduced costs, according to the company. Uniface has traditionally used its own proprietary way of sending data streams..."

• [September 30, 2000] "DXML - Dynamic XML. A Proposal Defining the Principles Involved in Creating a Dynamic XML System." By Sean B. Palmer. September 28, 2000. "This is a proposal to outline the principles and protocols that are needed to create a truly dynamic form of XML. XML/XHTML documents are excellent means of conveying information, but the static nature of these languages is rapidly becoming out of date. To cope, the W3C has introduced standards such as XSLT which can enable processing of the XML document structure tree; and furthering the DOM specifications. However, this proposal (referred to hereafter as DXML) is not primarily based upon these systems. Rather it is a real form of dynamicism - it involves actually changing the XML tree on the server and/or client side. In brief, DXML is a separate system to the XML DOM, and DHTML - but it can implement these to achieve the dynamic status. To do this, we can (only?) achieve the effects of XSLT, DOM and DHTML by using CC/PP [CCPP], and in particular, the new CC/PP - DTPP proposal. The CC/PP - DTPP proposal defines a number of 'statuses' for documents being shunted through a CC/PP processing system. As a document goes through a CC/PP system, it gets 'customized', that is deliberately changed to suit a specific User Agents needs through Preference Profiles. What DXML aims to do, is use this customization in a slightly different way - to process the XML document for a single UA, using a DXML CC/PP profile. The method for processing DXML profiles is beyond the scope of this document, which simply proposes it. However, the CC/PP group has foreseen the fact that CC/PP may be used for many different applications, and so have written it in an extensible language - RDF. Therefore, CC/PP profiles are not adverse to being modified in a manner that may make DXML become a reality. Overall, one possible application of DXML is that it may use CC/PP to perform the tasks of XSLT, DHTML, and scripting functions on the DOM...'

• [September 30, 2000] "XML and www.microsoft.com." By Chris Lovett. From MSDN Library (September 29, 2000). ['Extreme XML columnist Chris Lovett interviews Mike Moore and discusses XML implementation on the microsoft.com site.'] "Some new developers joined my team in late 1998, and they gave us a demonstration of an XML dialect they had created for the Knowledge Base using a beta version of MSXML. Seeing MSXML survive processing the entire Knowledge Base gave us great confidence in the stability of the MSXML component. In early 1999, we were working on a new product catalog application and were running into some very real operational limits. We had a back-end system that was generating about 100,000 fully localized HTML pages. Managing this quantity of data across a Web farm of about 30 U.S. machines-- and a total of 20 machines outside the U.S. that had slower connections-- together with very high churn, was next to impossible. We were about two weeks away from going into production with this new system when we decided XML was a much better way to do this. Internationalization was a big factor. We did some performance analysis on MSXML and were very impressed with the fact that it ran rock solid for 20 hours with no memory leaks (using our typical 20-KB XML test file), so we decided to completely scrap the old system and start over with XML. One guy sat down and prototyped something in a couple days using XML for the data and ASP script code that loaded the XML by using MSXML and rendered the HTML page. . . To be honest, I was blown away by the performance of the new XSL-based catalog when it shipped. We could literally see that the pages were a lot snappier. On every ASP request, we are loading from four to six localized XML files. Then we're applying XSL on the fly to dynamically generate a fully localized HTML page, and we're doing about 30 of these transformations per second per machine. It really exceeded our expectations. The whole code/data/presentation separation thing is a huge win. A lot of people don't realize how big a win this is. We didn't even realize it going in, but now we are finding new opportunities all over the place for re-using the content in ways we would have never thought of. We've even found that some other groups inside Microsoft are already reusing our XML content. They never even talked to us. They just looked at the XML, understood the schema, and ran with it. We had no idea until we stumbled onto it! [...] We have about 30 machines in our main cluster, each handling about 100,000 users per day. You have to understand that we hammer Windows 2000 really hard. We have about 75,000 different ASP pages on www.microsoft.com and a churn of up to 150,000 page changes per day, so the operational maintenance side of this site is huge. We are using stock standard Windows 2000 SP1 with MSXML 2.5. We're evaluating MSXML 3.0 right now."

• [September 30, 2000] "Develop Web Applications with XML and Exchange 2000." By Thomas Rizzo. From MSDN Library (September 29, 2000). ['This article describes the difference between XML and HTML, and shows how you can use XML to get, set, and search data in Microsoft Exchange 2000.'] "Since its introduction, many computer pundits have touted Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a cure-all for electronic data interchange problems. The hype is often justified -- XML lets you easily describe data and share it among applications. Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server supports XML natively, making it a great Web-development platform. In this article, I'll briefly describe the difference between XML and HTML, then show how you can use XML to get, set, and search data in Exchange 2000. You can retrieve XML data from Exchange 2000 in several ways, but you'll probably use the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol most often. WebDAV is an extension to the HTTP protocol that specifies how to perform file processing, making it easy to read and write to the Web. Using WebDAV commands, you can lock a resource, and get or change a property. Because it piggybacks on HTTP, WebDAV can also work through firewalls and proxy servers."

• [September 29, 2000] "IBM, Microsoft, Ariba release WSDL Specification." By Roberta Holland. In eWEEK (September 26, 2000). "Less than a month after a coalition of 36 companies announced a wide-ranging initiative to create a directory for Web services, IBM and Microsoft Corp. have released a new language specification to describe those services. IBM, Microsoft, Ariba Inc. and other companies joined together last month on the UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) initiative, intended to form a collection of registries and databases describing what businesses do and how to access their services electronically. What IBM and Microsoft released Monday is an XML syntax to describe those services, called the Web Services Description Language. Ariba also helped in the effort, which essentially was a merger of existing technologies from IBM and Microsoft. Officials involved say WSDL will allow for better interoperability among Web services and development tools. The language is based both on IBM's Network Accessible Services Specification Language and Microsoft's SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) Contract Language. WSDL was developed outside of the UDDI group and will either formally be submitted to the coalition for a specification or be submitted to a separate standards organization, said Bob Sutor, IBM's program director for e-business standards strategy in Somers, N.Y. Sutor said WSDL will not be the only choice for describing Web services, adding that Microsoft and IBM felt it made sense to combine their efforts." The WSDL specification is available for review on the IBM and Microsoft web sites. See also "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)" and "Web Services Description Language (WSDL)."

• [September 29, 2000] "Microsoft, IBM release directory specs." By James Evans. In Network World (September 29, 2000). "IBM and Microsoft have developed a language standard for the new Universal Description, Discovery and Integration business directory, which is designed to fuel business-to-business commerce. The standard, called Web Services Description Language (WSDL), is a mixture of both IBM's Network Accessible Services Specification Language and Microsoft's Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) contract language. SOAP is an open standards-based interoperability protocol that uses XML to provide a common messaging format to link together applications and services anywhere on the Internet regardless of operating system, object model or programming language. The companies are evaluating the appropriate path for submitting the specification to the industry as a draft for standardization. A coalition of 36 vendors and consultants are working on the UDDI business directory, which, at its core, will be an XML-based holding tank for what businesses do, the services they offer and how they interface with their computing systems. The registry announced in early September is expected to support a number of APIs for gathering and offering information. There will be three initial versions of the registry as it gradually becomes more elaborate. It initially will provide basic information and later will offer more detailed company information, such as how to deal with a specific business unit. Ariba, along with IBM and Microsoft, launched the UDDI business directory, which will be built on TCP/IP, HTML and XML. Beta testing is expected to begin sometime in October." See also "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)" and "Web Services Description Language (WSDL)."

• [September 29, 2000] "The Beginning of the Endgame. A Look at the Changes in the Pre-CR W3C XML Schemas Draft." By Rick Jelliffe. From XML.com. September 27, 2000. ['The W3C's XML Schemas technology, vital to the use of XML in e-business, is finally nearing completion. This article catalogs the most significant changes from the recent draft specs,and highlights areas where priority feedback is required from implementors and users.'] "This article looks at those changes in the recent Pre-CR draft of W3C XML Schemas that will most effect developers and users. Requirements for data interchange with database systems have been important during W3C XML Schema's development. The recent changes also support markup languages and schema construction better. The Candidate Recommendation (CR) drafts are slated to appear hot on the heels of the current drafts. The XML Schema Working Group was aware that authors, implementers, schema writers, and technical evaluators needed to know the most recent changes, especially since they include some syntax changes that will affect schemas using type derivation." See "XML Schema Definition Language - Seventh Working Draft" for a summary of the 22-September-2000 XML Schema 'Pre-CR' release.

• [September 29, 2000] "XML Q&A: From DTDs to Documents." By John E. Simpson. From XML.com. September 27, 2000. "This month our question and answer column covers guidelines for good DTD design and the thorny problem of generating Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat documents from XML."

• [September 29, 2000] "XML-Deviant: Schemas in the Wild." By Leigh Dodds. From XML.com. September 27, 2000. "As adoption of W3C XML Schema technology increases, the need for documenting best practices is becoming more important, not least where namespaces are concerned. This week the XML-Deviant revisits the topic of schemas. As the W3C XML Schemas Working Group is making final strides toward releasing XML Schemas as a Candidate Recommendation, the XML community is exploring best practice in schema design."

• [September 29, 2000] "Guidelines for Markup of Electronic Texts." Edited by Peter C. Gorman, UW-Madison TEI Markup Guidelines Working Group; Endorsed by the UW-Madison Libraries Digital Steering Committee September 11, 2000. September 29, 2000. "This document is intended for use by staff using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines TEIP3 to mark up electronic texts for inclusion in the UW-Madison Libraries' digital collections. It is not relevant to other types of projects using SGML encoding, e.g., page-image projects or digital finding aids. Some of the content has been quoted or adapted from other published guidelines, which are referenced in each case. The purpose of this document is not to teach or otherwise document the TEI itself, but rather to create a profile of the TEI for use in the UW-Madison digital library collections. It is assumed that the user is already familiar with TEI markup. The motivation for creating these guidelines is a desire to create a consistent and scalable infrastructure for text encoding projects, whereby new works can be created and added to the collection with minimal development effort on the part of project leaders, text encoders, and technical staff. At the same time, text encoded according to these guidelines should provide a suitable base for further elaboration or expansion by future encoders with minimal restructuring. At any point in this document, you can click on the magnifying glass icon to see examples of the point being discussed. The examples will open in a new window. [...] The primary motivation for creating this document was a desire to define encoding standards for a 'base' level: the minimal level of markup we would accept for locally-produced collections. The result, a 'Reading Level', falls somewhere between the poles of 'use nothing but <div0>, <p>, and <lb>' and 'TEILite is useless for real documents'. But why define a minimal level at all? For us, the answer is that we want to provide basic ('reading') access to as many materials as possible (as appropriate for the curricular and research needs of our campus), but the production of marked-up texts can be expensive." See "Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) - XML for TEI Lite."

• [September 29, 2000] "Microsoft to air wireless server. Mobile Information 2001 Server to make its debut." By John Fontana. In Network World News (September 22, 2000). "Microsoft next week will introduce a server designed to give companies a way to wireless-enable applications for access from any number of handheld devices. The Mobile Information 2001 Server is middleware that transforms output from corporate applications into formats that can be displayed on mobile phones and other handheld devices. The server, which was code-named Airstream, also is a platform for building new wireless-enabled applications. The server will be a central point for establishing what devices can connect to the network, managing user access and security across the corporate firewall, and setting content-delivery preferences for devices such as Palm Pilots, Windows CE computers and mobile phones...Mobile Server works by taking in application data from servers and transforming it into formats such as the Wireless Markup Language or compact HTML for presentation on wireless devices. Key to the data transformation is the Extensible Stylesheet Language, which provides information to identify what type of device is requesting information and what kind of network it is running on. Mobile Server also includes support for a number of services for building mobile applications, including XML, Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) and Wireless Markup Language. The server also supports standards based mobile specific transports and security mechanisms including, IETF DAV, Handheld Devices Markup Language, HTTP/HTML, XML, Secure Sockets Layer, Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol, Wireless Access Protocol, Wireless Markup Language, Active Directory Services Interface, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and Short Message Service. The server also includes Microsoft Message Queuing to support asynchronous delivery of data to devices without a persistent connection."

• [September 28, 2000] "Language Identification and IT: Addressing Problems of Linguistic Diversity on a Global Scale." By Peter Constable and Gary Simons. In SIL Electronic Working Papers. Reference: SILEWP 2000-001. September 2000. 22 pages. Keywords: ISO 639, RFC 1766, internationalization, I18N, linguistic diversity, web development, XML, language identification, information technology (IT). [A revised version of a paper that was presented at the 17th International Unicode Conference in San José , California in September, 2000, and which appears in the conference proceedings.] "Many processes used within information technology need to be customized to work for specific languages. For this purpose, systems of tags are needed to identify the language in which information is expressed. Various systems exist and are commonly used, but all of them cover only a minor portion of languages used in the world today, and technologies are being applied to an increasingly diverse range of languages that go well beyond those already covered by these systems. Furthermore, there are several other problems that limit these systems in their ability to cope with these expanding needs. This paper examines five specific problem areas in existing tagging systems for language identification and proposes a particular solution that covers all the world's languages while addressing all five problems." [...] The information technology (IT) industry has been driven in recent years to address problems of multilingualism and internationalization. This has been driven to a significant extent by the growth of the Internet. Rapidly increasing economic development throughout the world, together with the growth of the 'Net, has actually resulted in a significant increase in the number of languages that technologies need to support. In many parts of the world, speakers of previously 'unknown' languages (that is, unknown to speakers of 'major' languages) are beginning to make their mark on the World Wide Web, and are using their own languages to do so. Even apart from the Internet, communities of speakers of lesser-known languages are using technology to pursue linguistic development of their communities through literacy, literature development and other means. In addition, researchers such as linguists and anthropologists, development and relief organizations, and governments are pursuing interests involving thousands of different linguistic and ethnic communities around the world. In this work, they are seeking to make use of current information technologies, such as Unicode and XML. . .[Problem of scale:] The need for systems to cover thousands of languages is real, not merely hypothetical. For instance, SIL has been involved in projects in some 1,600 different languages, of which about 1,100 are current, and new projects are begun regularly. Thus, just within SIL, we have an immediate need for over 1,600 identifiers that conform to RFC 1766 for use within XML documents. We are aware of several other agencies that have similar, vastly multilingual needs, such as the Linguistics Data Consortium, the Linguist List, the Endangered Language Fund, UNESCO, various departments of the U.S. and other governments, and others. When we add the work of other institutions, individual linguists and the language communities themselves, the existing needs for language identifiers are considerably greater, and are only continuing to grow. As stated earlier, every language in the world represents a real need for a unique language identifier. When confronted with needs for thousands of language identifiers, we find that some existing systems do not scale well. There is the obvious problem of devising several thousand new tags. There are other problems with scaling, however, due either to the mechanism that a system uses for tags, or to the procedures for extending the coverage of a system. We will consider each of these in turn..." Also in PDF format. See "Names of Languages - ISO 639." [cache]

• [September 27, 2000] "Airlines turn to XML to try to fix e-ticket transfer problems." By Michael Meehan. In ComputerWorld (September 25, 2000). "After a summer plagued by record numbers of delayed and cancelled flights, the top U.S. airlines have decided to try to fix the clunky links between their individual electronic-ticketing systems in an effort to make it easier for stranded passengers who don't have paper tickets to rebook flights with a different carrier. Jim Young, managing director for cost measurement and distribution strategy at Continental Airlines Inc. in Houston, said here last week that an XML-based standard for sharing electronic-ticket information is being developed by the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) travel-industry trade association. Young is the chairman of the OTA, which includes all of the leading international airlines, computerized reservations systems and hotel chains. At the eTravelWorld conference, Young said the OTA is looking to fast-track the XML interoperability standard in hopes of eliminating one of the major impediments blocking a full conversion to electronic tickets. A draft of the standard is expected by year's end, and Young said a finished version could be in place before next summer's travel season starts. Currently, passengers who have electronic tickets have to wait in line to receive a paper ticket from their initial airline if a flight has been canceled and they want to try to switch to another carrier. In addition, airline employees must fill out a handwritten 'flight interruption manifest' for each ticketholder who's looking to rebook elsewhere. But with an industry-standard setup based on XML, Young said, a passenger's electronic ticket could automatically be transferred to another airline's system. The common XML technology would provide an easy-to-process format for all the airlines and could make electronic tickets more valuable than paper ones, he added. 'We want to create an environment where we're treating our electronic customers better than our paper-ticket customers, which is certainly the opposite of what it is today,' Young said. Al Lenza, vice president of distribution planning at Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines Inc., said 67% of his company's domestic flyers use electronic tickets -- making it imperative that the transferability problem be solved. At the conference, executives from Chicago-based United Air Lines Inc. and Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines Inc. also pledged their commitment to fixing the problem..." See "OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)."

• [September 25, 2000] "XML from Your Palm." By Norman Walsh (Staff Engineer. Sun Microsystems, XML Technology Center). From Sun Developer Connection. "If you're like me, you rely on your Palm organizer to keep a semblance of order in your life. Without it, I wouldn't get to meetings on time, or remember to participate in telephone conference calls[1] , or know how to reach my colleagues when I'm on the road. Unfortunately, for all its benefits, I still have some troubles with my Palm. Among them, the fact that I can't sync my Palm address book with other information management tools that are important to me (e.g., my BBDB in Emacs) or publish the calendar on the web so that I can share my calendar with my manager and colleagues. Now, I'm sure I could have gone out and found solutions for some of these problems, for example, one of the web calendar syncing tools, but when I hear a problem described that involves open-format information exchange and multiple output formats, one answer springs immediately to mind: XML. So, what I wanted was some way to sync my Palm to my desktop machine using XML so that I could transform the XML into other formats and sync it with other formats. . . I'm by no means done hacking my XML address book and schedule. I still have to write the XML BBDB/Palm merging tool and I may decided to write a stylesheet for putting my address book online. I hope some of you find the SyncXml Conduits useful and feel inspired to introduce XML into your applications. Let me know!"

• [September 23, 2000] "The Petri Net Markup Language." 6 pages, with 6 references. By Matthias Jüngel, Ekkart Kindler, and Michael Weber (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; email: {juengel|kindler|mweber} @informatik.hu-berlin.de). 31-August-2000. To be presented at the 'Workshop Algorithmen und Werkzeuge für Petrinetze, Koblenz University, Germany, 2000. ['A position paper which argues in favour of a generic interchange format and discusses the basic idea of PNML.'] "At the "Meeting on XML/SGML based Interchange Formats for Petri Nets" held in Aarhus in June 2000, different aspects of interchange formats for Petri nets were discussed, requirements were identified, and several interchange formats were proposed. Here, we present an interchange format for Petri nets that is based on this discussion and on our preliminary proposal. We call it the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML). The proposed format is quite basic, but it is open for future extensions. In this paper, we present the concepts and terminology of the interchange format as well as its syntax, which is based on XML. It should provide a starting point for the development of a standard interchange format for Petri nets. Concepts and terminology: Before introducing the syntax of the interchange format, we briefy discuss its basic concepts and terminology, which is independent of XML. . . A file that meets the requirements of the interchange format is called a Petri net file; it may contain several Petri nets. Each Petri net consists of objects, where the objects, basically, represent the graph structure of the Petri net. Thus, an object is a place, a transition, or an arc. For structuring a Petri net, there are three other kinds of objects, which will be explained later in this section: pages, reference places, and reference transitions. Each object within a Petri net file has a unique identifier, which can be used to refer to this object. For convenience, we call places, transitions, reference places, and reference transitions nodes, and we call a reference place and a reference transition a reference node. In order to assign further meaning to an object, each object may have some labels. Typically, a label represents the name of a node, the marking of a place, the guard of a transition, or the inscription of an arc. The legal labels -- and the legal combinations of labels -- of an object are defined by the type of the Petri net, which will be defined later in this section. In addition, the Petri net itself may have some labels. For example, the declaration of functions and variables that are used in the arc-inscriptions could be the labels of a Petri net. We distinguish between two kinds of labels: annotations and attributes. Typically, an annotation is a label with an infinite domain of legal values. For example, names, markings, arc-inscriptions, and transition guards are annotations. An attribute is a label with a finite (and small) domain of legal values. For examples, an arc-type could be a label of an arc with domain: normal, read, inhibitor, reset (and maybe some more). Another example are attributes for classifying the nodes of a net as proposed by Mailund and Mortensen. Besides this pragmatic difference, annotations have graphical information whereas attributes do not have graphical information. [...] The available labels and the legal combinations of labels for a particular object are defined by a Petri net type. Technically, a Petri net type is a document that defines the XML-syntax of labels; i.e., either a DTD-file or an XML-Schema. In this paper, we concentrate on a single Petri net type: a Petri net type for high-level Petri nets. In principle, a Petri net type can be freely defined. In practice, however, a Petri net type chooses the labels from a collection of predefined labels, which are provided in a separate document: the conventions. The conventions guarantee that the same label has the same meaning in all Petri net types. This allows us to exchange nets between tools with a different, but similar Petri net type. . . we present some concrete XML syntax in order to exemplify the concepts discussed in Sect. 2. Here, we can only give a flavour of PNML by examples. The examples are pieces of a PNML-coded document representing a Petri net. The examples refer to the PNML version 0.99. In PNML, the net, the Petri net objects, and the labels are represented as XML elements. An XML element is included in a pair of a start tag <element> and an end tag </element>. An XML element may have XML attributes in order to qualify it. XML attributes of XML elements are denoted by an assignment of a value to a key in the start tag of the XML element <element key="value">. XML elements may contain text or further XML elements. An XML element without text or sub-elements is denoted by a single tag <element/>. In our examples, we sometimes omit some XML elements. We denote this by an ellipsis (...). The tags of the following XML elements are named after the concepts given in Sect. 2 except for the labels. Labels are named after their meaning. Thus, an unknown XML element appearing in a Petri net or in an object may indicated as a label of the net or the object..." See: "Petri Net Markup Language (PNML)" and "XML and Petri Nets." [cache]

• [September 23, 2000] "Textual Interchange Format for High-level Petri Nets." By R.B. Lyngsø and Thomas Mailund [Jensen]. "In this paper a text format for High-level Petri Net (HLPN) diagrams is presented. The text format is designed to serve as a platform-independent file format for the Design/CPN tool. It is consistent with the forthcoming standard for High-level Petri Nets. The text format may also be seen as our contribution to the development of an open, tool-independent interchange format for High-level Petri nets. The text format will make it possible to move Design/CPN diagrams between all supported hardware platforms and versions. It is also designed to be a bridge to other Petri Net tools, e.g., other analysis tools which the user may want to use with Design/CPN diagrams. The proposed text format does not address any standardization for the inscription language used in the diagram. It is, however, possible to extend the format to incorporate such a standardization. The text format is designed for the exchange of Hierarchical Coloured Petri Nets but the structure is general enough to cope with other High level Petri Nets as well. The text format presented here has been implemented as part of Design/CPN version 3.1. [...] Design/CPN is a widely used tool within the Petri Net community and has been developed for more than 10 years. The tool has been used in many projects in a broad range of application areas. Design/CPN supports Hierarchical Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets or CPNs) with complex data types (colour sets) and complex data manipulations (arc expressions and guards) - both specified in the functional programming language CPN ML. It also supports hierarchical CP-nets, i.e., net diagrams that consist of a set of separate modules (subnets) with well-defined interfaces. . . We believe however that the inscription language is a far more integrated part of each tool than the graphical layout, thus translation to and from a common inscription language was considered beyond the scope of this text format. On the other hand it was feasible to implement known standards for both naming conventions and syntax in order to make it easier for humans to read the description of the diagram. To that end we have chosen to use the terminology presented in the current version of the committee draft of the HLPN standard. This means that the entities known in Design/CPN as arc expressions, colour regions and guards are called arc annotations, type region and transition conditions, respectively. Furthermore we chose to use the SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) ISO standard, which will be described in Sect. 3. The structure of the text format is chosen to be based on the semantic properties rather than the graphical appearance. It is thus considered more important to know that a certain object is a place than it is to know that the object has the shape of an ellipse. We want the text format to be both general enough to be used by various different tools and specific enough to save the same information about a diagram as the binary format used so far. Different tools need to add different kinds of information to the text format, and later versions of Design/CPN will probably add to the format as well." See also the DTD. On Petri Nets, see "XML and Petri Nets." [cache]

• [September 23, 2000] "Separation of Style and Content with XML in an Interchange Format for High-level Petri Nets." By Thomas Mailund and Kjeld H. Mortensen (Department of Computer Science University of Aarhus, Denmark). "Style sheets have been proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a means for separating presentation and content in World Wide Web documents, and they are now widely used and generally popular. In this paper we use the same idea for an XML interchange format proposal for high-level Petri nets. There are several benefits of using this design principle: It is easier to exchange content-only for non-graphics tools, and alternative styles can conveniently be replaced to make a new graphical appearance. The ideas presented in this paper are illustrated by means of examples. . . Most high-level Petri net tools can agree on the underlying mathematical model of a Petri net: a set of places, a set of transitions, a set of arcs connecting places and transitions, and some annotations describing data types and data. It is quite another matter when it comes to the graphical layout of nets. Different tools have dierent graphical attributes that can be associated with the net elements. To be able to interchange models between different tools, we would like a minimal format containing only the information found in the standard for highlevel nets, and a more format for describing graphical attributes. The latter should be extendable to include tool-specific graphical information. . . In this paper we suggest how to separate presentation and content for a high-level Petri net interchange format. We used CSS examples to illustrate the main benefits of such a design technique. However CSS is more suitable for presentation of text rather than vector graphics such as Petri nets. Hence as a future activity we propose to design a special purpose style language in the context of the interchange format activity." On Petri Nets, see "XML and Petri Nets." [cache]

• [September 23, 2000] "An Experimental Approach Towards the XML Representation of Petri Net Models." By Ousmane Sy, Mathieu Buffo, and Didier Buchs (LIHS-FROGIS, Université Toulouse I, Place Anatole France, F-31042 Toulouse CEDEX, France). "XML has attracted many application developers because it eases the interchange of data between heterogeneous applications. XML based proposal are currently being elaborated to store Petri nets models. The fact that some Petri nets tools already use XML for storage purposes shows that XML may be suitable for Petri nets tools. But it also raises the question of interchange of models between different tools. Indeed, each tool defines its own storage format (DTD - Document Type Definition) using XML, which can make the interchange difficult if the DTD is not standardized. In order to get insights for the definition of standard XML representations, we have set up a research team whose goals are the following: (1) make a survey of the available tools in order to gather information about the various features they support; (2) extract and build a taxonomy of formalisms in order to identify clusters of Petri net dialects that have the same needs; (3) and finally propose a XML representation standard for Petri nets tools derived from this taxonomy. This paper presents the preliminary results derived from our survey and will be completed according to incoming information up to the Petri net conference." See: "Petri Net Markup Language (PNML)."

• [September 23, 2000] "XML Based Schema Definition for Support of Inter-organizational Workflow." By W.M.P. van der Aalst and A. Kumar. Paper presented at the "Meeting on XML/SGML based Interchange Formats for Petri Nets," 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets [ICATPN 2000]. Aarhus, Denmark, June 26-30, 2000. 41 pages (with 40 references). "Commerce on the Internet is still seriously hindered by the lack of a common language for collaborative commercial activities. Although XML (Extensible Markup Language) allows trading partners to exchange semantic information electronically, it does not provide support for document routing. In this paper, we propose the design for an eXchangeable routing language (XRL) using XML syntax. Since XML is becoming a major international standard, it is understood widely. The routing schema in XRL can be used to support flexible routing of documents in the Internet environment. The formal semantics of XRL are expressed in terms of Petri nets and examples are used to demonstrate how it can be used for implementing inter-organizational electronic commerce applications. . . A core feature of XRL is that it provides a mechanism to describe processes at an instance level, i.e., an XRL routing schema describes the partial ordering of tasks for one specific instance. Traditional workflow modeling languages describe processes at a class or type level. Workflow instances, often referred to as cases, typically have a state which is expressed in terms of the class model. From an efficiency point of view, it is beneficial to split state (i.e., instance level) and process model (i.e., class level): If there are many instances of the same class, then duplication of routing information is avoided. However, in the context of inter-organizational workflow such a split is undesirable. It is unrealistic to assume that the different organizations share a common process model. Moreover, it should be possible to migrate instances (or parts of instances) from one organization to another without prior agreement on the precise order in which tasks are executed. Since the XRL routing schema describes the partial ordering of tasks for one specific instance instead of a class: (1) the schema can be exchanged more easily, (2) the schema can be changed without causing any problems for other instances, and (3) the expressive power is increased (workflow modeling languages typically have problems handling a variable number of parallel or alternative branches)... A Document Type Definition (DTD) which describes all the constructs is given in Appendix 1 using standard XML notation. The DTD contains markup declarations for the class of XRL documents. The document element, also called the root, is the route element. Any XRL document should be well-formed, i.e., taken as a whole it should match the production labeled document in the XML version 1.0 standard. Moreover, any XRL document should also be valid, i.e., the document should satisfy the constraints expressed by the declarations in the DTD. In Section 4, we introduced the XRL (eXchangeable Routing Language). The syntax of this language was defined in terms of a DTD. XRL is used to describe the dynamics of inter-organizational workflows. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to have clear semantics for each of the constructs supported by XRL. For this purpose, we map XRL onto Petri nets. On the one hand, Petri nets can be used to represent the business logic in a graphical manner. In fact, the Petri net language is close to many of the diagramming languages used by both commercial workflow management systems and researchers active in this domain. For example, workflow management systems and ERP systems such as COSA (Software Ley), Income (Promatis), BaanERP (Baan), and ARIS/SAP (IDL/SAP) use (variants of) Petri nets. On the other hand, Petri nets are a formal language with clear semantics, powerful analysis techniques, and strong theoretical results. By mapping XRL onto Petri nets, we give formal semantics, are able to reason about XRL (e.g., about its expressive power), can use state-of-the-art analysis techniques, and can use existing software..." See: "Exchangeable Routing Language (XRL)" and "XML and Petri Nets." [cache]

• [September 23, 2000] "XML Schemas: Best Practices." By Roger L. Costello et al. (1) Hiding (Localizing) Namespace Complexities within the Schema (2) Namespaces: Expose them or Not? Purpose: collectively come up with a set of 'best practices' in designing XML Schemas. The specifics of designing a schema are dependent upon the task at hand. The goal of this effort is to come up with a set of schema design guidelines that hold true irrespective of the specific task. Below are some of the things that must be considered in designing a schema. It is by no means an exhaustive list. For example, it doesn't address when to block a type from derivation, when to create a schema without a namespace, when to make an element or a type abstract, etc. Nonetheless, it is a start to some hopefully useful discussions. First, a quick list of the issues: (1) Element versus Type Reuse; (2) Local versus Global; (3) elementFormDefault - to qualify or not to qualify; (4) Evolvability/versioning; (5) One namespace versus many namespaces (import verus include); (6) Capturing semantics of elements and types ... For schema description and references, see "XML Schemas."

• [September 23, 2000] "Bidcom Tames the XML Beast." By Tom Sullivan. In CTO FirstMover [InfoWorld] (September 18, 2000), page 39. "XML has emerged from HTML's shadow to become a major enabler for e-business, allowing dissimilar applications to interchange data efficiently. But this same flexibility creates a challenge for e-businesses that now need to extend XML to enable business processes. It's a tall order, but San Francisco-based Bidcom, an e-services provider that enables building professionals to communicate and collaborate, manage business processes, conduct e-commerce, and access industry-related content, met the challenge handily. Bidcom CTO Larry Chen explains that from the outset his company had a variety of disparate digital and paper-based systems, such as accounting, that needed to be tied together. So Bidcom began adopting XML as a query language two years ago and has since been using it as the vehicle that enables Bidcom's systems to exchange data. By using XML as a querying language, Bidcom enabled its customers to send and receive data with each other on the Web. In this particular case, Chen says, Bidcom had to overcome two levels of XML's extensibility. The first was extending the semantics of XML itself, and the second was extending the schema. To make things simple for Bidcom and its customers, Chen opted to stick to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) standards for extending XML's semantics. The W3C provided clear guidelines and something that all parties could easily agree on. . . . On top of that platform, Bidcom uses XSL (extensible stylesheet language) style sheets to customize forms, documents, and logos for its customers. Chen says that Bidcom did this by separating the presentation from the function via XML." [Note: Mr. Chen has over ten years of experience in the technology industry. Mr. Chen, representing Bidcom, is the current chair of the Construction/Project Management working group of the aecXML Project, a building industry consortium chartered to standardize the definition and exchange of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) data. Mr. Chen also represents Bidcom on the board of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI).]

• [September 23, 2000] "W3C Is Moving Aggressively On SOAP." By Antone Gonsalves. In TechWeb News (September 21, 2000). "The World Wide Web Consortium, which recently formed a working group for standardizing SOAP, is expected to finish within a year its first specification for it, an official close to the group said Thursday. The W3C announced last week it has formed an XML protocol activity working group that would be chaired by David Fallside, who works for IBM's standards division. '[The working group] has a very aggressive schedule,' said Robert Sutor, Fallside's boss and program director of IBM e-Business Standards Strategy. 'If you look at the charter, they believe they can get this done pretty much within a year, which is extremely fast by W3C standards.' 'I don't see any major roadblocks,' Sutor said. 'It's just a question of these companies who have said they would work on it to get their technical resources out there in doing so.' Because SOAP is XML-based, the technology is easier to use than programming-based cross-platform solutions. However, it is best suited for lightweight applications and exchanging information in an environment like the Web. It is not optimized for industrial-strength applications requiring tightly coupled, synchronous, ultra-secure processing among applications, observers said." See: (1) "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)" and (2) the earlier announcement for the W3C working group and related XML Protocol Activity.

• [September 23, 2000] "SXML: Streaming XML. By Boris Rogge, Dimitri Van De Ville, Rik Van de Walle, Wilfried Philips, and Ignace Lemahieu (University of Ghent, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium); Tel: 1 +32 9/264.89.11; Fax: 1 +32 9/264.35.94; E-mail: Boris.Rogge@rug.ac.be. Pages 389-393 (with 9 references) in ProRISC/IEEE. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Workshop on 'Circuits and Systems and Signal Processing'. [ISBN: 90-73461-18-9.] Utrech, Netherlands. "When broadband networks will be implemented, huge amount of bandwidth will be available and hence, a number of new applications will emerge. Application developers will need a framework that enables them to utilize the possibilities of these types of new networks. In this article we present a document type that will allow the addition of (meta-)information to data streams and the synchronization of different data streams. It is called SXML (Streaming XML) and is based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The SXML grammar is defined in a document type definition (SXML-DTD). The content of an SXML document can be processed in real time or can be retrieved from disk. XML is being used in a complete new manner and in a totally different environment in order to easily describe the structure of the stream. Finally, a preliminary implementation has been developed and is being tested." See similarly: B. Rogge, R. Van de Walle, I. Lemahieu, and W. Philips, "Introducing Streaming XML (SXML)," in SPIE International Symposium on Voice, Video, and Data Communications, (Boston), 2000. Accepted for publication; in press. [cache]

• [September 23, 2000] "A New Method for Synchronizing Media Based on XML." By Boris Rogge, Dimitri Van de Ville, Rik Van de Walle, Wilfried Philips, and Ignace Lemahieu (University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium). Presented at EUROMEDIA'2000. See "Ghent builds XML-driven demonstrator for remote multimedia data access in teleradiology and PACS": "XML can mean a big help when it comes to synchronising multimedia data in radiology departments. Huge amounts of data have to be post-processed, so you will have to need a system which is fast and easy to use and has been implemented by using open standards. The suitable characteristics of the Internet do not suffice for real synchronisation. The Quality of Service (QoS) heavily relies on the server. To meet these requirements, the ELIS research team has built an XML-driven demonstrator for radiological images, administrative patient data, and radiologist's comments. The database describes the links between the data." Related publications: (1) R. Van de Walle, B. Rogge, and I. Lemahieu, "Remote multimedia information access by using extensible markup language (XML)," in Proceedings Euromedia, (Antwerp), 2000. Invited presentation. (2) R. Van de Walle, B. Rogge, K. Dreelinck, and I. Lemahieu, "XML-based description and presentation of multimedia radiological data," in SPIE International Symposium on Voice, Video, and Data Communications, (Boston), 2000. Accepted for publication, in press.

• [September 22, 2000] "Towards a Library of Formal Mathematics." By Andrea Asperti, Luca Padovani, Claudio Sacerdoti Coen, and Irene Schena (Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna). Paper submitted to TPHOLS2000. "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) opens the possibility to start anew, on a solid technological ground, the ambitious goal of developing a suitable technology for the creation and maintenance of a virtual, distributed, hypertextual library of formal mathematical knowledge. In particular, XML provides a central technology for storing, retrieving and processing mathematical documents, comprising sophisticated web-publishing mechanisms (stylesheets) covering notational and stylistic issues. In this paper, we discuss the overall architectural design of the new systems, and our progress in this direction." Note also "Formal Mathematics in MathML," presented at the October MathML Conference at UIUC. Published within the HELM Project [XML and the Hypertextual Electronic Library of Mathematics]. See further references in the W3C Math Home Page and "Mathematical Markup Language (MathML)."

• [September 22, 2000] "XML, Stylesheets and the re-mathematization of formal content." By Andrea Asperti, Luca Padovani, Claudio Sacerdoti Coen, and Irene Schena (Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna). Submitted to LPAR2000. "An important part of the descriptive power of mathematics derives from its ability to represent formal concepts in a highly evolved, two-dimensional system of symbolic notations. Tools for the mechanization of mathematics and the automation of formal reasoning must eventually face the problem of re-mathematization of the logical, symbolic content of the information, especially in view of their integration with the World Wide Web. In a different work, we already discussed the pivotal role that XML-technology is likely to play in such an integration. In this paper, we focus on the problem of (Web) publishing, advocating the use of XSL-Stylesheets, in conjunction with the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), as a standard, application independent and modular way for associating notation to formal content." Published within the HELM Project [XML and the Hypertextual Electronic Library of Mathematics]. See further references in the W3C Math Home Page and "Mathematical Markup Language (MathML)."

• [September 22, 2000] "W3C Pursues SOAP-like Activity." By Carolyn Duffy Marsan. In Network World Fusion (September 19, 2000). The World Wide Web Consortium has created a new working group to develop an XML-based messaging protocol, but the international standards body says it won't rubberstamp Microsoft's Simple Object Access Protocol - SOAP - as some vendors had hoped. W3C's XML Protocol Working Group will develop a common way for Web applications to communicate with each other in an automated fashion using XML-encoded messages. An anticipated feature of the next-generation Web, XML is a simple, flexible text format designed for large-scale electronic publishing. . . The XML Protocol Working Group will host its first face-to-face meeting in October, with an initial working draft of the protocol due next January. Companies already signed up to participate in the working group include IBM, Epicentric, SAP and Jamcracker. One unusual aspect of the XML Protocol Working Group is that it will conduct all of its business in public, W3C spokeswoman Janet Daly says. The working group's charter, members and meeting minutes will be posted on the W3C's Web site." See (1) "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)" and (2) the earlier announcement for the W3C working group and related XML Protocol Activity.

• [September 22, 2000] "XML Overview." From Microsoft ISN (Internet Services Network). August 31, 2000. "Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the universal language for data on the Web. XML gives developers the power to deliver structured data from a wide variety of applications to the desktop for local computation and presentation. XML allows the creation of unique data formats for specific applications; it is also an ideal format for server-to-server transfer of structured data. There are many benefits to using XML both on the Web and in the middle tier: (1) Delivers data for local computation. Data delivered to the desktop is available for local computation. The data can be read by the XML parser, then delivered to a local application such as a browser for further viewing or processing. Or the data can be manipulated through script or other programming languages using the XML Object Model. (2) Gives users an appropriate view of structured data. Data delivered to the desktop can be presented in multiple ways. A local data set can be presented in the view that is right for the user, dynamically, based on factors such as user preference and configuration. (3) Enables the integration of structured data from multiple sources into common logical views. Typically, agents will be used to integrate data from server databases and other applications on a middle-tier server, making this data available for delivery to the desktop or to other servers for further aggregation, processing, and distribution. (4) Describes data from a wide variety of applications. Because XML is extensible, it can be used to describe data contained in a wide variety of applications, from describing collections of Web pages to data records. Because the data is self-describing, data can be received and processed without the need for a built-in description of the data. (5) Improves performance through granular updates. XML enables granular updating. Developers do not have to send the entire structured data set each time there is a change. With granular updating, only the changed element must be sent from the server to the client. The changed data can be presented without the need to refresh the entire page or table. To date, Microsoft has actively participated in the W3C creation and standardization of XML and has aggressively delivered XML support in its products..."

• [September 22, 2000] "XML, .NET and distributed applications." In El.pub Analytic. September 2000. 'Analysis of the market and technical aspects of electronic publishing'. Also in .DOC format.

• [September 22, 2000] "Getting The Message. [APPLICATION INTEGTRATION & MANAGEMENT.]" By Max P. Grasso. In Application Development Trends (August 2000). ['EJB, COM, RPC and CORBA get the headlines, but messaging middleware is still the preferred choice for building large, distributed corporate systems; the addition of XML is expected to quickly boost capabilities.'] "Messaging middleware can offer more than primitives for message delivery. In the past few years, many middleware products have started to provide higher level services that we will cumulatively call message brokering. These services allow sophisticated custom logic to run co-located with the middleware and to examine, route, filter and modify messages according to content or message envelope attributes. In practice, message brokering can be exploited to the point where a substantial part of a business app will be contained in the middleware's nodes and the global communication patterns will be defined by the local behavior at the nodes. In the past, messaging middleware required the use of proprietary message definitions, so that it could look not only in the message envelope but also into the message content formats -- and could possibly transform the messages in transit. Because this required a specific product focus, vendors would either focus on the message delivery or the message-brokering facilities. The acceptance of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has changed things dramatically. It has allowed any messaging product to easily provide message-brokering functionality for XML-formatted messages. Such facilities can be put together easily with vendor-provided or open source tools. Without a doubt, messaging products will make increasing use of XML and provide message filtering and content-based routing. In general, message-brokering facilities provide an excellent platform for integrating legacy and new systems, as long as one can easily describe business flows in terms of event-driven logic (otherwise, we would rather recommend developing a solution using distributed components). This approach to solving business problems using routing, filtering and transformation logic in the messaging middleware is targeted by EAI products."

• [September 22, 2000] W3C RDF and ISO/XML Topicmap discussion. Dan Connolly posted the announcement: "Following the energy and good will built up at the 'RDF vs. Topic Maps' session at Extreme Markup Languages in Montreal, a few of us got together by phone/IRC this morning (well... morning in my time zone). The notes we managed to take are available at http://www.w3.org/2000/09/tmr493/notes..." See RDF - ISO/XML Topicmap Agenda - 20000918: "A continuation of the conversations that started in Montreal at the Extreme Markup Languages Conference to increase knowledge and understanding about the relationships between the W3C RDF and ISO/XML Topicmap activities." See "(XML) Topic Maps" and "Resource Description Framework (RDF)."

• [September 22, 2000] Zvon Xlink Reference. Miloslav Nic announced 2000-09-22: "Jiri Jirat has published XLink reference and XLink examples at http://www.zvon.org/xxl/xlink/Output/xlink_refs.html and http://www.zvon.org/xxl/xlink/OutputExamples/xlinksimple_intro.html. The examples are functional If you have browser which supports Xlink (Mozilla M17 recommended), you can test real behaviour. If you do not have Xlink capable browser, you can go through tutorial where the behaviour is simulated (using JavaScript)." Main features (1) Names of elements and attributes of Xlink are clickable; (2) Click on 'Go to standard' leads to the relevant part of the W3C XLink specification; (3) Where applicable, links to relevant examples are given." See XLink resources referenced in "XML Linking Language."

• [September 22, 2000] "Out-of-Line XML Linking with X2X: Satisfying the need for better access to information." By Jason Markos (Director of Research and Development, empolis UK). Technical [white] paper. "In the past, [linking] has been enabled through either HREFs or ID/IDREFs. While these two approaches are syntactically different, they are very similar in how they work. They are both based on the conventional idea of a link being about a source file and a target file and embedding the syntax within the source file to get to the target. This approach has a number of limitations. Firstly, neither of them are bi-directional links. However, the biggest failing is that the link has no way of expressing any semantic value as to why the relationship was established. For example, HREFs rely on the text that is highlighted to explain why the link was inserted. ID/IDREFs rely on the element or it's content in a similar way. This model works if the authors understand the semantic meaning of the links that should point to or from the file that they were authoring. [Hence:] Out-of-line Linking and XLink. The fundamental principle behind 'out-of-line' linking is that the link information is stored independently of the resources that are being linked together. This concept has been around for a considerable time, but it wasn't until HyTime was produced that the idea was popularised. While XLink is a more recent standard, it is trying to solve the same problems that HyTime tries to address with regards to linking issues. Out-of-line linking has much richer functionality than the more conventional types of linking discussed earlier. This richer functionality can allow us to address some of the linking issues such as multi-directional navigation, management, validation and link semantics. There is a lot more information to be captured in an out-of-link. A link can have a title and other attributes which allows applications to distinguish different links. Each link can be viewed as a typed relationship between a number of resources. Each one of these resources can be a document, a part of a document or a data fragment. These points are represented using anchors. An anchor is a handle to a document or a position within a document. Each anchor can have a role defining the part that the anchor plays within the link. . . In summary, [the XLink tool] X2X enables you to: (1) Link between resources without the need to change them. (2) Build new documents dynamically from a template link document. (3) Have true bi-directional links between resources. (4) Group sets of related resources in strongly typed relationships. (5) Link between structured and unstructured information. (6) Manage large repositories of link information in a centralised efficient manner. (7) Link resources that are stored in a variety of different data repositories. (8) Create links using any application that creates XML XLink documents." Note: X2X from empolis UK is advertised as "the first commercial XLink engine that enables organisations to create links that are more valuable than the information they link..." See XLink resources referenced in "XML Linking Language."

• [September 22, 2000] "Out-of-Line Linking with X2X: Satisfying the need for better access to information." By Jason Markos. In Interchange [ISSN: 1463-662X] Volume 6, Number 1 (March 2000), pages 12-15. "Approximately eighty percent of all Web page accesses are from links from four key sites; search engine sites such as Alta Vista. Apart from the fact that it is very interesting that these four sites have such a monopoly, they are all dependent on links. Linking provides the potential to define relationships between information sets that can be tailored, maintained, and given extended functionality based on individual user requirements. This is not about replacing search engine technology, but further enabling it. The fundamental principle behind out-of-line linking is that the link information is stored independently of the resources that are being linked together. Once we have our link information expressed in a rich standards-based format (XLink), an important remaining issue is how to combine that link information with the resources for delivery to end users. This is often referred to as link resolving or resolution. X2X, a product from STEP UK, has been designed to provide an engine for the resolution of out-of-line links based on XLink." See XLink resources referenced in "XML Linking Language." [See the previous entry.]

• [September 22, 2000] "What is XLink?" By Fabio Arciniegas A. From XML.com (September 20, 2000). ['XLink is an XML specification for describing links between resources in XML. Our introduction shows you how to get to grips with using XLinks in your own documents.'] "The very nature of the success of the Web lies in its capability for linking resources. However, the unidirectional, simple linking structures of the Web today are not enough for the growing needs of an XML world. The official W3C solution for linking in XML is called XLink (XML Linking Language). This article explains its structure and use according to the most recent Candidate Recommendation. . . [Conclusion:] XLink is a powerful and compact specification for the use of links in XML documents. Even though XLink has not been implemented in any of the major commercial browsers yet, its impact will be crucial for the XML applications of the near future. Its extensible and easy-to-learn design should prove an advantage as the new generation of XML applications develop." Part 2 of the article is "XLink Reference." See XLink resources referenced in "XML Linking Language."

• [September 22, 2000] "Getting into i-Mode." By Didier Martin. From XML.com (September 20, 2000). ['Following on with his investigations into XML and wireless devices, Didier Martin explains i-Mode, the technology fueling the Japanese explosion in wireless Web access, and contrasts it with WAP.'] "If we look at the technology, the i-Mode service is based on packed switched overlay over circuit-switched digital communications. In contrast to most European or North American WAP services, it is based on TCP/IP, is always on, and hence does not require a dial-in connection. The content is encoded in an HTML variant named cHTML (Compact HTML)... The first thing to notice is that cHTML is unfortunately not XML-based. A cHTML document is like an HTML document. In contrast to a WAP document, which contains more than one screen (i.e. cards), a cHTML document contains only one screen. Thus, the cHTML rendering model is identical to the HTML rendering model: one page at a time." Note: See "Compact HTML for Small Information Appliances" submitted as a NOTE to W3C on 1998-02-09.

• [September 22, 2000] "XML-Deviant: Super Model." By Leigh Dodds. From XML.com (September 20, 2000). ['Growing interest in RDF is seeing renewed work to increase understanding of the specification, including a move to separate RDF's simple data model from its oft-maligned syntax.'] "The RDF Interest Group has recently been gathering momentum, and the XML-Deviant takes a look at the progress they're making towards improving understanding of RDF." See references in "Resource Description Framework (RDF)."

• [September 22, 2000] "XML: Get out your hype-o-meter." By Mary Jo Foley [ZDNet News]. In ZDNet News (September 21, 2000). "It slices. It dices. It cuts through all standards confusion with a single swish. Just when you think the Exensible Markup Language (XML, to you) can't get any hotter or more hyped, it's poised to be invoked yet again over the next few weeks, as various software vendors trot out their scalability announcements. When Microsoft talks up its enterprise servers next week in San Francisco, you can bet that XML will be touted as Redmond's answer to questions about why it still has no cross-platform strategy. XML is part of just about all of the 2000 generation of Microsoft products that it officially will roll out next week: Exchange Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, et al. XML also likely will be a key component of Microsoft's Airstream wireless middleware platform. Sources said Microsoft might use its Enterprise 2000 launch to roll out Beta 1 of Airstream next week..."

• [September 22, 2000] "IntraNet Solutions Wants to Spread Some XML." By Clint Boulton. In InternetNews.com (September 19, 2000). "With an eye toward securing the standards employed in its product line, IntraNet Solutions Inc. Tuesday joined the Organization for Structured Information Standards. OASIS, the world's largest Extensible Markup Language (XML) interoperability consortium, fights for industry standards to make it easier for firms to conduct business online. Essentially, it lobbies for businesses to use XML, a common Web language, in formats that can be shared and accessed across applications. Why XML as opposed to HTML? The latter is a set language while the former allows designers to create their own customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations..."

• [September 22, 2000] "XML and the Net: Better Than Sliced Bread - Really." By David Streitfeld [Washington Post Service] In International Herald Tribune (September 21, 2000). "The programming language known as XML may be taking the Internet to a new level, but its many fans have not yet settled on a mundane way to describe to the uninitiated exactly what it does. It is the glue that knits the Net together, says one. A bar code for information, says another. It is the lingua franca of electronic commerce and content, says a third. It is an Esperanto for computers, says a fourth, referring to an attempt to merge the main European languages into a universal form of communication. If anything, such labels understate the fervor with which XML is being touted. Networking guru Craig Burton has said XML will do for this era what calculus did for the Renaissance: Both are dynamic new approaches that render the previous system outmoded, if not irrelevant. David Turner, a product manager at Microsoft Corp. specializing in XML, goes even further. ''The introduction of XML is in many ways like the creation of writing in the evolution of language,'' he said. ''People had spoken language for a long period before they got to the point of inventing writing. But as soon as they did, they were able to make huge steps forward.'' XML, which stands for extensible markup language, is technically a metalanguage, a language that describes other languages. It is a loose cousin of hypertext markup language, whose development laid the groundwork for the Web. But while HTML is a fine tool for writing Web pages, it is static. HTML presents a fixed snapshot of data. XML merely structures it, allowing for much more fluidity..."

• [September 16, 2000] "Introducing the Schematron. A fresh approach to XML validation and reporting." By Uche Ogbuji. In SunWorld Magazine (September 16, 2000). ['Judging from the ongoing developments and debates about XML document validation, it's evident the language is in flux. In this article, writer and consultant Uche Ogbuji gets a handle on some of these changes and introduces the Schematron, a new validation and reporting methodology and toolkit.]' The Schematron is a validation and reporting methodology and toolkit developed by Rick Jelliffe, a member of the W3C Schema working group. Without denigrating the efforts of his group, Mr. Jelliffe has pointed out that XML Schemas may be too complex for many users, and so he approaches validation from the same approach as the DTD. Jelliffe developed the Schematron as a simple tool to harness the power of XPath, attacking the schema problem from a new angle. As he writes on his Website: 'The Schematron differs in basic concept from other schema languages in that it is not based on grammars but on finding tree patterns in the parsed document. This approach allows many kinds of structures to be represented which are inconvenient and difficult in grammar-based schema languages.' The Schematron is no more than an XML vocabulary that can be used as an instruction set for generating stylesheets. . . There are several things that DTDs provide that Schematron cannot, such as entity and notation definitions, and fixed or default attribute values. RELAX does not provide any of these facilities either, but XML Schemas provide them all -- as they must, because they are positioned as a DTD replacement. RELAX makes no such claim, and indeed the RELAX documentation has a section on using RELAX in concert with DTDs. We have already mentioned that Schematron, far from claiming to be a DTD replacement, is positioned as an entirely fresh approach to validation. Nevertheless, attribute-value defaulting can be a useful way to reduce the clutter of XML documents for human readability, so we'll examine one way to provide default attributes in association with Schematron. Remember that you're always free to combine DTDs with Schematron to get the best of both worlds, but if you want to leave DTDs behind, you can still get attribute-defaulting at the cost of one more pass through the document when the values are to be substituted. This can be done by a stylesheet that transforms a source document into a result that is identical except that all default attribute values are given. . . At Fourthought, we've used Schematron in deployed work products both for our clients and for ourselves. Because we already do a lot of work with XSLT, it's a very comfortable system and there's not much training required for XPath. To match the basic features of DTD, not a lot more knowledge is needed than path expressions, predicates, unions, the sibling and attribute axes, and a handful of functions. Performance has not been an issue because we typically have strong control over XML data in our systems and rarely use defaulted attributes. This allows us to validate only when a new XML datum is input, or an existing datum has modified our systems, reducing performance concerns. Schematron is a clean, well-considered approach to validation and simple reporting. XML Schemas are significant, but it is debatable whether such a new and complex system is required for validation. RELAX and the Schematron both present simpler approaches coming from different angles, and might be a better fit for quick integration into XML systems. In any case, Schematron once again demonstrates the extraordinary reach of XSLT and the flexibility of XML as a data-management technology." Rick also wrote: "Because Schematron works at a level that is sort-of intermediate between XML Schemas (rather storage-oriented) and RDF (integrating statements into a semantic web), I haven't expected it to get popular until after XML Schemas is rolled out, so this article comes at a great time. I see there is also an article on Schematron in German by Oliver Becker slated for German computer journal iX in a month or two. Schematron works quite well with XML Schemas or DTDs (as well as by itself) because it expresses not only static constraints (a <dog> must contain a <tail>) but also co-occurence constraints (if <dog sex="f" then must contain <name>FIFI</name>) and even constraints based on external vocaularies in any format (if <dog sex="f" then must contain <name> with a value being any item from a list <names> in some external document)." Note that there is now an open source Schematron project on SourceForge.

• [September 16, 2000] "XMIDDLE: An XML based Middleware for Mobile Computing." By Cecilia Mascolo and Wolfgang Emmerich. University College London, Research Note RN/00/54. Submitted for publication. September 2000. "An increasing number of distributed applications will be written for mobile hosts, such as laptop computers, third generation mobile phones, personal digital assistants, watches and the like. These applications face temporary loss of network connectivity when they move. They need to discover other hosts in an ad-hoc manner, and they are likely to have scarce resources including CPU speed, memory and battery power. Software engineers building mobile applications need to use a suitable middleware that resolves these problems and offers appropriate support for developing mobile applications. In this paper, we describe the XMIDDLE mobile computing middleware that addresses data synchronization issues using replication and reconciliation techniques. XMIDDLE enables the transparent sharing of XML trees across heterogeneous mobile hosts, allowing on-line and off-line access to data. We describe XMIDDLE using a collaborative e-shopping case study on mobile clients. . . The principal contribution of this paper is a presentation of the basic primitives provided by the XMIDDLE middleware and an overview of their implementation in the XMIDDLE architecture. XMIDDLE overcomes the defects of other mobile computing middleware approaches by firstly choosing a more powerful data structure and secondly by supporting replication and reconciliation. XMIDDLE's data structure are trees rather than tuple spaces. More precisely, XMIDDLE uses the eXtended Markup Language (XML) to represent information and supports XML standards, most notably the Document Object Model (DOM) to support the manipulation of its data. This means that XMIDDLE data can be represented in a hierarchical structure rather than, for instance, in a flat tuple space. The structure is typed and the types are defined in an XML Document Type Definition or Schema. XMIDDLE applications use XML Parsers to validate that the tree structures actually conform to these types. The introduction of hierarchies also facilitates the coordination between mobile hosts at different levels of granularity as XMIDDLE supports sharing of subtrees. Furthermore, representing mobile data structures in XML enables seamless integration of XMIDDLE applications with the Micro Browsers, such as WAP browsers in mobile phones, that future mobile hosts will include. XMIDDLE allows mobile and fixed hosts to share each other's information when they are connected, it supports the specification of the information that should be replicated so that replicas continue to be available when connections are lost. Data synchronization is considered the Achilles' heel of mobile computing and the SyncML consortium is building synchronization standards based on XML to promote interoperability and integration of mobile devices and their data. Upon re-connection XMIDDLE executes a reconciliation protocol that re-establishes of data consistency. The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 we introduce XMIDDLE and the main characteristics of the system. In Section 3 we describe a collaborative electronic shopping system that we use as a case study to illustrate XMIDDLE. In Section 4 we depict the architecture of the system, and in Section 5 we describe the details of XMIDDLE primitives. Section 6 contains the details of the implementation of the case study. In Section 7 we discuss and evaluate the XMIDDLE system and in Section 8 we conclude the paper and list some future work." [cache]

• [September 16, 2000] "XMILE: An Incremental Code Mobility System based on XML Technologies." By Cecilia Mascolo, Wolfgang Emmerich, and Anthony Finkelstein (Dept. of Computer Science, University College London). 2nd International Symposium on Agent Systems and Applications and Mobile Agents (ASA/MA2000), September 2000. "Logical mobility ranges from simple data mobility, where information is transferred, through code mobility that allows the migration of executable code, to mobile agents, in which code and data move together. Several application domains need a more exible approach to code mobility than the one that can be achieved with Java and with mobile agents in general. This exibility can either be required as a result of low network bandwidth, scarce resources, and slow or expensive connectivity, like in mobile computing settings, or scalability requirements like in applications on several thousand clients that haveto be kept in sync and be updated with new code fragments. We show how to achieve more fine-grained mobility than in the approaches using mobile agents and Java class loading. We demonstrate that the unit of mobility can be decomposed from an agent or class level, if necessary, down to the level of individual statements. We can then support incremental insertion or substitution of, possibly small, code fragments and open new application areas for code mobility such as management of applications on mobile thin clients, for example wireless connected PDAs or mobile phones, or more in general distributed code update and management. This work builds on the formal foundation for fine-grained code mobility that was established in [an earlier paper]. That paper develops a theoretical model for fine-grained mobility at the level of single statements or variables and argues that the potential of code mobility is submerged by the capability of the most commonly used language for code mobility, i.e., Java. We focus on an implementation of fine-grained mobility using standardized and widely available technology. It has been identified that mobile code is a design concept, independent of technology and can be embodied in various ways in different technologies. The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) can be exploited to achieve code mobility at a very fine-grained level. XML has not been designed for code mobility, however it happens to have some interesting characteristics, mainly related to exibility, that allow its use for code migration. In particular, we will exploit the tree structure of XML documents and then use XML related technologies, such as XPath and the Document Object Model (DOM) to modify programs dynamically. The availability of this technology considerably simplifies the construction of application-specific languages and their interpreters. XML provides a exible approach to describe data structures. We now show that XML can also be used to describe code. XML DTDs (i.e., Data Type Definition) are, in fact, very similar to attribute grammars. Each element ofan XML DTD corresponds to a production of a grammar. The contents of the element define the right-hand side of the production. Contents can be declared as enumerations of further elements, element sequences or element alternatives. These give the same expressive power to DTDs as BNFs have for context free grammars. The markup tags, as well as the PCDATA that is included in unrefined DTD elements, define terminal symbols. Elements of XML DTDs can be attributed. These attributes can be used to store the value of identifiers, constants or static semantic information, such as symbol tables and static types. Thus, XML DTDs can be used to define the abstract syntax of programming languages. We refer to documents that are instances of such DTDs as XML programs. XML programs can be interpreted and in interpreters can be constructed using XML technologies. When XML programs are sent from one host to another we effectively achieve code mobility." [cache]

• [September 16, 2000] "Consistency Management of Distributed Documents using XML and Related Technologies." By Ernst Ellmer, Wolfgang Emmerich, Anthony Finkelstein, Danila Smolko and Andrea Zisman (Department of Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK). Email contact: {E.Ellmer|W.Emmerich|A.Finkelstein|D.Smolko|A.Zisman}@cs.ucl.ac.uk. UCL-CS Research Note 99/94 (Submitted for Publication), 1999. "In this paper we describe an approach and associated techniques for managing consistency of distributed documents. We give an account of a toolkit which demonstrates the approach. The approach supports the management of consistency of documents with Internet-scale distribution. It takes advantage of XML (Extensible Markup Language) and related technologies. The paper contains a brief account of the base technologies and an extended discussion of related work. The approach and the toolkit are described in detail in the context of a typical application... We provide means for managing consistency of documents with Internet-scale distribution. Our approach is very simple and light-weight and can be readily deployed in a variety of different settings. This simplicity is achieved by building on existing Internet technologies which form a very powerful and widely used base. It is also achieved by exploiting an emerging standard XML (Extensible Markup Language) and related technologies. The work we have carried out originates in our interest in soft-ware engineering and particularly in the problem of managing consistency among software engineering documents. Though the work we describe has clear and immediate application in this area and we will continue to use this as an example, our concerns are wider and the approach applies, we believe to all classes of structured document. In the paper which follows we set out an example problem, managing software engineering documents produced in the UML (Unified Modelling Language). We describe XML and related technologies. We outline our approach and provide an account of our implementation of the architecture. The approach is evaluated and related work reviewed. The paper outlines future directions and suggests ways in which the overall approach could be extended."

• [September 16, 2000] "BOX: Browsing Objects in XML." By Christian Nentwich, Wolfgang Emmerich, Anthony Finkelstein and Andrea Zisman (Dept. of Computer Science, University College London). In Software Practice and Experience, 30 (2000), pages 1-16. "The latest Internet markup languages support the representation of structured information and vector graphics. In this paper we describe how these languages can be used to publish software engineering diagrams on the Internet. We do so by describing BOX, a portable, distributed and interoperable approach to browsing UML models with off-the-shelf browser technology. Our approach to browsing UML models leverages XML and related specifications, such as the Document Object Model (DOM), the XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) and a Vector Graphic Markup Language (VML). BOX translates a UML model that is represented in XMI into VML. VML can be directly displayed in Internet browsers, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5. BOX enables software engineers to access, review and browse UML models without the need to purchase licenses of tools that produced the models. BOX has been successfully evaluated in two industrial case studies. The case studies used BOX to make extensive domain and enterprise object models available to a large number of stakeholders over a corporate intranets and the Internet. We discuss why XML and the BOX architecture can be applied to other software engineering notations. We also argue that the approach taken in BOX can be applied to other domains that already started to adopt XML and have a need for graphic representation of XML information. These include browsing gene sequences, chemical molecule structures and conceptual knowledge representations."

• [September 16, 2000] "WAP Forum moves toward Net standards." By Stephen Lawson. In InfoWorld (September 14, 2000). "The WAP Forum expects to approve Version 2.0 of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) by mid-2001 and may complete specifications before that for features such as animation, streaming media, and downloading of music files, leaders of the group said at a press event Thursday following a two-day meeting here. The next major version of WAP, a protocol for providing Internet-based data services on mobile phones, will complete a migration to XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as the foundation of the technology, which will make it easier for developers to write WAP applications, said Michael Short, director of international affairs and strategy at BTCellnet, in Slough, England, and a member of the WAP Forum board of directors. The group, which has more than 580 member companies and hosted about 700 delegates here, is also making progress toward enabling additional services on WAP devices, according to Scott Goldman, chief executive officer of the WAP Forum. In addition to animation, streaming media, and music downloads, WAP will display color graphics, provide location-specific content, and allow users to synchronize information with personal information manager software on a desktop PC in a remote location. Goldman painted WAP, which has been labeled a transitional technology because of its slow performance and rudimentary display, as a vital technology even for the upcoming age of third-generation (3G) wireless communications. The 384Kbps that 3G will deliver to roving users will be shared bandwidth, so each user typically will get only 20Kbps to 30Kbps throughput to a mobile device anyway, Goldman said... While the WAP Forum moves WAP toward XHTML and TCP, another wireless Internet technology, NTT DoCoMo's I-Mode, is moving in the same direction, Goldman said. The two probably will converge next year, he said." See: "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification (WML)."

• [September 15, 2000] "CFOs shun manual labor. Standard takes sweat out of pulling together data." By Roberta Holland. In eWEEK (September 11, 2000). "For Greg Adams, chief financial officer of Edgar Online Inc., quarterly report time means long hours scrolling through massive Securities and Exchange Commission documents to see how the competition is doing. Currently, Adams has to search each SEC filing individually, pluck out the 20 or so variables he needs, and manually re-enter the data into a new file. But software based on an emerging standard called XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) will enable him to type in competitors' ticker symbols and the variables he needs and watch while the information is automatically pulled into a spreadsheet or chart. The estimated time difference: 8 hours whittled down to 3 minutes. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), XBRL allows for the generation, extraction and exchange of financial data from financial statements presented in software applications. Once tagged in XBRL, the financial statements can be rendered in different forms, such as an annual report, HTML for a company Web site, tax returns or an SEC filing. The protocol is being developed by the XBRL Committee, an international coalition whose 63 members include a virtual who's who of the financial services world. The group's first published taxonomy, for financial reporting of commercial and industrial companies under generally accepted U.S. accounting principles, was released July 31. Software companies are now starting to roll out products that incorporate XBRL. While the U.S. taxonomy was the first published, roughly a dozen more are expected, to accommodate accounting terms used in other countries, including New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Once all the taxonomies are in place, the next layer will be tools to make those frameworks useful. All of the 63 companies and groups in the coalition have agreed to implement XBRL into their own products and processes. Edgar Online, in fact, is setting up a repository of companies that have their information tagged in XBRL." See: "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."

• [September 16, 2000] "LeapIt's CTO puts real-world lessons to work." By Mark Leon. In InfoWorld Volume 22, Issue 37 (September 08, 2000), page 44. "In 1999 Lee and two partners received financial backing from Sterling Capital, in Chicago, to found LeapIt, a distance-learning software developer that builds and hosts software allowing educators to interact with students through the Internet. The company launched last August...At General Physics, Lee got his feet wet in Internet programming, creating distance-learning portal sites for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and Fortune 100 companies such as Ford and Chrysler. Before LeapIt could attract customers, however, it needed to choose what technologies to use to build its e-learning platform. Some of the leading candidates for LeapIt's system included Active Server Pages (ASP) from Microsoft, server-side Java, and XML. Lee says server-side Java and XML turned out to be the best way to protect a client's brand. 'XML in particular facilitates this,' Lee explains. 'It is due to the hierarchical nature of XML. It allows you to put not only your data but also your processes in a hierarchy. What this means is that we can formalize processes in a way that ensures that a client's existing systems can be easily integrated with ours. This preserves whatever look and feel the client currently has.' A couple of other things that sold Lee on XML was the standard's newfound status and natural fit with object-oriented technology. 'XML is here to stay,' he says. 'We made our system very granular so people can get just the information they want. To do this we created learning objects, and XML supports these very well.'

• [September 15, 2000] "XML takes on content delivery. Web technology is poised to save time and money by eliminating redundant distribution tasks." By Roberta Holland. In eWEEK (September 11, 2000). "Having proved its mettle as a data delivery format, XML is now working its way into both content delivery and content management systems. The language, which can easily be transformed into any presentation format it needs, such as HTML, Wireless Markup Language, text and other formats, will become a crucial element in content delivery as the spectrum of devices accessing online content expands. Mark Cahill, editor of Reel-Time.com, an Internet journal of saltwater fly-fishing, said he plans to add Extensible Markup Language content delivery to his site soon, particularly for Wireless Application Protocol phones. 'It's a natural for the type of data we deliver,' said Cahill, in Worcester, Mass. 'It will enable us to give area reports to fishermen and deliver it in a way they can take with them.' Companies such as Arbortext Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Inc., of Reading, Mass., showcased their respective answers to how XML can be used in content delivery and management at the XML World 2000 show here last week. Arbortext unveiled at the show its Epic E-Content Engine, or E3, content aggregation and delivery server, which converts content from a variety of sources into XML and then enables the content to be served into any format a device requests. Xyvision demonstrated its recently released content management software, Content@XML, which allows editing and reuse of content, creation of single-source repositories, and publishing for multiple channels. Both companies' products are available now. The benefits that XML brings to content delivery and management are many. For starters, the language uses a media-neutral representation and can be combined and repurposed for different documents and formats. It also allows for personalization, intelligent searches and greater automation and can aggregate content from multiple sources... Users said savings in cost and time are important. Noel Albertson, director of AnswerLab, the Philadelphia-based R&D arm of AnswerThink Inc., said using XML to solve the problem of separate teams creating identical content for different formats may present some tough collaboration issues. But Albertson believes money won't be the main reason that companies gravitate toward XML."

• [September 15, 2000] "Btrade helps business learn the lingo." By Jefferey Burt. In eWEEK (September 16, 2000). "One of the biggest e-commerce hurdles facing small and midsize enterprises has been the language they use to conduct business on the Internet. Most, armed with nothing more than a browser, use HTML or XML. Meanwhile, their larger trading partners use the legacy-based languages of EDI, including X12 and Electronic Data Interchance For Administration Commerce and Transport. Large companies also often prefer to transport e-business documents using value-added networks rather than the internet. Software vendors such os The EC Co. and Cyclone Commerce Inc. are developing tools to enable smaller businesses to more easily conduct e-business wiht larger partners. This week, BTrade.com, of Irving, Texas, is launching WebAcess2000, a desktop software application that quickly translates EDI documents from many of the world's larger retailers to Internet protocols, such as Extensible Markup Language, and back. It also can move the EDI documents into smaller businesses' back and systems. The software, available, now, can either be downloaded or accessed through a hosted ASP (application service provider) model for a one-time fee of $750. Those using the ASP sevice are then charged $90 per month. BTrade officials compare that with costs of $2,500 or more for a translator..."

• [September 15, 2000] "Going to Extremes." By Liora Alschuler. From XML.com (September 13, 2000). ['Geeks in tweed and metadata maniacs, shapers of the future of structured information representation. The recent Extreme Markup Languages conference had it all. Liora Alschuler was there and reports back on the Topic Maps and RDF head-to-head.]' "XML has to date achieved a degree of syntactic, but not semantic, interoperability. On the Web, you still can't find what you need easily, and when you do, you may not know what it means. Grammars, that is, DTDs and schemas, don't supply meaning any more than the Elements of Style can tell you the size, shape, and location of a certain white whale. (The draft W3C schemas do include a type system, a necessary but not sufficient component of 'meaning.' W3C schemas figured remarkably little in discussion, although a pre-conference tutorial was well attended.) As Jeff Heflin and James Hendler put it, 'To achieve semantic interoperability, systems must be able to exchange data in such a way that the precise meaning of the data is readily accessible and the data itself can be translated by any system into a form that it understands.' The problem is that XML itself has, by design, no semantics. Or, as John Heintz and W. Eliot Kimber said, 'DTDs constrain syntax, not data models. They don't capture abstraction across models, they are simply an implementation view of a higher abstraction.' The conference program was rich in reports of real-world, large-scale implementations actively engaged in the search for meaning, and they were not all focused on Topic Maps or RDF -- although these specs (ISO and W3C respectively) were the most prevalent form of semantic representation addressed. . . Facing the conflict between Topic Maps and RDF head-on, the conference staged a debate between Eric 'RDF' Miller of OCLC and Eric 'Topic Maps' Freese of ISOGEN. Freese and Miller provided this comparison between the two specs: Both (1) are hard to read, (2) share a goal: to tie semantics to document structures, (3) provide a systematic way to declare a vocabulary and basic integrity constraints, (4) provide a typing system, (5) provide entity relationships, (6) both work well with established ontologies. Differences between the two specifications (1) Topic