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XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 08 April 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:

* DMTF SM CLP Specification Adopted as an ANSI INCITS Standard
* First Public Draft: Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) Knowledgebase
* New WSO2 Identity Solution Feature-Rich with OpenID
* Google App Engine Supports Scalable Application Development
* Cool URIs for the Semantic Web
* Intel Releases SOA Security Toolkit
* SCA Java EE Integration Specification Version 0.9
* RSA 2008: BT Trials Federated Identity Management

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DMTF SM CLP Specification Adopted as ANSI INCITS Standard
Staff, DMTF Announcement

The Distributed Management Task Force announced a major technology
milestone in achieving "National Recognition with a Newly Approved ANSI
Standard." Its Server Management Command Line Protocol (SM CLP)
specification, a key component of DMTF's Systems Management Architecture
for Server Hardware (SMASH) initiative, has been approved as an American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) InterNational Committee for
Information Technology Standards (INCITS) standard. DMTF will continue
to work with INCITS to submit the new ANSI standard to the International
Standards Organization/ International Electrotechnical Commission
(ISO/IEC) Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) for approval as an
international standard. The INCITS Executive Board recently approved the
SM CLP standard, which has been designated ANSI INCITS 438-2008. INCITS
is accredited by ANSI, the organization that oversees the development of
American National Standards by accrediting the procedures of
standards-developing organizations, such as INCITS. SM CLP (DSP0214) is
a part of DMTF's SMASH initiative, which is a suite of specifications
that deliver architectural semantics, industry standard protocols and
profiles to unify the management of the data center. The SM CLP standard
was driven by a market requirement for a common command language to
manage a heterogeneous server environment. Platform vendors provide tools
and commands in order to perform systems management on their servers.
SM CLP unifies management of multi-vendor servers by providing a common
command language for key server management tasks. The spec also enables
common scripting and automation using a variety of tools. The SM CLP spec
allows management solution vendors to deliver many benefits to IT
customers. The spec enables data center administrators to securely manage
their heterogeneous server environments using a command line protocol
and a common set of commands. SM CLP also enables the development of
common scripts to increase data center automation, which can help
significantly reduce management costs... The CLP is defined as a
character-based message protocol and not as an interface, in a fashion
similar to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (RFC 2821). The CLP is a
command/response protocol, which means that a text command message is
transmitted from the Client over the transport protocol to the
Manageability Access Point (MAP). The MAP receives the command and
processes it. A text response message is then transmitted from the MAP
back to the Client... The CLP supports generating XML output data
(Extensible Markup Language, Third edition), as well as keyword mode
and modes for plain text output. XML was chosen as a supported output
format due to its acceptance in the industry, establishment as a
standard, and the need for Clients to import data obtained through the
CLP into other applications.

http://xml.coverpages.org/DMTF-SMCLP-Approved.html

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First Public Draft: Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) Knowledgebase
M. Scott Marshall and Eric Prud'hommeaux, W3C Technical Report

Members of the W3C Semantic Web in Health Care and Life Sciences
Interest Group (HCLS) have released a First Working Draft for a "HCLS
Knowledgebase" specification. This document is one of two initial WDs.
The HCLS Knowledgebase (HCLS-KB) is a biomedical knowledge base that
integrates 15 distinct data sources using currently available Semantic
Web Technologies such as the W3C standard Web Ontology Language (OWL)
and Resource Description Framework (RDF). This report outlines which
resources were integrated, how the KB was constructed using freely
available triple store technology, how it can be queried using the W3C
Recommended RDF query language SPARQL, and what resources and inferences
are involved in answering complex queries. While the utility of the KB
is illustrated by identifying a set of genes involved in Alzheimer's
Disease, the approach described here can be applied to any use case
that integrates data from multiple domains. A second document
"Experiences with the Conversion of SenseLab databases to RDF/OWL"
shares implementation experience of the Yale Center for Medical
Informatics: "One of the challenges facing Semantic Web for Health
Care and Life Sciences is that of converting relational databases
into Semantic Web format. The issues and the steps involved in such
a conversion have not been well documented. To this end, we have
created this document to describe the process of converting SenseLab
databases into OWL. SenseLab is a collection of relational (Oracle)
databases for neuroscientific research. The conversion of these
databases into RDF/OWL format is an important step towards realizing
the benefits of Semantic Web in integrative neuroscience research.
This document describes how we represented some of the SenseLab
databases in Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology
Language (OWL), and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of
these representations. Our OWL representation is based on the reuse
of existing standard OWL ontologies developed in the biomedical
ontology communities." The mission of the W3C Health Care and Life
Sciences (HCLS) Interest Group is to show how to use Semantic Web
technology to answer cross-disciplinary questions in life science that
have, until now, been prohibitively difficult to research. The
success of the group continues to draw industry interest. W3C Members
are currently reviewing a draft charter that would enable the renewed
HCLS Interest Group to develop and support use cases that have clear
scientific, business and/or technical value, using Semantic Web
technologies in three areas: life science, translational medicine,
and health care. W3C invites Members to review the draft charter
(which is public during the review), and encourages those who are
interested in using the Semantic Web to solve knowledge representation
and integration on a large scale to join the Interest Group.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-hcls-kb-20080404/
See also the W3C news item: http://www.w3.org/News/2008#item64

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New WSO2 Identity Solution Feature-Rich with OpenID
Staff, WSO2 Announcement

Developers today announced the "WSO2 Identity Solution", which enables
LAMP and Java websites to provide strong authentication based on the
new interoperable Microsoft CardSpace technology. New features in
version 1.5 include: (1) OpenID Provider and relying party component
support; (2) OpenID information cards based on user name-token credential
and self issued credential; (3) SAML 2.0 support. "This new release
includes OpenID and OpenID Information Cards, further enhancing the WSO2
Identity Solution to cater to a wider audience for web based
authentication. OpenID is a key feature in decentralizing single sign-on,
much favored by many users. The WSO2 Identity Solution is built on the
open standards Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) and WS-Trust.
This version supports SAML version 2.0 in addition to 1.1 which was
available in the previous version of the WSO2 Identity Solution. WSO2's
open source security offering features an easy-to-use Identity Provider
that is controlled by a simple Web-based management console and supports
interoperability with multiple vendors' CardSpace components. This
includes those provided by Microsoft .NET. The WSO2 Identity Solution
also works with current enterprise identity directories, such as those
based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Microsoft
Active Directory, allowing them to leverage their existing infrastructure.
In addition to the Identity Provider the WSO2 Identity Solution provides
a Relying Party Component Set which plugs into the most common Web
servers to add support for CardSpace authentication and now OpenID."
The software is available for download, governed by the open source
Apache License, Version 2.0.

http://wso2.org/project/solutions/identity/1.5/docs/release-notes.html
See also the WSO2 Identity Solution project web site: http://wso2.org/downloads/solutions/identity

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Google App Engine Supports Scalable Application Development
Staff, Google Announcement

Google has announced the availability of its free Google App Engine which
provides a fully-integrated application environment, making it "easy
to build scalable applications that grow from one user to millions of
users without infrastructure headaches." According to the Google
announcement, "Google App Engine gives you access to the same building
blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to
build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with
large amounts of data. The development environment includes the following
features: (1) Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web
technologies; (2) Persistent storage powered by Bigtable and GFS [Google
File System, a scalable distributed file system for large distributed
data-intensive applications] with queries, sorting, and transactions;
(3) Automatic scaling and load balancing; (4) Google APIs for
authenticating users and sending email; (5) Fully featured local
development environment. App Engine applications are implemented using
the Python programming language. The App Engine Python runtime environment
includes a specialized version of the Python interpreter, the standard
Python library, libraries and APIs for App Engine, and a standard
interface to the web server layer. Google App Engine and Django both
have the ability to use the WSGI standard to run applications. As a result,
it is possible to use nearly the entire Django stack on Google App Engine,
including middleware. As a developer, the only necessary adjustment is
modifying your Django data models to make use of the Google App Engine
Datastore API to interface with the fast, scalable Google App Engine
datastore. Since both Django and Google App Engine have a similar concept
of models, as a Django developer, you can quickly adjust your application
to use our datastore. Google App Engine packages these building blocks
and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to
focus on writing code and improving your application... This preview of
Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign
up, and we plan to increase that number in near future. During this
preview period, applications are limited to 500MB of storage, 200M
megacycles of CPU per day, and 10GB bandwidth per day. We expect most
applications will be able to serve around 5 million pageviews per month.
In the future, these limited quotas will remain free, and developers will
be able to purchase additional resources as needed..."

http://code.google.com/appengine/
See also the TechCrunch review: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/techcrunch-labs-our-experience-building-and-launching-app-on-google-app-engine/

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Cool URIs for the Semantic Web
Leo Sauermann and Richard Cyganiak (eds), W3C Interest Group Note

Members of the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest
Group have published an Interest Group Note "Cool URIs for the Semantic
Web." It constitutes a tutorial explaining decisions of the Technical
Architecture Group (TAG) for newcomers to Semantic Web technologies. The
document was initially based on the DFKI Technical Memo TM-07-01, 'Cool
URIs for the Semantic Web' and was subsequently published as a W3C
Working draft in December 2007, and again in March 2008 by the Semantic
Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group of the W3C, part of the
W3C Semantic Web Activity. The drafts were publicly reviewed, especially
by the TAG and the Semantic Web Deployment Group (SWD). Summary: The
Resource Description Framework RDF allows users to describe both Web
documents and concepts from the real world -- people, organisations,
topics, things -- in a computer-processable way. Publishing such
descriptions on the Web creates the Semantic Web. URIs (Uniform Resource
Identifiers) are very important, providing both the core of the framework
itself and the link between RDF and the Web. This document presents
guidelines for their effective use. It discusses two strategies, called
303 URIs and hash URIs. It gives pointers to several Web sites that use
these solutions, and briefly discusses why several other proposals have
problems. Given only a URI, machines and people should be able to retrieve
a description about the resource identified by the URI from the Web. Such
a look-up mechanism is important to establish shared understanding of
what a URI identifies. Machines should get RDF data and humans should get
a readable representation, such as HTML. The standard Web transfer protocol,
HTTP, should be used. There should be no confusion between identifiers
for Web documents and identifiers for other resources. URIs are meant
to identify only one of them, so one URI can't stand for both a Web
document and a real-world object.

http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/
See also the announcement: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2008Apr/0038.html

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Intel Releases SOA Security Toolkit
Staff, DDJ

Intel has introduced its SOA Security Toolkit as a release candidate.
Part of Intel's family of XML tools, the toolkit is a high-performance
software module that addresses the confidentiality needs of
services-oriented architectures (SOA) by providing XML digital
signatures, encryption, and decryption capabilities for SOAP protocol
messages. Enterprises adopting and deploying Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) solutions rely on message formats defined in XML
(Extensible Markup Language). The extensibility, verbosity and
structured nature of XML create performance challenges for software
developers seeking to provide content security in this dynamic,
heterogeneous environment. The Intel SOA Security Toolkit is standards
compliant, for easy integration into existing XML processing environments
and is optimized to support the authentication, confidentiality and
integrity of complex and large-size XML documents. The Intel SOA Security
Toolkit 1.0 for Java environments is a high-performance policy-driven
API available for Linux and Windows. Compliant with WS-security 1.0/1.1
and SOAP 1.1/1.2 standards, the toolkit focuses on confidentiality,
integrity and non-repudiation for SOA environments. This toolkit enables
encryption and decryption of SOAP message data, digital signature and
verification via a wide range of security algorithms, using industry
standards, for both servers as well as application environments. The
toolkit lets users provide their own XML policy file as an input. Through
this policy file, users can specify for the API security policy engine
which key provider and trust manager to instantiate, using either a
custom or the default class loader implementation. The security policy
engine then applies the specified policy, obtaining the keys and
certificates through the specified key provider and perform the trust
check using the specified trust manager. The toolkit supports all types
of X509 certificates, private, and shared keys.

http://www.ddj.com/security/207100298
See also the product description: http://tinyurl.com/42s9nu

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SCA Java EE Integration Specification Version 0.9
OSOA, Specification Draft

On March 28, 2008 Version 0.9 of the SCA "Java EE Integration
Specification" was published by OSOA authors as part of the SCA
Service Component Architecture; contributors include BEA, Cape Clear,
IBM, Interface21, IONA, Oracle, Primeton, Progress Software, Red Hat,
Rogue Wave, SAP, Siemens, Software AG., Sun, Sybase, and TIBCO. The
specification defines a model of using SCA assembly in the context of
a Java EE runtime that enables integration with Java EE technologies
on a fine-grained component level as well as use of Java EE applications
and modules in a coarse-grained large system approach. The Java EE
specifications define various programming models that result in
application components, such as Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) and Web
applications that are packaged in modules and that are assembled to
enterprise applications using a Java Naming and Directory Interface
(JNDI) based system of component level references and component naming.
Names of Java EE components are scoped to the application package
(including single module application packages), while references, such
as EJB references and resource references, are scoped to the component
and bound in the Environment Naming Context (ENC). In order to reflect
and extend this model with SCA assembly, this specification introduces
the concept of the Application Composite and a number of implementation
types, such as the EJB implementation type and the Web implementation
type, that represent the most common Java EE component types.
Implementation types for Java EE components associate those component
implementations with SCA service components and their configuration,
consisting of SCA wiring and component properties as well as an assembly
scope (i.e. a composite). Note that the use of these implementation
types does not create new component instances as far as Java EE is
concerned. Section 3.1 explains this in more detail. In terms of
packaging and deployment this specification supports the use of a Java
EE application package as an SCA contribution, adding SCA's domain
metaphor to regular Java EE packaging and deployment. In addition, the
JEE implementation type provides a means for larger scale assembly of
contributions in which a Java EE application forms an integrated part
of a larger assembly context and where it is viewed as an implementation
artifact that may be deployed several times with different component
configurations.

http://xml.coverpages.org/OSOA-SCA-JAVA-EE-IntegrationV09.pdf
See also the OSOA canonical source: http://www.osoa.org/download/attachments/35/SCA_JAVAEE_integration_v0_9.pdf

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RSA 2008: BT Trials Federated Identity Management
Ian Grant, ComputerWeekly

BT is experimenting with a federated identity management system that
could be rollled out to its eight million internet users and corporate
customers. A commercial version would allow users to identify themselves
for websites and applications and other users to access data, do work
and transact business, said Robert Temple, BT's chief security architect.
Using CA's Siteminder software, BT is giving internal staff web access
to applications such as Peoplesoft, Siebel, Oracle Financials, Citrix,
an XML gateway, and a voice-verification system from Persay. Temple said
the company's intention is to provide managed user identity as a "common
capability" of the kind relatively common in IT but rare in
telecommunications. Temple said BT runs 32 discrete different networks.
As a result it has too many Radius identity authentication servers.
Learning how to consolidate how it manages user identities on all these
networks is the only way it would be possible to extend similar
safeguards to BT customers, he said. It has opted to use the Liberty
Alliance's Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 standard for
federated identity management. However, it has proved hard to find
external contractors willing and able to help BT as most were familiar
with earlier versions of SAML. Temple noted that relationships between
BT and organisations sharing its federated IDs were plagued by lawyers
and contracts. "In the end, we asked the lawyers politely to get out of
the way as we knew what we were doing," he said. Temple said this was
not to minimise the legal issues, which required partners to spend a
lot of time building trust in each other. These lessons would help to
reduce the learning curve for user organisations when the time came for
them to make more use of the web for business applications...

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/04/08/230193/rsa-2008-bt-trials-federated-identity-management.htm

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