Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 14 February 2008
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:

* ActiveBPEL Community Edition Supports WS-Human Task and BPEL4People
* Google Code Project Provides an Enterprise Java XACML Implementation
* Updated Liberty Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) Based upon Public Review
* W3C Publishes Best Practices for XML Internationalization
* Red Hat Expands JBoss SOA, Community Efforts

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

ActiveBPEL Community Edition Supports WS-Human Task and BPEL4People
Staff, Active Endpoints Announcement

Active Endpoints, Inc., inventor of visual orchestration systems (VOS),
has announced the availability of Milestone 1 of ActiveBPEL Community
Edition 5.0 Server. The ActiveBPEL engine comprehensively implements
both the BPEL4WS 1.1 specification and the WSBPEL 2.0 standard. The
engine supports the full complement of BPEL activities, event handling,
exception handling and scope/compensation management. ActiveBPEL 5.0
represents the world's first release of an open-source implementation
of both BPEL4People and WS-Human Task. These specifications allow
human interactions to be included in services-based applications. By
incorporating human tasks in composite applications, WS-Human Task and
BPEL4People expand project teams' flexibility and efficiency in
delivering standards-based solutions. With BPEL4People and WS-Human
Task, application developers no longer have to cede control of business
logic to proprietary workflow engines. Instead, these specifications
allow human interaction to become a core, natural and open part of
creating, deploying, testing and maintaining standards-based applications.
For project teams struggling with the complexity of integrating closed
workflow systems into composite applications, BPEL4People is a
breakthrough specification and makes WS-BPEL itself an even more
compelling alternative to overweight, piece-parts approaches to creating
composite applications. Active Endpoints is an author of both the
WS-Human Task and BPEL4People specifications. As a co-submitter of
these specifications to OASIS, the company will play an active role
in improving these through its participation in the OASIS WS-BPEL
Extension for People Technical Committee. By releasing ActiveBPEL 5.0
Milestone 1 to the open source community, the company hopes to gain
experience in the implementation of these specifications in order to
permit Active Endpoints to more quickly promote the specifications as
OASIS standards. Rapid finalization of these specifications will
deliver major productivity to project teams interested in modernizing
applications using standards-based technologies.

http://xml.coverpages.org/ActiveBPEL-ServerV50.html
See also WS-BPEL for People (BPEL4People) references: http://xml.coverpages.org/bpel4people.html

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

Google Code Project Provides an Enterprise Java XACML Implementation
Zian Wang, Software Announcement

The 'enterprise-java-xacml' Google Code Project provides a high
performance XACML 2.0 implementation that can used in the enterprise
environment. A first release has been announced; the software is
made available under the Apache License 2.0. Enterprise Java XACML
intends to fully implement OASIS XACML 2.0 and will support XACML
3.0 in the future. It is a totally independent implementation. It
fully implements XACML 2.0 core standard and has passed all
conformance tests. It provides PDP that can accept XACML requests
and returns XACML responses. The software is said to offer a highly
effective target indexing mechanism that greatly speeds up policy
searching: completely cached decisions that can speed up the
evaluation, and completely cached policies that can speed up the
evaluation. It supports a plugable data store mechanism: users can
implement their own data store by implementing only a few interfaces;
a file data store implementation is provided. It features a plugable
context factory: users can implement their own context factory that
wrap request/response in a specific format, and a default
implementation is supplied. A plugable logger mechanism means users
can implement their own logger mechanism: "I've provided 2 types of
logger, one is log4j, the other is a default logger; if log4j
conflicts with user's system, they may want to use this default one."
The tool supports an extensible XACML function registering mechanism;
users can write their own functions and register them to PDP and then
use in policies. The extensible attribute retriever mechanism means
that users can write their own attribute retriever to retrieve
attributes from external systems. It provides simple PAP APIs that
can be used to produce XACML policy files; users who want write an
XACML policy administrative UI can also rely on these APIs. Both
XACML APIs and an application framework are supported, which means
users can incorporate this implementation by calling XACML APIs from
their own applications. The implementation also provides a standalone
application framework that users can start and directly send XACML
request to it for evaluation. The software is distributed with unit
tests and conformance tests against XACML 2.0.

http://code.google.com/p/enterprise-java-xacml/
See also XACML references: http://xml.coverpages.org/xacml.html

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

Updated Liberty Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) Based upon Public Review
Staff, Liberty Alliance

Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a
more trusted internet for consumers, governments and businesses
worldwide, today released the latest version of the Liberty Identity
Assurance Framework (IAF). The IAF is a policy-based organizational
framework being developed collaboratively within the Liberty Alliance
Identity Assurance Expert Group and corresponding public special interest
group to advance trusted identity federations based on standardized and
certified identity assurance levels. The latest version of the IAF is
based on recent input from over 40 representatives from the global
financial services, government, telecom, healthcare, system integrator,
and technology sectors and is available for additional review and
comment. Liberty Alliance formed the Identity Assurance Expert Group
(IAEG) to foster adoption of identity trust services. Utilizing initial
contributions from the e-Authentication Partnership (EAP) and the U.S.
E-Authentication Federation, the IAEG's objective is to create a
framework of baseline policies, business rules, and commercial terms
against which identity trust services can be assessed and evaluated.
The goal is to facilitate trusted identity federation to promote
uniformity and interoperability amongst identity service providers.
The primary deliverable of IAEG is the Liberty Identity Assurance
Framework (LIAF). The LIAF leverages the EAP Trust Framework and the
US E-Authentication Federation Credential Assessment Framework (CAF)
as a baseline in forming the criteria for a harmonized, best-of-breed
industry identity assurance standard. The LIAF is a framework
supporting mutual acceptance, validation, and life cycle maintenance
across identity federations. The main components of the LIAF are
detailed discussions of Assurance Level criteria, Service and Credential
Assessment Criteria, an Accreditation and Certification Model, and
the associated business rules. Assurance Levels (ALs) are the levels
of trust associated with a credential as measured by the associated
technology, processes, and policy and practice statements. Liberty
Alliance is also announcing four public webcasts, each designed to
review and gather industry input into primary sections of the IAF as
the Framework moves to final during 2Q of 2008.

http://xml.coverpages.org/LibertyIdentityAssuranceFramework-2008.html
See also Liberty Alliance references: http://xml.coverpages.org/libertyAlliance.html

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

W3C Publishes Best Practices for XML Internationalization
Yves Savourel, Jirka Kosek, and Richard Ishida; W3C WG Note

W3C's Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has published a
Group Note for "Best Practices for XML Internationalization." The
specification provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents
and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best
practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications,
as well as the author of XML content to create material in different
languages. This document and "Internationalization Tag Set (ITS)
Version 1.0" implement requirements formulated in "Internationalization
and Localization Markup Requirements." This note is intended to
complement the W3C ITS Recommendation, since not all
internationalization-related issues can be resolved by the special
markup described in ITS. The best practices in this document therefore
go beyond application of ITS markup to address a number of problems
that can be avoided by correctly designing the XML format, and by
applying a additional guidelines when developing content. Guidelines
for designers and developers of XML applications are presented in
three sections. Section 2 "When Designing an XML Application" provides
a list of some of the important design choices you should make in
order to ensure the internationalization of your format. Section 4
"Generic Techniques" provides additional generic techniques such as
writing ITS rules or adding an attribute to a schema; such techniques
apply to many of the best practices. Section 5 "ITS Applied to
Existing Formats" provides a set of concrete examples on how to apply
ITS to existing XML based formats; this section illustrates many of
the guidelines in this document. Guidelines for users and authors of
XML content are outlined in other document sections. Section 3 "When
Authoring XML Content" provides a number of guidelines on how to create
content with internationalization in mind. Many of these best practices
are relevant regardless of whether or not your XML format was developed
especially for internationalization. Section 4.1 "Writing ITS Rules"
provides practical guidelines on how to write ITS rules. Such
techniques may be useful when applying some of the more advanced
authoring best practices.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xml-i18n-bp-20080213/
See also the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group: http://www.w3.org/International/its/

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

Red Hat Expands JBoss SOA, Community Efforts
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com

Red Hat is out this week with a series of initiatives to further expand
and develop its JBoss middleware platform. On the commercially
available product side there is the JBoss SOA platform and on the
community side there are three separate projects including Black Tie
(for BEA Tuxedo migration), RHQ (a management effort for middleware
management) and SOA Governance. All told, the projects are part of Red
Hat's effort to accelerate JBoss to take on 50 percent of the enterprise
middleware market. During a conference call with the media, JBoss CTO
Sacha Labourey explained that the Black Tie effort came out of JBoss's
acquisition of Ajuna in 2005. The goal of Black Tie is simple: to get
users of BEA's Tuxedo transaction server. Black Tie which is expected
to have its first open source release in the next 60 days will allow
for interoperability with Tuxedo as a transaction server. Labourey
claimed it could possibly serve as a replacement to Tuxedo in certain
scenarios as well. In terms of governance, JBoss is kicking off a series
of projects all under the larger banner of SOA governance. Craig Muzilla,
VP Middleware Business at Red Hat, explained that all of the SOA
governance projects are aimed at helping the adoption of JBoss's
middleware. While Muzilla could not provide all the hard details on the
SOA governance project he did indicate that there will be at least
three core areas including registry, repository and policy management.
In addition to the new open source efforts, JBoss also announced the
general availability of its SOA platform. The JBoss SOA platform is an
integrated set of JBoss technologies that have been combined to form a
full SOA solution. Among the JBoss tools included in JBoss SOA is JBoss
ESB (for service integration), jBPM (for workflow) and JBoss Rules
(for policy).

http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3728296/Red+Hat+Expands+JBoss+SOA+and+Community+Efforts.htm

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

XML Daily Newslink and Cover Pages are sponsored by:

BEA Systems, Inc. http://www.bea.com
EDS http://www.eds.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 archive: http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletterArchive.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/

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

Back to newsletter list

Date:

From:

Subject:

XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 14 February 2008