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XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 22 January 2008
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
BEA Systems, Inc. http://www.bea.com
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HEADLINES:

* SAML: The Master Key?
* Thinking About HTML5
* Wal-Mart Is Piloting E-Health Record System
* IE Struggles to Be Compatible
* Ajax and XML: Use Ajax Techniques to Create Input Forms
* Zend Targets Enterprise PHP with App Server, IDE

COVER PAGES:

* Public Working Draft for HTML 5: A Vocabulary and Associated APIs
for HTML and XHTML

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SAML: The Master Key?
Joab Jackson, Government Computer News

Imagine a day when instead of setting up an account with each
organization you do business with, you set up a single account, which
all the parties can consult. Such a setup could be useful for federal
agencies for a number of reasons. For one, federal employees often
need to access systems and data held by agencies other than their own.
For another, e-government initiatives involve people who often hold
no government-recognized credentials. How does the government
authenticate their identities? The General Services Administration's
E-Authentication Identity Federation initiative can meet these needs,
said David Temoshok, director of identity policy and management at
GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy. The program is a central hub
for facilitating interactions among different organizations. And one
of the ways E-Authentication can offer this service is through an
emerging Extensible Markup Language-based standard, called the Security
Assertion Markup Language (SAML), which was first developed by OASIS
and later adopted by the Liberty Alliance as the backbone for its
efforts to offer tools for federated network identity... Through the
Liberty Alliance, GSA also maintains a list of SAML-based products
that are interoperable. Like the common terminology, this streamlines
the process of setting up an authenticating relationship with another
party. In September [2007], GSA mandated that all products undergoing
SAML interoperability testing be certified to be interoperable with
Version 2.0 of SAML.

http://www.gcn.com/print/27_2/45690-1.html
See also SAML references: http://xml.coverpages.org/saml.html#JacksonSAML-GSA

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Thinking About HTML5
Norm Walsh, Blog

HTML 5 is big. Big in a lot of different ways. I'm trying to understand
some of them. Let the random mutterings begin... The genesis of this
essay was some thinking about validity, well-formedness, markup
minimization, and parsing. The design space for markup, especially
markup that will be authored by hand (directly or indirectly), is pretty
big. It's interesting to compare how SGML, XML, and HTML 5 fit in that
space. SGML was designed with ease of authoring in mind, at least to
the extent that minimizing how much markup one had to type was an ease
to authoring. Because SGML required (pre-corrigendum[1]) all documents
to be valid, this flexibility came at a terrible price. SGML parsers
were fiendishly hard to implement correctly. In the SGML world, those
typing conveniences go hand-in-hand with validity. XML was designed
with ease of parsing in mind. In particular, it relaxed the validity
constraint and obviated the need for a DTDs. Without a DTD, it's
impossible to know where implied markup boundaries should go, so you
can't have any. Because you don't know the vocabulary. SGML and XML
are both 'meta markup languages': they have no defined vocabulary. SGML
includes a mechanism that allows users to invent their own tag
vocabularies; XML has several such mechanisms. HTML 5, in contrast, is
explicitly a single vocabulary (or perhaps a small family of vocabularies).
As such, it would be much less interesting where it not for two facts:
first, it is a revision of the single most important vocabulary on the
p***t and second, it is neither SGML nor XML. One of the two 'authoring
formats' described by the HTML 5 specification is a custom one. The other
is XML, but in fact both are described as just concrete syntaxes for
'an abstract language for describing documents and applications' which
is what is really being defined. The goal of the custom parser, as I
understand it, is that it imposes an unambiguous HTML 5 interpretation
on any random stream of characters... While that offers some apparent
benefits to end users (they don't for example, have to remember to type
quotes around their attribute values), I harbor some reservations about
whether or not this strategy will be a good thing for the broader markup
community in the long run.

http://norman.walsh.name/2008/01/22/html5
See also the HTML5 news story and references: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2008-01-22-a.html#references

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Wal-Mart Is Piloting E-Health Record System
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, InformationWeek

A small number of employees have been given secure access to digitized
information -- such as prescription drug records, lab results, and more --
about their own personal health. The rollout by Wal-Mart is part of a
larger project announced more than a year ago by Dossia, a coalition
that includes Wal-Mart and several other large employers, including
Intel, British Petroleum, Pitney Bowes, Cardinal Health, Applied Materials,
AT&T, and Sanofi-Aventis. Dossia is partnering with Children's Hospital
Boston in developing the e-health system, which is based on Indivo, a
scalable, secure, open-source personal health record system that
Children's Hospital built in 1998 for its patients. By providing Wal-Mart
workers with e-health records, the company believes employees will be
more "engaged in their own healthcare" and better equipped to make good
decisions regarding their health. [Note: According to an article in
'BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making' (12-September-2007)
"personally controlled health records (PCHRs), a subset of personal health
records (PHRs), enable a patient to assemble, maintain and manage a
secure copy of his or her medical data. Indivo is an open source, open
standards PCHR with an open application programming interface. The
article describes how the PCHR platform can provide standard building
blocks for networked PHR applications. Indivo allows the ready integration
of diverse sources of medical data under a patient's control through the
use of standards-based communication protocols and APIs for connecting
PCHRs to existing and future health information systems. The approach to
interoperability of PCHRs with electronic medical records (EMRs) and
other information systems relies on a simple principle -- use
widely-adopted, standardized methods for exchanging (importing and
exporting) data. Currently, Indivo handles both the Continuity of Care
Record (CCR) and the Continuity of Care Document (CCD) for such information
transfer and is working closely with the Healthcare Information Technology
Standards Panel (HITSP) on interoperability. Standard coding systems,
such as LOINC, may be used when the source data provider supports them.
Our mechanism for importing data from EMRs and other sources, the
subscription agent, is discussed below. The Indivo architecture is
document-centric, with a document model adapted for information needed
by patientcentric applications, rather than one which simply wraps
electronic health record data."]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205915101
See also the BMC Medical Informatics article: http://xml.coverpages.org/Mandl-Simons-Indivo-2007-09.pdf

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IE Struggles to Be Compatible
Joe Wilcox, eWEEK

There's a new browser war brewing, and it's not between Microsoft and
Mozilla. Internet Explorer is in a state of conflict with itself and
Web standards. The conflict will expand next month, when Microsoft
sends enterprises an Internet Explorer 7 Valentine. On February 12, IE
7 will dispatch through WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). The
days of enterprises blocking the browser will end. Desktops running
Windows XP and IE 6 will get the update. Those running Windows Vista
already have it. IE 7 is notorious for breaking applications and some
Web sites, and the reasons for both calamities are somewhat different.
Security architectural changes, mainly around ActiveX controls, are
the compatibility killer for many homegrown applications and for some
Web sites. Microsoft's efforts to make Internet Explorer a
standards-based browser has caused Web site compatibility problems...
In a long blog posted overnight, Chris Wilson, Microsoft's IE platform
architect, comes clean about efforts to achieve some kind of balance
between standards compliance and backwards compatibility. It's an ugly
story that he tells. But they say that confession is good for the soul --
or perhaps software development. To me, the scariest part of Wilson's
story is what's not yet written: IE 8. Microsoft's solution : Put more
onus on Web developers, which must insert a tag for rightly rendering
the content in the most standards way. IE 8 will keep the same quirks
and standards modes as IE 7. What he's really say is this: IE 7 broke
the Web once, and Microsoft doesn't want IE 8 to do the same. So for
the mess of DOCTYPE rendering modes everywhere, IE 8 will hold to the
IE 7 status quo. But to get the benefits of the new IE 8 rendering
engine, Web developers will have to tag their sites to support the new
browser. I wouldn't exactly call that a formula for mass adoption.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/ie_struggles_to_be_compatibile.html
See also on IE 8: http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/01/ie-lock-in

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Ajax and XML: Use Ajax Techniques to Create Input Forms
Jack D. Herrington, IBM developerWorks

Augmenting your HTML forms with Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax)
callbacks to the server is a practical way to add Web 2.0 functionality
to your application. When you think about Web 2.0 applications, often
the most glamorous of them come to mind: the video of YouTube, the
über-cool scrolling map of Google Maps, the geo-location functionality
in Flikr. Often overlooked in such sites, however, is the humble HTML
form that has undergone a big transformation with the popularization of
Ajax technology. In this article, I show you how to use the Prototype.js
JavaScript library to solve common user experience problems as you
augment forms with Ajax code. You will discover a variety of techniques
to add Ajax code and enhance the user experience for PHP applications.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-ajaxxml9/

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Zend Targets Enterprise PHP with App Server, IDE
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Focusing on the enterprise, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) tools vendor
Zend Technologies is shipping Tuesday version 3.6 of its Zend Platform
application server for PHP as well as Zend Studio for Eclipse, an IDE
for PHP based on Eclipse open source technology. Featured in Zend
Platform 3.6 are capabilities to monitor HTTP, Apache, and Java events;
expanded performance alerts; and better diagnostics through the
debugging of production problems on development servers. These
improvements are part of Zend Platform's "PHP intelligence" functions
for monitoring PHP application performance. Zend Platform monitors PHP
applications in real time, reporting on script errors, database and
performance issues, and other matters. Downtime is reduced by recording
the full context for reported problems to enable root cause diagnostics
and short time to resolution. Also highlighted in version 3.6 are
automatic output compression to save bandwidth and enhanced job queues
for deferred and offline processing. An improved download server
optimizes delivery of large content and media files. Version 3.6 also
features expanded options for caching content, with support for file
or URL-based caching, client-side caching, and in-memory or disk-based
caching... Zend Studio for Eclipse is built on top of the Eclipse PDT
(PHP Development Tools) project. Studio improves the quality of PHP
applications, speeds development cycles, and simplifies complex projects.
It features a set of editing, debugging, analysis, and database tools.
Agile development processes are supported, such as unit testing,
refactoring, and code coverage. Eclipse plug-ins can be accessed for
capabilities such as database access and source control.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/21/php-zend_1.html

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

Public Working Draft for HTML 5: A Vocabulary and Associated APIs for
HTML and XHTML

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the publication of
a First Public Working Draft of HTML 5: A Vocabulary and Associated
APIs for HTML and XHTML. The specification is intended to replace, viz.,
become the new version of, what was previously defined in the HTML4,
XHTML 1.x, and DOM2 HTML specifications. The HTML 5 specification defines
the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: HTML.
In this version: (1) new features are introduced to help Web application
authors, (2) new elements are introduced based on research into
prevailing authoring practices, and (3) special attention has been given
to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to
improve interoperability. The new features are presented in the companion
Working Draft HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4. According to the W3C
announcement, the HTML 5 specification "helps to improve interoperability
and reduce software costs by giving precise rules not only about how to
handle all correct HTML documents but also how to recover from errors.
Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard
that allows people to create Web applications that interoperate across
desktop and mobile platforms. Some of the most interesting new features
for authors are APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and
controlling audio and video content, maintaining persistent client-side
data storage, and for enabling users to edit documents and parts of
documents interactively." The new specification differs from previous
versions of "HTML" in that it defines an abstract language for describing
documents and applications, as well as some APIs for interacting with
in-memory representations of resources that use this language.

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2008-01-22-a.html

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XML Daily Newslink and Cover Pages are sponsored by:

BEA Systems, Inc. http://www.bea.com
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