password
username
Sponsored by CakeMail, an email marketing software.
Newsletter preview


XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 29 May 2007
A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

====================================================

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

====================================================

HEADLINES:

* POWDER: Use Cases and Requirements
* Astoria On-Demand Tames Complex Documents
* Bringing It All Together: SOA Design for Data-Sharing Links
* Reliability in SOA is HUGE
* OASIS Digital Signature Services Extended (DSS-X) Technical Committee

----------------------------------------------------------------------

POWDER: Use Cases and Requirements
Phil Archer (ed), W3C Technical Report

W3C's POWDER Working Group announced the release of a first publication
for "POWDER: Use Cases and Requirements." The W3C Protocol for Web
Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group was chartered to specify
an RDF vocabulary for specifying authorship of and authentication of
Description Resources, a specification for associating a Description
Resource with a class of Web resources, predicates for declaring classes
of resources based on string functions of the resource URIs, and a
protocol for accessing Description Resources. A Description Resource
(DR) must be able to describe aspects of a group of information resources
using terms chosen from different vocabularies. Such vocabularies might
include, but are not limited to, those that describe a resource's subject
matter, its suitability for children, its conformance with accessibility
guidelines and/or Mobile Web Best Practice, its scientific accuracy and
the editorial policy applied to its creation. This Working Group Note
will guide the development of a way to attach small, easily-produced
annotations to large collections of Web content. Web resources can then
be retrieved, personalized and delivered in a variety of delivery
contexts to meet both social needs for content labels and commercial
requirements for content adaptation.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/NOTE-powder-use-cases-20070525/
See also the Working Group Charter: http://www.w3.org/2007/02/powder_charter

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Astoria On-Demand Tames Complex Documents
Mike Heck, InfoWorld

Most enterprises drive their Web sites and intranets using a CMS.
That's because CMSes offer consistent branding, easy editing, content
reuse, and approval workflows. Unfortunately, publishing systems for
producing structured technical manuals came late to the party in
delivering these benefits Astoria On-Demand provides a highly usable
and quickly deployed hosted system based on OASIS' DITA (Darwin
Information Typing Architecture) standard. This easy-to-use solution
enables remote teams to author, review, and publish XML-based technical
documents. On-Demand manages content as elements (which can be reused),
provides automated workflow, and publishes to multiple formats -- with
the short implementation and predictable cost provided by the SaaS model.
I found using the system straightforward, after I brushed up on some
DITA concepts (which should take new users a few days at most). To
begin, the visual Web interface is arranged into logical areas. On the
left, much like Microsoft Word's Document Map feature, Astoria's Map
Editor structures content into standard DITA topics, references, and
tasks that appear in a hierarchical tree. Modifying content in the XML
editor is swift; Astoria bundles Parametric Technology's popular
Arbortext Editor. Familiar text and image formatting options appear in
a toolbar, and a variety of other options (such as selecting content for
re-use or showing revision history) are found within clearly labeled
menus. Astoria On-Demand demystifies other complex tasks; for instance,
Astoria Document Assembly (a built-in application) creates new documents
for you from components and topics stored in the repository. Moreover,
these technical bulletins, data sheets, and operator manuals are
dynamically updated to reflect changes in the single copy of the
underlying content.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/23/21TCastoria_1.html
See also DITA references: http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bringing It All Together: SOA Design for Data-Sharing Links
David Essex, Government Computer News

For decades, the Defense Department and intelligence agencies cultivated
a garden of specialized technologies that shifted classified data --
typically files, text chat and e-mail -- across security classifications
and network domains. As a result, there are now more than 800 of these
cross-domain interfaces, most of them customized. Simplification of the
cross-domain offerings has been in the works for at least a year. The
chief intelligence officers of the Pentagon and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) created the Cross Domain
Management Office (CDMO) in March 2006 to choose a baseline group of
the cross-domain entities and mandate their exclusive use. The tentative
result is a baseline set of about 15 cross-domain interfaces and 10
exceptions covering special cases. More than 750 cross-domain interface
projects won't make the cut... The SOA and XML models embedded in those
law enforcement systems figure prominently in the technological work of
the Information Sharing Environment, an agency that reports to the ODNI.
ISE systems architects have defined architecture requirements that
apply to new systems in about 20 agencies with primary responsibilities
for counterterrorism work. OMB enforces the ISE technology requirements,
including their SOA features, via the Form 300 submissions that federal
agencies must provide before receiving funding for new systems.

http://www.gcn.com/print/26_12/44365-1.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Reliability in SOA is HUGE
Nick Malik, Blog

Reliability takes many forms, but the definition that I work from comes
from the IEEE. IEEE 610.12-1990 defines Reliability as "The ability of
a system or component to perform its required functions under stated
conditions for a specified period of time." The reason that this becomes
a problem in SOA is because the basic strength of SOA is the message,
and the weakest link is the mechanism used to move the message. If we
create a message but we cannot be certain that it gets delivered, then
we have created a point of failure that is difficult to surpass. One
friend of mine, Harry Pierson, likes to point out that the normal notion
of 'Reliable Messaging' is not sufficient to provide system reliability.
You need more. You need durable messaging. Durable messaging is more
than reliable messaging, in his lexicon, because durable messages are
stored and forwarded. Therefore, if a system goes down, you can always
rely on the storage mechanism to keep it from being lost. Reliable
messages are kept in memory and simply retried until acknowledged, but
lost if the sending system goes down during the process... I view
reliability as a measurable condition of a system, usually measured in
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). What becomes clear from this thread
is this: in order to increase system reliability, especially in a system
based on messages, we need to insure message delivery, and the best way
to do this is through message durability.

http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2007/05/27/reliability-in-soa-is-huge.aspx
See also Reliable Messaging references: http://xml.coverpages.org/reliableMessaging.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

OASIS Digital Signature Services Extended (DSS-X) Technical Committee
Staff, OASIS Announcement

OASIS announced a charter proposal for a Digital Signature Services
Extended (DSS-X) Technical Committee. As drafted, the proposed Technical
Committee "has as its mandate production of new profiles of the existing
OASIS Digital Signature Services core protocol 'Digital Signature
Service Core Protocols, Elements, and Bindings Version 1.0' and
maintenance of this specification and its existing profiles. If at a
later date it becomes clear that a new version of DSS is necessary then
this may be produced by the TC. This further includes promotion of the
standard and the creation of material helping dissemination. In general
terms, the TC has the goal to facilitate the processing of digital
signatures and time stamps in a client server environment. In-scope
topics include (1) support of the server-based creation and verification
of different types of signatures, among which the most relevant ones are
XML Sig and CMS, and timestamps, both RFC 3161 and the XML time-stamps
defined by the OASIS Digital Signature Services (DSS) TC; (2) production
of new profiles suitable for a number of environments and purposes,
which spread the usage of the specifications; (3) production of an
analysis of inter-relationship among existing profiles in a matrix where
new profiles shall state their relationship to existing ones; (4)
production of dissemination material for promoting usage and facilitating
tools development; (5) maintenance of the existing OASIS DSS standard
and core protocol and related profiles produced by the former OASIS
Digital Signature Services Technical Committee, subject to appropriate
access to underlying intellectual property.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200705/msg00015.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

XML Daily Newslink and Cover Pages are sponsored by:

BEA Systems, Inc. http://www.bea.com
IBM Corporation http://www.ibm.com
Primeton http://www.primeton.com
SAP AG http://www.sap.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

XML Daily Newslink: http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter.html
Newsletter subscribe: newsletter-subscribe@xml.coverpages.org
Newsletter ***: newsletter-***@xml.coverpages.org
Newsletter help: newsletter-help@xml.coverpages.org
Cover Pages: http://xml.coverpages.org/

----------------------------------------------------------------------