Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Friday, 06 July 2007
A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

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

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HEADLINES:

* New Working Draft for XProc: An XML Pipeline Language
* Proposed Recommendations for W3C Web Services Policy 1.5
* GCN Insider: DITA to That
* IBM Zeroes In On Project Zero for Web 2.0 Applications
* Netconf XML Schema Query
* REST vs. WS-*: War is Over (If You Want It)
* The Atom Publishing Protocol
* Threats to GEOPRIV Location Objects
* Microsoft Rejects Latest Open Source License

COVER PAGES:

* Six Technical Committees Proposed for the OASIS Open CSA Member
Section

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New Working Draft for XProc: An XML Pipeline Language
Norman Walsh and Alex Milowski (eds), W3C Technical Report

W3C Staff announced the publication of a new Working Draft for the
XML Pipeline specification, produced by members of the W3C XML
Processing Model Working Group. "XProc: An XML Pipeline Language"
describes the syntax and semantics of a language for describing
operations to be performed on XML documents. An XML Pipeline specifies
a sequence of operations to be performed on a collection of XML input
documents. Pipelines take zero or more XML documents as their input
and produce zero or more XML documents as their output. A pipeline
consists of steps. Like pipelines, steps take zero or more XML documents
as their input and produce zero or more XML documents as their output.
The inputs to a step come from the web, from the pipeline document,
from the inputs to the pipeline itself, or from the outputs of other
steps in the pipeline. The outputs from a step are consumed by other
steps, are outputs of the pipeline as a whole, or are discarded. There
are two kinds of steps: atomic steps and compound steps. Atomic steps
carry out single operations and have no substructure as far as the
pipeline is concerned, whereas compound steps include a subpipeline of
steps within themselves. The XProc specification defines a standard
library of steps in Appendix A (Standard Step Library). Pipeline
implementations may support additional types of steps as well. Norm
Walsh reports in the associated Blog: "... think our latest draft,
published today, is getting pretty close. This draft resolves (finally,
I hope) the question of how to deal with parameters. I don't think
we've quite dotted the I's and crossed the T's on how the new parameter
story interfaces with the outside world, but I'm confident that we'll
get there. We've also introduced a new defaulting story; I expect this
will generate feedback, both positive and negative... I hope the next
draft is our Last Call draft and I hope it comes out in July [2007]..."

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xproc-20070706/
See also Norm Walsh's blog: http://norman.walsh.name/2007/07/06/xproc

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Proposed Recommendations for W3C Web Services Policy 1.5
Asir Vedamuthu, Dave Orchard, Frederick Hirsch (et al, eds), W3C PRs

W3C has announceed the advancement of the Web Services Policy 1.5
specifications to Proposed Recommendation status. Public comments are
welcome through 17-August-2007. The "Web Services Policy 1.5 - Framework"
document defines a framework and a model for expressing policies that
refer to domain-specific capabilities, requirements, and general
characteristics of entities in a Web services-based system. A policy
is a collection of policy alternatives. A policy alternative is a
collection of policy assertions. A policy assertion represents a
requirement, capability, or other property of a behavior. A policy
expression is an XML Infoset representation of its policy, either in
a normal form or in its equivalent compact form. Some policy assertions
specify traditional requirements and capabilities that will manifest
themselves in the messages exchanged(e.g., authentication scheme,
transport protocol selection). Other policy assertions have no wire
manifestation in the messages exchanged, yet are relevant to service
selection and usage (e.g., privacy policy, QoS characteristics). "Web
Services Policy 1.5 - Framework" provides a single policy language to
allow both kinds of assertions to be expressed and evaluated in a
consistent manner. The "Web Services Policy 1.5 - Attachment"
specification defines two general-purpose mechanisms for associating
policies with the subjects to which they apply; the policies may be
defined as part of existing metadata about the subject or the policies
may be defined independently and associated through an external binding
to the subject. To enable Web Services Policy to be used with existing
Web service technologies, this specification describes the use of
these general-purpose mechanisms with WSDL (WSDL 1.1, WSDL 2.0 Core
Language) definitions and UDDI (UDDI API 2.0, UDDI Data Structure 2.0,
UDDI 3.0).

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-ws-policy-20070605/
See also Web Services Policy Working Group: http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/policy/

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GCN Insider: DITA to That
Joab Jackson, Government Computer News

Service-oriented architecture aims to turn computational processes into
services so they can be used for missions beyond their original scope.
Now, an emerging Extensible Markup Language (XML) product promises to
do the same for text. Developed by IBM and later released to OASIS as
an open standard, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA,
is an XML Document Type Definition that can be used to mark up different
sections of documents so they can easily be found later and reused in
other documents. Although IBM first came up with DITA for its technical
documents, it could be used across a wide range of organizational
material, said Ann Rockley, who leads the Rockley Group consulting firm.
Rockley spoke at the recent Gilbane content management conference in
Washington. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Rockley's
presentation is how easy DITA is for end users. Most good DITA-aware
editors look like a version of Word loaded with organizational style
sheets, she said. Each document has different sections, specifying title,
author, and the different topics and subtopics. Each topic or subtopic
can be specified by the user or an organizational list of topics compiled
in a component management system; these topics are indexed for later
retrieval. Reuse can happen in a number of different ways. Frequently
reused snatches of text, such as boilerplates, definitions or policy
statements, can easily be called up and placed into documents. Another
good use is for what Rockley called multichannel documents, where one
basic piece of text has to be used in multiple forms, such as in a
brochure, on a Web page or for a white paper.

http://www.gcn.com/print/26_16/44622-1.html
See also the DITA.XML.org community resource: http://dita.xml.org/

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IBM Zeroes In On Project Zero for Web 2.0 Applications
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

IBM is working on a project to enable agile development of Web 2.0
applications, but the effort has drawn criticism because it is not an
open source endeavor. Called Project Zero, it offers an environment for
building applications based on popular Web technologies. Included is a
scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP. Also featured are APIs for
developing REST-style (Representational State Transfer) services and
capabilities for mashups and rich Web interfaces. REST and Atom form
the basis of the service invocation model while JSON (JavaScript Object
Notation) and XML provide for data interchange. AJAX (Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML) is the model for a rich client in Zero. Extensive
scripting is supported. The project's Web site features an online
community and infrastructure used to develop Zero. Rather than leveraging
open source, Zero follows what IBM calls "a community-driven commercial
development process," in which contributions in the form of feedback
are welcomed. IBM sees benefits of this format as being centered on
real-time communication with users. [Web site home page: "Zero complexity.
Zero overhead. Zero obstacles. Project Zero is an incubator project
started within IBM that is focused on the agile development of the next
generation of dynamic Web applications. Project Zero introduces a
simple environment for creating, assembling and executing applications
based on popular Web technologies. The Project Zero environment includes
a scripting runtime for Groovy and PHP with application programming
interfaces optimized for producing REST-style services, integration
mash-ups and rich Web interfaces. Project Zero is now being developed
openly using a Community-Driven Commercial Development process."]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/06/project-zero_1.html
See also the Web site: http://www.projectzero.org/

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Netconf XML Schema Query
Mark Scott (ed), IETF Internet Draft

IESG has announced the publication of an Internet Draft for "Netconf
XML Schema Query" in the IETF Standards Track. The NETCONF protocol
(Request for Comments 4741, December 2006) defines a simple mechanism
through which a network device can be managed, configuration data
information can be retrieved, and new configuration data can be
uploaded and manipulated. The protocol allows the device to expose a
full, formal application programming interface (API). Applications
can use this straightforward API to send and receive full and partial
configuration data sets. The NETCONF protocol uses a remote procedure
call (RPC) paradigm. A client encodes an RPC in XML and sends it to
a server using a secure, connection-oriented session. The server
responds with a reply encoded in XML. The contents of both the request
and the response are fully described in XML DTDs or XML schemas, or
both, allowing both parties to recognize the syntax constraints imposed
on the exchange. The "Netconf XML Schema Query" document defines a
mechanism to retrieve a list of XML Schemas supported by a NETCONF
server. This is an optional capability built on top of the base
NETCONF definition. The document defines the capabilities and operations
necessary to support this service.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-scott-netconf-schema-query-00.txt
See also the NETCONF Configuration Protocol: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4741.txt

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REST vs. WS-*: War is Over (If You Want It)
David Chappell, Blog

To anybody who's paying attention and who's not a hopeless partisan,
the war between REST and WS-* is over. The war ended in a truce rather
than crushing victory for one side -- it's Korea, not World War II.
The now-obvious truth is that both technologies have value, and both
will be used going forward. If you doubt this, take a look at
Microsoft's forthcoming support for creating RESTful applications in
the next release of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The official
Java world is also on board, with the impending creation of JAX-RS.
Since both worlds also have good support for the WS-* approach,
developers will be able to choose the approach that's best for a
particular application. Two big questions remain. The first is, What
exactly is REST? By far the best and clearest definition I've seen is
provided by RESTful Web Services, a wonderful book by Leonard Richardson
and Sam Ruby. If everybody can buy into the measures of RESTfulness
this book provides, we can all avoid lots of future arguments. As a
side benefit, it will let most of us get by without reading Roy
Fielding's PhD thesis, the canonical text on REST. The second question
is, When should each approach be used? Whatever partisans may claim,
neither technology is right for every situation. While hammering out
a true understanding of this will likely take some time, the basic
outlines are clear. A RESTful approach is a natural for data-oriented
applications that focus on create/read/update/delete scenarios. Lots
and lots of apps fit this model, especially on the public Internet. A
solution based on WS-* makes more sense for service/method-oriented
applications, especially those that need more advanced behaviors such
as transactions and more-than-basic security.

http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2007/06/rest-vs-ws-war-is-over-if-you-want-it.html
See also JAX-RS, the Java API for RESTful Web Services: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=311

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The Atom Publishing Protocol
Joe Gregorio and Bill de hOra (eds), IETF Internet Draft

The IETF has issued a revised (-16) Internet Draft for "The Atom
Publishing Protocol" specification, now progressing through in the
IESG Processing/Evaluation stage. The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)
is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web
resources. The protocol is based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted
representations, where the Atom format is documented in the "Atom
Syndication Format" specification (IETF Request for Comments #4287).
APP uses HTTP (RFC 2616) and XML 1.0. The protocol supports the
creation of Web Resources and provides facilities for: (1) Collections:
Sets of Resources, which can be retrieved in whole or in part; (2)
Services: Discovery and description of Collections; (3) Editing:
Creating, editing, and deleting Resources. APP uses Atom-formatted
representations to describe the state and metadata of those Resources.
It defines how Collections of Resources can be organized, and specifies
formats to support their discovery, grouping and categorization. APP
uses HTTP methods to author Member Resources as follows: GET is used
to retrieve a representation of a known Resource. POST is used to
create a new, dynamically-named, Resource. When the client submits
non-Atom-Entry representations to a Collection for creation, two
Resources are always created -- a Media Entry for the requested
Resource, and a Media Link Entry for metadata about the Resource that
will appear in the Collection. PUT is used to edit a known Resource.
It is not used for Resource creation. DELETE is used to remove a known
Resource. Changes in -v16 include minting a new NS URI at the W3C domain:
'http://www.w3.org/2007/app'.

http://xml.coverpages.org/atom.html#Protocolv16
See also the diff: http://tools.ietf.org/wg/atompub/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-16-from-15.diff.html

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Threats to GEOPRIV Location Objects
Richard Barnes, Matt Lepinski (et al., eds), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Geographic Location/Privacy (GEOPRIV) Working Group
have published an initial Internet Draft specification "Threats to
GEOPRIV Location Objects." The memo relates to location information
as defined in RFC 4119: A Presence-based GEOPRIV Location Object Format
(Request for Comments 4119) describes an object format for carrying
geographical information on the Internet. The location object extends
the Presence Information Data Format (PIDF), which was designed for
communicating privacy-sensitive presence information and which has
similar properties. RFC 4119 defines the PIDF-LO location object format,
which extends the Presence Information Document Format to carry location
information and rules regarding transmission and processing of that
location information. A PIDF-LO document contains four essential types
of information: Identifiers for the described presentity, location
information, time-stamps, and rules. By grouping values of these various
types together within an XML structure, a PIDF-LO document encodes a
set of bindings among them. Presence-based location objects used by
Internet protocols encode bindings of location information to identities
of a presentity, with associated rules for the handling and usage of
the location object. Parties that make use of location objects rely on
the accuracy of these bindings to ensure their proper function, and
the entities that they describe rely on the proper application of the
included rules to ensure their privacy. The I-D "Threats to GEOPRIV
Location Objects" describes the space of attacks against location
objects. The threat model focuses on how location objects can be
misused or corrupted across its entire life-cycle -- a more general
type of threat than is addressed in RFC 3694, which focuses on a single
hop in a putative store-and-forward system.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-barnes-geopriv-lo-sec-00.txt
See also the GEOPRIV Working Group Charter: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/geopriv-charter.html

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Microsoft Rejects Latest Open Source License
Keith Ward, Application Development Trends

The Microsoft-Novell Linux alliance may have gotten shakier, with
Microsoft saying it doesn't recognize the latest version of the standard
license for open source software (OSS). In an recent announcement on
its Web site, Microsoft stated, in blunt fashion, that it rejects the
third iteration of the General Public License (GPLv3) governing OSS.
The statement begins: "Microsoft is not a party to the GPLv3 license
and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as
a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under
such license." GPLv3 has generated controversy for its stipulation that
recent deals Microsoft has struck with a number of Linux developers and
distributors like Linspire, Novell and Xandros will be illegal in the
future. Despite the statement, Microsoft claimed that its stance will
not affect its relationship with Novell, which was its partner in the
first patent-infringement protection deal. Under the terms of that
agreement, Microsoft said it would not hold Novell or any users of its
Linux products liable for what Microsoft claimed in May are 235 OSS
violations of its patents.

http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=20922
See also GPLv3: http://xml.coverpages.org/GNU-GPL-V3-Announce.html

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Selected From The Cover Pages, by Robin Cover
======================================================================

Six Technical Committees Proposed for the OASIS Open CSA Member Section

OASIS has published six (6) Proposed Charter documents for new Technical
Committees to be created within the Open Composite Services Architecture
(Open CSA) Member Section. Formation of new Technical Committees was
anticipated in the announcement of March 21, 2007, where eighteen
technology vendors reported that key Service Component Architecture (SCA)
and Service Data Objects (SDO) specifications had completed incubation,
and would be formally submitted to OASIS for advancement through its
open standards process. Some sixty-three (63) names are given as proposers
(or supporters) in the six TC Proposed Charters, representing thirty-two
(32) different individuals. Eleven (11) company names are associated with
the proposers, including BEA, Cape Clear, IBM, Interface21, Oracle,
Progress, Quovadx, Rogue Wave, SAP, Siemens, Sun, and TIBCO. The TC
Charters as proposed identify some fifteen OASIS specifications that build
upon the existing OSOA Service Component Architecture Version 1.0
Specifications, as described in earlier announcements. The draft charters
submitted to establish the OASIS TCs are subject to review, and published
comments are available online. The deadlines for review comments are
13-July-2007 (for SCA-Assembly TC, SCA-Policy TC) and 16-July-2007 (for
SCA-Bindings TC, SCA-J TC, SCA-BPEL TC, and SCA-C TC).

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-07-06-a.html

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XML Daily Newslink. Friday, 06 July 2007