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[May 25, 2001] More than 140 leaders representing all aspects of the travel industry recently met for an OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) Advisory Forum and approved the release of a new draft customer profile specification. Version 2001A of the OpenTravel Alliance Message Specifications document "merges the OTA and Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) respective customer profiles into one comprehensive profile to expedite the imminent adoption of this new OTA specification. The Version 2001A public release also includes a major infrastructure change that incorporates emerging Extensible Markup Language (XML) capabilities: it adopts a portion of the messaging structure developed by the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) Transport, Routing and Packaging project team. Version 2001B has also been released for member review; it includes the complete set of revised HITIS standards for the hotel industry coupled with availability and booking specifications to serve airline, car rental, package holidays from consumer to supplier, and travel insurance industries. The OTA specifications now include the principal specification document, W3C XML Schema and schema fragments conforming to the W3C Candidate Recommendation, XML DTDs, UML Model diagrams, and a data dictionary. The OTA's five working groups, together with an interoperability committee to coordinate their efforts, are developing open Internet-compatible messages using XML data terms: air, car, hotel, leisure supplier, and non-supplier." [Full context] [May 25, 2001] Paul Brown (FiveSight Technologies, Inc.) announced the release of an 'XPath Tester' tool which provides a graphical test environment for XPath expressions. XPath Tester "is an XML productivity tool that wraps the XPath API in XalanJ2. It allows the user to load an XML document, enter a query, and see the resulting NodeSet match highlighted or the value displayed. The tool provides a real-time mode that will apply the query as you type. The Xalan-J2 XSLT Processor [Version 2.1.0] from the Apache XML Project is used as the underlying XPath engine. The tool is available for download as a single executable JAR file that can be run via double-click in Windows or via java -jar xpathtester_1_x.jar [x replaced by the appropriate digit)] on any platform." XPath Tester is made publicly available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Peter Flynn nominated the XPath Tester application for [first] prize as "Most Useful Tool." [Full context] [May 24, 2001] Several leading companies recently announced support for Edge Side Includes (ESI) as an open specification for managing content transparently across Application Server solutions, Content Infrastructure, Content Management Systems, and Content Delivery Network industries. Edge Side Includes (ESI) "accelerates dynamic Web-based applications by defining a simple markup language to describe cacheable and non-cacheable Web page components that can be aggregated, assembled, and delivered at the network edge. The Edge Side Includes (ESI) specification defines an XML-based markup language that provides a means to assemble resources in HTTP clients. Unlike other in-markup languages, ESI is designed to leverage client tools like caches to improve end-user perceived performance, reduce processing overhead on the origin server, and enhanced availability. ESI allows for dynamic content assembly at the edge of the network, whether it is in a Content Delivery Network, end-user's browser, or in a 'Reverse Proxy' right next to the origin server. ESI is primarily intended for processing on surrogates (intermediaries that operate on behalf of the origin server, also known as 'Reverse Proxies') that understand the ESI language. However, its application is not restricted to these devices. ESI also specifies a content invalidation protocol for transparent content management across ESI-compliant solutions, such as application servers and content delivery networks. The ability to assemble dynamic pages from individual page fragments means that only non-cacheable or expired fragments need to be fetched from the origin Web site, thereby lowering the need to retrieve complete pages and decreasing the load on the Web site's content generation infrastructure." [Full context] [May 22, 2001] A recent announcement from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine describes the creation of a new technology consortium for education and collaboration in the area of medical science. "Johns Hopkins has joined with many leading professional medical societies to create the MedBiquitous Consortium, a group dedicated to creating technology standards and software for education and collaboration in online medical communities. The MedBiquitous Consortium is a non-profit international organization dedicated to creating a comprehensive XML framework for professional medical societies. The goal is to enable individual citizens, medical societies, governmental, and industry members to build on this framework to create thriving online communities and Web-based services for physicians. The MedBiquitous Consortium's immediate focus is on defining a set of XML (Extensible Markup Language) standards and software requirements for communications within and among professional medical societies and related organizations. The standards developed by the Consortium are freely available throughout the industry, thus enabling the development of interoperable software tools and Web services. The Consortium is also creating a library of Java software tools for Consortium members." Key working standards identified by the group include XML, Java, and UML: "The Consortium will create XML standards that allow organizations to better exchange data; it will create modular Java software components and applications based on the XML standards; it will use UML to architect Java software components and applications. MedBiquitous will thus provide the vehicle for a consensus-building process of defining an XML vocabulary for professional medical societies. The XML vocabulary will support a wide range of activities including organizational membership and participation, specialty certification, continuing education, online meetings, scientific abstracts, journal article submission and administration, clinical trials, and data registries for tracking medical outcomes. As is the case with other industries, the creation of these XML standards will allow the development within professional medicine of interoperable Web software tools and services." [Full context] [May 22, 2001] IBM recently announced a wide-scale program of support for "production-ready infrastructure software and services to enable Web Services," involving open Internet standards and secure management of high-volume transactions and integrating complex business processes. Also announced is systems integration support from IBM Global Services to help businesses build Web services applications using IBM's infrastructure software. To support the growth of business-process integration, projected to approach $50 billion by 2005, IBM is enabling all of its middleware infrastructure software with comprehensive support for open Internet standards to enable the development of Web services applications. The support spans IBM's entire middleware portfolio, including DB2, Lotus, Tivoli and WebSphere software. Software for developing, publishing, hosting and deploying Web services includes WebSphere Application Server Version 4, which supports the variety of open standards and technologies necessary to develop, publish and deploy Web services applications, including: Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE); Web Services Description Language (WSDL); and enhanced integration of leading XML technologies. Software enabling Web Services applications to manage and access data includes DB2/XML Extender, which enables Web services applications to access data stored in DB2 or any other database, providing businesses with greater ease and efficiency in accessing, analyzing and managing information across multiple computing systems. Software for availability, performance and security of web services applications involves the Tivoli Manager for WebSphere Application Server, which provides a single point of control to enable businesses to manage the distributed environments that use WebSphere Application Server to host Web services applications. Software for enabling web collaboration, knowledge management, and e-learning includes the Lotus Web Services Enablement Kit with the Lotus Domino Application Server; the collaboration, workflow, and messaging capabilities of Domino can be accessed as Web services by adding SOAP interfaces and WSDL descriptions to new or existing Domino applications. The built-in support for Web, XML, and Java technology provides a straightforward approach for enabling custom Domino applications as Web services, with workflow, knowledge discovery system, and instant messaging." IBM is also developing an XML-based 'Web Services Flow Language (WSFL)' which describes how Web services may be composed as 'usage patterns' and 'interaction patterns' into new Web services to support business processes. [Full context] [May 22, 2001] IBM XML Schema Quality Checker Supports the W3C XML Schema Recommendation. A communiqué from Bob Schloss (IBM Research) reports on the availability of an updated IBM XML Schema Quality Checker tool from IBM alphaWorks. The new version of this downloadable tool (Version 1.0.17, 05/21/2001) assists users who are creating XML Schemas conforming to the May 2, 2001 W3C Recommendation. The updated release "contains fixes bugs, adds a checker to verify that identity constraint definitions (Key, KeyRef and Unique) are consistent with the type of the element declaration where they appear, and updates the default stylesheet used to view the error reports. The XML Schema Quality Checker is a Java program which takes as input an XML Schema 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 XML 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." Schloss reports that the team is continuing to work on more complete checking of the consistency of identity-constraint definitions and on additional improvements; they welcome feedback and suggestions. The tool has been produced by the IBM XML Application Development team, including Achille Fokoué, Bob Schloss, Tom Gallivan, and Roberto Galnares. [Full context] [May 21, 2001] A product announcement from Ontopia AS describes the commercial release of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite Version 1.0, with support for the ISO 13250 and XML Topic Map (XTM) specifications. "The Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS) version 1.0 comprises a full-featured Topic Map Engine written in 100% Java, and the Ontopia Topic Map Navigator, a framework for building web-based topic map delivery applications. The new Navigator can be tested online or downloaded free. The OKS will become a complete suite of tools for managing and using topic maps, as new components are released during the coming months. Topic Mapping is a new paradigm for organizing, retrieving, and navigating information resources. Through the provision of a 'knowledge layer' that is independent of the information resources themselves, topic maps help capture and manage corporate memory, improve indexing, and enable the integration of information that spans multiple, disparate repositories. Topic Maps are an international standard, defined by the ISO, and can also be interchanged using the Extensible Markup Language (XML) defined by the W3C. Ontopia AS, a providers of advanced Topic Map technology and co-creators of the Topic Map standards, offers technology supporting added value to web portals, content management systems, knowledge-based intranet applications, and enterprise application integration." [Full context] [May 21, 2001] A posting from Christian Nentwich announces the release of a software tool called BOX ('Browsing Objects in XML') which "reads UML models in XMI and exports the contained diagrams in vector graphics form, including SVG and VML. The BOX tool includes, amongst other things, (1) An implementation of the UML metamodel [mainly Foundation/Core, not behavioral packages], in the uml package; (2) A parser for XMI; (3) An additional parser for diagram information specific to the Unisys exporter, in the unisys package; (4) Several exporters in the export package, which you have to manually call at the moment; (5) Heuristics for reconstructing diagrams from the rather poor information made public by the exporter; (6) Sample UML models." BOX was written for a research project in 1998-2001; though currently unmaintained and underdocumented, it is licensed as free software under the GNU General Public License. A research paper on 'Browsing Objects in XML' from 1999 describes BOX as a "a portable, distributed, and interoperable approach to browsing UML models with off-the-shelf browser technology; its approach to browsing UML models leverages XML and related specifications, such as the Document Object Model (DOM), the XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) and a Vector Graphic Markup Language (VML). BOX translates a UML model that is represented in XMI into VML. BOX has been successfully evaluated in two industrial case studies which used BOX to make extensive domain and enterprise object models available to a large number of stakeholders over a corporate intranets and the Internet. We discuss why XML and the BOX architecture can be applied to other software engineering notations and argue that the approach taken in BOX can be applied to other domains that already started to adopt XML and have a need for graphic representation of XML information. These include browsing gene sequences, chemical molecule structures, and conceptual knowledge representations." [Full context] [May 20, 2001] A communiqué from Akmal B. Chaudhri announces a call for papers in connection with the OOPSLA 2001 Workshop on 'Objects, <XML> and Databases', to be held October 14/15, 2001 in Tampa Bay, Florida. The workshop will be hosted in conjunction with the OOPSLA 2001 Conference (ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications). Topics of interest for the workshop include "the use, management and delivery of XML, web and semi-structured data using object technology and database systems; for example, the efficient storage, retrieval and querying of XML from database systems, application and database evolution issues relating to changes in structure of XML documents, case studies or experience reports, benchmarks and performance, early adopter experiences, standards issues, etc. The goal is to bring together academics, practitioners, users and vendors to discuss the use and synergy between Objects, XML and Databases. Many commercial systems built today are increasingly using these technologies together and it is important to understand the various research and practical issues. The wide range of participants will help the various communities understand both specific and common problems... For many organizations already using object-orientation with database management systems, XML data adds a new dimension that brings considerable flexibility and promise, but also adds new uncertainties and issues as to how to effectively manage that data. The recent trend towards XML servers, native XML databases and support for XML in existing relational databases is a testimony to the importance of this issue for the vendor community as well." [Full context] [May 19, 2001] An updated workshop schedule is available for the IJCAI 2001 Workshop on E-Business and the Intelligent Web, to be held in Seattle, WA, August 5, 2001 as part of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. An invited paper on "Standardizing XML Rules" will be presented by Benjamin N. Grosof of the MIT Sloan School of Management. The workshop is set against the backdrop of two key trends: "(1) The e-business community is creating new infrastructures to support high-level business-to-business and business-to-consumer activities on the web. (2) The so-called 'semantic web' movement is developing a range of proposals aimed at supporting intelligent information-seeking and information-management operations over the web. In the first trend, the main foci are on defining a new generation of electronic data interchange protocols, mostly based on XML (prominent initiatives include BizTalk, eCo, OASIS, and RosettaNet) and on creating new kinds of e-business services such as agent-mediated B2B e-commerce, and knowledge-driven customer relationship management. In the second trend, the emphasis is on enriching the web's data markup languages with knowledge representation features, to permit inference over the content of web pages (prominent initiatives include DAML, OIL, and RDF). Its goals include the production of internet-scale inference mechanisms, knowledge markup languages, and active information-seeking services. The goal of the workshop is to bring together members of the e-business and intelligent web communities to consider the current state of the two fields, and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the interaction between the two areas." [Full context] [May 19, 2001] W3C has announced a call for papers and registration in connection with a workshop on XML Key Management Services, to be held July 19, 2001 in Redwood City, California. The goal of the workshop is "to consider the requirements for simple key resolution and trust services for XML security applications, the degree to which the XKMS specification satisfies those requirements, and to determine if there is sufficient focus and interest to propose a W3C activity in this area." The workshop will focus upon 'questions of key trustworthiness' which hitherto have not been in scope for W3C activities under the XML Signature and XML Encryption work. The workshop organizers believe the broader questions of trust not yet fully accounted for in W3C activity, including confidence in a key, "are critical to secure XML applications, reliable XML protocols and trusted Web services. Topics likely to be discussed at this workshop include: (1) XML Security application key management requirements (2) Dependencies upon XML Protocol, Web services, XML Query, Semantic Web, and transport protocols [e.g., HTTP]; (3) Security considerations resulting from a specification; (4) The scope of any resulting W3C Activity." Workshop attendance will be limited to forty-five (45) participants, based upon the quality of position papers submitted and [preference for] membership in a W3C Working Group. [Full context] [May 19, 2001] A posting from Murata Makoto (Project Editor of RELAX Core at ISO/IEC JTC1) reports on the result of an ISO/IEC JTC1 ballot of May 10, 2001 which approved the RELAX Core specification as ISO/IEC Technical Report 22250-1. RELAX Core is part of the larger RELAX [Regular Language Description for XML] specification, which currently includes RELAX Namespace, and will later have RELAX Data. RELAX Core is "a simple language for describing XML tag sets, viz., for describing markup languages containing a single XML namespace; the RELAX Namespace is used to describe markup languages containing more than a single XML namespace consisting of more than one RELAX Core document." RELAX Core "was originally created as a JIS TR and was then submitted to ISO via the fast-track procedure. The final text will be prepared in an upcoming meeting in August 2001. The latter half, RELAX Namespace, has been approved as JIS TR and will soon be submitted to ISO." In a parallel universe, RELAX Core and TREX (Tree Regular Expressions for XML) are to be unified, since the two are very similar as structure-validation languages. The unified TREX/RELAX language will be called RELAX NG [for "Relax Next Generation," pronounced "relaxing"]. This design work is now being conducted within the OASIS TREX Technical Committee, where a (first) specification is expected by July 1, 2001. The OASIS TC may also be renamed 'RELAX NG' to reflect the new name of the unified TREX/RELAX language. The RELAX NG development team plans to submit the OASIS specification to ISO, given the importance of ISO standards in Europe. RELAX NG progress may be tracked via the mailing list archives or by comparing the issues list with the original TREX tutorial and specification. [Full context] [May 17, 2001] The W3C XML Core Working Group has announced the release of a last call working draft specification for XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0. The working draft document "specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML Infosets 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)." The working group invites comment on this specification during the last call review period which begins May 16, 2001 and ends June 5, 2001. According to background information supplied by Arnaud Le Hors and Paul Grosso (Chairs of the XML Core WG), the XML Core WG "is not aware of an issue with this WD document; the list of issues that have been raised and resolved while elaborating the specification can be found in the accompanying issues document." [Full context] [May 17, 2001] A communiqué from Margaret Thorpe (ILOG, S.A.) announces the development SRML (Simple Rule Markup Language) which the designers believe may be of wider interest. SRML describes a "generic rule language consisting of the subset of language constructs common to the popular forward-chaining rule engines. Because it does not use constructs specific to a proprietary vendor language, rules specified using this XML DTD can easily be translated and executed on any conforming rule engine, making it useful as an interlingua for rule exchange between Java rule engines. The Java Rule Engine API specified in JSR-000094 defines generic API support for parsing rulesets that are represented using XML, but does not define a rule language standard. Thus, while JSR-094 will prescribe that some kind of 'content language' is made available to the engine via XML, and will provide some kind of 'content handler' to process these XML rule documents, a rule language is still required in order to provide a Java rule engine with rules via this API." A preliminary XML DTD describing the structure of SRML has been made available by the authors. As defined in this DTD, a ruleset "is the root element of the SRML XML document, and it consists of a list of rules. Rules have a condition part [conditionPart] and an action part [actionPart], and the condition part must have at least one condition. Conditions are composed of test expressions, and can be simple conditions or not conditions." Etc. [Full context] [May 14, 2001] The XML Information Set specification ('Infoset') has been advanced to the status of W3C Candidate Recommendation, and implementation experience is being sought by the WG members. The specification provides an abstract data set via a set of definitions "for use in other specifications that need to refer to the information in an XML document." The Infoset "does not attempt to be exhaustive: the primary criterion for inclusion of an information item or property has been that of expected usefulness in future specifications. Nor does it constitute a minimum set of information that must be returned by an XML processor... The XML Information Set does not require or favor a specific interface or class of interfaces. The specification presents the information set as a modified tree for the sake of clarity and simplicity, but there is no requirement that the XML Information Set be made available through a tree structure. Other types of interfaces, including (but not limited to) event-based and query-based interfaces are also capable of providing information conforming to the XML Information." The W3C XML Core Working Group invites comments on the Infoset CR through 15-June-2001, at which time it expects to have sufficient evidence of implementation to advance the specification to a Proposed Recommendation. [Full context] [May 14, 2001] A posting from Michael Rys (Microsoft Program Manager, SQL Server XML Technologies) announces that the XQuery Prototype demonstrated at XML DevCon in New York has been placed online for public use. "The goal of the prototype implementation is to follow the public working drafts of the W3C XML Query working group while trying to avoid 'inside' knowledge about how something is supposed to work. The prototype currently [2001-05-14] follows the February 15, 2001 W3C XQuery working draft and will be updated to the next working draft within weeks after the next working draft's publication. The web site allows you to formulate XQueries and a subset of a proposed XQuery-compatible data manipulation language and parse and execute the former, but currently only allows one to parse the later. Since the demo is provided via a website, we provide a set of predefined XML documents and disallow the use of user-specified documents for security reasons. In addition, the site offers a set of compliance tests that can be used to check the syntax for the XQuery parser. Since the tests are automatically generated based on the syntax, some of the statements may not have meaningful semantics... The prototype is implemented in C# and is currently only available via the website; future downloadable implementations of XQuery are planned for later technology previews of some of the XML technologies." [Full context] [May 14, 2001] An updated release of the IBM Web Services ToolKit (WSTK version 2.3) contains a Private UDDI Registry and enhancements to the WSDL Generation Tool in order to support COM. IBM Web Services ToolKit provides "a runtime environment as well as demo/examples to design and execute web-service applications to find one another and collaborate in business transactions without programming requirements or human intervention. The distribution includes a full web services application 'Gourmet2Go', an Aggregation demo of web services, and some tools that are helpful to develop and deploy Web Services. Extensive documentation is included in the toolkit to assist developers with the basic concepts of web services. The toolkit includes a fully functioning web services client API that can be used to directly access a UDDI registry." The version 2.3 WSTK release is compliant with the WSDL 1.1 specification; it also supports SOAP encryption, UDDI4B (a UDDI for Browser), and Digital Signature handler. [Full context] [May 14, 2001] An announcment from UN/CEFACT and OASIS reports on the meeting of 11-May-2001 in which ebXML participants approved a core set of electronic business data specifications. From the announcement: "ebXML, which began as an 18-month initiative sponsored by UN/CEFACT and OASIS, is a modular suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies now have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. Approved specifications include ebXML Technical Architecture, Business Process Specification Schema, Registry Information Model, Registry Services, ebXML Requirements, Message Service and Collaboration-Protocol Profile and Agreement. Accepted ebXML Technical Reports include: Business Process and Business Information Analysis Overview, Business Process Analysis Worksheets & Guidelines, E-Commerce Patterns, Catalog of Common Business Processes, Core Component Overview, Core Component Discovery and Analysis, Context and Re-Usability of Core Components, Guide to the Core Components Dictionary, Naming Convention for Core Components, Document Assembly and Context Rules, Catalogue of Context Drivers, Core Component Dictionary, Core Component Structure and Technical Architecture Risk Assessment. Adoption, implementation and maintenance of the ebXML specifications will be conducted by UN/CEFACT and OASIS under the auspices of a Memorandum of Understanding, which was signed by the two organizations in Vienna. Coordination of this work will be achieved through a joint UN/CEFACT and OASIS management committee." [Full context] [May 10, 2001] The University of Washington Database Research Group is developing a 'Tukwila' system which "uses adaptive query processing techniques to efficiently deal with processing heterogeneous, XML-based data from across the Internet. The data integration system depends upon a mediated schema to represent a particular application domain and data sources are mapped as views over the mediated schema. The user asks a query over the mediated schema and the data integration system reformulates this into a query over the data sources and executes it. The system then intelligently processes the query, reading data across the network and responding to data source sizes, network conditions, and other factors. The Tukwila data integration system is designed to scale up to the amounts of data transmissible across intranets and the Internet (tens to hundreds of MBs), with large numbers of data sources. The Tukwila data integration system is designed to support adaptivity at its core using a two-pronged approach. A highly efficient query reformulation algorithm, MiniCon, maps the input query from the mediated schema to the data sources. Next, interleaved planning and execution with partial optimization are used to allow Tukwila to process the reformulated plan, quickly recovering if decisions were based on inaccurate estimates. The system provides integrated support for efficient processing of XML data, based on the x-scan operator. X-scan efficiently processes non-materialized XML data as it is being received by the data integration system; it matches regular path expression patterns from the query, returning results in pipelined fashion as the data streams across the network. XML provides a common encoding for data from many different sources; combined with standardization of schemas (DTDs) across certain domains, it greatly reduces the needs for wrappers and even query reformulation. The latest versions of Tukwila are built around an adaptive query processing architecture for XML, and can seamlessly combine XML and relational data into new XML content." [Full context] [May 10, 2001] The Center for Humanities Information Technology at the University of Bergen has announced support for a two-year research project focused on markup for "complex" documents. The main goal of the MLCD Project (Markup Language for Complex Documents) is to "lay the theoretical foundation for a better system of representation for complex textual phenomena than can be found in today's SGML- and XML-based systems; the project will also lay a foundation for software development, with an eye to web-based delivery." Among the issues dealt with in MLCD: the well-attested phenomenon of "overlap" (non-hierarchical structures), handled by various methods in SGML and XML, e.g., 'store both structures, filter into SGML; use the SGML CONCUR Feature; use marked sections and entity declarations; use [TEI] milestones [= empty, asynchronous elements]; model as fragmentation; use stand-off markup'; etc. The MLCD project builds upon published research from C. M. Sperberg-McQueen and Claus Huitfeldt, especially "GODDAG, MECS, and TexMECS (an experimental markup meta-language for complex documents). MECS (Multi-Element Code System) "was developed by Claus Huitfeldt in connection with the work of the Wittgenstein Archive at the University of Bergen. MECS has many similarities to SGML-based systems, but distinguishes itself from them in that it has a simpler notation and a well-defined concept of well-formedness as a property separate from that validity. MECS thus anticipates many of the ways in which XML has modified the rules of SGML; in addition, MECS allows non-hierarchical structures in the form of overlapping elements. The MLCD project intends to define a system which combines the best of SGML/XML and MECS. A notation for such a system has already been designed, and a data structure has been sketched out. The project will work to complete the specification of the data structure and to develop some method of specifying document grammars." [Full context] [May 08, 2001] Dommitt Inc. (Cupertino, CA) has announced an online utility for XML diff/merge and XML DTD generation. The tool allows a user to find changes in XML documents in three easy steps, aided by HTML forms: "upload the files, view the differences between them, and generate a DTD to validate the new XML file with changes." Supporting documentation at the website demonstrates the differences between the Dommitt online tool and related software tools in the market (e.g., IBM alphaWorks XML Diff and Merge utility, Sun's diffmk perl tool, and DeltaXML). DOMMITT produces an XML document annotated with edit operations (insert, delete and update operations). DOMMITT has its roots in research directed towards diffing snapshots of object databases. Such snapshots are inherently tree structured. The algorithms stemming from this research similar to the LCS algorithm used by the UNIX diff utility, but LCS does not comprehend tree structure. So variants of this approach were used to adapt the algorithm to this new domain. DOMMITT Inc. is committed to delivering high-performance and scalable solutions in the XML space. Making these tools easy to use is also a priority. DOMMITT is structured to allow peer-to-peer XML document comparisons. This essentially implies the computationally intensive diff operation is scaled across machines that are registered in the peer network." [Full context] [May 08, 2001] IMS, "a global consortium of more than 300 educational institutions, commercial entities and government agencies" recently announced the publication of the IMS Content Packaging 1.1 Specification that forms part of the core IMS standard for exchanging e-learning content. "The IMS Content Packaging Specification provides the functionality to describe and package learning materials, such as an individual course or a collection of courses, into interoperable, distributable packages. Content Packaging addresses the description, structure, and location of online learning materials and the definition of some particular content types. The Content Packaging Specification is aimed primarily at content producers, learning management system vendors, computing platform vendors, and learning service providers. Learning materials described and packaged using the IMS Content Packaging XML format should be interoperable with any tool that supports the Specification. Content creators can develop and distribute material knowing that it can be delivered on any compliant system, thereby protecting their investment in rich content development. IMS uses XML as its current binding, and XML-Schema as its primary XML control document language. Some IMS bindings use parts of other IMS XML bindings; for example, the Content Packaging specification also uses the IMS Meta-Data." The Managed Learning System Research and Development Lab has announced support for IMS, along with other XML-based educational standards designed for interoperability. [Full context] [May 05, 2001] Microsoft Corporation has released a new version of its Visio 2002 drawing and diagramming software to manufacturing companies with new XML capabilities and support for Component Object Model (COM) add-ins. "Based on Extensible Markup Language syntax, the XML for Visio format allows developers to create tools for searching and indexing, revision tracking, and version control. This new format gives Visio data synergy with new Web tools, better archival data format, and an open exchange of Visio data with other XML-enabled applications. XML for Visio is capable of describing Visio data with as much fidelity as VSD format, and is intended to provide open access to data in Visio and to enable more open exchange of Visio data with other applications. In addition, by using the 'Save as Web Page' feature, users can publish Visio drawings to the Web and at the same time generate a XML for Visio file that will permit round-tripping-re-opening the file in Visio without loss of data. The XML for Visio format requires considerable complexity; however, developers who have a knowledge of Visio (the Automation and ShapeSheet models in particular) will have no trouble understanding the format and, with a reasonable amount of effort, writing software that uses it. The XML for Visio schema is organized so that individual shapes and masters can be represented without requiring the complete document structure. In practice, this means that Visio can both emit individual objects as XML for Visio data and read in and merge such objects. XML for Visio is extensible with SolutionXML; Visio solutions can save data in XML format into the XML for Visio stream and access it using standard XML tools externally to Visio, or from within Visio at runtime." [Full context] [May 05, 2001] Microsoft Corporation has released a new version of its Visio 2002 drawing and diagramming software to manufacturing companies with new XML capabilities and support for Component Object Model (COM) add-ins. "Based on Extensible Markup Language syntax, the XML for Visio format allows developers to create tools for searching and indexing, revision tracking, and version control. This new format gives Visio data synergy with new Web tools, better archival data format, and an open exchange of Visio data with other XML-enabled applications. XML for Visio is capable of describing Visio data with as much fidelity as VSD format, and is intended to provide open access to data in Visio and to enable more open exchange of Visio data with other applications. In addition, by using the 'Save as Web Page' feature, users can publish Visio drawings to the Web and at the same time generate a XML for Visio file that will permit round-tripping-re-opening the file in Visio without loss of data. The XML for Visio format requires considerable complexity; however, developers who have a knowledge of Visio (the Automation and ShapeSheet models in particular) will have no trouble understanding the format and, with a reasonable amount of effort, writing software that uses it. The XML for Visio schema is organized so that individual shapes and masters can be represented without requiring the complete document structure. In practice, this means that Visio can both emit individual objects as XML for Visio data and read in and merge such objects. XML for Visio is extensible with SolutionXML; Visio solutions can save data in XML format into the XML for Visio stream and access it using standard XML tools externally to Visio, or from within Visio at runtime." [Full context] [May 05, 2001] Joshua Lubell (NIST) has announced the creation of an open source toolkit designed to "help developers avoid the drudgery of writing the complicated XSLT transforms often needed to integrate XML applications." The software has been developed within NIST's Manufacturing Systems Integration Division (MSID). The 'XSLToolbox' toolkit "currently contains two tools, both written in XSLT: (1) APEX is an application for transforming XML documents as specified by architectural forms; (2) ATTS is a stylesheet generator for adding default attribute values to XML documents. Unlike some other XSLT libraries, the XSLToolbox is specifically geared toward XML data exchange between applications rather than conversion of XML to human-readable data formats." APEX as a generic architecture engine processes "architecture support attributes which describe how its elements, attributes, and data correspond to their architectural counterparts governed by the architecture's architectural forms. [This allows the designer to:] extend XML vocabularies without breaking existing applications; to create architecture-specific document views, retaining only relevant markup and character data while hiding all other content; and to promote data sharing between user communities with inconsistent terminologies by enabling the substitution of identifier names and by allowing simple document transformations. Input to APEX consists of an XML document plus stylesheet parameters identifying an architecture used by the document. APEX produces as output an architectural document, i.e., an XML document containing only the markup and data defined by the architecture specified. ATTS provides an XSLT meta-stylesheet for assigning default attribute values to an XML document. ATTS is intended for XML applications lacking a convenient method, such as a DTD (document type definition), for specifying attribute defaults. Since the attributes that control architectural processing are usually fixed, ATTS can be used to supply their values. ATTS is therefore handy for DTD-less applications using APEX." [Full context] [May 04, 2001] A posting from Takeshi Imamura (Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Research) reports on the availability of an experimental implementation of [W3C] XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.0. Support is implemented in the updated version of the XML Security Suite from alphaWorks. The IBM XML Security Suite "provides security features such as digital signature, element-wise encryption, and access control to Internet business-to-business transactions. The new experimental support for the W3C XML Encryption proposal enables one to encrypt/decrypt arbitrary binary data, an XML element, or its content. The XML Schema definition of XACL [XML Access Control Language] syntax is introduced." Also featured in the IBM implementation is W3C/IETF XML-Signature support conforming to the new Candidate Recommendation of 19-April-2001. [Full context] [May 04, 2001] A posting from Norman Walsh contains the text of an IETF Network Working Group Internet-Draft which the authors believe "resolves all outstanding issues with respect to the request for a 'publicid' NID." The draft A URN Namespace for Public Identifiers ('draft-urn-publicid-03, May 4, 2001) is authored by Norman Walsh (Sun Microsystems, Inc.), John Cowan (Reuters Health Information), and Paul Grosso (Arbortext, Inc.). The draft "describes a URN namespace that is designed to allow Public Identifiers to be expressed in URI syntax." From the document Introduction: "XML external entities have two identifiers: a system identifier and a public identifier. The system identifier is a URI, by definition, but the public identifier is simply a string. Historically, the system identifier of an external entity has been a local, or system-specific identifier while the public identifier has been a more global, persistent name. Unfortunately, public identifiers do not fit neatly into the existing web architecture because they are not legal URIs. Many new specifications (XSLT, XML Schema, etc.) have the implicit or explicit requirement that all external identifiers be URIs. The purpose of this namespace is to allow public identifiers to be encoded in URNs in a reliable, comparable way. This document describes a scheme for representing public identifiers as URNs by introducing a public identifier namespace, 'publicid'. This namespace specification is for a formal namespace." [Full context] [May 03, 2001] The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the publication of the W3C XML Schema specification as a W3C Recommendation. A W3C 'Recommendation' "indicates that a specification 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. XML Schemas define shared markup vocabularies, the structure of XML documents which use those vocabularies, and provide hooks to associate semantics with them. With over two years of development and testing through implementation, XML Schema provides an essential piece for XML to reach its full potential. The XML Schema specification consists of three parts. One part defines a set of simple datatypes, which can be associated with XML element types and attributes; this allows XML software to do a better job of managing dates, numbers, and other special forms of information. The second part of the specification proposes methods for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, and defines the rules governing schema-validation of documents. The third part is a primer, which explains what schemas are, how they differ from DTDs, and how someone builds a schema. XML Schema introduces new levels of flexibility that may accelerate the adoption of XML for significant industrial use. For example, a schema author can build a schema that borrows from a previous schema, but overrides it where new unique features are needed. XML Schema allows the author to determine which parts of a document may be validated, or identify parts of a document where a schema may apply. XML Schema also provides a way for users of ecommerce systems to choose which XML Schema they use to validate elements in a given namespace, thus providing better assurance in ecommerce transactions and greater security against unauthorized changes to validation rules. Further, as XML Schema are XML documents themselves, they may be managed by XML authoring tools, or through XSLT." [Full context] [May 03, 2001] A joint announcement from the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) and the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) describes the creation of a new paper supply chain initiative involving a leadership structure and standards process for the North American pulp, paper and paperboard industry. This 'papiNet NA' initiative is part of an international effort to "develop e-business processes and standards for the total paper supply chain" and represents collaborative effort between the European Paper Consortium (EPC) and papiNet NA (the North American Group). "The goal is a single set of unified, international XML-based e-business standards designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of transactions throughout the supply chain, while reducing the cost of operations. The work of papiNet NA will support the ongoing papiNet standards effort begun in 2000, which focuses on publication, fine and packaging grades of paper, paperboard and their supply chains. Five standards have been developed and are in the implementation stage, including purchase order, order confirmation, call-off (delivery schedule), delivery message and invoice." Relevant XML DTDs are accessible from the papiNet web site. [Full context] [May 03, 2001] A communiqué from Eduardo Gutentag reports on the availability of the 'Sun XML Datatypes Library'. Developed by Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the datatypes library is Sun's implementation of W3C's XML Schema Part 2 intended for use with applications that incorporate XML Schema Part 2. It can be used from any Java code to validate strings with datatypes and to convert strings into Java objects. The preview version 1 of 'April 2001' implements the proposed recommendation version of the W3C XML Schema Part 2 Datatypes. The distribution of the XML Datatypes Library includes a sample class file src/com/sun/tranquilo/datatype/CommandLineTester.java provided "as a guide for implementing your own Java classes with the Datatypes Library." Documented examples include validating a string with an integer datatype, deriving a new type from an existing DataType object, and diagnosing errors. The library distribution includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation; its use requires JDK 1.3. [Full context] More Information on Robin Cover's XML pages at xml.coverpages.org |
