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• [September 30, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases UDDI Registry Extensions.    An IBM alphaWorks development team has released a package of extensions that enhance IBM WebSphere UDDI product with advanced search capabilities. These UDDI Registry Extensions support Version 1.1.1 of the IBM WebSphere UDDI Registry. The new UDDI Registry Extensions provide "advanced search capabilities that enable the formation of complex queries comprising search criteria from two standard UDDI 'find' APIs, find_business and find_service, all in one query. With these advanced search capabilities, requesters can find businesses with services of specific names or in a specific category and vice versa to find services owned by businesses that match specified criteria. Such capabilities are not available with current UDDI search technology and these searches cannot be done without much effort. To make equivalent queries with the current UDDI search technology, the client search requester must perform two steps: (1) Issue two queries: a find_business query and a find_service query, and (2) Process the two sets of results returned by the queries and perform the appropriate intersection of the results, which is complex and error-prone." [Full context]

• [September 30, 2002]   US Internal Revenue Service Establishes Online XML Developers' Forum for Employment Tax E-file System.    The US Internal Revenue Service has set up an online "94x XML Developers' Forum" to provide information and technical guidance for software developers interested in developing software for the new Employment Tax e-file System in XML. The website provides links to the relevant XML Schemas, technical documents, news, and announcements. Supported tax forms include: Form 940 - Employer's Annual Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax Return (Forma 940-PR in Spanish), Form 941 - Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return (Form 941-PR in Spanish), Form 941-SS - Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return, Form 941c - Supporting Statement to Correct Information, and XML PIN Registration. An Employment Tax e-file System Implementation and User Guide and a Preliminary Guide to Creating 94x Return Transmission Files provide procedural guidelines and validation criteria for the Employment Tax e-file System. Section 5 of the User Guide ('Building XML Transmission Files') describes the procedure for creating a 94x return transmission file with XML structures for the SOAP Transmission Envelope, TransmissionHeader, PINRegistrationOriginHeader, PIN Registration Transmission Envelope, and a complete Transmission Envelope with the ReturnData and MIME parts. "The new Employment Tax e-file System has been designed to replace all previous electronic filing options for returns in the 940 and 941 families. Previous e-file formats will be maintained in order to allow for transition to the new XML based system." The IRS XML Development Teams also maintain two lists (XML Schema News and Information, XML Schema Discussion Group) for distributing communications, and encouraging open discussion on the overall XML development effort. An associated US Fed/State Employment Tax XML Forum provides guidance for software developers and Federal/State partners who are interested in developing a gateway and/or software to file both federal and state employment taxes along with payments. The state level XML schemas are designed to be used with the Federal 94x schemas. [Full context]

• [September 30, 2002]   STARLab Object Role Modeling Markup Language (ORM-ML) Represents ORM Models in XML.    The research team at STARLab (Systems Technology and Applications Research Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) has developed an Object Role Modeling markup language (ORM-ML) for representing ORM models in an XML based syntax. Stylesheets may be written to convert this ORM-ML syntax into other syntaxes for processing by business rule engines. The team "has chosen ORM for its rich constraint vocabulary and well-defined semantics and elected to use XML Schema to define this communication 'protocol' for conceptual schemas seen as XML document instances. The design approach respects the ORM structure as much as possible by not 'collapsing' it first through the usual relational transformer that comes with most ORM-based tools (or UML, or EER tools). ORM-ML allows the representation of any ORM schema without loss of information or change in semantics, except for the geometry and topology (graphical layout) of the schema (e.g., location, shapes of the symbols), which easily may be provided as a separate graphical style sheet to the ORM Schema." [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Specification Submitted to W3C.    W3C has acknowledged receipt of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Version 1.1 specification from IPR Systems, and has published the document as a W3C Note. The submission request and W3C Team Comment reference the possible chartering of a DRM/Rights Language activity within W3C, but no commitment has yet been made. The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) "is a proposed language for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) community for the standardisation of expressing rights information over content. The ODRL is intended to provide flexible and interoperable mechanisms to support transparent and innovative use of digital resources in publishing, distributing and consuming of electronic publications, digital images, audio and movies, learning objects, computer software and other creations in digital form. The ODRL has no license requirements and is available in the spirit of 'open source' software." The ODRL specification is presented in four main sections: Section 2 describes the model for the ODRL expression language; Section 3 describes the semantics of the ODRL data dictionary elements; Section 4 describes the XML syntax used to encode the ODRL expressions and elements; Section 5 describes how additional ODRL data dictionaries can be defined. The Expression Language and Data Dictionary elements are formally defined in two normative appendices: Appendix A provides the ODRL Expression Language XML Schema and Appendix B gives the ODRL Data Dictionary XML Schema. [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   W3C Publishes Note on Extensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL).    RealNetworks, Inc. has submitted the Extensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL) specification to W3C with the suggestion "that the Consortium start a working group to develop a W3C recommendation for XML based digital rights specification language." The Extensible Media Commerce Language is "an interchange format that describes usage rules that apply to multi-media content. It is designed to communicate these rules in an implementation independent manner for interchange between business systems and DRM implementations responsible for enforcing the rules described in the language." The submission notes that "a standard XML-based business rule definition language would bring DRM systems together on the back end and reduce the cost for the publisher/e-tailer; most importantly, a standard business rule definition language would enable the e-tailer to become independent of the particular implementation choices of any single DRM vendor and any single back-end system." XMCL "describes the minimum, self-complete set of business rules under which digital media is licensed for consumer use. These business rules support multiple business models including rental, subscription, ownership, and video on demand/pay-per-view. When a business system authorizes a customer transaction for digital media, it generates a XMCL document that is then acted upon and enforced by a specific trusted system." [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   Last Call Working Draft for SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature.    A Last Call Working Draft for SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature has been released by the W3C XML Protocol Working Group as part of the W3C Web Services Activity. The specification is based upon the IETF Internet-Draft "WS-Attachments" and "defines a SOAP feature that represents an abstract model for SOAP attachments. The compound SOAP structure model is abstract in the sense that it does not define an actual means by which compound SOAP structures are represented or transmitted by a SOAP binding. [The specification] provides the basis for the creation of SOAP bindings that transmit such attachments along with a SOAP envelope, and provides for reference of those attachments from the envelope. SOAP attachments are described using the notion of a compound document structure consisting of a primary SOAP message part and zero or more related documents parts known as attachments. The compound SOAP structure model is independent of the underlying protocol used for transmitting the primary SOAP message part and any of the secondary parts. That is, there is no requirement that all parts of a compound SOAP structure representation be transmitted within the same unit of the underlying protocol." The last call review period for the WD ends on 15-October-2002. [Full context]

• [September 21, 2002]   Discussion Forum for Web Services Security Quality of Protection.    An OASIS discussion list has been created on the topic Web Services Security Quality of Protection. Subscribers to the 'WSSQoP-Discuss' list will discuss the possible creation of an OASIS Technical Committee. Sponsors of the proposal include representatives from CommerceOne, Cisco, Entrust, IBM, RSA Security, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and VeriSign; the discussion leader is Tim Moses (Entrust). The stated purpose of the TC under discussion would be "to identify candidate solutions for communicating the required security tokens and quality of protection for a Web service, taking advantage of the common service definition tools, such as WSDL. The solutions are intended to allow a service consumer to determine (1) how to produce a SOAP message including security tokens and protection mechanisms, in accordance with WSS, that is acceptable to both the provider and consumer, and (2) whether the consumer is capable of performing the required security processing on the response from a Web service. Components of security policy include at least the set of acceptable types of security token, the set of acceptable cryptographic algorithms, (optionally) what key to use for encryption, and the payload nodes to be protected. The topic is potentially open-ended, leading to solutions for trust policy, authorization policy, personal privacy policy, etc. While recognizing this, it is the intention to limit the identified solutions to those that address the QoP of the initial mechanisms of WSS. This is analogous to the 'cipher suites' and "supported algorithms" mechanisms of TLS and S/MIME, respectively. In addition, the group will identify candidate process models for producing a WSDL instance from a security policy definition, and producing a language-specific API from a WSDL instance..." [Full context]

• [September 19, 2002]   Sun Offers Developers Interoperability Prototype for Liberty.    An Interoperability Prototype for Liberty (IPL) was among several announcements issued by Sun Microsystems at the SunNetwork 2002 Conference and Pavilion. The prototype is based upon the Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification, and has been designed "for developers (enterprise customers and ISVs) who want to build or test Liberty-enabled applications to manage and maintain their own identity management systems. Based on open standards such as SAML 1.0, XML, and SOAP, both the IPL prototype and the Liberty specification are available immediately for download. The Interoperability Prototype for Liberty is the first open-source implementation of the Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification based on Java technology. IPL is designed to help developers learn how the project Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification can be implemented. Written for the Java 2 platform, IPL provides the foundation for building liberty into applications and testing interoperability between liberty compliant solutions such as the Sun ONE Identity Server version 6.0. IPL consists of sample Java source code libraries, implementing the Liberty version 1.0 specification, and is not designed for commercial deployment." [Full context]

• [September 17, 2002]   W3C Issues Second Candidate Recommendation for XML Inclusions (XInclude).    The W3C XML Core Working Group has published a second Candidate Recommendation for XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 which incorporates implementation feedback based upon the first CR. The XInclude document "specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML information sets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI references). Feedback received during the first Candidate Recommendation has prompted some features to be removed from the specification, namely, full namespace fixup, and conformance to full XPointer in favor of a lower level made possible by the factoring of XPointer into the XPointer Framework and separate fragment schemes. The second Candidate Reommendation provides an opportunity for these changes to be reflected in implementations, and for the XML Core Working Group to collect additional test cases and information about implementations. [The WG] expects that sufficient feedback to determine its future will have been received by 1-November-2002." The working group welcomes feedback on patterns of implementation and use of this specification, as well as contributions of XInclude test cases. [Full context]

• [September 16, 2002]   IONA Orbix E2A XMLBus Version 5.4 Connects Corba with Web Services.    IONA has announced Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform 'XMLBus Edition' version 5.4 as the latest release of its visual environment for developing, deploying, integrating, and managing secure Web services. XMLBus Edition v5.4 delivers enhanced features that enable the bridging of CORBA systems to Web services. New features such as an Operation Flow Designer address the problems inherent in mapping complex CORBA systems into more abstract, business-focused Web services. The XMLBus is "a highly productive visual environment that enables developers to rapidly develop, deploy, integrate, and manage secure Web Services. XMLBus lets developers create Web services from existing applications, including existing Java Classes, EJB's, and CORBA systems. The result is a SOAP gateway that conforms to a WSDL interface derived from the original Java code. XMLBus Edition also provides a graphical tool to define the sequence of calls on fine-grain back-end components -- a capability that is required to create complex and truly loosely-coupled Web services. And XMLBus Edition is integrated with IONA's Process Engine, which enables the coordination of various business activities and Web services in a way that lets you integrate multiple activities into a single executable business process. [Full context]

• [September 16, 2002]   Altova Introduces New XML Product Line for Design and Development.    Altova Inc. has released a new XML product line consisting of three easy-to-use software tools designed to facilitate and advance the adoption of XML technologies. The XMLSPY 5 tool "builds on the previous XMLSPY version by adding XSLT debugging, WSDL editing, Java/C++ code generation, HTML Importing, and Tamino Integration. Altova's AUTHENTIC 5 is a standards-based browser enabled document editor; it allows business users to seamlessly capture thoughts and ideas directly in XML content for storage in any content management system, database, or XML repository, for later retrieval or transformation, unlocking corporate knowledge. The STYLEVISION 5 XML tool supports web developers by providing powerful conversion utilities for painless migration of traditional HTML websites to true XML-based sites; it consists of XSLT stylesheets, XML Schema/DTD, and XML content." Each of the tools is available from the Altova website for free trial download and evaluation. [Full context]

• [September 14, 2002]   freebXML Initiative Supports Open Source ebXML Implementations: Message Service Handler (MSH) and Registry/Repository.    A posting from Thomas Lee (CECID) announces the formation of a new 'freebXML' initiative that aims to foster the development and adoption of ebXML and related technologies. freebXML is an international effort comprising of founding members from technology firms, government organizations, standardization bodies, and academic institutions. The mission of freebXML is to provide a centralized Website for ebXML users and developers from around the world to access and share 'free' ebXML code and applications. Users and developers can also exchange their ebXML development and deployment experience at www.freebXML.org. Some features of www.freebxml.org include 'open source' projects for download, deployment or use cases of ebXML technology, a list of ebXML vendor products, latest news on freebXML, and discussion forums for developers and users. Access to www.freebxml.org is free of charge and open to all individuals and organizations interested in ebXML. Initially, two 'open-source' projects are available for download: Hermes and ebxmlrr. Hermes is a Message Service Handler (MSH) implementation of OASIS' ebXML Message Service V2 Standard. ebxmlrr is an implementation of the ebXML Registry/Repository V2 Standard. Donated to the ebXML development community by CECID, Hermes is released under the Academic Free License. ebxmlrr, hosted at SourceForge, is an international collaboration with developers from around the world based on the initial code donation by Sun Microsystems Inc. The ebxmlrr project is released under an Apache style open source license that permits royalty free use of the source and binaries." [Full context]

• [September 14, 2002]   W3C HLink Working Draft Defines Hyperlink Markup Facility for XHTML Family.    W3C's HTML Working Group has released a first public Working Draft specification for HLink: Link Recognition for the XHTML Family. The HLink module defined in the specification "provides XHTML Family Members with the ability to specify which attributes of elements represent hyperlinks, and how those hyperlinks should be traversed, and extends XLink use to a wider class of languages than those restricted to the syntactic style allowed by XLink." Normative 'Appendix A' documents three implementations defined in terms of XML DTD, RELAX NG, and W3C XML Schema. The HLink module defined in the WD uses the XML Namespaces identifier http://www.w3.org/2002/06/hlink. The new markup that can be used to describe links in XHTML Family members "consists of two elements; they are used to associate properties with markup elements and attributes to describe how they behave as links. Many of the descriptive properties are taken from XLink, but with additions to support the behaviour of links in XHTML. The <hlinks> element exists only to be a root element for a document containing only <hlink> elements. The empty element <hlink> is used to identify an element and/or attributes within a namespace, and associates properties with them to specify how the element should be treated as a link, or how the attributes contribute to an element that is a link. HLink may be used in two ways: (1) the first is by putting the <hlink>s in the <head> [element]; (2) the other is by putting them in a separate resource, and referring to that resource by a hlink:definition URI attribute on the root element of the document. At the time of publication, the Working Group believed there were no patent disclosures relevant to the HLink specification. [Full context]

• [September 11, 2002]   Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor Supports XML and SGML.    A posting from Rick Jelliffe announces the release of the Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor version 1.0.1. The Collaborative Markup Editor is a delimiter-aware text editor with markup-aware cut-and-paste operations, undo/redo, rectangular selection, clear diagnostics, and over a dozen innovative tools to handle common markup tasks. The editing environment is described as "a new tool for professional publishing teams and individuals which supports the whole of lifecycle for large and complex XML and SGML documents." The program design reflects an observation that "standard text editors don't provide enough validation but XML editors lack the flexibiltiy that publishers require." The Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor is suitable especially in contexts where the editing tasks involve markup, text conversion, efficient teamwork, multiple DTDs, larger files, and multiple languages or platforms. The tool supports Unicode and offers validation for both SGML and XML. It "gracefully handles long files and bad markup, offers fast text input and scrolling, and incorporates innovative tools in a familar interface framework. It provides flexibility by working with different document types, and adjusts readily to new document types, with special validation modes for incomplete documents." Topologi is based upon standards from ISO, IETF and W3C; it supports ISO RELAX NG, Schematron 1.5, W3C XML, Namespaces, and W3C XML Schema. The Community Edition for Wintel may be downloaded for evaluation from Topologi's website; Linux and Mac OS X versions are now in beta testing. [Full context]

• [September 10, 2002]   Workflow Management Coalition Publishes XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) Beta.    The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has released a draft beta version for the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL), together with a supporting XML schema. The document relates to WfMC's Interface One, supporting Process Definition Import and Export. The interface includes a common meta-model for describing the process definition and an XML schema specifying XPDL. Interface One is one of five functional interfaces to a workflow service identified by the WfMC as part of its standardization program. The draft document "describes the meta-model which is used to define the objects and attributes contained within a process definition. The XPDL grammar is directly related to these objects and attributes. This approach needs two operations to be provided by a vendor: (1) Import a workflow definition from XPDL; (2) Export a workflow definition from the vendor's internal representation to XPDL. The specification uses XML as the mechanism for process definition interchange. XPDL forms a common interchange standard that enables products to continue to support arbitrary internal representations of process definitions with an import/export function to map to/from the standard at the product boundary. A variety of different mechanisms may be used to transfer process definition data between systems according to the characteristics of the various business scenarios. In all cases the process definition must be expressed in a consistent form, which is derived from the common set of objects, relationships and attributes expressing its underlying concepts." [Full context]

• [September 09, 2002]   Creative Commons Project Releases RDF Metadata Specification for Copyright Licenses.    A posting from Aaron Swartz announces the release of a new draft Creative Commons Metadata Specification which defines RDF descriptions for copyright licenses. "Unlike Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which tries to prevent people from doing things with digital works, Creative Commons is working towards promoting these uses of works." The draft Creative Commons Metadata specification "describes Works, Licenses, and License Characteristics (permissions, prohibitions, requirements). Licenses are created via tools and databases in a variety of data and metadata formats, including RDF metadata and application-specific XML vocabularies; this data and metadata will be made available for use by third-party software applications. An initial goal of Creative Commons Project is to release a public a set of copyright licenses free of charge; these licenses tell others that works are free for copying and other uses, but only on certain conditions. In addition to supporting fixed licenses, the software tools will help users mix and match preferences from a menu of options to create custom licenses. Custom licenses declare permission to copy, distribute, display, perform the work, create a derivative work (etc) with several variations, including terms for non-commercial use, copyleft license principles, etc. The CC licenses will be expressed in three forms: (1) a 'Commons Deed' written as a simple, plain-language summary of the license; (2) the 'Legal Code' fine print that one needs to be sure the license will stand up in court; (3) one or more 'Digital Code' machine-readable [XML/RDF] translations of the license which help search engines and other applications identify the work by its terms of use. The license tool will also help a user dedicate a work to the public domain in a legally accepted way. [Full context]

• [September 05, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Updates XML Schema Quality Checker.    A posting from Achille Fokoué (XML/XSL Transformational Systems, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) announces the release of the IBM XML Schema Quality Checker version 2.1.1 from IBM Alphaworks. XML Schema Quality Checker (SQC) "is a program which takes as input documents containing XML Schemas written in the W3C XML schema language and diagnoses improper uses of the schema language. Where the appropriate action to correct the schema is not obvious, the diagnostic message may include a suggestion about how to make the fix. For Schemas which are composed of numerous schema documents connected via <include>, <import> or <redefine> element information items, a full schema-wide checking is performed. The tool can also be run in batch mode to quality check multiple XML schemas in a single run. SQC may be installed as an Eclipse or WSAD Plugin." Changes in version 2.1.1 include: (1) improved error detection; (2) implementation of fixes based upon the W3C 'XML Schema 1.0 Specification Errata' document; (3) SchemaQualityChecker is now using Apache's XERCES-J version 2.1; (4) Additional command line options; (5) Eclipse progress meter. [Full context]

• [September 05, 2002]   W3C Publishes Note on XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema.    The W3C HTML Working Group has released a Note defining XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema. "This work in progress provides informative XML schemas corresponding to the XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, and Frameset DTDs. For the most part, these XML Schemas are written to imitate the structure of the XHTML 1.0 DTDs; major differences are those affecting the validation of XHTML 1.0 documents." Using XML Schema for XHTML 1.0 provides three principal benefits via-à-vis DTDs: (1) Strong datatyping and thus better validation; (2) Better expressive power for describing content models [e.g., fieldset]; (3) Better namespace support. "DTD validation and XML Schema validation are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes authors might want to use some DTD features (e.g., entities) while taking advantage of the XML Schema validation." [Full context]

• [September 04, 2002]   Cape Clear Software Releases Free WSDL Editor Graphical Tool.    Cape Clear Software has announced the availability of a free WSDL Editor graphical tool "that enables you to create and edit WSDL definitions of Web services. It facilitates the creation of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files and manages WSDL file syntax and validation." Designed for programmers interested in working with Web Services, the Cape Clear WSDL Editor "delivers the first complete environment for rapid Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) development. It supports novice programmers, while also providing sophisticated features for more experienced Web Services developers. The WSDL Editor includes powerful wizards that eliminate the complexity of WSDL, as well as WSDL validation, which simplifies testing, and support for the rapid creation of Web Services from XML Schema. It offers an intuitive graphical environment for the design of Web Services and, in particular, assists developers who wish to create Web Services from existing XML interfaces such as SWIFT, ACORD, BAPI, and RosettaNet. The WSDL Editor is an early access component of CapeStudio, Cape Clear's integrated Web services development environment. CapeStudio's design-time components include a WSDL Generator (generates WSDL files from existing server-side component interfaces, such as Java classes, Enterprise JavaBeans, or CORBA IDL definitions), a WSDL Assistant (automatically creates Visual Basic and Java client proxies, JSP pages to be deployed as Web clients, and Java and EJB skeleton code for server-side components), an XSLT Installer, and a Deployment Wizard." The Java-based WSDL Editor tool is available for download. [Full context]

• [August 30, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Draft of Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web.    An initial public working draft of "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web" has been published on the W3C website. The WD seeks to establish a reference set of principles for Web architecture. The World Wide Web, according to this working draft, "is a networked information system. Web Architecture is the set of principles that all agents in the system follow to create the large-scale effect of a shared information space. Identification, data formats, and protocols are the main technical components of Web Architecture, but the large-scale effect depends on social behavior as well." Agents are programs acting on behalf of another person, entity, or process that exchange information. The main sections of the document discuss identifiers, formats, and protocols; each section highlights principles of Web architecture and notes on good practice. The World Wide Web architecture "consists of: (1) Identifiers - a single specification to identify objects in the system, namely, the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); (2) Formats - a nonexclusive set of data format specifications designed for interchange between agents in the system; this includes several data formats used in isolation or in combination (e.g., XHTML, CSS, PNG, XLink, RDF, SMIL animation), as well as technologies for designing new data formats (XML, XML Namespaces); (3) Protocols - a small and nonexclusive set of protocol specifications for interchanging information between agents, including HTTP, SMTP, and others. Several of these protocols share a reliance on the Internet Media Type (or, 'MIME') the metadata/packaging system." The document is edited by Ian Jacobs, and its authors are the participants of W3C's Technical Architecture Group: Tim Berners-Lee (Chair, W3C), Tim Bray (Antarctica Systems), Dan Connolly (W3C), Paul Cotton (Microsoft), Roy Fielding (Day Software), Chris Lilley (W3C), David Orchard (BEA Systems), Norman Walsh (Sun), and Stuart Williams (Hewlett-Packard). [Full context]

• [August 30, 2002]   Web Services Security TC Receives WS-Security Profile for XML-based Tokens.    A communiqué from IBM, Microsoft, and Verisign to the OASIS WSS TC describes the submission of a WS-Security Profile for XML-based Tokens specification designed to supplement the existing WS-Security input specification. The authors request consideration of the specification by the WSS-TC, as the document "further clarifies how XML Tokens are used with WS-Security." The document "describes a general framework to enable XML-based security tokens to be used with WS-Security. Two profiles that use this general framework are provided: one for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and another for the Extensible rights Markup Language (XrML). Since these formats are described in standalone specifications, not unlike X.509 and Kerberos, the document describes their usage with respect to the WS-Security specification. The specification does not endorse any particular XML security token standard; the description of SAML and XrML are provided to show the mechanisms by which the bindings should be performed. Additional XML token formats may be added to the specification in future revisions as needed." A Web Services Security Addendum was submitted to the WSS-TC previously. [Full context]

• [August 29, 2002]   STAR and OAGI Approve XML Standards in the Automotive Retail Space.    A communiqué from Tom Campisi (STAR Communications Chair) describes the approval of XML standards for the retail automotive industry. Seven new XML specifications have been completed, and will be publicly available on the STAR web site. According to the announcement, STAR (Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail) and OAGI (Open Applications Group, Inc.) have recently approved seven new XML standards for automotive dealer-to-manufacturer transactions. STAR is a North American "non-profit, auto industry-wide initiative to create voluntary IT standards for the data elements and transmission format used by manufacturers, dealers, and retail system providers to communicate with each other. STAR's initiatives will result in a more efficient data exchange between dealers and manufacturers, with lower costs, more accurate and timely data, and increased levels of customer satisfaction. OAGI is a non-profit consortium focused on building reusable, interoperable XML messages." OAGI created the XML message methodology on which STAR standards, called BODs (Business Object Documents) are based. The seven standards govern Parts Order, Parts Pick List, Parts Return, Repair Order, Sales Lead, Vehicle Service History, and Warranty Reconciliation. [Full context]

• [August 29, 2002]   OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee Continues Work on Web Services Registry Foundations.    A UDDI Specification Technical Committee has been formed within the OASIS UDDI Member Section to "continue work on the Web services registry foundations developed and published by UDDI.org." The new technical committee has been chartered to support: "specifications for Web services registries and Web service interfaces to the registries; replication or synchronization mechanisms across multiple implementations; and security facilities for access or manipulation of the registry and maintaining data integrity." Specifically, the OASIS UDDI Specification TC will: "(1) Accept as input the UDDI version 2.0 and 3.0 specifications published by the members of UDDI.org; (2) Produce as output a specification for Web Services Description, Discovery and Integration; this specification will reflect refinements and changes made to the submitted version of UDDI that are identified by the UDDI Specification TC members, and for additional functionality within the scope of the TC charter; (3) Liaise and/or forge relationships with other Web services efforts to assist in leveraging UDDI as a part of their specifications or solutions; (4) Coordinate with the chairs of the other related OASIS Technical Committees via Joint Committees as appropriate; (5) Coordinate with the UDDI Business Registry operators in order to get early feedback from their implementation experiences; (6) Oversee ongoing maintenance and errata of the UDDI specifications." Members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee include BEA Systems, Cincom, Computer Associates, E2open, Entrust, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, IONA, Microsoft, MSI Business Solutions, NerveWire, Novell, Oracle, Perficient, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Verisign, webMethods, XML Global, and others. [Full context]

• [August 27, 2002]   IDEAlliance Announces Speaker Lineup for XML 2002 Conference and Exposition.    IDEAlliance has published a detailed program listing and roster of keynote presentations for the XML Conference and Exposition 2002, to be held December 8-13, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. XML 2002 "Putting the Pieces Together" is presented by IDEAlliance, co-hosted by DISA and OASIS. The Program Committee includes Paul Cotton, Eve Maler, and Marion Elledge. This comprehensive XML event, "now in its 16th year, is known for the quality of its program, which draws information technology experts from around the globe." The XML 2002 keynote speakers include: (1) Tim Bray, Chief Technology Officer, Antarctica Systems Inc.; (2) Whitfield Diffie, Chief Security Officer, Sun Microsystems; (3) Robert Haycock, Manager for the Office of Management and Budget's Federal Enterprise Architecture Initiative; (4) Craig Hayman, Vice President of Software Group Strategy, IBM; (5) Pam Samuelson, Professor, University of California at Berkeley; (6) Robert Wahbe, General Manager, XML Web Services, Microsoft Corporation. Lauren Wood, once again the Conference Chair, promises that "this year's keynote roster will give attendees the opportunity to hear leading technology visionaries share their insights on how business and government are putting the pieces of their XML-based systems together." The XML 2002 program includes "more than 150 presentations which will address current and emerging trends in e-business, ebXML, wireless communications, B2B, content management, web standards, syndication and metadata, security issues, graphics, XML tools, schemas, topic maps, and many, many other key issues relating to today's XML technologies." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Stream Index 'SIX' Used in XML Stream Processing Toolkit.    A research team at the University of Washington Department of Computer Science and Engineering has developed an XML toolkit using a highly scalable XML stream processor and an XML stream index. The XML toolkit "consists of a number of utilities that perform simple operations on XML files. [The team has built] a sort utility, an aggregation utility, a mapping utility to transform Unix directory hierarchies to XML, and some smaller utilities. The utilities can be combined sequentially, in pipes, to perform more complex XML processing. The toolkit defines a binary XML format that is more compact than XML (by a factor of two, on average). This format can be optionally used as communication format in a pipeline, to achieve speedups by a factor of two. The toolkit defines a novel index called stream index, SIX. All utilities check if the input data has a pre-computed SIX, and use it if it is available... From a technical point of view, it is essential for XML Toolkit commands to parse XML data and process a collection of XPath expressions. As a common library for these command, the team has implemented two technologies to realize a high-throuput XML data processing: (1) Lazy DFA-based XPath processor, a deteministic finite automaton that is constructed lazily, and (2) 'SIX' streaming index for XML data for the XML parser. They have implemented the Lazy DFA and SIX on a tokenized (binary) SAX parser and xerces1_4_0 SAX parser." The XML Toolkit library is available for download. [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Microsoft Announces Web Services Development Kit Technology Preview.    Microsoft has announced a technical preview for the Microsoft Web Services Development Kit (WSDK), which "provides the tools developers need to build advanced Web services applications using the latest Web services specifications, such as WS-Security, WS-Routing and WS-Attachments. The WSDK is a new Microsoft .NET class library for building Web services using the latest Web services protocols, including WS-Security, WS-Routing, DIME and WS-Attachments. The WSDK offers a low-level API that allows you to apply these protocols directly to individual SOAP messages being sent using HTTP. The library also integrates with the higher-level Microsoft ASP.NET Web service APIs (ASMX) included in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The design of the WSDK reflects the principles of the basic message-level protocols themselves, as outlined in the document 'Understanding GXA': Decentralization and federation; Modularity; XML-based data model; Transport neutrality; Application-domain neutrality... The WSDK incorporates Microsoft's recent work with industry customers and partners to develop Web services specifications beyond XML and SOAP, such as WS-Security, that address the core challenges of Web services in a way that is broadly interoperable across heterogeneous systems. The core features included in the technology preview of the Microsoft WSDK include (1) the ability to help secure XML Web services across platforms and trust domains, including digital signing and encryption of SOAP messages that are compliant with the WS-Security specification; (2) the ability to route an XML Web service through intermediaries using the WS-Routing specification; (3) communication between XML Web services can contain attachments that are not serialized into XML." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   New Draft Specifications from MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework Project.    An announcement from the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Convenor describes the advancement of important ISO draft specifications in ISO's MPEG-21 project. The goal of MPEG-21 is to "define a multimedia framework to enable transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices used by different communities. Its scope is the integration of the critical technologies enabling transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices to support functions such as: content creation, content production, content distribution, content consumption and usage, content packaging, intellectual property management and protection, content identification and description, financial management, user privacy, terminals and network resource abstraction, content representation and event reporting." The MPEG-21 Part 3 'Digital Item Identification' specification (DII ISO/IEC FDIS 21000-3) was elevated to Final Draft International Standard and will become an International Standard following a two-month ballot by JTC 1; DII supports the unique identification of digital items in the MPEG-21 framework. The MPEG-21 Multimedia Description Schemes Subgroup has completed Committee Drafts for MPEG-21 Part 5 'Rights Expression Language (REL)' and MPEG-21 Part 6 'Rights Data Dictionary (RDD)'. REL "specifies the expression language for issuing rights for Users to act on Digital Items, their Components, Fragments, and Containers"; RDD "forms the basis of all expressions of rights and permissions as defined by the MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language. The MPEG-21 REL and RDD work together to allow the machine-readable expression of rights associated with the use of multimedia. These parts will be finalized by MPEG over the next year." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Apache Xalan XSLT Compiler (XSLTC) Integrated into the Java Web Services Developer Pack (WSDP).    An announcement from Sun Microsystems' XML Technology Center describes the availability of a new Java Web Services Developer Pack integrating the Apache Xalan XSLT Compiler. The XSLT Compiler (XSLTC) is a "high-performance alternative to the Xalan Classic XSLT Processor for transforming XML documents into a variety of output formats. XSLTC is a free, open-source, Java-based tool that generates fast and lightweight Java class files called translets that can be plugged into existing applications or used directly for transforming XML files according to an input XSL stylesheet. It assists developers who need high-volume, portable, embeddable XML transformation capabilities in their applications." The Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP) is "a free, integrated toolset that in conjunction with the Java platform allows Java developers to build, test and deploy XML applications, Web services, and Web applications. The Java WSDP provides Java standard implementations of existing key Web services standards including WSDL, SOAP, ebXML, and UDDI as well as important Java standard implementations for Web application development such as JavaServer Pages (JSPTM pages) and the JSP Standard Tag Library. These Java standards allow developers to send and receive SOAP messages, browse and retrieve information in UDDI and ebXML registries, and quickly build and deploy Web applications based on the latest JSP standards. Java WSDP Version 1.0_01 also includes: (1) Java XML Pack [Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM); Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) with XML Schema support; Java API for XML Registries (JAXR); Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC); SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ)]; (2) JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library [JSTL] (3) Java WSDP Registry Server; (4) Web Application Deployment Tool; (5) Ant Build Tool; (6) Apache Tomcat 4.1.2 container. [Full context]

• [August 21, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases Conversation Support for Web Services.    A development team at IBM alphaWorks labs has released 'Conversation Support for Web Services'. Conversation Support for Web Services is "a technology that proposes and implements a conversational model of e-business interaction by extending and building on the Web Services architecture. In the conversational model, the interoperability technology consists of two distinct parts: messaging and conversation support. Messaging is the plumbing needed to send and receive electronic communications with others. Conversation support governs the formatting of messages that are to be sent, the parsing of messages that have been received, and the sequencing constraints on the exchange of multiple, correlated messages. It is a separate subsystem that mediates between the messaging system and business processes. These pre-programmed interaction patterns are captured in a progamming element called Conversation Policies." A companion document "Conversation-Enabled Web Services for Agents and e-Business" written by the 'Conversation Support for Web Services Team' at IBM T.J.Watson Research Center, describes IBM's Conversation Policy XML (cpXML), an XML dialect for describing conversation policies, now under development. cpXML "permits CPs to be downloaded from third parties (such as standards bodies, providers of conversation-management systems, or specialized protocol-development shops). Once downloaded and fed into a firm's conversation-management system, bindings are added to specify the connections between the decision points of the CP and the firm's business logic." [Full context]

• [August 21, 2002]   W3C Publishes Preview Candidate Recommendation for XForms Specification.    The W3C XForms Working Group has released an updated working draft for the XForms 1.0 specification. XForms is "an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts -- XForms model, instance data, and user interface -- it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing, reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG." The latest Working Draft incorporates the resolution of all last call issues reported on the XForms 1.0 Last Call Working Draft published on 18-January-2002. This draft is characterized as a "pre-version the Candidate Recommendation document [designed] to show the work on disposition of comments and allow authors of the Last Call comments to review the current XForms specification before advancing the specification to CR status." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   ISO Prepares Reference Ontology for Interchange of Cultural Heritage Information.    In collaboration with the International Council of Museums Committee for Documentation (ICOM CIDOC), ISO Technical Committee 46 is developing a reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information. The ISO/CD 21127 (Committee Draft) published August 8, 2002 provides a formal "domain ontology for cultural heritage information... it is intended to cover all concepts relevant to cultural heritage information, but most particularly those needed for wide area data exchange between museums, libraries, and archives. Due to the diversity of the subject matter and the nature of cultural heritage collections, this goal can ultimately be achieved only by extensions to the standard. However, thanks to its object-oriented nature, the ontology offers a backbone of powerful general concepts, which have a wide application... This proposed standard is already being tested and implemented by members of the working group. Mappings (crosswalks) have been established with major data schemas and metadata standards such as Dublin Core, ABC, and Spectrum. XML and RDFS implementations have been developed using the CRM and data migrations have been made using test data provided by different institutions. The scope of the CRM has been extended to provide enhanced support for archeology and natural sciences." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   Tiny API for Markup (TAM) and Parser for Lightweight XML Processing.    A posting from Simon St.Laurent announces the initial release of a Tiny API for Markup (TAM) and supporting Java 2 Micro Edition parser. "The Tiny API for Markup (TAM) provides a very small interface for parsing XML and similar documents, targeted at Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). TAM is designed to report pretty much everything the parser encounters, leaving it to applications to do some work (notably DTD interpretation) if they need it. TAM is based on a subset of SAX2, which is then slightly expanded. TAM is not a proper drop-in replacement for SAX; it uses similar method calls, and a similar approach, but it's been reduced to meet the needs of even smaller projects, and expanded slightly to reflect that TAM parsers are not required to process the DTD... This parser does support namespaces, and namespace declarations are reported as attributes. The startPrefix/endPrefix methods of SAX2 are not supported by TAM. The current version also does very little character checking of markup, and while it normalizes line-ends, it doesn't do attribute white-space normalization. These features (and DOCTYPE processing) will appear in a later version of the parser which supports more of XML 1.0 and also Markup Object Events (MOE)." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   W3C Working Groups Update Specifications for XSLT, XML Query, and XPath.    Seven revised working draft specifications have been published by the W3C Working Groups for XML Query, XSL, and XML Schema. Several working drafts represent collaborative work by the XSL and XML Query Working Groups, which are jointly responsible for XPath 2.0, a language derived from both XPath 1.0 and XQuery; the XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Working Drafts are generated from a common source. The updated working drafts include: XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0; XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0; XML Query Use Cases; XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators. Comments on these drafts may be sent to the W3C Query and Transform mailing list ('public-qt-comments') set up for public feedback on W3C specifications published by the XML Query and XSL Working Groups. [Full context]

• [August 14, 2002]   SALT Forum Contributes Speech Application Language Tags Specification to W3C.    An announcement from the SALT Forum describes the contribution of the Speech Application Language Tags specification to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The SALT Forum has "asked the W3C Multimodal Interaction Working Group and Voice Browser Working Group to review the SALT specification as part of their development of standards for promoting multimodal interaction and voice-enabling the Web." The contribution is said to furthers the SALT Forum's goal of "establishing an open, royalty-free standard for speech-enabling multimodal and telephony applications." On July 15, 2002 the SALT Forum announced the public release of SALT Version 1.0. Version 1.0 of the SALT specification covers three broad areas of capabilities: speech output, speech input and call control. The specification's 'prompt' tag allows SALT-based applications to play audio and synthetic speech directly, while 'listen' and 'bind' tags provide speech recognition capabilities by collecting and processing spoken user input. In addition, the specification's call control object can be used to provide SALT-based applications with the ability to place, answer, transfer and disconnect calls, along with advanced capabilities such as conferencing, The SALT specification thus "defines a set of lightweight tags as extensions to commonly used Web-based markup languages. This allows developers to add speech interfaces to Web content and applications using familiar tools and techniques. The SALT specification is designed to work equally well on a wide variety of computing and communicating devices." [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   US OMB Publishes Business Reference Model for Its Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA).    The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has published a Business Reference Model as part of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). The Federal Enterprise Architecture is a "business-based framework for cross-agency, government-wide improvement; it provides OMB and the Federal agencies with a new way of describing, analyzing, and improving the federal government and its ability to serve the citizen." The new BRM is a "function-driven framework for describing the business operations of the Federal Government independent of the agencies that perform them; it represents the first layer of the Federal Enterprise Architecture and it is the main viewpoint for the analysis of data, applications and technology. The BRM identifies three Business Areas that provide a high-level view of the operations the Federal Government performs. These three Business Areas comprise a total of 35 external and internal Lines of Business, representing the services and products the Federal Government provides to its citizens, together with with 137 Sub-Functions or lower level activities that Federal Agencies perform." The accompanying XML schema describes and defines the type of content including the entities, attributes, elements, and notation of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. An XML document supplies detailed descriptions for the federal business areas, lines of business, and sub-functions of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   OASIS Technical Committee Proposed for XML e-Government Standards.    An initial proposal has been received by OASIS for a Technical Committee on 'XML based Standards for e-Government'. The proposers include John Borras (UK Office of e-Envoy), Jouko Salonen (Republica, Finland), and Marion Royal (U.S. General Services Administration - GSA). Rationale for the TC is given in the statement that "many, if not all governments worldwide, are now developing strategies to deliver e-government services to citizens and businesses, and to support the modernisation of government. A fundamental component of enabling e-government is the adoption and use of XML based standards. To ensure these standards are developed with government requirements in mind it is proposed to create a new Technical Committee to co-ordinate and present a single voice for governments." Suggested goals for the TC would be to: (1) provide a forum for governments internationally to voice their needs and requirements with respect to XML-based standards which can be handed off to relevant OASIS TCs; (2) provide a mechanism for the creation of best practice documents relative to the adoption of OASIS specs/standards within governments internationally; (3) promote the adoption of OASIS specs/standards within governments; (4) act as an information clearinghouse and work with other OASIS channels in the adoption of XML-based systems and standards. [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   Pilot Nasdaq-Hosted Web Service Features XBRL Financial Data.    Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers have announced the launch of a new pilot program "to provide investors with remote access to financial data from five years of financial reports for twenty-one (21) Nasdaq-listed companies. The pilot program, designed by PwC and stored on Nasdaq hardware, provides access to XBRL data through Microsoft Office. The online data, formatted in XBRL and publicly available via a Nasdaq-hosted Web Service, will showcase XBRL's ability to allow for easy comparisons of the financials of companies within a particular industry, like semiconductors. XBRL is a free XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to translate financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. XBRL streamlines the way companies report and publish their financial data, and how analysts and investors can review that information. For example, before XBRL, investors would need to pore through numerous reports and precisely program their computers to recognize any given value from a financial statement. With XBRL, data is tagged to instruct the system how to handle the data in question and enables the user to locate the necessary information without leafing through multiplenumerous financial reports. Today, more than 140 of the world's leading accounting, software, business and technology companies and organizations participate in a global effort to support the development and use of XBRL." [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   Proposed Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Rights Expression Language Based Upon ODRL.    A posting from Renato Iannella announces the public release of a draft Rights Expression Language Version 1.0 from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). The OMA was formed in June 2002 by the Open Mobile Architecture Initiative and the WAP Forum, together "with nearly 200 companies representing the world's leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies, and content providers; OMA has MOUs with the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF), SyncML, MMS Interoperability Group (MMS-IOP), and Wireless Village." The OMA REL document is one of several in the OMA Download specification suite. The rights expression language "describes the rights governing the usage of DRM content; it addresses requirements such as enabling preview, i.e., test-driving, of content, possibly prior to purchasing, expressing a range of different permissions and constraints, and optimisation of rights objects delivered over constrained bearers. It provides a concise mechanism for expressing rights over DRM content. It is independent of the content being distributed, the mechanism used for distributing the content, and the billing mechanism used to handle the payments." The OMA's REL document defines the syntax and semantics of rights governing the usage of DRM content based on the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) specification. The XML-based ODRL, recently released as version 1.1, provides the semantics for DRM expressions in open and trusted environments whilst being agnostic to mechanisms to achieve the secure architectures. Formal models for ODRL Expression Language and for the ODRL Data Dictionary are presented as XML schemas in normative appendices of the ODRL v1.1 specification. [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   W3C Acknowledges Receipt of Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) Submission.    The Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) 1.0 specification has been submitted to W3C by member companies BEA Systems, BPMI.org, Commerce One, Fujitsu Limited, Intalio, IONA, Oracle Corporation, SAP AG, SeeBeyond Technology Corporation, and Sun Microsystems. Initially released in June 2002 and now published as a W3C 'Note', the royalty-free WSCI specification provides an "XML-based interface definition language that describes the flow of messages exchanged by a Web service participating in choreographed interactions with other services. WSCI describes the dynamic interface of the Web service participating in a given message exchange by means of reusing the operations defined for a static interface. This is expressed in terms of temporal and logical dependencies among the exchanged messages, featuring sequencing rules, correlation, exception handling, and transactions. WSCI also describes the collective message exchange among interacting Web services, thus providing a global, message-oriented view of the interactions. WSCI works in conjunction with the Web Service Description Language (WSDL), the basis for the W3C Web Services Description Working Group. It can also work with another service definition language that exhibits the same characteristics as WSDL." The specification is being brought to the attention of relevant W3C working groups, including the Web Services Architecture Working Group, the Web Services Description Working Group, and the Web Ontology Working Group. [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases BPWS4J Engine and Editor.    A posting from Sanjiva Weerawarana announces the release of a BPEL4WS engine and editor from IBM alphaWorks. BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is one of three Web Services specifications recently released by Microsoft, IBM and BEA. BPEL4WS is "an XML-based flow language that defines how business processes interact. This interaction can involve processes contained within or between enterprises. It allows companies to describe complex business processes that can span multiple companies, such as order processing, lead management and claims handling. These business processes can use partner-provided Web services, and can also be offered as Web services business process functions internally or to partners in a reliable and dependable way." The IBM BPEL4WS Java Run Time (BPWS4J) "includes a platform upon which business processes written using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) can be executed, a set of samples demonstrating the use of BPEL4WS, and a tool that validates BPEL4WS documents. The BPWS4J Engine is an all-Java implementation of BPEL4WS that runs in a servlet container; the BPWS4J Editor is an Eclipse plugin that can be used with Eclipse v2.0+." [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   Web Services Specifications for Business Transactions and Process Automation.    Microsoft, IBM, and BEA have announced the publication of three specifications which "collectively describe how to reliably define, create, and connect multiple business processes in a Web services environment. The specifications will help organizations coordinate business processes and transactions within the enterprise and with partners and customers across heterogeneous systems and within the enterprise. Announced were the new specifications to address transacted communications of Web services (WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction) and a new language to describe business processes (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, or BPEL4WS). BPEL4WS allows companies to describe business processes that include multiple Web services and standardize message exchange internally and between partners. WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction provide companies with a reliable and durable way of handling multiple Web services interactions, regardless of the underlying computing infrastructure." [Full context]

• [August 08, 2002]   XFrames Application for Composing Documents to Replace HTML Frames.    W3C's HTML Working Group has released an initial public working draft specification for 'XFrames'. XFrames is an XML application which "addresses the usability, search, and security problems associated with HTML frames." The specification "defines a separate XML application (not a part of XHTML per se) that allows functionality similar to HTML Frames, but with fewer usability problems, principally by making the content of the frameset visible in its URI. The frames element forms the container for the composed document. The individual sub-documents ('frames') may be composed together in a rectangular space by placing them next to, or above, each other in rows and columns, or they may be displayed as separate movable window-like panes, or as tabbed panes, or in any other suitable manner. The collection of frames in an XFrames document is referred to as a frameset. All styling, positioning, and sizing of frames is done using a style sheet in CSS or some other suitable styling language. The specification does not require conformant XFrames user agents to accept or refuse any particular type of document for assignment to a frame." A DTD implementation projected for completion as a normative Appendix A is not supplied in this WD, but unofficial and experimental schemas have been drafted by Masayasu Ishikawa (XML DTD, RELAX NG schema, W3C XML schema). [Full context]

• [August 07, 2002]   Topic Maps for the Web.    Addison-Wesley Professional has announced the release of XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web, described as a "complete introduction and application guide to the world of topic maps." Edited by Jack Park and Sam Hunting, the book contains contributions from sixteen authorities on topic maps. The volume "introduces the topic maps paradigm, global federated knowledge interchange, the topic map standards and specifications, the basics of XTM markup, Published Subject Indicators, ontological engineering, open source topic map software, topic map visualization, topic maps and RDF, semantic networks, and knowledge organization and representation -- all with a wealth of technical detail. Originally designed to handle the construction of indexes, glossaries, thesauri, and tables of contents, [Topic Maps] can provide a foundation for the Semantic Web. They can serve to represent information currently stored as database schemas (relational and object). Where databases only capture the relations between information objects, topic maps also allow these objects to be connected to the various places where they occur. Knowledge bases can be designed that not only relate concepts together but also can point to the resources relevant to each concept." [Full context]

• [August 05, 2002]   RosettaNet and Uniform Code Council Inc. (UCC) Announce Merger.    A merger between RosettaNet and the UCC (Uniform Code Council) has been announced by the two entities as a "strategic partnership which will advance B2B integration in the marketplace and help strengthen standards adoption across multiple industries." Under this agreement, "RosettaNet will become a subsidiary of the UCC, while continuing to operate as an entity directly with its members. The UCC currently works within 23 industries with an emphasis on retail and grocery. RosettaNet focuses on the high tech sector, and specifically companies representing electronic components, information technology and semiconductor manufacturing. The UCC's XML-based business processes align with RosettaNet's strong business process standards development and global implementation strategy. The pairing of the two organizations will accelerate strategic innovation and leadership initiatives throughout the industries serviced by each organization, resulting in rapid supply chain integration across global trading networks. The merger is aimed at strengthening the development and adoption of business-to-business (B2B) standards across the industries served by the two organizations and expanding the standards-based business opportunities for respective member companies. A primary goal of the relationship is to accelerate B2B integration via industry implementation efforts for XML standards and emerging services. By forming a common architectural environment, the two organizations will drive joint development of B2B standards supporting multiple industries, thereby increasing the speed and number of implementations across user communities, and attracting adjacent industry sectors on a worldwide basis." [Full context]

• [August 02, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Draft on Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios.    W3C's Web Services Architecture Working Group has published an initial Working Draft specification for Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios. The document supplies a collection of some forty (40) usage scenarios and use cases "which illustrate the use of Web services, and which are used to generate requirements for the Web services architecture, as well as to evaluate existing technologies." The section on Use Cases provides additional context for some of the individual usages scenarios listed in the Usage Scenarios section (Travel agent use case; EDI-like purchasing). The Web services usage scenarios and use cases are categorized under the following labels: (1) Message exchange patterns, i.e., RPC, asynchrony, security, reliability, conversations; (2) Event based message exchange patterns; (3) System and other messages; (4) Service description above and beyond those outlined in '(1) - (3)'; (5) Discovery. Part of the document content was adapted from the XML Protocol Usage Scenarios document edited by John Ibbotson of IBM. The W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group has been chartered to draft a coherent architecture for a modular set of web services technologies by producing architectural documents and advising W3C regarding work in the Web services area. [Full context]

• [August 02, 2002]   Electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) for Pharmaceutical Regulatory Information.    The ICH Multi-disciplinary Group 2 (M2) Expert Working Group (EWG) is developing an XML-based specification governing electronic submission of pharmaceutical regulatory information. A version 1.0 XML DTD was completed in February 2002, along with the publication of a version 2.0 Electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) specification. The eCTD is defined as "an interface for industry to Agency transfer of regulatory information while at the same time taking into consideration the facilitation of the creation, review, lifecycle management and archival of the electronic submission. The eCTD specification lists the criteria that will make an electronic submission technically valid. The focus of the specification is to provide the ability to transfer the registration application electronically from industry to a regulatory authority. Industry to industry and Agency to Agency transfer is not addressed... The specification for the eCTD is based upon content defined within the CTD issued by the ICH M4 EWG. The CTD describes the organization of modules, sections and documents. The structure and level of detail specified in the CTD has been used as the basis for defining the eCTD structure and content but where appropriate, additional details have been developed within the eCTD specification. The XML eCTD DTD (Document Type Definition) defines the overall structure of the submission." [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   W3C Web Ontology Working Group Releases Working Drafts for OWL Semantic Markup Language.    Three initial working draft documents on 'OWL' have been published by the W3C's Web-Ontology Working Group (WebOnt). OWL is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the World Wide Web. OWL is derived from the DAML+OIL Web Ontology Language and builds upon the Resource Description Framework. The designers expect that OWL will support the use of automated tools which "can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management." The OWL Web Ontology Language is being designed "in order to provide a language that can be used for applications that need to understand the content of information instead of just understanding the human-readable presentation of content. OWL facilitates greater machine readability of web content than XML, RDF, and RDF-S support by providing an additional vocabulary for term descriptions." The Feature Synopsis for OWL Lite and OWL introduces the OWL language. The OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 Reference provides a systematic, compact and informal description of all the modelling primitives of OWL. An OWL knowledge base is a collection of RDF triples as defined in the RDF/XML Syntax Specification; OWL prescribes a specific meaning for triples that use the OWL vocabulary. The Language Reference document specifies which collections of RDF triples constitute the OWL vocabulary and what the prescribed meaning of such triples is. The OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 Abstract Syntax document describes a high-level, abstract syntax for both OWL and OWL Lite, a subset of OWL; it also provides a mapping from the abstract syntax to the OWL exchange syntax. [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   IDEAlliance Announces XML Book Industry Transaction Standards Working Group (XBITS).    The International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance) has announced the formation of a new standards working group called XBITS (XML Book Industry Transaction Standards) representing "a group of major book publishers, printers, paper mills, and component vendors. The goal of XBITS is to design XML-based transactions to facilitate bi-directional electronic data exchanges within the book manufacturing supply chain through the application of the papiNet development process. The end result will be a set of electronic documents that facilitate the flow of information among supply chain partners in the publishing/print industry. The effort supports efficient business-to-business (B2B) communication, improves the reach and richness of communication throughout the supply chain, and increases efficiencies in transaction activities while supporting interoperability among trading partners. Working with the papiNet electronic standards initiative previously organized for the paper and forest products industry, XBITS will proactively develop, maintain and support the implementation of common electronic transaction formats for the book publishing industry. Major XBITS transactions scheduled for completion and publication by Summer 2003 include the [core] specifications, RFQ, RFQ Response, Purchase Order, Order Confirmation, Order Status, Delivery Message, Goods Receipt, Invoice, Usage, Information Request, Inventory Status, and Business Acknowledgement. [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   ACM Workshop on XML Security.    A call for papers has been issued in connection with the 2002 ACM Workshop on XML Security, to be held November 22, 2002 at the Johnson Center in George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA. Chaired by Michiharu Kudo (IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory, Japan) and Phillip Hallam-Baker (Verisign, USA), the workshop will be hosted in conjunction with the Ninth ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS-9). The XML Security workshop "seeks submissions from academia and industry covering novel research on theoretical and practical aspects of the security required for XML-based systems. The organizers also encourage submissions from standardization communities such as W3C and OASIS, particularly from the technical viewpoint." Proposals should be submitted to Michiharu Kudo by email by August 10, 2002. The workshop "will address security problems faced by users who try to develop XML-based applications, Web services, and security middleware for XML. It ranges from specific security features, such as digital signatures and element-wise encryption and access control of XML documents, to XML-based infrastructure, such as Web services and XML databases. Since many security features for XML have already been standardized, experimental evaluations of these standards is one of the important topics covered by this workshop." [Full context]

• [July 30, 2002]   OASIS to Host UDDI Project Technical Work.    The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Project has announced the transition of its standards work to OASIS. OASIS will "serve as the steward for the UDDI project and activities and will continue development of the UDDI technical work" in a new technical committee. "This transition delivers on the goals laid out in the UDDI project's original charter. OASIS, a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards, will manage the future development of the UDDI specification and related activities. Existing business registries will continue to be made available by registry operators. Under OASIS, the UDDI specification will continue to advance as a standard, and interested companies can continue to incorporate the specification into future business and software plans. UDDI also will benefit from additional expertise in shaping, developing and coordinating the fundamentals for open standards based business interoperability. The UDDI Community is comprised of more than 300 business and technology leaders working together to enable companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find, and use Web services. As a part of the UDDI project, a UDDI Business Registry has been established to allow businesses to publish and discover Web services." [Full context]

• [July 30, 2002]   OASIS LegalXML Member Section Creates Four New Technical Committees.    Four new technical committees are being formed to support the standards activity of the OASIS LegalXML Member Section, complementing work currently underway in the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC. The LegalXML Member Section "unites legal and technical experts in a common forum to create standards for the electronic exchange of legal data." According to the new published charters for the OASIS TCs: (1) The eContracts Technical Committee will develop open XML standards for the markup of contract documents to enable the efficient creation, maintenance, management, exchange and publication of contract documents and contract terms. (2) The eNotarization TC has been chartered to develop an agreed set of technical requirements to govern self-proving electronic legal information. (3) The Integrated Justice TC plans to develop XML specifications for exchanging data among justice system branches and agencies. While its principal focus will be on data pertaining to criminal cases, its scope will include certain data exchanges in civil cases, such as civil protection order, child support enforcement and dependency and neglect cases. (4) The Transcripts TC will develop an XML compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents either as stand-alone structured content, or as part of other legal records. [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   Exclusive XML Canonicalization from IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group Becomes W3C Recommendation.    The IETF/W3C Exclusive XML Canonicalization specification has been advanced to a W3C Recommendation, signifying that it is "stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who are in favor of supporting its adoption by academic, industry, and research communities. The specification augments the previously published Canonical XML Recommendation to better enable a portion of an XML document (fragment) to be as portable as possible while preserving the digital signature. It works in combination with the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing Recommendation produced jointly by W3C and the IETF in February 2002, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for digital signatures. Exclusive XML Canonicalization provides a method of serializing an XML fragment into a portable and canonical form. This functionality, when combined with XML Signature, is critical for electronic commerce because it ensures the integrity of documents and protocol messages that travel between multiple XML processors." [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   Web3D Consortium Publishes X3D Final Working Draft.    The Web3D Consortium recently announced the publication of a final working draft for the X3D 'Extensible 3D' specification. Relevant XML DTDs and schemas are presented in Annex A of Part 3, 'Extensible Markup Language (XML) Encoding.' X3D "enables the creation and deployment of state-of-the-art 3D graphics on small, lightweight clients, and the integration of high-performance 3D into broadcast and embedded devices. X3D also works seamlessly with World Wide Web technologies including the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Document Object Model (DOM), providing extensive application-development capabilities. X3D satisfies these demanding requirements with an advanced componentized architecture that enables compact client players with add-on components, as well as a set of profiles designed to meet the demands of a variety of applications. Earlier this year the X3D Interactive Profile was accepted by the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the basis for lightweight, interactive 3D graphics in the MPEG-4 multimedia standard. The Web3D Consortium will deliver X3D with a rich set of base components and profiles with additional components and profiles to follow in the near future. The Web3D Consortium has also issued a Call for Implementations, inviting companies to evaluate and implement products using this open, royalty-free specification in preparation for submission of X3D to the International Standards Organization (ISO)." [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   ANSI ASC X12 Document Proposes Reference Model for XML Electronic Business Messages.    A document ASC X12 Reference Model for XML Design has been published by ANSI's Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, detailing a proposed reference model for electronic business messages based on XML. The document "proposes features of XML to use in e-business messages, and offers design principles for organizing business data into modularly flexible messages using XML. The reference model is built on the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) standards developed by OASIS and UN/CEFACT, specifically the specifications on semantic interoperability called core components. ASC X12 is also collaborating with OASIS's Universal Business Language Technical Committee that is developing XML schemas for standard business messages. With numerous innovations, ASC X12's reference model takes into consideration existing roadblocks to EDI implementation and standards development, new technologies, requirements defined by industry groups developing XML specifications, small-to-medium-sized company requirements, and the general marketplace. Some of the core benefits of the reference model include: (1) The Document Assembly Model, which enables users to take reusable components that can then be assimilated into a new document; (2) The Granularity Model, which turns subjective decisions in EDI into clear content decisions for both structure and semantic reuse; (3) Modular flexibility and designed autonomy, which provide both the ability to achieve application integration for industry-specific application and flexibility to achieve cross-industry solutions and interoperability; (4) Semantically specific standards, eliminating the EDI requirement for supplementary 'how to implement' bilateral agreements." [Full context]

• [July 25, 2002]   IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool Supports XML Metadata Description.    The IBM alphaWorks development team has released a downloadable MPEG-7 Annotation Tool which "assists in annotating video sequences with MPEG-7 metadata. Each shot in the video sequence can be annotated with static scene descriptions, key object descriptions, event descriptions, and other lexicon sets. The annotated descriptions are associated with each video shot and are put out and stored as MPEG-7 descriptions in an XML file. IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool can also open MPEG-7 files in order to display the annotations for the corresponding video sequence. IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool also allows customized lexicons to be created, saved, downloaded, and updated. The IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool takes an MPEG video sequence as the required input source. The tool also requires a corresponding shot segmentation file, where the video sequence input is segmented into smaller units called video shots by detecting the scene cuts, dissolutions, and fadings. This shot file can be loaded into the tool from other sources or generated when the video input is first opened. After IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool performs shot detection on a video, the shot file can be saved in MPEG-7 schema for later use. As an alternative, the shot file can also be generated by the IBM CueVideo Shot Detection Tool Kit." [Full context]

• [July 23, 2002]   OASIS Announces Technical Committee for Web Services Security.    OASIS has announced the formation of new Technical Committee for Web Services Security (WSS). The TC is designed to continue work on the Web services security foundations published in the WS-Security specification from IBM, Microsoft, and Verisign. Development will also follow the vision of the Web Services Security Roadmap published in April, 2002. The WS-Security specification "defines a standard set of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) extensions, or message headers, that can be used to implement integrity and confidentiality in Web services applications." The new Web Services Security specification will support security mechanisms of several types, each using implementation and language-neutral XML formats defined by XML Schema: use of XML signature to provide SOAP message integrity for Web services; use of XML encryption to provide SOAP message confidentiality for Web services; attaching and/or referencing security tokens in headers of SOAP messages; carrying security information for potentially multiple, designated actors; associating signatures with security tokens; representing specific forms of binary security tokens as defined in WS-Security specification. Participation in the OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee is open to all organizations and individuals. [Full context]

• [July 22, 2002]   New York Stock Exchange and FISD Develop Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML).    In cooperation with the SIIA's Financial Information Services Division, the Market Data division of the New York Stock Exchange is developing a new formal structure for vendor fulfillment of billing and reporting obligations. The new Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML) is "based upon the original VARS format but adds additional functionality and efficiency." Under the old system, vendors would send data files to TCB Data Systems, which would provide one level of processing and extraction, then disperse the files to the appropriate markets including NYSE Market Data. The teams are developing more efficient, industry-accepted data transfer methodologies to enable direct reporting via straight-through-processing. The new system also supports the transformation of an existing VARS file into a VRXML file. The June 2002 draft of Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML) includes, in addition to prose specification, a conceptual model diagram in UML, an independent XML schema file defining standardized reporting and billing data elements, and sample XML instance. This draft "deals with NYSE reporting obligations but could be extended to cover a broader set of industry requirements." [Full context]

• [July 20, 2002]   Object Management Group Issues Web Services for Enterprise Collaboration (WSEC) RFP.    The Object Management Group (OMG) has issued an RFP on Web Services for Enterprise Collaboration. The RFP "provides for a two-way mapping between the Component Collaboration Architecture (CCA) portion of the Enterprise Collaboration Architecture (ECA) and WSDL such that enterprise collaborations described in CCA can be implemented with WSDL, XML Schema and SOAP. It also describes how existing WSDL services are represented in UML using CCA. This enables high-level and business focused collaborations to be automatically and deterministically mapped to web services infrastructures. It also allows existing services to be made part of new CCA collaborations. The RFP specifically solicits proposals for the following: (1) A Mapping from EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture to XML-Schema and unbound WSDL 1.1 with a SOAP binding; (2) A Mapping from XML-Schema and WSDL 1.1 with an optional SOAP binding to the EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture; (3) Any required extensions to the EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture to represent WSDL semantics." The letter of intent deadline is August 28, 2002, and the initial submission deadline October 28, 2002. [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   SALT Forum Publishes Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) Version 1.0.    The Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) 1.0 Specification has been released by the SALT Forum, a "group of companies with a shared goal of accelerating the use of speech technologies in multimodal and telephony systems. The Forum is committed to developing a royalty-free, platform-independent standard that will make possible multimodal and telephony-enabled access to information, applications, and Web services from PCs, telephones, tablet PCs, and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs). Version 1.0 of the SALT specification covers three broad areas of capabilities: speech output, speech input and call control. The specification's 'prompt' tag allows SALT-based applications to play audio and synthetic speech directly, while 'listen' and 'bind' tags provide speech recognition capabilities by collecting and processing spoken user input. In addition, the specification's call control object can be used to provide SALT-based applications with the ability to place, answer, transfer and disconnect calls, along with advanced capabilities such as conferencing. The SALT specification draws on emerging W3C standards such as Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) and semantic interpretation for speech recognition to provide additional application control. Following previously announced plans, the SALT specification is being submitted to an established international standards body to provide the basis of an open, royalty-free standard for speech-enabling multimodal and telephony applications." [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   Free Amazon.com Web Services Facility Supports XML/HTTP and SOAP.    A new Amazon.com Web Services facility makes it possible for developers to "build applications and tools that will allow them to incorporate many of the unique features of Amazon.com into their web sites free of charge. Among its many features, Amazon.com's Web Services will allow third party sites to search and display products from Amazon.com's web site, and enable visitors to those sites to add items to their Amazon.com shopping carts. Developers can access AWS through two industry standards: XML and SOAP." The toolkit allows one to search for Amazon.com products in a variety of ways (keyword, author, actor, director, ASIN, UPC, publisher, etc) and to get results in XML, including customer reviews and product similarities. One can pass the server a URL that references a style sheet along with the SOAP or XML request, and receive the XML data rendered with the nominated style sheet. The developer's toolkit includes documentation on how to make calls to Amazon.com Web Services, a DTD and XSD specification, the SOAP WSDL file, an example XSLT style sheet, examples of 'lite and 'heavy' XML results documents, sample SOAP requests, and the Amazon.com Web Services license. [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases UDDI for Python Package (UDDI4Py).    The IBM alphaWorks development team has released a UDDI4Py Python package that "allows the sending of requests to and processing of responses from the UDDI Version 2 APIs. UDDI4Py supports access to the UDDI Registry by abstracting the underlying XML constructs and by the transmission/processing of the various SOAP API messages. It is meant to complement the UDDI tool kit available to the Java development community, and gives customers the alternative of using a different Web services development platform. UDDI4Py is not for the development of Web Services, but rather for discovering and/or publishing the technical interfaces that describe specific Web services using the UDDI Registry. UDDI4Py supplies glue that allows Python applications to dynamically discover and/or publish Web services to and from the public registry. The rapid application development that the Python language provides is leveraged by any system working within the Web services arena and utilizing the UDDI4Py package." [Full context]

• [July 16, 2002]   Liberty Alliance Project Publishes Version 1.0 Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization.    The Liberty Alliance Project has released its version 1.0 open federated network identity specifications, and several vendors at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference in San Francisco have announced plans today to deliver Liberty-enabled products and services. The Liberty Alliance Project is a an alliance (60+ members) formed to deliver and support a federated network identity solution for the Internet that enables single sign-on for consumers as well as business users in an open, federated way. The version 1.0 specifications focus on interoperability between systems to enable opt-in account linking and simplified sign-on functionality. This allows users to decide whether to link accounts with various identity providers and makes it easier for both consumers and businesses to take advantage of the growing Web services space." Specific functionality outlined in version 1.0 includes: (1) Opt-in account linking; (2) Simplified sign-on for linked accounts; (3) Authentication context; (4) Global log-out; (5) Liberty Alliance client feature. The six-part specification includes: Architecture Overview, Architecture Implementation Guidelines, Authentication Context Specification, Bindings and Profiles Specification, Protocols and Schemas Specification, and a Technical Glossary. "The Liberty Alliance specifications leverage industry-standard security and data transfer protocols, including the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), developed OASIS; SAML is quickly becoming the de-facto means for exchanging user credentials between trusted environments." [Full context]

• [July 15, 2002]   Burton Group's Catalyst Conference Features SAML Interoperability Event.    The first day of a San Francisco Catalyst Conference organized by the Burton Group is focused upon 'Building Secure Relationships Through Directory and Identity Management'. A SAML Interoperability Event was also held as part of the conference. According to the announcement, the first public demonstration of the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) "was held Monday at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco. Twelve vendors, including IBM, Novell, Oblix, Sun Microsystems Inc., Baltimore Technologies, CrossLogix, Entegrity Solutions, ePeople, Overxeer, Netegrity, RSA Security, and Sigaba participated in the event, which demonstrated interoperability of SAML 1.0-conformant security software products. SAML allows authentication and authorization information to be exchanged among disparate Web access management and security products. The OASIS specification addresses the need for secure single sign-on among diverse Web access management environments implemented across various organizations, applications, Web sites and portals. Defining standardized exchanges of identity and access management information, SAML leverages such Web services standards as XML and SOAP." [Full context]

• [July 11, 2002]   OneName Corporation Releases Extensible Name Service (XNS) Protocol Specifications.    An announcement from OneName Corporation describes the release of the XNS specifications under a royalty-free license and the submission of these specifications to the non-profit XNS Public Trust Organization (XNSORG). "These XML-based specifications for eleven (11) Web services and an identity addressing syntax create the first open, federated, peer-to-peer infrastructure for identifying and linking any resource participating in digital transactions. Extensible Name Service (XNS) is a protocol for digital identity and relationship management that spans any number of devices and domains. Whereas DNS (Domain Name System) is a protocol designed for federated naming of Internet hosts at the TCP/IP level, XNS is designed for modeling and managing the identity of any actor at the SOAP level, including people, businesses, machines, applications, objects, classes, etc. XNS enables identity controllers to register and use XNS identities to automate the exchange of any set of data associated with an identity while providing protection for the security and privacy of this data. OneName will also make available open-source Java Reference Implementations (JRIs) based on the protocol; an open-source client JRI is available immediately and an open-source server JRI will be available in Fall 2002." [Full context]

• [July 11, 2002]   W3C Publishes Four Working Drafts for the XML Pointer Language (XPointer).    The W3C XML Linking Working Group has released four Working Drafts relating to XPointer. W3C XPointer "supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents, allowing for traversals of a document tree and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position." The four specifications refactor schemes presented in the earlier W3C Candidate Recommendation for XML Pointer Language (XPointer) Version 1.0. The XPointer Framework is "an extensible system for XML addressing and underlies additional schemes. Other XML-based media types are also encouraged to use this framework in defining their own fragment identifier languages. Many types of XML-processing applications need to address into the internal structures of XML-encoded resources using URI references, for example, the XML Linking Language (XLink), XML Inclusions (XInclude), the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and SOAP V1.2. The element() scheme allows basic addressing of XML elements, the xmlns() scheme is for interpreting namespace prefixes in pointers, and xpointer() scheme allows full XML addressing." [Full context]

• [July 09, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Drafts for Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.2.    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the publication of initial working draft specifications for Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2 and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2: Bindings. WSDL is "an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information." The primary document "defines the core language which can be used to describe Web services based on an abstract model of what the service offers; the WSDL Version 1.2 Bindings document describes how to use WSDL in conjunction with the SOAP 1.2 Messaging Framework, HTTP/1.1 GET/POST, and MIME (IETF RFC 2045)." These WSDL v1.2 specifications are part of the W3C Web Services Activity which "currently consists of three Royalty-Free Working Groups whose focus is to develop an open, interoperable and extensible model for Web Services, as well as critical components, such as an XML-based protocol for data to be exchanged and processed by applications, and technologies for providing descriptions of Web Services." WSDL Version 1.2 provides a new conceptual framework approach to define the description components, language clarifications, support for W3C XML Schemas and the XML Information Set, better definition of bindings, and clarified process/technical requirements consistent with W3C's mandate for royalty-free technologies. [Full context]

• [July 03, 2002]   UDDI Working Group Publishes UDDI Version 3.0 Specification.    A posting from Luc Clément of Microsoft announces that the UDDI Working Group and Advisors Group has released the UDDI Version 3 Specification, Open Draft for public review. UDDI Version 3 "delivers upon the roadmap and requirements outlined at the launch of UDDI in September 2000, to develop a secure, general-purpose registry for Web services. UDDI V3 builds on the vision of UDDI, providing a 'meta service' for locating web services by enabling robust queries against rich metadata. Expanding on the foundation of Versions 1 and 2, Version 3 offers the industry a specification for building flexible, interoperable XML Web services registries useful in private as well as public deployments. UDDI V3 has a vast array of enhancements -- including multi-registry topologies, increased security features, improved WSDL support, a new subscription API, and core information model advances. The Version 3 specification offers clients and implementers a comprehensive and complete blueprint of a description and discovery foundation for a diverse set of Web services architectures." [Full context]

• [June 26, 2002]   BPMI.org Releases Business Process Modeling Language Working Draft Specification.    The Business Process Management Initiative has anounced the publication of the Business Process Modeling Language specification (BPML 1.0) as a first public working draft. The BPML specification "provides an abstract model and XML syntax for expressing business processes and supporting entities. It governs transactions and their compensation, data management, concurrency, exception handling, and operational semantics. BPML itself does not define any application semantics such as particular processes or application of processes in a specific domain; rather it defines an abstract model and grammar for expressing generic processes. This allows BPML to be used for a variety of purposes that include, but are not limited to, the definition of enterprise business processes, the definition of complex Web services, and the definition of multi-party collaborations. By leveraging the Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) specification developed by BEA Systems, Intalio, SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems, BPML 1.0 enables the modeling of end-to-end processes that can be translated into collections of private implementations executed as BPML processes and public interfaces defined using WSCI. Together, they provide an end-to-end view that depicts the role of each individual business process in the overall choreography, and the business activities performed by each role. BPML 1.0 and WSCI 1.0 appropriately share the same underlying process execution model, as well as similar syntaxes." [Full context]

• [June 26, 2002]   OpenTravel Alliance XML Specification Supports Multiple Travel Verticals.    An announcement from the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) describes a public review release of the enhanced Version 2002A XML Message Specification. This version of the OTA specification "addresses multiple levels of interoperability across the travel verticals, enabling organizations of all sizes to implement complex online transactions. It incorporates cross-industry components such as customer, payment and flight arrival information in many of the OTA messages so that travel trading partners will more easily be able to communicate essential traveler information." New release materials include an overview document and a collection of some 103 OTA XML Schema Definition files. "With over 150 members representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OTA is comprised of representatives from the airlines, car rental firms, hotels, leisure suppliers, service providers, tour operators, travel agencies, and trade associations. OTA working groups, together with an OTA interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages using XML." The review period ends July 19, 2002 and final publication of this OTA specification is scheduled for July 31, 2002. [Full context]

• [June 24, 2002]   IBM Clio Tool Supports Mapping Between Relational Data and XML Schemas.    Clio is a Computer Science Research project at IBM's Almaden Research Lab. Its developers are designing methods to specify the transformation of legacy data to make it fit for new uses. Clio addresses the challenge of "merging and coalescing data from multiple and diverse sources into different data formats. In particular, it addresses schema matching (the process of matching elements of a source schema with elements of a target schema) and schema mapping (the process of creating a query that maps between two disparate schemas), which lie at the heart of data integration systems. Clio is a tool for generating mappings (queries) between relational and XML Schemas. The user is presented with the structure and constraints of two schemas and is asked to draw correspondences between the parts of the schemas that represent the same real world entity. Correspondences can also be inferred by Clio and verified by the user. Given the two schemas and the set of correspondences between them, clio can generates the (SQL, XSLT, or XQueries) queries that drive the translation of data conforming to the first (source) schema to data conforming to the the second (target) schema." [Full context]

• [June 22, 2002]   Project XMILE: XML in Mobile Incremental Logical Environment.    The XMILE project organized by the Software Systems Engineering Group (University College London) is developing XML-based middleware for fine grained code mobility. XMILE (XML in Mobile Incremental Logical Environment) is a language that "exploits the tree structure of XML documents and then uses XML related technologies such as XML Schema, XPath, and the Document Object Model (DOM) to modify programs and even their programming languages dynamically. The availability of these XML technologies considerably simplifies the construction of application-specific languages and their interpreters. XML is used in XMILE to achieve more fine-grained mobility than in the approaches based on Java; the unit of mobility can be decomposed from an agent or class level, if necessary, to individual statements. XMILE supports 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 personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, and active networking." [Full context]

• [June 20, 2002]   RIXML Version 2.0 Released for Public Comment.    The RIXML.org consortium has announced a version 2.0 release of the RIXML investment research specification, including a User's Guide, Data Dictionary Report, and XML schema. RIXML version 2.0 "broadens the standard by incorporating taxonomies that address fixed income, globalization, financial data, events and distribution information into the specification. The primary objective of the RIXML specification is to provide extensive capabilities for tagging any piece of financial research content, in any form or media, with sufficient metadata information to allow research users to search, sort, and filter the published research and to provide highly relevant information to decision-makers. A solution for 'componentizing' research content has been proposed for a future release of the specification. RIXML.org is a consortium of buy- and sell-side financial services firms that are committed to improving the process of electronic research distribution by creating an open industry standard. Its goal is to define an open protocol that will improve the process of categorizing, aggregating, comparing, sorting, searching, and distributing global financial research." [Full context]

• [June 18, 2002]   OASIS Discussion List for a Proposed edXML Technical Committee.    Affiliates of OpenVES, Sun Microsystems, Computer Associates, and Fujitsu Software Corporation have organized a discussion list for a proposed OASIS edXML Technical Committee. According to the proposal's statement of scope, the edXML group would "embark on a number of initiatives to fast-track the documentation of PK12 educational requirements for XML based markup, controlled vocabularies, ontologies, web services and protocols. It will pursue areas not currently being addressed in other standards communities, and will coordinate with IMS and other groups where important foundation specifications relevant to PK12 are being developed. The edXML community will explore the relationships between other important emerging XML specifications, like ebXML, DSML, SAML, WSRP, WSXL, and PK12 requirements, and create liaisons between them." The group would coordinate and collaborate with other important PK12 initiatives such as OpenVES, EdNA, EUN SchoolNet, CanCore, APEC, Prometeus, CETIS, USoeC, and Achieve.org. It would also "create implementation strategies for web services deployment of PK12 education applications, tools, resources, services, and content, publishing and documenting XML based pattern languages for Collaborative Patterns, Pedagogical Patterns, Learning Patterns and Assessment Patterns for PK12." [Full context]

• [June 18, 2002]   Early Access Availability of VordelSecure XML Security Product.    Vordel has announced an Early Access program for its forthcoming release of the VordelSecure 1.1 XML Security product, allowing participating organizations to "integrate a wide variety of technologies for passing authentication and authorization data in SOAP messages -- including SAML, digital certificates, and WS-Security. VordelSecure is deployed at the perimeter of an organization, intercepting incoming SOAP requests at the Web server and validating them against security rules configured for the requested SOAP service. Depending on the outcome of the rules, the XML messages are either routed to the service or blocked. In this way it ensures that requests, containing unwanted data or received from unauthorized users, do not reach the business logic on an application server or interfere with internal systems. VordelSecure can examine the integrity, structure, and content of XML requests using industry standards such as XML Signature, XML Schema, and XPath; VordelSecure ensures the authenticity of X.509 certificates used, by integrating with PKI directories and local and global trust services, including XKMS based services." [Full context]

• [June 15, 2002]   Interactive Financial Exchange Releases IFX Specification Version 1.3.    The Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum has published a new version 1.3 IFX specification. IFX is an XML-based communication protocol that "enables the exchange of information between financial institutions and their customers, their service providers, and other financial institutions." The Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum represents a group of business and technology professionals working to "develop a robust XML framework for the electronic business-to-business exchange of data among financial service institutions around the world." IFX version 1.3 includes the Direct Debit Payment process, used by business banking to draw funds from payers; typically, a direct debit payment case is a recurring transaction, where it is expected to occur periodically. Direct Debit Payment process is utilized by many businesses to ensure payment is made on time, achieve better and more accurate float, and eliminate the payment issuance process. Other enhancements to the IFX Business Message Specification for version 1.3 include multiple addresses in contact information, composite remittance or lockbox data, payment credit status, improvements to check ordering, deposit account application, status Code to the additional status aggregate, and effective date which now conforms to DateTime." [Full context]

• [June 14, 2002]   W3C and NIST Release XML 1.0 (Second Edition) Conformance Test Suite.    W3C has announced the release of a new XML Conformance Test Suite that any developer can download free of cost and use to test an XML processor's conformance to the XML Recommendation. Built in cooperation with NIST and formerly hosted by OASIS, the XML 1.0 (Second Edition) errata 20020320, W3C Conformance Test Suite 20020606 contains over 2000 test files and an associated test report. The test report supplies background information on conformance testing for XML as well as test descriptions for each of the test files included in this release. This new XML test suite provides a set of metrics for determining conformance to the W3C XML 1.0 Second Edition Recommendation, and is intended to complement the W3C XML 1.0 (Second Edition) Recommendation dated 6-October-2000. All interpretations of this Recommendation are subject to confirmation by the W3C XML Core Working Group. Implementors are encouraged to write a harness around these tests to test their implementation for XML conformance." [Full context]

• [June 14, 2002]   CNet Sweden Publishes Multilingual Term Catalogues With 'Termado' XML Technology.    CNet Sweden has announced the availability of its Termado software for "management and publishing of term catalogues, lexicons and dictionaries. Using the latest XML and Web Services technology, Termado publishes term catalogues to different media but can also export term data to different applications helping businesses establishing common concepts throughout the organization. Termado consists of a termbase management system and a termbase publishing engine. The termbase management system has an easy-to-use interface for creating and managing a catalogue with terms. The termbase has been designed using linguistic and terminological models. It can represent anything from simple glossaries and dictionaries to very complex terminologies for different subject domains... The web interface supports concept searches as well as free text searching in the term catalogue. Termado automatically creates links between related concepts in the database, which can be used to navigate and explore the termbase." The product supports exchange formats such as OLIF, MARTIF, Geneter, and XTL. [Full context]

• [June 13, 2002]   Microsoft Announces DSML Services for Windows (DSfW).    A posting from Andy Harjanto on behalf of the Microsoft Active Directory Team announces 'DSML Services for Windows (DSfW)' as Microsoft's implementation of the DSML version 2 specification. Completed in November 2001, the OASIS Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) version 2 was recently voted as an OASIS Standard. According to the market bulletin, DSML "provides a means of representing directory structural information and directory operations as an XML document. The intent of DSML is to allow XML-based enterprise applications to leverage profile and resource information from a directory in their native environment; it allows XML and directories to work together and provides a common ground for all XML-based applications to make better use of directories. For example, in addition to the already standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), many devices and other platforms have other alternatives to communicate with Active Directory." The MS DSML Services for Windows Beta 1 extends the power of the Active Directory service. Its features include a SOAP listener, support for equivalent LDAP operations, session support, IIS security support, connection pooling, and multiple configuration options. [Full context]

• [June 13, 2002]   Chemical, Petroleum, and Agricultural Industries to Develop eBusiness Standards.    A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by The Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX), Petroleum Industry Data Exchange (PIDX) and RAPID, Inc. signifying their commitment to collaborative development and support of "common platform-independent electronic business data communications standards." These standards-setting bodies serving the chemicals, petroleum and agricultural industries will coordinate to share information, technology and process standardization within and between their respective industries. Together, CIDX, PIDX and RAPID will leverage resources and technical expertise to: "(1) define a set of voluntary vertical industry standards for trade within and between their respective industries; (2) represent the 'voice of the combined industries' to cross-industry XML standards initiatives; (3) work with solution providers to accelerate development and implementation of improved technologies and methodologies to support the common standards; (4) share implementation 'know-how,' case studies, and support materials." [Full context]

• [June 13, 2002]   Web Service Choreography Interface Released by BEA Systems, Intalio, SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems.    A new review draft Web Service Choreography Interface 1.0 specification "proposes a language standard that can be used in conjunction with existing Web-service protocols to provide a description of the observable behavior of Web services. The Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) is an XML-based interface description language that describes the flow of messages exchanged by a Web Service participating in choreographed interactions with other services. WSCI describes the dynamic interface of the Web Service participating in a given message exchange by means of reusing the operations defined for a static interface. WSCI works in conjunction with the Web Service Description Language (WSDL), the basis for the W3C Web Services Description Working Group; it can, also, work with another service definition language that exhibits the same characteristics as WSDL. WSCI describes the observable behavior of a Web Service. This is expressed in terms of temporal and logical dependencies among the exchanged messages, featuring sequencing rules, correlation, exception handling, and transactions. WSCI also describes the collective message exchange among interacting Web Services, thus providing a global, message-oriented view of the interactions." [Full context]

• [June 10, 2002]   NISO and AIIM International Release Digital Still Images Metadata Standard for Review.    An XML Schema and accompanying Data Dictionary -- Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images has been published by the [US] National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and AIIM International for 18-month review as a Draft Standard for Trial Use. A NISO 'Draft Standard for Trial Use (DSFTU)' is typically released when there is a need for field experience before proceeding with balloting; the extended time period "allows implementers to test the standard; at the end of the trial period the standard may be balloted, revised or withdrawn." The data dictionary "defines a standard set of metadata elements for digital images. Standardizing the information allows users to develop, exchange, and interpret digital image files. The dictionary has been designed to facilitate interoperability between systems, services, and software as well as to support the long-term management of and continuing access to digital image collections." An (informative) Annex A presents the MIX Z39.87 XML schema under the name 'NISO Metadata for Images in XML (NISO MIX).' This XML schema "supplies a set of technical data elements required to manage digital image collections; the schema provides a format for interchange and/or storage of the data specified in the dictionary." [Full context]

• [June 07, 2002]   Rogue Wave Software Releases 'Persian' C++ Web Services Platform.    A posting from David Noor announces the availability of Persian 'early access technology' from Rogue Wave Software. Persian is a development and deployment platform "which allows for the creation and consumption of SOAP-based Web services in C++. Persian makes it easy to use existing Web services in C++, or to write new Web services in C++, without writing any SOAP or networking code. Persian takes WSDL describing Web service as input, and generates: (1) An easy-to-use client proxy class, so you can use the Web service from any C++ program; (2) An easy-to-implement C++ servlet, so you can create a Web service from scratch in a matter of minutes; (3) Full HTML documentation for the Web service and generated classes; (4) A sample client and server; (5) A client and server makefile to ease build and deployment steps." The Persian technology preview download "contains the Persian client and server generators, Persian examples, and a User's Guide; Persian generators also make the generated classes easy to use by providing class reference documentation." [Full context]

• [June 07, 2002]   HKU's E-Commerce Center Supports ebXML Pilot Projects with Government and Industry Partners.    An announcement from the University of Hong Kong Center for E-commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) describes three ebXML pilot projects designed to "demonstrate the feasibility and added value of ebXML applications. CECID was recently awarded funding of USD $1.2 million from the Innovation and Technology Commission for an R&D project on the Establishment of an ebXML Software Infrastructure in Hong Kong. The new Project Phoenix aims to facilitate the adoption of e-commerce in Hong Kong to enhance the region's competitiveness; the R&D team has started intense development work on a local e-commerce software infrastructure and is carrying out pilot projects with industry and government partners in Hong Kong, based on the international ebXML standard. (1) MTR Corporation and Saggio Company are piloting the use of ebXML for the exchange of purchasing documents in automating transaction processing in office supplies procurement. (2) CECID is developing an ebMail prototype for pharmaceutical companies to apply to the Department of Health for import and export licenses of pharmaceutical products. (3) CECID is also developing an ebXML solution for the Marine Department to receive Dangerous Goods Manifests in XML form from shipping agents." [Full context]

• [June 05, 2002]   Library of Congress Publishes MARC 21 XML Schema and Transformation Tools.    A posting from Corey Keith of the US Library of Congress announces the publication of an XML Schema for use in communicating MARC 21 records. Prepared by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office, the XML Schema "was developed in collaboration with OCLC and RLG and reviewed by the National Library of Canada and the National Library of Medicine (NLM), after a survey of schemas in use in various projects. The schema will be maintained by the Library of Congress, along with software that enables lossless conversion to and from MARC 21 records in the ISO 2709 structure. The schema supports tags with alphabetics and subfield codes that are symbols, neither of which are as yet used in the MARC 21 communications formats, but are allowed by MARC 21 for local data; it accommodates all types of MARC 21 records: bibliographic, holdings, bibliographic with embedded holdings, authority, classification, and community information." The software tools maintained by LOC will support transformations to and from other metadata approaches, including Dublin Core and MODS. The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) "is a new schema for a bibliographic element set that is a subset of MARC expressed in XML with language-based rather than numeric tags." [Full context]

• [June 04, 2002]   Consortium Advances Project Management Extensible Markup Language (PMXML).    Pacific Edge Software has announced the expansion of the Project Management Extensible Markup Language (PMXML) standards organization with the addition of several new Consortium members, an updated XML specification, and a new discussion forum. The industry group has chartered collaborative work to develop and refine PMXML as "the standard XML definition for project data." The goal of the XML schema design is to enable project management tools 'talk' and thus 'understand' each other; as a result [is it maintained] they can exchange information regarding task and project status, resource assignments, additional project attributes, and the work involved to complete these projects." Development of the PMXML standard is driven by the conviction that companies "should not be forced to adopt a single standard for data storage, particularly across diverse applications; organizations need immediate access to data pertinent to their project portfolios and the only way to provide flexibility and control is to create an industry standard that enables data interchange between whatever applications a company chooses to use." NASA, Oracle, PM Boulevard LLC, and PM Solutions have recently joined the PMXML initiative, originally created in March 2000. [Full context]

• [June 04, 2002]   Exchangable Faceted Metadata Language (XFML) as Fuzzy-Lightweight XTM and RDF.    A communiqué from David Steinberg reports on the version 0.1 release of a specification for the Exchangable Faceted Metadata Language (XFML). The draft specification defines an XML format which "allows for easy creation of advanced, automatically generated navigation for your website; you can even automatically generate links to related topics on other websites. It also allows for merging of metadata between different websites. XFML is an open, free format, like SOAP or RSS, designed to be easy to understand, and easy to code for, yet powerful and flexible... XFML borrows many of the ideas of [XML] topic maps: it works with faceted metadata, although you could easily use it with a classical hierarchical taxonomy by using only one facet. Conceptually, in XFML metadata is separated (as topics) from content: you create a map that exists on its own, regardless of whether you have any content that relates to the map. This provides a lot of power in that it allows you to work with your map as an entity of its own, you can import facets of other maps, merge topics and so on." XFML is based upon the notion of "imperfect and ever changing taxonomies: with its strict separation of metadata and content, the metadata in an XFML map can evolve more easily than in most current CMS systems where metadata is intertwined with content definition, and where adjusting the structure of the metadata typically involves a lot of work." [Full context]

• [May 29, 2002]   Oracle XQuery Prototype and Oracle9i Database Release 2 with SQLX and XMLType Support.    A communiqué from Steve Muench reports on two XML-related announcements from Oracle. (1) In March 2002, Oracle released a Java XQuery prototype which includes a Java API to XQuery (JXQI) and a command-line interface. This technical preview implementation of the W3C XQuery language with Oracle specific extensions features support "focusing on the 'R' (Relational Data) and the 'XMP' (Experiences and Exemplars) XQuery use cases; it also features an experimental JDBC-style Java API for XQuery as well as a sql() function for using XQuery over SQL query results." Oracle's goal ultimately is to "provide both a SQL-flavored and an XQuery-based query syntax for XML content in Oracle leveraging the same underlying database engine via appropriate query rewriting." (2) Oracle has also announced Oracle9i Release 2, offering significant new "native database support for XML. The new Oracle9i Database Release 2 provides a high-performance, native XML storage and retrieval technology available within Oracle9i Release 2; it fully absorbs the W3C XML data model into the Oracle9i Database, and provides new standard access methods for navigating and querying XML." Enhanced support includes XMLType and related native XML data-management features as well as XML Repository and XML-based content-management features. [Full context]

• [May 29, 2002]   ContentGuard Releases Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML) Version 2.1.    Version 2.1 of ContentGuard's Extensible Rights Markup Language has been submitted to the OASIS Rights Language Technical Committee, and will serve as "the basis in defining the industry standard rights language" outlined in the TC's charter. The Rights Markup Language TC has been established by ContentGuard, Microsoft, and other OASIS members to "define the industry standard for a rights language that supports a wide variety of business models and has an architecture that provides the flexibility to address the needs of the diverse communities that have recognized the need for a rights language." The XrML 2.1 release contains two main parts, in addition to four XML schemas: (1) Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML) Core 2.1 Specification defines the core of XrML, "a general-purpose language in XML used to describe the rights and conditions for using resources. It explains the basic concepts for issuing rights in a machine-readable language and describes the language syntax and semantics; the goal is a language that can be used throughout industry to stipulate rights to use resources and the conditions under which those rights may be exercised and by whom." (2) Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML) Standard Extension 2.1 Specification builds upon XrML Core 2.1 by defining "a set of concepts that are generally and broadly useful and applicable to XrML2 usage scenarios, but which are not necessarily at the heart of XrML2 semantics; these concepts are broadly classified, according to the purpose that they serve, into conditions, payment notions, properties, and revocation extensions." [Full context]

• [May 28, 2002]   W3C Receives Proposal for an Extensible User Interface Protocol (XUP).    The W3C has acknowledged receipt of a submission from MartSoft Corporation for a proposed Extensible User Interface Protocol (XUP). XUP is "a SOAP-based protocol for communicating user interface events and updates on the web. Once a session has been established between a client and server, user interface events can be passed to server-side handlers; these in turn, pass back updates to the user interface. XUP provides a foundation for developing and consuming highly interactive web applications and services. XUP is independent of the actual UI or event model: it places no restriction on the UI component set, or the attributes or events associated with each component. Furthermore, it supports both delegation and capturing/bubbling event models. XUP can work with any UI models with XML-based representations. A UI model is described by a tree of XML elements, with UI components (e.g., panels, buttons) mapping to elements and the properties (e.g., color, size) of the components mapping to attributes. Examples of XML-based UI models include XUL, Proto, XHTML, and WML." According to the W3C comment, the XUP submission "has a direct relationship to the goals of the W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity to develop markup specifications for synchronization across multiple modalities and devices with a wide range of capabilities." [Full context]

• [May 24, 2002]   RELAX NG Published as ISO/IEC DIS 19757-2 (DSDL Part 2).    A posting from James Clark to the RELAX NG mailing list announces that ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 [Document Description and Processing Languages] has voted to send out the edited text of RELAX NG as an ISO Draft International Standard (DIS). The text prepared by James Clark and Murata-san contains "no technical changes" vis-à-vis the OASIS specification, but has been changed editorially to meet ISO publication requirements. James indicates that the next stage is for the ISO national member bodies to vote on the DIS; if the draft is approved without comment, it may then be sent out for approval as a full-fledged International Standard; otherwise, there may be another round involving a Final DIS (FDIS). ISO/IEC 19757 (Document Schema Definition Languages - DSDL) is planned as a ten-part specification, of which RELAX NG is Part 2. DSDL is "a modular set of specifications for describing the document structures, data types, and data relationships in structured information resources. Two kinds of integrated specifications are included: (1) specifications for describing aspects of validity of a document, and (2) rules for combining and packaging a collection of processes applicable to the task of validating a document. This integration makes DSDL applicable to both business and publishing applications of structured information resources." [Full context]

• [May 24, 2002]   XML Schemas for the NCBI Molecular Biology Data Model.    A posting from H. Kaiser Yang reports on the release of thirty-one (31 ) draft XML Schema files and six corresponding sample XML bio-sequence files from the NCBI's data modeling research. The US National Center for Biotechnology Information supports a "multi-disciplinary research group comprised of computer scientists, molecular biologists, mathematicians, biochemists, research physicians, and structural biologists concentrating on basic and applied research in computational molecular biology." NCBI has used ASN.1 [Abstract Syntax Notation One] "for the storage and retrieval of data such as nucleotide and protein sequences, structures, genomes, and MEDLINE records; it permits computers and software systems of all types to reliably exchange both the data structure and content." The draft XML schemas are orthogonal to the DTDs in current use, and will replace the DTDs in the next version of the database toolkit. NCBI earlier "added support for XML output to its ASN.1 toolkit such that an ASN.1 specification could be automatically rendered into an XML DTD; data encoded in ASN.1 can then be output automatically in XML which will validate against the DTD using standard XML tools." [Full context]

• [May 24, 2002]   IBM Publishes XML Schema Infoset API Requirements and Development Code.    A posting from Bob Schloss describes the public availability of a requirements document for an XML Schema Infoset API and code being written to produce a reference implementation for the schema components API. The requirements document outlines "the design principles, scope, and requirements for a XML Schema Infoset and API; it includes requirements as they relate to development time and runtime software which: (1) constructs, examines or modifies schema components; (2) examines the Post Schema Validation Infoset; (3) makes use of schema components in conjunction with components that represent the infoset of other namespaces (such as WSDL or XForms). It includes requirements concerning the data model, external requirements, and coordination. The API could be used by programs such as: editors of XML instance documents which provide guidance based on a schema; tools that examine pairs of schemas; mapping tools that support non-XML data sources at one end and schema-described XML at the other; tools to visualize, create, modify and extend XML Schemas." The IBM development team is building a reference implementation for the API which is expected to be "very complete -- not simply read-only, but able to handle any XML Schema, no matter how complex." This work, including source code, UML, example usage code, and documentation is available online. [Full context]

• [May 23, 2002]   SNIA Announces Bluefin SAN Management Specification Using WBEM/MOF/CIM.    The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has acknowledged receipt of a draft specification for a "proposed common interface for SAN [Storage Area Network] management that can reliably identify, classify, monitor and control physical and logical resources across the enterprise using a common transport for communication. The specification, code-named 'Bluefin,' employs technology from the Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) initiative that uses the Managed Object Format (MOF) to describe system resources based on a Common Information Model (CIM). Bluefin introduces new technology for security, locking, and discovery for SAN management. The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and SNIA have been in close collaboration for several years in anticipation of driving improved storage management interoperability. DMTF has developed WBEM, a standard set of web-based enterprise management tools that unify management of enterprise computing environments. WBEM includes a data model, the Common Information Model (CIM), an encoding specification based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), and a transport mechanism based on Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP). CIM is an object-oriented information model that provides a conceptual view of physical and logical system components. Taken together, these technologies provide the tools to build reliable, scalable, multi-vendor SAN management solutions." [Full context]

• [May 20, 2002]   New OASIS Technical Committee for Controlled Trade Markup Language (CTML).    OASIS has received a proposal from several members for a technical committee to develop standards for controlled trade. Chaired by Todd Harbour of FGM, the group will address new "challenges in managing transfers of sensitive and strategic goods in order to help governments share information and protect the transport of sensitive goods." The purpose of the proposed Controlled Trade Markup Language (CTML) Technical Committee is "to develop a unified trade control vocabulary that supports an international collection of business documents (e.g., trade applications, cases, licenses, delivery verification certificates, etc.) through the extension and expansion of an existing XML vocabulary. The TC will concentrate on building standards in the areas of controlled trade, import, export, and transit licensing, sanctions, commodity classification, internal control programs and export management systems." The standards will also "allow industry, nongovernmental organizations, and governments to unambiguously identify the essential business and legal documents to be exchanged in particular business contexts and geographic locales." [Full context]

• [May 20, 2002]   New XML-Based Inktomi Search Toolkit Combines Keyword and Parametric Search.    The Inktomi Search Toolkit has been announced as an innovative OEM solution that delivers "advanced XML-based retrieval capabilities for finding structured, unstructured, and semi-structured content within enterprise applications to improve application usability and increase end-user productivity. By indexing documents in native XML format and preserving the hierarchy of the data, the Search Toolkit allows you to return the reference to the documents, the actual XML documents or any fragments of the documents." The toolkit "has been built from the ground up to utilize XML as the content mark up language to provide a standards-based query language (W3C XQuery) for retrieval of structured information. In addition, it provides a comprehensive suite of keyword search capabilities. It is available as a multi-threaded server product. For easy integration with the parent application, a Java API is provided for the product, as well as an open, socket-based interface using an XML-based and HTTP-based protocol. The internals of the Search Toolkit were designed to support retrieval across both unstructured content, as well as structured content marked up with XML." [Full context]

• [May 17, 2002]   IBM Releases SDK for Web Services Experience Language (WSXL).    IBM alphaWorks has released a WSXL SDK which enables presentation-level application integration using Web Services. The WSXL SDK "supports a subset of IBM's Web Services Experience Language (WSXL), which has been submitted to the OASIS Web Services for Interactive Applications (WSIA) Technical Committee. The SDK is a set of run times (producer-side and consumer-side) built on IBM's Web Services Tool Kit, intended for: (1) Web application developers who want to convert their Servlet/JSP application to a presentation-level WSXL Web Service; (2) Web application developers who want to integrate third-party, presentation-level WSXL Web Services into their application; (3) Web service developers who want to develop presentation-level WSXL Web Services." Web Services Experience Language is "a Web services-centric component model for interactive Web applications, that is, for applications that provide a user experience across the Internet. WSXL is designed to achieve two main goals: (1) to enable businesses to deliver interactive Web applications through multiple distribution channels (2) to enable new services or applications to be created by taking advantage of other interactive applications across the Web. To accomplish these goals, all WSXL component services implement a set of base operations for life cycle management, acceptance of user input, and production of presentation mark-up." [Full context]

• [May 17, 2002]   Second Interoperability Summit Focuses on E-business Core Vocabularies.    A second Interoperability Summit Series event hosted by HR-XML, OASIS, OMG, and XBRL will "bring industry groups, consortia and their members together in an ongoing initiative to coordinate development of electronic business specifications." The Interoperability Summit will be held June 27-28, 2002 in Orlando, Florida. On the first day, reports will be presented on interoperability concerns within several industry sectors. The second day's program will explore the several initiatives developing core vocabularies and related best practices to enable electronic business: (1) UN/CEFACT's eBusiness Transition Working Group [eBTWG]; (2) ASC X12's E-Business Cross-Industry XML architecture; (3) OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee; (4) Open Applications Group Integration Specification [OAGIS]; (5) OMG's Model Driven Architecture Initiative [MDA]. Based upon agreements reached at the first Summit in December 2001, the four organizers "have created an Interoperability Pledge which recognizes the need to identify intersections between major horizontal and vertical standards and promote acceptance of common models and approach." [Full context]

• [May 15, 2002]   IBM's Darwin Architecture Supports Enhancements for Domain Specialization, Content Reuse, and Linking Logic.    Communiqués from Don Day and Michael Priestley of IBM describe new features in the 2002-05 update of IBM's XML-Based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The DITA XML-based architecture "provides a way for documentation authors and architects to create collections of typed topics that can be easily assembled into various delivery contexts. Topic specialization is the process by which authors and architects can define topic types, while maintaining compatibility with existing style sheets, transforms, and processes. The new topic types are defined as an extension, or delta, relative to an existing topic type, thereby reducing the work necessary to define and maintain the new type." Improving upon the original release of March 2001, DITA v1.0 features "a logical extension of specialization that has now been incorporated into DITA: the ability to extend existing content markup to represent domains of specialized markup that are common across particular sets of typed topics (hardware vs. software, for example)." The DITA design has a unified content reuse mechanism which enables one to combine several topics into a single document: "an element can replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models. The distinction between reusable content and reusing content, which is enshrined in the file entity scheme, disappears: any element with an ID, in any DITA topic, is reusable by 'conref' transclusion. The linking logic is also now supports type checking and takes advantage of the short description element to provide progressive disclosure." [Full context]

• [May 15, 2002]   Sun Microsystems Delivers StarOffice 6.0 Office Productivity Suite.    Sun Microsystems announced that its StarOffice 6.0 office productivity suite will be generally available worldwide on May 21, 2002. The software runs on multiple platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Windows and is expected to provide customers "with an economical alternative to proprietary office productivity suites that are expensive and have restrictive licensing policies." The v6.0 office suite "has a simple, easy-to-use interface and contains full-featured applications including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and database capabilities. It uses an open and published Extensible Markup Language (XML) based file format as its default, enabling anyone the ability to use widely available tools to open, modify, and share StarOffice content. Users will also enjoy more robust Microsoft Office import and export filters, including support for Office XP, redesigned dialog boxes, additional templates, graphics, clipart and enhanced, revamped help. The Asian language versions of StarOffice 6.0 software, known as StarSuite 6.0 software, add support for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean languages. Additionally, the integrated desktop has been removed to support native desktop environments such as Common Desktop Environment (CDE), GNOME and Windows. Through Software AG's database engine Adabas D, StarOffice software also delivers integrated database functionality on all platforms. StarOffice 6.0 software also works transparently with a variety of file formats, enabling users familiar with other office suites, such as Microsoft Office, to open, modify, and share files." [Full context]

• [May 14, 2002]   European Service Providers Develop Securities Financing Extensible Markup Language (SFXL).    Several service providers in the securities finance industry have announced support for development of an XML-based Securities Financing Extensible Markup Language (SFXL), currently in draft from SecFinex. SFXL is being developed as an industry standard for "information transfer in the highly fragmented securities finance market." The ten companies represent reconciliation service providers, risk management service providers, electronic marketplace providers, and transaction processing service providers. The initial draft specification governs the transfer of information on securities finance transactions; planned enhancements "will encompass securities inventories and the post-trade servicing of securities finance actions such as trade matching, billing, and marking to market." The SFXL format is being designed as an "open standard, freely available to all service providers and participants in the securities financing arena" and will be offered in its initial draft to Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) working groups. The ten initial company sponsors of the Securities Financing Extensible Markup Language have agreed to incorporate SFXL and FpML into their software systems. Securities financing is said to be a trillion-dollar industry, "with the size of the market estimated at between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion worldwide." [Full context]

• [May 13, 2002]   DISA Registry Initiative Announces ebXML Registry Prototype for IFX and OTA Specifications.    DISA (the Data Interchange Standards Association) has announced a "working prototype of a registry for electronic business specifications from two of its vertical industry organizations: the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum and the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)." The registry software contributed by XML Global Technologies implements the ebXML Registry specifications. The DRIve prototype "classifies the objects according to two standard industrial classifications, shows the relationship among the various specifications (called associations by the ebXML standards), and links the objects to external registries, in this case the XML.Org registry operated by OASIS. The registry offers a hands-on, real-time experience for visitors to learn more about IFX Forum and OTA specifications. Both the IFX Forum and OTA, industry affiliates of DISA, have written electronic business specifications based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and make their documents freely available." [Full context]

• [May 09, 2002]   Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium Publishes CDISC Operational Data Model (ODM).    An announcement from the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) describes the release of a final version 1.1 Specification for the Operational Data Model (ODM). The XML-based Operational Data Model "provides a format for representing the study metadata, study data, and administrative data associated with a clinical trial. It represents only the data that would be transferred among different software systems during a trial, or archived after a trial. It need not represent any information internal to a single system, for example, information about how the data would be stored in a particular database." The version 1.1 release includes the text of the specification, with XML DTDs and supporting documentation. ODM v1.1 Final "represents the culmination of more than three years of effort by a multi-disciplinary team of pharmaceutical and biotechnology sponsors and technology vendors; the development team believes the CDISC 1.1 DTD is now ready for widespread adoption among sponsors, vendors and CROs to facilitate the interchange of clinical trial data." [Full context]

• [May 07, 2002]   Sun Announces Netbeans Metadata Repository Modules for an Open Source Implementation of OMG's MDA.    Sun Microsystems has announced its contribution of Metadata Repository modules to the NetBeans open source project, supporting Object Management Group's (OMG's) Model Driven Architecture (MDA). "The Model Driven Architecture represents an advanced approach to software design based on models created using languages such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML); it helps protect organizations' software investments by capturing business logic (business processes and their appropriate interactions) in re-usable models. Sun has contributed the Metadata Repository (MDR) modules to NetBeans to make it easier for developers to support another programming languages without extensive extra programming, and to write NetBeans-based tools that interoperate with standards-based modeling tools. MDR implements the OMG's MOF (Meta Object Facility) standard based metadata repository, including a persistent storage mechanism for storing the metadata. The interface of the MOF repository is based on JMI (Java Metadata Interface) as specified in JSR-40. In addition to the provisional JMI implementation, MDR also defines an event notification mechanism and additional features that help to incorporate it into the IDE." [Full context]

• [May 03, 2002]   W3C Publishes Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG as Candidate Recommendations.    The publication of two new W3C Candidate Recommendation specifications for SVG represents an important milestone for the W3C Scalable Vector Graphics format. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification "defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 1.1, a modularized language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. The graphical capabilities of SVG 1.1 are the same as those of the widely implemented SVG 1.0, which has been a W3C Recommendation since 4-September-2001. What has changed is the way the language is defined. For SVG 1.0, the Document Type Definition (DTD) was a single, monolithic unit. In SVG 1.1, the DTD is divided up into smaller, more flexible functional building blocks that can be reassembled in different ways for different purposes." Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic "defines two mobile profiles of SVG 1.1: SVG Tiny, aimed at multimedia capable cellphones such as the recently announced 3G units, and SVG Basic for handheld and palmtop computers. Instead of sending text messages or canned, bitmap logos, SVG Tiny makes it possible to send a colorful animated multimedia message. Instead of juggling a laptop or taking a static printout to the factory floor, construction site, hospital ward, or trading room, SVG Basic enables the mobile professional to consult up to date, interactive, informative graphics on a convenient pocket computer which is dynamically updated over a wireless network connected to the XML information hub of the enterprise." The Candidate Recommendation phase for both specifications ends 23-June-2002. [Full context]

• [May 03, 2002]   College Students Receive Awards for New XML Web Services Applications.    Awards were announced for three innovative Web Services applications developed by students in a Microsoft '.NET Best Student Awards 2001 Contest'. (1) RenderFarm.NET (University of Minnesota Twin Cities) "is a Web service designed to process and render high-resolution 3-D scenes and animation sequences to a variety of image file formats and movies. It accepts 3-D data in the form of XML and returns a URL where the finished product will be available. RenderFarm.NET allows anyone to create and render beautiful 3-D scenes and animation sequences regardless of the hardware configuration or software solution." (2) SkyQuery (Johns Hopkins University) "provides a distributed query execution system for the world's astronomy community, which will enable them to run combined queries on the existing heterogeneous astronomy archives. SkyQuery will provide a simple, user-friendly interface to run distributed queries over the federation of registered astronomical archives. SkyQuery will not only provide location transparency, but also will take care of vertical fragmentation of the data and will run the query efficiently to minimize query execution costs." (3) BrainWebber QA (University of Bridgeport) is "a subscription-based defect tracking system that allows users to manage defects (bugs) using a wide range of applications and devices. These applications and devices access data about defects using BrainWebber QA Web Services and then render the data to provide a customized interface to end users. The students used a variety of technologies, tools and open industry standards to create innovative Web services, including XML, SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, DirectX application programming interface, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET." [Full context]

• [May 03, 2002]   ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 Publishes Standard Application Model for Topic Maps Review Draft.    An Editor's draft version of The Standard Application Model for Topic Maps has been published for review. It has been produced under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34: Information Technology - Document Description and Processing Languages. The document "defines the structure and interpretation of topic map information by defining the semantics of topic map constructs using prose, and their structure using a formal data model. This specification supersedes ISO13250 and XTM (XML Topic Maps); it is intended to become part of the new ISO 13250 standard. Topic maps are abstract structures which encode information about a domain and connect this information to information resources that are considered relevant to the domain. Topic maps are organized around topics, which are symbols representing real-world things, associations representing relationships between the things, and occurrences, which connect the topic map to information resources pertinent to the topics... It is expected that topic map implementations will have internal representations of topic map information that have a well-defined correspondence to the model defined in this document. This specification also defines a number of structural constraints and operations on the model, which implementations are expected to conform to." [Full context]

• [May 02, 2002]   Open Forum 2003 on Metadata Registries Highlights Data Semantics and Registry Interoperability.    A call for participation has been issued in connection with the Sixth International Open Forum on Metadata Registries. Open Forum 2003 on Metadata Registries will be held January 20-24, 2003 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. It is sponsored by the US Federal CIO Council's XML Working Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Metadata Working Group (WG2) from the ISO/IEC JTC1 Subcommittee 32 on Data Management and Interchange (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32/WG2). Forum participants will explore the capabilities, uses, content, development, and operation of registries and related technologies, with special emphasis on management of data semantics. The forum "brings together standards developers, software developers and practitioners with a goal of introducing various registries, showing how they are used, and describing the related standards; a major topic will be cooperation between the registries to manage semantics. Topics include (1) ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registries; (2) Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration [UDDI]; (3) XML Registries/Repositories; (4) Database Catalogs; (5) CASE Tool Repositories; (6) Software Component Registries; (7) Ontological Registries. Special attention will be given to XML aspects of these registries." A 'Concept Presentation' document on the forum website surveys existing registry standards. ISO/IEC 11179 is "primarily aimed at semantics management and will be the focus of demonstrations in some of the practitioner tracks; special emphasis will be given to interoperation between 11179 registries, UDDI registries, XML registries/repositories, and database catalogs." [Full context]

• [May 02, 2002]   UK e-Envoy Publishes e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) Version 4.    The UK Office of the e-Envoy has released the e-GIF framework specification version 4. This UK e-Government Interoperability Framework "prescribes the policies and technical specifications that will act as the foundation of the e-Government strategy and help get the UK online. e-GIF version 4 utilises market driven open standards to enable the seamless flow of information from back end systems to citizen and business, and between government organisations." Through the UK GovTalk website, the XML Schemas project is defining common data definitions as XML schemas for use throughout the public sector; the website contains a number of draft and approved XML schemas. The v4 specification is published in two parts: Part 1 (Framework) "contains the high level policy statements, management, implementation and compliance regimes; Part 2 contains the technical policies and tables of specifications, and a glossary and abbreviations list. The main thrust of the framework is to adopt the Internet and World Wide Web specifications for all government systems. Throughout this section use of the term 'system' is taken to include its interfaces. There is a strategic decision to adopt XML and XSL as the core standards for data integration and management of presentational data. This includes the definition and central provision of XML schemas for use throughout the public sector. The e-GIF also adopts specifications that are well supported in the market place." [Full context]

• [May 01, 2002]   HR-XML Publishes Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards 1.0 (SIDES) with Industry Support.    Version 1.0 of HR-XML's Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards (SIDES) was approved by the HR-XML Consortium on April 29, 2002 and has been endorsed by six leading staffing firms (Adecco, Kelly, Manpower, Randstad, Spherion, and Vedior). The new specification describes the eight major SIDES XML schemas and several reusable modules, their expected usage, and the business processes intended to be supported. SIDES is a "comprehensive suite of data exchange standards designed to offer new efficiencies and cost savings for staffing customers, staffing suppliers, and other stakeholders in the staffing supply chain. Major modules include: StaffingOrder; HumanResource; Assignment; StaffingSupplier; StaffingCustomer; StaffingAction; Extended TimeCard; and Invoice (an extended version of OAGIS 8.0 Invoice). This suite of open standards is designed to increase the efficiency of staffing processes and to reduce integration costs usually incurred by the need to implement custom interfaces to link to trading partner systems." [Full context]

• [May 01, 2002]   W3C I18N Working Group Publishes Last Call Working Draft for the WWW Character Model.    The W3C Internationalization Working Group has issued a second Last Call Working Draft specification defining a Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0. The document is an Architectural Specification designed to provide "a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web. Topics addressed include encoding identification, early uniform normalization, string identity matching, string indexing, and URI conventions, building on the Universal Character Set, defined jointly by Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. Some introductory material on characters and character encodings is also provided." The goal of the specification is to "facilitate use of the Web by all people, regardless of their language, script, writing system, and cultural conventions, in accordance with the W3C goal of universal access; one basic prerequisite to achieve this goal is to be able to transmit and process the characters used around the world in a well-defined and well-understood way." The W3C I18N Working Group invites comments on the specification through the end of the review period, May 31, 2002. "Due to the architectural nature of this document, it affects a large number of W3C Working Groups, but also software developers, content developers, and writers and users of specifications outside the W3C that have to interface with W3C specifications. Because review comments play an important role in ensuring a high quality specification, the WG encourages readers to review this Last Call Working Draft carefully." [Full context]

• [May 01, 2002]   OASIS Election and Voter Services TC Releases e-Voting Process and Data Requirements Specification.    A Committee Specification for TC approval has been released for public review by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. Under the title Election Markup Language (EML): e-Voting Process and Data Requirements, this document constitutes one of several early TC deliverables being used in pilot studies designed to test the effectiveness of the prototype EML standard across a number of different international jurisdictions. It represents a "general and global study of the electoral process, introducing the transition from a complete human process by defining the data structure to be exchanged and where needed; an EML schema is introduced and clearly marked." The supporting schemas package also under vote as part of the TC release includes thirty-nine (39) XML schemas and a reference document Election Markup Language (EML): XML Schemas. The TC has been chartered to "develop a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations. The services performed for such elections include but are not limited to voter role/membership maintenance (new voter registration, membership and dues collection, change of address tracking, etc.), citizen/membership credentialing, redistricting, requests for absentee/expatriate ballots, election calendaring, logistics management (polling place management), election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting and demographics." [Full context]

• [April 29, 2002]   W3C Publishes Requirements Documents for Web Services Architecture and Description.    Two web services requirements documents have been released by Working Groups within the W3C Web Services Activity. The Web Services Architecture Working Group has published a set of requirements for a standard reference architecture for Web Services in the working draft Web Services Architecture Requirements. These requirements "are intended to guide the development of the reference architecture and provide a set of measurable constraints on Web Services implementations by which conformance can be determined." Background to this design is identified as a recognition that the "use of Web Services on the World Wide Web is expanding rapidly as the need for application-to-application communication and interoperability grows. These services provide a standard means of communication among different software applications involved in presenting dynamic context-driven information to the user. In order to promote interoperability and extensibility among these applications, as well as to allow them to be combined in order to perform more complex operations, a standard reference architecture is needed. The Web Services Architecture Working Group at W3C is tasked with producing this reference architecture." A deliverable from the W3C Web Services Description Working Group presents "the first W3C Working Draft of the Web Services Description Requirements document" with definitions and requirements for WS messages, message exchange patterns, and protocol bindings"; certain rejected requirements are retained in the XML source. [Full context]

• [April 27, 2002]   W3C's Daniel Weitzner Testifies on Patents and IP Licensing Terms in Open Standards Activity.    Daniel Weitzner, W3C Technology and Society Domain Leader and Chair of the W3C Patent Policy Working Group recently provided testimony on patents and IP licensing at a United States DOJ/FTC hearing. The meeting was held on 18-April-2002, before the "United States Department of Justice and United States Federal Trade Commission Joint Hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy: Standards and Intellectual Property." The presentation contributed to an ongoing US government investigation into 'Standard-Setting Practices: Competition, Innovation and Consumer Welfare'. Weitzner's stated goal in the testimony was to "contribute to the factual basis of [government] inquiry into antitrust, intellectual property and technical standards by providing an overview of the experience that the World Wide Web community has had with patents over the last four years. This testimony highlighted three main points: (1) First, the Web itself has been possible only in the context of open, royalty-free (RF) standards. (2) Second, the 'reasonable, non-discriminatory terms' (RAND) licensing model common in many traditional standards bodies is unlikely to be accepted in the Web environment. (3) Third, W3C is working hard to develop a Royalty-Free patent policy that encourages the continued evolution of the Web as a universal information space, while respecting our Member's legitimate intellectual property rights." Also declared by Weitzner: "Of critical importance to the rise of electronic commerce as a new marketplace, Web technology allows a wide variety of new systems and technologies to be built on top of the basic architecture of the Web, thus enabling continual innovation in the design of Web-based applications and services... Whether patents and claims related to W3C technologies are in fact valid or not, the risk of costly, time-consuming litigation and possible limitations on use by the right holders, is sufficient to suffocate much of the dynamic development activity that has been driving the Web industry." [Full context]

• [April 26, 2002]   IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group Issues XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0.    The IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has released an initial public working draft for XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0. The specification "defines a means to digitally sign a document subset using XPath" in support of the W3C XML Signature Recommendation. The goal is to: "(1) more easily specify XPath transforms, and (2) more efficiently process those transforms... [the document] describes a new signature filter transform that, like the XPath transform, provides a method for computing a portion of a document to be signed. In the interest of simplifying the creation of efficient implementations, the architecture of this transform is not based on evaluating an XPath expression for every node of the XML parse tree (as defined by the XPath data model). Instead, the XPath expression in this transform is used to identify a set of nodes that, along with all nodes having an ancestor in the identified set, is used to transform the input node set by set intersection, subtraction, or union." Since the specification has already received a large amount of discussion and implementation within the Working Group, the WG members hope to move the specification "to and through Last Call and then Candidate Recommendation very quickly." [Full context]

• [April 26, 2002]   DISA to Establish a US DoD XML Registry and Clearinghouse.    A central XML registry for the US Department of Defense is being set up to promote interoperability, efficiency, and reuse of XML components. According to a "Memorandum for the Secretaries of the [US] Military Departments" (2002-04-22), the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has been designated as the Executive Agent (EA) for establishing the DoD XML Registry and Clearinghouse. In order to "support interoperability and minimize overhead, the Department is establishing a single clearinghouse and registry for creating, finding, reusing, and unambiguously identifying XML components. This will be accomplished by identifying best practices, establishing partnerships with industry, public-interest groups and other governmental activities, and coordinating XML education and outreach. Storage and retrieval of XML components will be performed in a way that takes full advantage of distributed network capabilities for reliable access and reference. This will facilitate the harmonization of XML registries and components among industry and government organizations... The DOD XML Registry and Clearinghouse is the authoritative source for XML components. All program managers that use XML as an interchange format must register XML components in accordance with procedures established by DISA." DISA currently supports a version 2 implementation of an XML Registry which "enables the consistent use of XML, both vertically within projects and horizontally across organizations." [Full context]

• [April 26, 2002]   W3C Publishes XML Version 1.1 Last Call Working Draft.    The W3C XML Core Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft for XML 1.1, previously called 'XML Blueberry.' XML 1.1 is written as "a series of alterations to the XML 1.0 Recommendation, such that its numbered sections correspond to those of the XML 1.0 Recommendation; sections of the V1.0 Recommendation that do not appear in the new document remain unchanged in XML 1.1." As outlined in the XML Blueberry Requirements, XML version 1.1 resolves problems related to Unicode and line ending. "The overall philosophy of names has changed since XML 1.0. Whereas XML 1.0 provided a rigid definition of names, wherein everything that was not permitted was forbidden, XML 1.1 names are designed so that everything that is not forbidden (for a specific reason) is permitted. Since Unicode will continue to grow past version 3.1, further changes to XML can be avoided by allowing almost any character, including those not yet assigned, in names. In addition, XML 1.0 attempts to adapt to the line-end conventions of various modern operating systems, but discriminates against the conventions used on IBM and IBM-compatible mainframes. As a result, XML documents on mainframes are not plain text files according to the local conventions. XML 1.0 documents generated on mainframes must either violate the local line-end conventions, or employ otherwise unnecessary translation phases before parsing and after generation." The working group invites comments on the draft through the end of the Last Call review period, 28-June-2002. [Full context]

• [April 25, 2002]   W3C Voice Browser Working Group Issues VoiceXML Last Call Working Draft.    W3C has released a Last Call Working Draft for Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version 2.0. Pending receipt of positive feedback on this draft, the W3C Voice Browser Working Group plans to submit the specification for approval as a W3C Candidate Recommendation; comments may be sent for consideration until May 24, 2002. VoiceXML "is designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed-initiative conversations. Its major goal is to bring the advantages of web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications. The top-level element is <vxml>, which is mainly a container for dialogs. There are two types of dialogs: forms and menus. Forms present information and gather input; menus offer choices of what to do next... The dialog constructs of form, menu and link, and the mechanism (Form Interpretation Algorithm) by which they are interpreted are then introduced in Section 2. User input using DTMF and speech grammars is covered in Section 3, while Section 4 covers system output using speech synthesis and recorded audio. Mechanisms for manipulating dialog control flow, including variables, events, and executable elements, are explained in Section 5. Environment features such as parameters and properties as well as resource handling are specified in Section 6. The appendices provide additional information including the VoiceXML Schema, a detailed specification of the Form Interpretation Algorithm and timing, audio file formats, and statements relating to conformance, internationalization, accessibility and privacy." [Full context]

• [April 24, 2002]   ETSI Releases Draft Technical Report on XML Format for Signature Policies.    ETSI's Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures Technical Committee has released a draft technical report XML Format for Signature Policies as a Final Phase 3 deliverable. ETSI SEC is responsible for Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures standardization within ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute); the ESI Working Group of ETSI SEC and Task Forces are acting in co-operation with CEN/ISSS within the ITCSB/EESSI work programme. The technical report "tries to accommodate the information for Signature Policies defined in ETSI TS 101 733 'Electronic Signature Formats' to XML syntax; the document is presented as the starting point of much more extensive work that should be done in a near future on this topic." Clause 8 of the report ('Syntax Overview for Signature Policy') "presents the XML schema definitions for Signature Policies; these definitions are based on the information specified in TS 101 733. Each clause contains a rationale introducing the schema definition, the definition itself, and additional textual explanations." ETSI is also in the process of producing a technical specification (ETSI TS 101 903: XML Advanced Electronic Signatures (XAdES)) that defines a XML format for electronic signatures compliant with the European Directive, as TS 101 733 does for ASN.1 syntax. [Full context]

• [April 22, 2002]   NewsML Toolkit Version 2.0 Includes New Read/Write Interface and User Manual.    A communiqué from David Megginson announces the release of a version 2.0 NewsML Toolkit which provides a read/write interface to NewsML. Developed under the International Press Telecommunications Council, NewsML is an XML-based "news-industry packaging and metadata standard for exchanging multi-part news and information in multiple media; it helps content providers represent and manage news throughout the news lifecycle, including production, interchange, and consumer use." The NewsML Toolkit is an open-source Java library for reading and processing NewsML documents. Version 2.0 of the NewsML Toolkit has been developed through sponsorship provided by Reuters PLC; it is released under the Gnu Lesser General Public License (LGPL), so this free NewsML source code library may be redistributed and modified. While version 1.1 of the NewsML Toolkit was mostly a read-only interface, version 2.0 provides "the ability to create and modify NewsML documents programatically; it includes support for creating new nodes and modifying existing ones. Client applications can now use the toolkit to perform simple or complex modifications on a NewsML package before saving it back to XML, or even to create a new NewsML package entirely from scratch. Version 2.0 is backwards-compatible with v1.1, so it won't break existing applications. The new release also provides a detailed manual designed for programmers using the NewsML Toolkit in their own programs." [Full context]

• [April 20, 2002]   Committee Specification Level Documents for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).    On April 19, 2002 the OASIS XML-Based Security Services Technical Committee (SSTC) released several SAML specifications which have reached 'Committee Specification' maturity level. The TC plans to submit the SAML specification for approval as an OASIS Standard in the July-September 2002 timeframe. The OASIS TC has been chartered to "define an XML framework for exchanging authentication and authorization information" and previously published working drafts for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Using industry-standard protocols and messaging frameworks, SAML "is an important element in the security technology stack; it makes use of XML digital signatures and XML encryption." In SAML, "security information is expressed in the form of assertions about subjects, where a subject is an entity (either human or computer) that has an identity in some security domain. A typical example of a subject is a person, identified by his or her email address in a particular Internet DNS domain. Assertions can convey information about authentication acts performed by subjects, attributes of subjects, and authorization decisions about whether subjects are allowed to access certain resources. Assertions are represented as XML constructs and have a nested structure, whereby a single assertion might contain several different internal statements about authentication, authorization, and attributes." The new Committee Specification deliverables include: (1) SAML Assertions and Protocol, with separate XML Assertion Schema and XML Protocol Schema; (2) SAML Bindings and Profiles; (3) SAML Security and Privacy Considerations [non-normative]; (4) SAML Conformance Program Specification; (5) SAML Glossary. [Full context]

• [April 19, 2002]   ISDA Releases FpML 3.0 Working Draft with Support for Equity Derivatives and Portfolios.    The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has announced the publication of Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) version 3.0, including a working draft specification, data dictionary, scheme definition document, DTD, and related resources. FpML is an XML-based protocol "enabling e-commerce activities in the field of financial derivatives. The development of the standard, controlled by FpML, will ultimately allow the electronic integration of a range of services, from electronic trading and confirmations to portfolio specification for risk analysis. All types of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives will, over time, be incorporated into the standard. FpML 3.0 has been expanded to include equity derivatives and provide Portfolio support. In addition to equity derivatives, Version 3.0 covers all previously defined IRD products in FpML Version 2.0, as well as FX products such as FX Spot, Forwards, Non-deliverable forwards, FX Swaps and FX OTC Options, making it the first FpML version to cover different asset classes." A new 'Tools' section of the FpML website references twelve current tools (Storage Tools, Development Tools, Application Components, Service Components) and list of vendors; this resource is used to "promote the development and support of FpML tools or utilities, which will facilitate the widespread use and adoption of the FpML standard across the OTC financial industry." [Full context]

• [April 19, 2002]   EPA's Central Data Exchange (CDX) Supports XML-Based Reporting.    The US Environmental Protection Agency has established a Central Data Exchange (CDX) to serve as "a central point which supplements EPA reporting systems by performing new and existing functions for receiving legally acceptable data in various formats, including consolidated and integrated data." XML is identified as the preferred format for data submission, though flat-file and EDI formats are accepted. With the cooperation of several states, information is sent to the legacy systems and made available for wider access. Several provisional XML DTDs, XML schemas, and data dictionaries have been developed. Critical environmental data on EPA facilities, air, water, waste, and toxic substances are submitted via XML and posted to the central CDX database. Specifically, CDX "provides production data flows for the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), National Air Emissions Inventory (NEI), and Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR). Several others including Interim Data Exchange Format (IDEF) for the Permit Compliance System (PCS), submissions under the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), [and Safe Drinking Water Accession and Review System (SDWARS)] are in development." The EPA is also developing an XML-based Environmental Data Registry (EDR) for defining data elements mapped to XML element types. The EDR is "a comprehensive, authoritative reference for information about the definition, source, and uses of environmental data supporting the creation and implementation of data standards designed to promote the efficient sharing of environmental information." [Full context]

• [April 18, 2002]   webMethods and HP Release Open Management Interface Specification (OMI) Version 1.0.    webMethods, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company have announced the public availability of the Open Management Interface (OMI) Specification Version 1.0 which defines a standards-based (XML/SOAP/HTTP) management interface. The intent of OMI is "to provide an easy, open way for systems management vendors and other interested parties to access and manage the resources associated with an integration platform, together with associated business processes. Using the OMI specification in conjunction with the webMethods integration platform and HP OpenView software, companies can include business processes and web services into Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) with customers, vendors and suppliers. If a process fails to work -- for example, the processing of a purchase order is delayed or cancelled -- a company can determine if it is due to a system being down or if it is a breakdown in the business process itself. In addition, the combination of a business process management and integration platform with systems management technology allows companies to know which business processes will be affected if any given system or application fails and take actions to correct it." OMI was announced in September 2001 as a joint development project; it has now been released as an open specification. webMethods and HP plan to deliver OMI-based versions of their products in the early summer of 2002, and invite feedback on the specification, as well broader adoption and use. [Full context]

• [April 17, 2002]   IPTC Develops RadioTV-NewsML Standard for Radio/TV Program Information.    The IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) has launched the RadioTV-NewsML project "as part of a larger effort to track and create specialized vocabularies for data of interest to the news industry." Draft XML DTDs are available from the project website. RadioTV-NewsML "consists of five NewsML types: (1) ProgramTable-NewsML gives groups of programs (program table) for each station in newspaper; (2) ProgramCommentary-NewsML gives commentary for programs; (3) ProgramPicture-NewsML supports pictures used in commentary; (4) BroadcastNews-NewsML gives news related to broadcasting programs; (5) Program-NewsML gives information per program for the Internet. RadioTV-NewsML aims to be the global XML standard for the interchange of Radio/TV Program Information by NewsML. Designed to be as easy to understand and implement as possible, RadioTV-NewsML allows all for the exchange of Radio/TV information for news publishers and broadcast stations." The project includes a RadioTV-NewsML Users Forum which connects publishers who use RadioTV-NewsML and vendors who create tools that process RadioTV-NewsML documents. NewsML is an XML-based standard to represent and manage news throughout its lifecycle, including production, interchange, and consumer use." [Full context]

• [April 17, 2002]   W3C Releases Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P 1.0) as a Recommendation.    W3C has published The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification as a Recommendation, signifying that it "is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document." The P3P specification document has been produced by the W3C P3P Specification Working Group as part of the Privacy Activity in the W3C Technology and Society Domain; contributors included "privacy advocates, Web technology leaders, data protection commissioners, and global ecommerce companies." P3P provides "a standard, simple, automated way for users to gain more control over the use of personal information on Web sites they visit. At its most basic level, P3P is a standardized set of multiple-choice questions, covering all the major aspects of a Web site's privacy policies. Taken together, the answers present a machine readable version of the site's privacy policy, a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled Web sites make this information available in a standard, machine-readable format. P3P enabled browsers can 'read' this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumer's own set of privacy preferences. P3P enhances user control by putting privacy policies where users can find them, in a form users can understand, and, most importantly, enables users to act on what they see." W3C also published a companion working draft of A P3P Preference Exchange Language 1.0 (APPEL1.0) which "complements the P3P1.0 specification by specifying a language for describing collections of preferences regarding P3P policies between P3P agents. Using this language, a user can express her preferences in a set of preference-rules (called a ruleset), which can then be used by her user agent to make automated or semi-automated decisions regarding the acceptability of machine-readable privacy policies from P3P enabled Web sites." [Full context]

• [April 15, 2002]   2002 ACM Workshop on XML Security.    A call for papers has been issued in connection with the 2002 ACM Workshop on XML Security, to be held November 22, 2002 at George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA. Chaired by Michiharu Kudo (IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory) and Phillip Hallam-Baker (Verisign), the XML Security Workshop will be held in conjunction with the Ninth ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS-9). The organizers request paper submissions from academia and industry "covering novel research on theoretical and practical aspects of the security required for XML-based systems." The ACM Workshop on XML Security "will address security problems faced by users who try to develop XML-based applications, Web services, and security middleware for XML. It ranges from specific security features, such as digital signatures and element-wise encryption and access control of XML documents, to XML-based infrastructure, such as Web services and XML databases. Since many security features for XML have already been standardized, experimental evaluations of these standards is one of the important topics covered by this workshop." [Full context]

• [April 12, 2002]   IBM Web Services Toolkit Supports the WS-Security Specification.    IBM alphaWorks Labs has released a new version of its Web Services Toolkit with support for the Web Services Security Specification (WS-Security) announced on 2002-04-11. Specifically, the v3.1 IBM WSTK additions "provide an implementation of SOAP Security Token and Digital Signature components of the WS-Security specification. The SOAP Security Token which indicates the message sender's properties (name, identity, credentials, and capabilities ) is passed with SOAP messages; this helps identify the message sender to the Web service provider. This modular technology is useful to Web service providers when they need to support users with different authentication mechanisms. It also enables Web services providers to incorporate additional security features to their Web services applications over time. Version 3.1 also features a Buyer-Seller demo, Business Explorer for Web Services, Web Services Management, WSDL Explorer, new utility services, WSIL4J, and support for the use of UDDI v2 registries. The Buyer-Seller demo uses various aspects of Web Services components such as WSDL, WS-Inspection, UDDI, AXIS, etc. in a standards-based J2EE runtime environment." [Full context]

• [April 11, 2002]   Microsoft, IBM, and VeriSign Promote WS-Security Specifications for Web Services.    A joint announcement from Microsoft, IBM, and VeriSign describes the (re-) publication of a Web services security specification "to help organizations build secure, broadly interoperable Web services applications. The three companies jointly developed the new specification, known as WS-Security, and plan to submit it to a standards body. WS-Security defines a standard set of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) extensions, or message headers, that can be used to implement integrity and confidentiality in Web services applications." The WS-Security specification is positioned as "the foundation for a broader road map and additional set of proposed Web services security capabilities outlined by IBM and Microsoft to tackle the growing need for consistent support of more secure Web services. The proposed road map is documented in Security in a Web Services World, which outlines additional Web services security specifications the companies plan to develop along with key customers, industry partners, and standards organizations." The other specifications include WS-Policy, WS-Trust, WS-Privacy, WS-Secure Conversation, WS-Federation, and WS-Authorization. The modular approach outlined in the proposal is said to be "necessary for Web services security because of the variety of systems that make up today's IT environments; as the use of Web services increases among collaborating organizations using different security approaches, the proposed security and trust model provides a flexible framework in which organizations can interconnect in a trusted way." [Full context]

• [April 11, 2002]   W3C XML Core Working Group Publishes New Working Drafts for Namespaces in XML.    The XML Core Working Group has produced two new working draft specifications on namespaces as part of the W3C XML Activity. Namespaces in XML 1.1 is the "first draft of a new 1.1 revision of the Namespaces in XML specification which will incorporate several errata to the 1.0 specification, and will make one substantive change: the provision of a mechanism to undeclare prefixes." Namespaces in XML 1.1 Requirements presents the requirements for the development of Namespaces in XML version 1.1. XML namespaces "provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references." The Requirements document clarifies that the Namespaces in XML 1.1 specification will apply only to XML version 1.1 documents; note that some examples in the WD mistakenly use version 1.0 identifier (<?xml version="1.0"?>) where "1.1" is intended. According to the WG's explanation, the Namespaces in XML 1.0 "has the ability to undeclare the default namespace, but doesn't provide a facility to undeclare namespaces with prefixes; an obvious syntax for such functionality would be an empty namespace attribute value (xmlns:prefix=""); this omission has had adverse consequences on infoset manipulations and serializers." Other specifications negatively affected by the V1.0 limitation include XML-Signature Syntax and Processing, SOAP Version 1.2 part 1: Messaging Framework, XML Inclusions (XInclude) 1.0, XQuery 1.0, and XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Data Model. [Full context]

• [April 10, 2002]   University of Hong Kong E-Commerce Center Opens Test Site for OASIS ebXML V2 Registry Implementation.    Researchers at the University of Hong Kong's Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) and Department of Computer Science Information Systems have released a publicly-accessible (beta version) test site which implements the OASIS ebXML Version 2 Registry. The version 2 registry specifications (ebXML Registry Information Model [RIM]; ebXML Registry Services [RS]) were finalized by the OASIS TC in December 2001, and are now in final approval phase. The CECID development was done as part of the University's Project Phoenix, which uses the ebXML Registry as one of four ebXML architectural components; the registry "provides the services for the participating e-commerce community to register, access, and share document schemas, business process specifications, and company data. CECID will operate the registry on a trial basis under the auspices of its Project Phoenix, which is sponsored by the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong Government, to establish an ebXML software infrastructure in Hong Kong." ebXML v2 Registry implementations were reported earlier by XML Global Technologies, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sterling Commerce, and KTNET (Korea); IONA and ebXMLsoft have also announced ebXML Registry implementations nearing completion. [Full context]

• [April 10, 2002]   Siebel Systems Announces XML-Based Universal Application Network.    Siebel Systems recently announced a 'Universal Application Network' as a standards-based architecture for end-to-end business process management; the company characterized the network as "the industry's first standards-based vendor-independent application integration solution." The Universal Application Network is comprised of three major components: a comprehensive business process library, a state-of-the-art business process design tool, and a market-leading integration server. Supported by several leading integration technology vendors (e.g., IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods), the Universal Application Network "is based on emerging Web Services and XML standards." The business process library component is "a collection of prepackaged, end-to-end, industry specific business processes such as Customer Creation or Quote to Order. The business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server. The business processes include pre-built business process flows, common objects (compliant with industry-specific standards such as RosettaNet and OAG), and XSLT-based transformation maps for mapping between the application data models and common objects. The Business Process Design Tool provides an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions. The Business Process Flow modeler enables the definition of business processes at various levels of abstraction, and emits Web services-based XML representations of the defined processes; the Transformation Modeler accepts and emits W3C XML [XSD] schemas and XSLT-based transformations." [Full context]

• [April 10, 2002]   Microsoft Announces MapPoint .NET XML Web Service With SOAP API.    Microsoft MapPoint .NET is "a hosted, programmable XML Web Service with a SOAP API that allows developers to integrate high-quality maps, driving directions, distance calculations, proximity searches, and other location intelligence into their applications, business processes, and Web sites." The MapPoint application promises to reduce the cost and complexity of mapping and spatial analysis, since "historically, the tools needed to perform geographic tasks were difficult to use, expensive to purchase, and even more expensive to maintain; typical server installations required specialized Geographic Information Systems (GIS) staff to manage proprietary datasets for map rendering and geocoding, dedicated servers to house the terabytes of geographic data, and large investments in learning new and difficult APIs." The MapPoint .NET XML Web service application is said to: "(1) provide developers the key building blocks they need to create geographically savvy applications; (2) support a standard SOAP Web service and can be accessed from a variety of platforms and development tools; (3) offer a short learning curve; (4) shield developers from the complexity of the management of spatial data and complicated GIS plumbing; (5) use a scalable transaction-based model that lets developers get started without incurring prohibitive upfront charges and lets applications grow with business need." [Full context]

• [April 10, 2002]   iTV Production Standards Initiative Creates XML Standards for Interactive Television.    A new Interactive Television Production Standards Initiative has been launched by television and interactive production companies, programmers, and technology providers. The open standards initiative will address the current industry situation in which "there are several disparate middleware platforms, operating systems, and hardware devices for distributing iTV and no common means of producing interactive programming. XML has been chosen for the standard because of its general acceptance as an open method for transferring data and its compatibility with all of the major iTV platforms. Of the three principal components of iTV programming (content, presentation, behavior), the initiative will seek to standardize only content and presentation. The content production portion of the standard specifies the timing and content of interactive assets such as trivia games, polls, interactive advertising, leaderboards, etc.; presentation description portion of the standard specifies the visual elements of the program, the location of these elements, and a method for mapping content to these locations. The iTV production standards initiative will be compatible with the other major iTV standards, such as SMPTE DDE-1 (ATVEF), SMPTE DDE-2, DVB-MHP, and ATSC-DASE. An XML schema developed by GoldPocket Interactive for enhanced TV programming has been used to create draft specifications, now under review by the WG; the expanded and refined XML spec documents will be published on May 5, 2002. [Full context]

• [April 09, 2002]   Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML) Version 2.0 Supports Digital Print Job Ticketing.    A communiqué from Tracy Burkovich announces the release of the Personalized Print Markup Language specification version 2.0. This version of the specification includes support for digital print job ticketing, and has been endorsed by several key industry partners. PPML is designed for "XML-based, efficient printing of documents with reusable and variable content. It was developed through a special program of PODi (The Digital Printing Initiative), a consortium of leading companies in digital printing. The main purpose of the PPML language is to provide object-level addressability and reusability; it provides an open, XML-based architecture for digital print projects. PPML was first introduced to the market at the worldwide 'drupa' exhibition in Dusseldorf in May, 2000, and has become the first widely-adopted print stream based entirely on an open standard. The PPML version 2.0 architecture includes generic printer control. This means PPML 2.0 jobs, including advanced printer features such as duplexing, finishing, and paper selection, can be created without knowing what machine will print them. Any PPML-compliant printer with the appropriate features will accept the same print file, no matter what software created it and what printer does the output. The PPML job ticketing architecture is designed to support ticket data in any format." [Full context]

• [April 08, 2002]   Adobe Announces Enhanced XML Authoring Support in FrameMaker Version 7.0.    Adobe Systems has released FrameMaker Version 7.0 with enhanced collaboration and XML authoring features. Version 7.0 now provides the "ability to import, validate, and export XML files and DTDs for 'XML roundtripping'. It supports XML namespaces as a prefix to XML element names when combining content from multiple sources. FrameMaker Version 7.0 supports import and export of XML files containing Unicode (UTF-8/UTF-16) characters, with automatic character mapping for Asian-language printing. V7.0 provides for automatic generation of CSS style definitions for XML files. DocBook 4.1, xDocBook 4.1.2, and XHTML sample applications are now included for structured authoring. Documentation includes a new 'XML Cookbook' manual for learning to work in structured authoring environments. Enhanced collaboration features include support for Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP), WebDAV, and workgroup facilities (shared documents, servers, and folders)." [Full context]

• [April 08, 2002]   ISO Common Logic Standard Proposed for Use With RDF, UML, DAML, and Topic Maps.    A posting from John Sowa summarizes the results of a recent Common Logic Standardization Meeting held at Stanford University which proposes an ISO Common Logic (CL) Standard related to Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) and Conceptual Graphs (CGs). CL is to be "defined by an abstract syntax, which specifies the major categories, such as Quantifier, Negation, and Conjunction, without specifying any concrete symbols for writing them. The CL standard will also contain grammars for three concrete syntaxes: KIF, CGIF (the CG interchange format), and traditional predicate calculus (TPC) with a Unicode encoding of the commonly used symbols. Besides the three concrete syntaxes that are currently planned for the standard, [the group] discussed plans for an XML-based syntax [XML-CL] that could be mapped directly to the abstract syntax. For example, the abstract category Conjunction would be expressed differently in each of the three concrete syntaxes. Instead of giving a separate mapping to XML from each of the concrete syntaxes, it would be simpler to map the abstract category directly to the XML form <conjunction>... </conjunction> without specifying which of the three concrete syntaxes was the original source or the intended target of the information." The development team "hopes that the CL standard can be used for many other languages that have a declarative semantics, such as RDF, UML, DAML, or Topic Maps. There will be an XML representation of the abstract categories, which will conform to all accepted W3C standards. There may also be XML representations of the concrete syntaxes as well; TPC notation will require Unicode for the special logical symbols, but they could also be represented, as in HTML and XML, by symbols like &forall; or &exist;." [Full context]

• [April 06, 2002]   Open Applications Group Releases OAGIS Version 8.0 Using Core XML Technologies.    A posting from Michael Rowell (Chief Architect, Open Applications Group) announces the release of the OAGIS version 8.0 specification. The Open Applications Group is a "non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and processes based on XML content for eBusiness and Application Integration." The principal notion in OAGIS is the BOD (Business Object Document), supporting a common horizontal message architecture. BODs are "the business messages or business documents that are exchanged between software applications or components; between companies; across supply chains; and between supply chains. The BOD Message Architecture is independent of the communication mechanism: it can be used with simple transport protocols such as HTTP and SMTP, but it also can be used in more complex transport protocols such as SOAP, ebXML Transport and Routing, or any other Enterprise Application integration system." The version 8.0 release contains some 200 XML BODs, with over 300 XML schemas and over 400 example XML instances. It includes a set of example scenarios, each of which describe the chorography or business process that OAGIS maybe used. Complete with hyperlinked HTML documentation, OAGIS v8.0 "adds support for long tag names, XML Schemas, XSL, and XPath. XSL (specifically XPath) is used to capture the required fields and other constraints that can be applied to the BODs; XPath is also used to apply the action of the Verb on particular Components of the Noun with in the BOD. OAGIS takes advantage of many capabilities of these 'core' XML technologies in order to provide a true horizontal specification for integration. Along with the UserArea, it provides support for Vertical Overlays, which can be used to by industry verticals and implementations to layer additional requirements over OAGIS allowing companies in different verticals to communicate with the same messages by simply applying the constraints that are appropriate for the given context." [Full context]

• [April 06, 2002]   XML Schemas for Historical Event Markup and Linking Project (HEML).    A posting from Bruce G. Robertson describes updated XML resources developed within the Historical Event Markup and Linking Project (HEML). Centered at Mount Allison University and the University of Virginia, the HEML project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; it is also affiliated with the Stoa Consortium for electronic publication in the humanities. Using the Apache Cocoon2 web publishing engine, the HEML project "provides a means of coordinating and navigating disparate historical materials on the internet. It includes: (1) an XML schema for historical events which describes the events' participants, dates, location and keywords; the schema associates these with source materials in print or on the web; (2) XSLT stylesheets that combine conforming documents and generate lists, SVG maps, and graphical timelines out of them." One may imagine HEML as "a reasonably light language that can associate the concepts 'William the Conqueror', '1066 AD in the Gregorian Calendar' and 'Hastings' with, among other things, an image of the Bayeux tapestry and with other pertinent information on the web, in many different languages and calendrical systems." [Full context]

• [April 05, 2002]   US General Accounting Office Releases XML Interoperability Report.    A report on Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language has been prepared by the United States General Accounting Office (GAO). The 73-page document GAO-02-327 is issued as a 'Report to the Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate (submitted to The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs by David L. McClure, Director, Information Technology Management Issues). The report was written in response to a request which asked GAO to assess (1) the overall development status of XML standards to determine whether they are ready for governmentwide use, and (2) challenges faced by the federal government in optimizing its adoption of XML technology to promote broad information sharing and systems interoperability. A principal finding was that important XML business standards are still being created for identifying potential business partners, exchanging precise transaction protocol information, and executing legally binding transactions. Current challenges and pitfalls threatening interoperability are reported to include: (1) proliferation of redundant data definitions, vocabularies, and structures; (2) the potential for proprietary extensions to XML; (3) inadequate security mechanisms; (4) an inadequate governmentwide XML adoption strategy; (5) incomplete identification of federal agencies' requirements; (6) lack of a central XML registry; (7) immature enterprise architectures for XML implementation. Recommendations include creation of a new government-unique requirements specification, a project plan for transitioning the CIO Council's pilot XML registry effort into an operational governmentwide resource, and policies for effective use of the governmentwide XML registry. [Full context]

• [April 05, 2002]   W3C Publishes New Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification.    The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has released an updated working draft for the Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification. The document has been produced as part of the W3C Voice Browser Activity, which seeks to develop standards enabling access to the web using spoken interaction. The document "describes markup for generating synthetic speech via a speech synthesizer, and forms part of the proposals for the W3C Speech Interface Framework." The Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification "is part of a set of new markup specifications for voice browsers, and is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in web and other applications. The essential role of the markup language is to provide authors of synthesizable content a standard way to control aspects of speech such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate and etc. across different synthesis-capable platforms." This SSML document has been revised in minor ways to assist in the further development of the W3C Speech Recognition Grammar Format and the W3C VoiceXML 2.0 specification which "are related to the SSML specification, and in some areas depend on this specification." [Full context]

• [April 05, 2002]   Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor Supports RELAX NG.    A posting from Rick Jelliffe announces support for RELAX NG in the Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor. The Topologi application is "a high-productivity XML and SGML editor for professional publishing teams; it is written in 100% pure Java and uses the Jing native interface. The editor also supports XML DTDs, XML Schemas, Schematron (including phases), and the Topologi NII (NamedInformationItem) schema formats. All these schemas can be put in an XAR file (a ZIP format for distributing document types and application code), and the editor will upload them over a network or between peers, so deploying schemas to systems should be pretty easy. The editor will be shipping with RELAX NG as one of the supplied applications; however it is not an IDE but targeted at data capture for the same kinds of publishing uses that SGML has succeeded in. This beta version is not considered feature-complete, but is being released with the goal of soliciting early feedback from users. Subsequent development is expected to provide undo, spell-checking, red-lining, context-sensitive sidebars, better collaborative authoring features, better support for ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language), etc. Interested parties may register for the beta program. [Full context]

• [April 04, 2002]   TIGERS Workgroup Reviews Draft XML Schemas for Form 1120 Corporation Income Tax Returns.    Xan Ostro of the US Internal Revenue Service Electronic Tax Administration (ETA) has posted a collection of eighteen (18) draft XML schemas relating to forms and schedules for IRS 1120. Preliminary docmentation is provided by sample XML instances and a companion document 'Introduction to IRS e-file XML Schemas', representing the most recent thinking of the development team on IRS XML 1120 schemas. This document discusses the schema design, "including treatment of namespaces, naming conventions, element and type reuse, etc., as well as transmission and acknowledgment files and envelopes, and overall e-file schema structures." U.S. Corporation Income Tax Return Form 1120 is used to report income, gains, losses, deductions, credits, and to calculate the income tax liability of a corporation. The draft materials were prepared to facilitate education and preparation for an upcoming TIGERS meetings addressing Tax XML Development. The principal Schema is for IRS Form 1120, excluding embedded schedules and supporting information. The team has also issued a Candidate Release of the IRS 940/941 XML Schema from March 31, 2002. These XML schemas have been created by the Tax Information Group for EC Requirements Standardization (TIGERS), part of the National Standards Institute's ASC X12-Government Subcommittee. This WG "has been chartered to discuss matters relating to business standards and practices surrounding national tax data formatting and transfer, and develops and maintains tax electronic technical format standards for a variety of tax filing and other related government electronic reporting or data exchange applications. The recent focus of the group has addressed the use of XML as a data transformation tool, and efforts to develop a standard taxonomy and schema as guidance for tax agencies. The aim is to create guidance useful to state and federal (IRS) tax authorities to assist them in XML application development." [Full context]

• [April 04, 2002]   W3C Math Working Group Publishes Cross-Browser Universal MathML Stylesheet.    On behalf of the W3C Math Working Group, David Carlisle (Numerical Algorithms Group) recently announced the availability of an XSL stylesheet for cross browser MathML viewing. The stylesheet "allows conforming XHTML+MathML documents to be rendered, without changing the document, in a range of browsers. This 'Universal MathML stylesheet' makes it possible to author a single form of HTML+MathML that will be viewable in many browsers, including IE5.5, IE6, and Mozilla. Basically the stylesheet detects the environment in which it is running and inserts any <object>, <embed> or other browser-specific markup required. If only presentation MathML rendering is available, it performs a 'Content to Presentation' transformation before passing the document to the rendering engine. This allows the document to be authored in a browser-independent style." The online documentation provides examples using the MathPlayer or Techexplorer plug-ins and standard Web browsers running on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux/UNIX platforms. [Full context]

• [April 04, 2002]   Unicode Consortium Publishes Unicode Standard Version 3.2.    A Proposed Draft Unicode Technical Report published by the Unicode Consortium earlier in 2002 has been advanced to an approved version 3.2 of the Unicode Standard. This edition of the Standard "includes the most extensive set of characters for mathematical and technical publishing yet defined. The Unicode Technical Committee and the Scientific and Technical Information eXchange (STIX) Project of the Scientific and Technical Publishers (STIPub) Consortium worked together over the past 5 years to identify over 1,600 new mathematical symbols and alphanumeric characters, more than doubling the number of characters with mathematical usage previously available. W3C's MathML integrates with developing Web technologies, and makes essential use of the Unicode character set. With the addition of four indigenous scripts of the Philippines, the Unicode Standard moves further towards full coverage of all living writing systems; version 3.2 is now fully synchronized with International Standard ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000, with its Amendment 1, and with ISO/IEC 10646-2:2001. The Unicode Standard is a major component in the globalization of e-business, as the marketplace continues to demand technologies that enhance seamless data interchange throughout companies' extended -- and often international -- network of suppliers, customers and partners. Unicode is the default text representation in XML, an important open standard being rapidly adopted throughout e-business technology." [Full context]

• [April 03, 2002]   Web Services Transactions Project (WSTx).    The IBM Web Services Transactions (WSTx) project "addresses the reliability concerns of business processes utilizing the emerging Web services platform to execute business transactions. The principals believe that a general-purpose coordination framework similar to the J2EE Activity Service would be highly desirable so as to support the variety of transaction models likely to emerge as businesses deploy solutions on the Web. Such a framework should offer the flexibility to coordinate participants with varying transactional capabilities, using standard protocols (such as SOAP), without compromising the autonomy of those participants. The WSTx project team is: (1) exploring the J2EE Activity Service (the state-of-the-art in distributed object transactions) as to how it can be employed to support existing extended transaction models; (2) exploring extensions the J2EE Activity Service, to include Web services as participants in distributed transactions; (3) defining Web service based transactional requirements, models to support those requirements, and quality of service issues; (4) designing and implementing Web service transaction models using a general-purpose coordination framework." [Full context]

• [April 02, 2002]   PLAN-X Workshop on Programming Language Technologies for XML.    A call for papers has been issued in connection with a 'PLAN-X' Workshop on Programming Language Technologies for XML. PLAN-X will be held October 3, 2002 in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. It is co-located with PLI 2002 (Principles, Logics, and Implementations of High-Level Programming Languages. October 3-8, 2002) and also with ICFP 2002 (International Conference on Functional Programming. October 4-6, 2002.) Chaired by Vivek Sarkar (IBM) and designed especially for the PLI community, the PLAN-X workshop "aims to bring together researchers from the programming languages and XML communities, to foster novel research to address unique challenges being posed by XML on current and future programming technologies, and to to exchange information on early research experiences with XML-related programming systems, tools, and languages." Rationale for the workshop: "... the robustness of current and future programming standards and tools for XML will depend on the strength of their foundations in core programming technologies e.g., XML parsing (parsing theory and incremental parsing), XML schemas (type systems), XPath expressions and XSLT programs (pattern-matching languages and their optimization), XSLT debuggers (dynamic program analysis and slicing). Since XML is a new domain, core programming technologies developed in past research cannot be used unchanged; instead, novel research is required to address the unique challenges posed by XML and its use in web applications and standalone applications." [Full context]

• [April 02, 2002]   AP MegaSports in XML Uses Sports Markup Language.    A joint announcement from ScreamingMedia Inc. and AP Digital describes a plan for adoption and implementation of the XML-based SportsML format for Internet and wireless distribution of AP MegaSports news feeds using ScreamingMedia's conversion technology. AP MegaSports in XML "will be delivered to Web environments, wireless applications and other interactive platforms, to provide customers with significantly faster implementation, better customization capabilities, and enhanced functionality. SportsML uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML), to create flexible packaging of sports content. Features of AP MegaSports that SportsML will facilitate integration of include sport-specific scrolling headlines, linked content, in-progress updates, play-by-play, and more. The service will be rolled out over the next three months and will include headlines, stories, scores, stats, sounds and photos from all major U.S. and many world professional sports leagues, as well as top amateur and collegiate competitions. The AP MegaSports package provides sites and services with stories, scores, stats, sounds and photos 24 hours a day." Developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council, SportsML is "an emerging open global standard for the interchange of sports data; markup languages applied to news feeds allow for easy packaging of text stories, audio, video, photos and other multimedia content." [Full context]

• [April 01, 2002]   EEXTT2002: Workshop on Efficiency and Effectiveness of XML Tools and Techniques.    The First VLDB Workshop on Efficiency and Effectiveness of XML Tools and Techniques (EEXTT2002) will be held August 19, 2002 in conjunction with VLDB 2002. Venue for the 28th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB 2002) is the Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel, Hong Kong, China, on August 20-23, 2002. The workshop will focus on the evaluation of the performance, effectiveness, and efficiency of XML management systems (XMLMS) together with study of the tools and techniques. Topics referenced in the call for papers include storage of XML data, compression of XML data, security for XML data, generation of XML data from legacy applications, indexing and retrieval of XML data, XML query languages, query processing over XML data, interchange and integration of XML data, and benchmarks for the management of XML data. The paper submission deadline is April 12, 2002. [Full context]

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What Was New in 1995 - 2002

Other SGML/XML news items recorded for 1995 and later may be found in separate online documents:

• SGML/XML News April - June 2002
• SGML/XML News January - March 2002
• SGML/XML News October - December 2001
• SGML/XML News July - September 2001
• SGML/XML News April - June 2001
• SGML/XML News January - March 2001
• SGML/XML News October - December 2000
• SGML/XML News July - September 2000
• SGML/XML News April - June 2000
• SGML/XML News January - March, 2000
• SGML/XML News October - December, 1999
• SGML/XML News July - September, 1999
• SGML and XML News. April - June, 1999
• SGML and XML News. January - March, 1999
• SGML/XML News for 1998
• SGML/XML News for 1997
• SGML/XML News for 1996
• SGML News for 1995