Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 28 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
IBM Corporation http://www.ibm.com
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HEADLINES:

* Progress Software Adds Cross-Process Visibility with Actional 7.1
* Will HP's Extended GIF Partnership Help With SOA Interoperability?
* Validator for XML Schema: XSV Version 3.1.1
* Battle on Microsoft Standard Push
* WSO2 Injects Mashups Into The Enterprise
* ILOG Updates Rules; Now Supports .NET 3.0 and WCF
* MarkLogic Server Used in Princeton Theological Seminary Digital Library

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Progress Software Adds Cross-Process Visibility with Actional 7.1
Dana Gardner, ZDNet Blogs

Progress Software has beefed up its Actional SOA management offerings
with the release of Progress Actional 7.1, which provides unified
visibility into business processes, and connects those business processes
to the underlying SOA infrastructure. Key features of the latest release
include an automatic discovery feature that keeps information accurate,
allowing users to compare how processes change from day to day. User can
also set thresholds for alters about behavior and performance, and policy
enforcement will automatically adjust when services or processes change.
Progress, Bedford, Mass., added the Actional product line to its SOA
arsenal just a little over two years ago with the acquisition of Actional
Corporation in a $32-million deal. Progress said that Actional 7.1 will
integrate with Lombardi TeamWorks, and the company plans to provide native
support for other business-process management (BPM) solutions, including
offerings from Software AG and Fujitsu. Actional also includes a software
development kit (SDK) that allows third parties to add support for other
BPM and SOA infrastructure products. The new version also includes support
for non-XML payload data, which is designed to allow users to inspect
and analyze message content in such existing services as Remote Method
Invocation (RMI) and Enterprise JavaBean (EJB).

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2599
See also InfoWorld: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/27/Progress-views-BPM-with-Actional-SOA-tool_1.html

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Will HP's Extended GIF Partnership Help With SOA Interoperability?
Andy Dornan, Network Computing

HP today launched new versions of Systinet and SOA Manager, adding new
features aimed at run-time governance " enforcing the policies that
traditional design-time registries and repositories define. It is also
announcing a large expansion of its Governance Interoperability Framework
(GIF), a set of specifications that smooth links between the registry
or repository and other components. The expansion of GIF is largely
through ten new partners, all of whom will support the spec. The single
most important new partner is Oracle, which is already a major player
in SOA and set to become moreso with its acquisition of BEA, already a
GIF member. The most interesting looks like LogicLibrary, a specialist
registry/repository vendor and Systinet competitor. Its support turns
GIF from what had been a Systinet-centric program into something more
vendor neutral. Most of the XML security gateway industry have also
joined the GIF program: HP is announcing support form Cisco Systems,
Alcatel-Lucent, Vordel and Layer 7 Technologies, which leaves IBM
DataPower the only major player in XML security that's not involved.
The other four new members are orchestration specialist Active Endpoints
and Web 2.0 development tool vendors JackBe, Nexaweb and Sonoa Systems,
which could help to bridge the gap between rich Internet applications
and SOA back end systems. But not everyone has embraced GIF. The main
competitor is SOA Link, a similar program started by Infravio before
it was acquired by webMethods and then Software AG. HP's new software
(Systinet 2.52 and SOA Manager 2.5) tries to close the loop between
design-time governance and run-time management, something several other
vendors are working on.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/channels/appinfrastructure/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205920526
See also the HP press kit: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/soa/

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Validator for XML Schema: XSV Version 3.1.1
Henry S. Thompson, Software Announcement

Henry S. Thompson (W3C Technical Advisory Group; HCRC Language Technology
Group, University of Edinburgh) announced the release of a vew version
of the XML Schema Validator (XSV). XSV is an open source (GPLed)
work-in-progress attempt at a conformant schema-aware processor, as
defined by XML Schema Part 1: Structures, Second Edition of
28-October-2004. The simplest way to use XSV is via a form-based
interface on the web. There is a Win32 one-click installation, and source
distributions are available for the more adventurous. All installers are
now up-to-date: Windoz executable, .deb, .rpm and source versions. The
major changes since the last public release are: (1) corner cases for
nested numeric exponents are handled correctly; (2) XSV no longer requires
PyLTXML (our fast Python/C XML parser), will run without it, provided
you have PyXML installed. XSV can be run with various flags to control
the kind and level of validation. If you enter more than one URI, the
second etc. will be used to schema-validate the document at the first
URI. "Show Warnings" will display warning messages, e.g. about use of
wildcards "Keep Going" enables continuation of schema-validation after
finding errors. Check as complete schema: Normally XSV interprets its
first input as a document to be validated, and the remaining inputs,
if any, as schema documents for use in that validation. This means that
if the only input is a schema document, XSV normally just validates that
document against the Schema for Schema Documents (XMLSchema.xsd), but
does not also check the Schema REC's constraints on the corresponding
schema. Ticking the "Check as complete schema" box causes XSV to treat
all its inputs as schema documents, check them against the Schema for
Schema Documents and check the Schema REC's constraints on the
corresponding schema.

http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/xsv-status.html
See also the online form-based interface from W3C: http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv

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Battle on Microsoft Standard Push
Karen Dearne, Australian IT

A global war has broken out over Microsoft's bid to make the XML document
format used in Office 2007 an international standard. Rivals and the
open-source community fear a yes vote for Office Open XML will stymie
the existing ISO file standard, OpenDocument Format, and give Microsoft
an ongoing commercial advantage. The file format standard is a key
factor in ensuring present and future access to digital documents used
by business or held in archives. The aim is to ensure
backward-compatibility despite changes in software and publishing
technologies. The software giant has been trying to secure national
votes for a coming ISO ballot on OOXML, after the first ballot failed
last September. IBM has been particularly outspoken about the issue, but
local government programs executive Kaaren Koomen insists it's not
simply a battle between two multinationals. "ISO has a policy that,
wherever possible, there should only be one standard to maximise
interoperability and functionality. We have an international standard
for digital documentation, ODF, which was developed by Microsoft, IBM,
Sun, Oracle and the open-source community some years back. Microsoft
pulled out of that process and decided to develop its own standard, OOXML.
Now Microsoft is trying to convince the rest of the ICT community to
adopt its standard." Microsoft Australia chief technology officer Greg
Stone says the company was simply responding to repeated requests to
make its specification available. Rick Jelliffe, a developer of XML-based
desktop tools and a long-standing participant in standards work, says
the bottom line for Microsoft is keeping in the game. "This is really
important for them. My take is that over the past 10 years Microsoft
has lost its bread-and-butter systems integrator market. It had a
thriving sector that was devoted and tied to it, but the advent of web
technologies meant the old advantages of lock-in to proprietary formats
suddenly became disadvantages, because you can't integrate with other
systems."

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23122041-24169,00.html

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WSO2 Injects Mashups Into The Enterprise
Charles Babcock, InformationWeek

WSO2's Mashup Server draws together a variety of enterprise information
or services and allows them to be combined into a new application or
"mashup." Mashups are typically associated with end user applications
that make use of information or services readily available on the Web,
such as an apartment-hunting application that taps intoGoogle Maps.
WSO2 is extending the mashup idea to inside the enterprise. Any internal
information or service that can be presented as a Web service may be
found by Mashup Server and utilized as part of a new application, said
Jonathan Marsh, WSO2 director of mashup technologies. Mashup Server
relies on the popular Javascript language to define what resources are
going to be tapped for a new application. Mashup Server includes an
administrative user interface where Javascript can be used to identify
and sequence services. But its Javascript may also be written wherever
the developer prefers to compose it, which could include a simple text
editor or an established integrated development environment, then
imported into the Mashup Server, said Marsh. The WSO2 Enterprise Service
Bus is an integration broker meant to serve as a basis for building out
services oriented architecture. Its built on top of Synapse, an Apache
incubator project that translates between applications and provides
automatic routing of XML messages. Mashup Server can discover new
services and capture information about them, which it stores for use
in future mash-ups WSO2 Mashup Server is released under the Apache
License Version 2.0. It features: (1) support for consuming and deploying
services using dynamic scripting languages; (2) trivial deployment and
redeployment; (3) automatic and UI-based generation of Web services
artifacts -- e.g. wsdl, schema, policy; (4) a set of gateways into a
variety of information sources, including SOAP and POX/REST Web services,
as well as plain old Web pages; (5) human-consumable results through a
variety of user interfaces including Web pages, portals, e-mail, Instant
Messenger service, Short Message Service (SMS), etc.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205919042
See also the Mashup Server product description: http://wso2.org/projects/mashup

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ILOG Updates Rules; Now Supports .NET 3.0 and WCF
Staff, DDJ

ILOG has announced its ILOG Rules for .NET 3.0, a tool that lets you
edit and manage business rules in Microsoft Word and Excel through a
new "Rules" tab in the Office 2007 toolbar or "ribbon". ILOG Rules for
.NET 3.0 also provides support for Windows Communication Foundation
(WCF), Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented
(SOA) applications. Debuting with this release, ILOG Rules for .NET 3.0
has a modular architecture similar to its sister product, ILOG JRules,
for Java. These modules include a dedicated rule authoring environment
for business users called "Rule Solutions for Office." Other features
include: (1) Portable Rule Editing Environment for Business users. Rule
Solutions for Office and Rule Team Server for SharePoint Services
combined to promote a document-centric approach to rule management,
leveraging new features in Office 2007. Users collaborate easily, taking
rules where Word documents go -- disconnected, routed, attached, and
printed. (2) Out-of-the-box SOA deployment using Rule Execution Server
for .NET. Traditionally, SOA investments have been expensive. (3) Enhanced
Rule Management for Business Analysts. Business analysts can more easily
collaborate with developers working on a common set of rules in their
familiar environment. (4) Enhanced performance with RetePlus and
FastPath available for the first time on .NET Framework. In this
version, ILOG is introducing RetePlus and sequential execution with
FastPath for .NET platform. The combination of RetePlus and FastPath
in ILOG Rules for .NET 3.0 eliminates the need for a customer to
compromise when selecting an algorithm.

http://www.ddj.com/windows/205917822
See also the product description: http://www.ilog.com/products/jrules/

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MarkLogic Server Used in Princeton Theological Seminary Digital Library
Staff, MarkLogic Announcement

Mark Logic Corporation announced that Princeton Theological Seminary has
implemented MarkLogic Server as the new basis for the library's new
digital collection. The library has launched a system for publishing
digital content to give users better access to and navigation through
more than 100,000 digital objects, including digitized representations
of historic photographs, portraits, artifacts, and journals. This
provides library members -- both seminary students pursuing advanced
degrees in divinity or theology, as well as the general public -- with
new levels of access and interactivity with historical and modern
theological works. The Seminary Library implemented MarkLogic Server to
enhance the library's existing browsing services with search and faceted
navigation including the Web 2.0 concept of user-tagging. Based on a
model of tag clouds, users apply key words to items in the digital archive,
which are then able to be used as search tools or for browsing via faceted
navigation. The digital collection is divided into visual collections
and textual collections. Mark Logic replaced the existing digital
collections infrastructure and provided a fixed, index-based navigation
of individual and multipart digital works which have been scanned from
a wealth of content related to the history of Princeton Seminary. The
index and holding metadata are stored in the metadata encoding and
transcription standard (METS), a library metadata XML standard developed
by the Library of Congress. The METS XML files describe books and journals
consisting of 100s of pages of content. Previously, access to the
collection would result in interminable wait times, often with the
browser simply timing out. Using MarkLogic, the Seminary Library can
run these queries in XQuery, returning results on these large XML files
often in less than a second and never more than three seconds.

http://www.marklogic.com/press/news_pr_07_Princeton_Theological_Seminary_Deploys_Mark_Logic.html
See also the library collections: http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/

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XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 28 January 2008