Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 07 May 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
IBM Corporation http://www.ibm.com
====================================================

HEADLINES:

* Full Validation of Atom Feeds Containing Extensions
* IBM Launches Its Own Data Center Alliance
* Canonical XML Version 1.1 Released as a W3C Recommendation
* New Release: Apache Axis2 Java and Apache Axis2/C Version 1.4
* Solution Deployment Descriptor (SDD), Part 1: An Emerging Standard
for Deployment Artifacts
* Java Platform To Get Modularity, OSGi Support
* Sun Launches OpenSolaris
* Google: Unicode Conquers ASCII on the Web
* Microsoft DAISY XML Add-In and DAISY Pipeline Support Accessibility
* JavaOne: Sun Rolls Out JavaFX
* Don't Show Me Problems Show Me Answers, And Don't Show Me Them Either!

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

Full Validation of Atom Feeds Containing Extensions
Makoto Murata and Hisashi Miyashita, Technical Report

MURATA Makoto writes: "I wrote a note about full validation of Atom
feeds containing extensions such as OpenSearch and Google Calendar.
Hisashi Miyashita, my co-author, implemented an NVDL validator for
such validation." The RELAX NG schema (hereafter atom.rnc) in RFC 4287
(The Atom Syndication Format) does not provide full validation of atom
feeds containing extensions. Rather, the schema focuses on top-level
constructs of atom feeds; it skips extension elements and attributes,
even when extension elements further contain constructs of atom feeds.
Some specifications (e.g., RFC 4685 (Atom Threading Extensions) for
atom extensions provide schemas for extension elements and attributes.
These extension schemas focus on extension elements and attributes,
and are typically written in RELAX NG. However, such extension schemas
are not referenced from atom.rnc. As a result, these schemas do not
provide full validation of atom feeds containing extensions. They are
useful for documentation, but they are not usable for validating atom
feeds. One might wonder whether atom.rnc and extension schemas can be
combined to form a single RELAX NG schema against which atom feeds
containing extensions are fully validated. To the best of our knowledge,
our earlier work is the only example of such combined schemas. We
combined a variation of atom.rnc and three schemas for atom extensions
thereby successfully providing full validation. However, we do not
believe that this all-in-one approach provides a reliable basis for full
validation of atom and its extensions. The all-in-one approach requires
that (1) schema authors understand schema customization techniques (e.g.,
the combine feature of RELAX NG) very well, (2) they avoid pitfalls
caused by wildcards, and (3) they understand customization points of all
schemas to be combined. In this document, we advocate the use of
Namespace-based Validation Dispatching Language (ISO/IEC 19757-4) for
full validation of atom feeds containing extensions. Schema authors for
atom extensions first create schemas dedicated to the extensions. They
then create NVDL scripts for combining these schemas and atom.rnc.
Controlled by NVDL scripts, the NVDL engine decomposes atom feeds
containing extension elements or attributes into (1) extension-free
atom and (2) extensions so that (1) and (2) are validated separately.
As an example, an NVDL script for Google Calendar is presented. This
NVDL script reveals that embedded atom entries in Google Calendar XML
documents have validation errors.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~eb2m-mrt/atomextensions/atomextensions.html
See also NVDL references: http://xml.coverpages.org/dsdl.html#part4

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

IBM Launches Its Own Data Center Alliance
Jacqueline Emigh, BetaNews

In a world already populated by the Green Grid Alliance and other
industry groups oriented to energy efficiency, IBM has just rolled out
a data center alliance with some similar interests. As explained in an
interview, Rich Lechner, VP of IBM's Enterprise Systems, said that that
his company's new alliance program for enterprise data centers will
work hand-in-hand with other industry groups, including Green Grid,
DMTF (Desktop Management Task Force), and SNIA (Storage Networking
Industry Alliance). "IBM was itself a founding member of the Green Grid
Alliance," Lechner noted. IBM also belongs to DMTF and SNIA, and many
of the members of IBM's own new data center alliance are affiliated
with one or more of the other groups. The Green Grid Alliance -- which
also numbers Sun and Microsoft among its more than 150 members -- is
using the DMTF's WBEM (Web-based Enterprise Management) standard for
distributed computing as the basis for interfaces it is creating as
part of its own standardized technology for managing energy use across
multiple vendors' platforms. But Green Grid officials have also been
careful to point out that, with their own special focus on green
computing, they view their work as separate and distinct from that of
either the DMTF or SNIA. Lechner acknowledged that the main reason
behind IBM's own new alliance is to ensure interoperability, especially
between IBM and major third-party data center partners such as Sun,
Novell, Red Hat, VMWare, Juniper Networks, Citrix, Emulex, and Eaton:
"We'll identify key standards, define implementations, and integrate
them into our point of view and product plans... vendors that support
energy efficiency standards can enable end-to-end management and
monitoring of power and cooling of hardware in the data center. Such
standards pave the way to product interoperability for greater data
center efficiency by setting caps on energy use, shifting resources
to meet business requirements, or adjusting workloads to avoid higher
billing rates."

http://www.betanews.com/article/IBM_launches_its_own_data_center_alliance/1210030226
See also the IBM announcement: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24101.wss

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

Canonical XML Version 1.1 Released as a W3C Recommendation
John Boyer and Glenn Marcy (eds), W3C Technical Report

W3C announced that the XML Core Working Group has published "Canonical
XML Version 1.1" as a W3C Recommendation. The term 'canonical XML'
refers to XML that is in canonical form. The XML canonicalization
method is the algorithm defined by this specification that generates
the canonical form of a given XML document or document subset. The
term XML canonicalization refers to the process of applying the XML
canonicalization method to an XML document or document subset.
Canonical XML Version 1.1 is a revision to Canonical XML Version 1.0
to address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML
namespace when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement
not to inherit 'xml:id', and to treat 'xml:base' URI path processing
properly. Any XML document is part of a set of XML documents that are
logically equivalent within an application context, but which vary in
physical representation based on syntactic changes permitted by XML 1.0
and Namespaces in XML 1.0. This specification describes a method for
generating a physical representation, the canonical form, of an XML
document that accounts for the permissible changes. Except for limitations
regarding a few unusual cases, if two documents have the same canonical
form, then the two documents are logically equivalent within the given
application context. Note that two documents may have differing canonical
forms yet still be equivalent in a given context based on
application-specific equivalence rules for which no generalized XML
specification could account. Canonical XML Version 1.1 is applicable
to XML 1.0 and defined in terms of the XPath 1.0 data model. It is not
defined for XML 1.1. A companion "Implementation Report C14N 1.1" has
been published to demonstrate fulfillment of the Candidate Recommendation
Exit Criteria for Canonical XML 1.1. Test documents have been developed
with a range of usages of attributes in the XML namespace, and correct
and compatible results shown for these tests by at least two
implementations.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-c14n11-20080502/
See also the W3C XML Core Working Group: http://www.w3.org/XML/Core/

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

New Release: Apache Axis2 Java and Apache Axis2/C Version 1.4
Deepal Jayasinghe, Blog

Members of the Apache Software Foundation Axis2 development team
announced the release of Apache Axis2 1.4 and Apache Axis2/C version
1.4.0. Based on the Axis2 architecture, there are two implementations
of the Apache Axis2 Web services engine - Apache Axis2/Java and Apache
Axis2/C. "Apache Axis2 is the core engine for Web services. It is a
complete re-design and re-write of the widely used Apache Axis SOAP
stack, built on the lessons learnt from Apache Axis. Just over 8 months
since the 1.3 release, we are very proud to announce the release of
Apache Axis2 version 1.4. Apache Axis2 is a complete re-design and
re-write of the widely used Apache Axis engine and is a more efficient,
more scalable, more modular and more XML-oriented Web services framework.
It is carefully designed to support the easy addition of plug-in 'modules'
that extend its functionality for features such as security and
reliability. Modules supporting WS-Security/Secure-Conversation (Apache
Rampart), WS-Trust (Apache Rahas), WS-Reliable Messaging (Apache Sandesha)
and WS-Eventing (Apache Savan) will be available soon after the Apache
Axis2 1.4 release. Apache Axis2 Version 1.4 comes with performance
improvements and a number bug fixes over the 1.3 release. The Axis2
Maven Main Repository has the latest jars as well.

http://jadeepal.blogspot.com/2008/05/apache-axis2-14-released.html
See also Apache Axis2/C version 1.4.0: http://jadeepal.blogspot.com/2008/05/apache-axis2c-140-released.html

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

Solution Deployment Descriptor (SDD), Part 1: An Emerging Standard
for Deployment Artifacts
Julia McCarthy and Brent Miller, IBM developerWorks

The Solution Deployment Descriptor (SDD) is an emerging standard from
the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
(OASIS). SDD defines the format for metadata about the requirements,
inputs, and results of the deployment artifacts that are processed to
deploy software resources. SDD also defines the format for metadata
about the aggregation of multiple deployment artifacts into a solution.
This metadata can be used to guide deployment as well as a variety of
other deployment-related activities, such as deployment planning.
Fundamentally, SDD provides a standard way to encode and externalize
deployment information. One Solution Deployment Descriptor consists of
two paired XML descriptor files, a package descriptor, and a deployment
descriptor, that contain deployment metadata; that is, descriptive
information about deployment artifacts and the aggregation of those
artifacts. The package descriptor describes the identity and contents
of the deployment package. The deployment package consists of a set of
artifacts used to perform deployment lifecycle operations on a group
of related resources that make up a solution. Artifact processing
results in the deployment of software. The deployment descriptor
describes the inputs, requirements, variability, and results of the
deployment artifacts. This article presents the concepts behind SDD
and describes what SDD is. It discusses SDD and provides a high-level
overview of the support provided by the SDD for the expression of
deployment-related knowledge through standardized, externalized
metadata. The article is written for those who want to understand
where the SDD fits into the deployment world and those who intend to
learn the details of the SDD standard, especially those who are
involved in developing, integrating, or deploying software. A general
knowledge of the current state of software deployment technology,
especially in complex environments, is assumed. Future articles will
describe in more detail how to use the SDD. In these articles you
will explore the elements of the SDD that realize the concepts described
in this introductory article.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/autonomic/library/ac-artifacts/index.html
See also the OASIS Solution Deployment Descriptor (SDD) Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/sdd/

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

Java Platform To Get Modularity, OSGi Support
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Upcoming versions of the Java platform will be fitted with capabilities
such as flexibility, OSGi support, and modularity, Sun Microsystems
officials announced at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Road
maps were detailed for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 6
and Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 7. Java SE serves as a
base Java platform, with the Enterprise version adding enterprise-level
capabilities. With Java EE 6, Sun seeks to increase flexibility in
implementing the platform. With version 6, profiles will be created
based on specific needs, such as a Web profile focused on Web developers,
Chinnici said. The Web profile is not fully defined yet, but will
feature technologies that appear in the vast majority of Web applications.
Other profiles are expected such as a telecommunications profile that
features SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) services. Profiles can be
created by filing a Java Specification Request as part of the Java
Community Process. Scripting languages will be made first-class citizens
on the Java platform as well. Web development will be made easier
through annotations across Web APIs. Developers should see a reduced
need to edit web.xml descriptors. Third-party libraries will
self-register, removing a common source of errors for developers.
Another feature of version 6 is an API for REST-ful (Representational
State Transfer) Web services. Also planned is a pruning process by
which certain parts of the Java platform can be made optional, according
to Roberto Chinnici, Java EE platform lead at Sun: "The typical
candidate is those technologies that have been superseded effectively
by new ones... for EE 6, the theme is what I like to call 'rightsizing,'
which essentially means making the platform the right size for you."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/07/Java-platform-to-get-modularity-OSGi-support_1.html

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

Sun Launches OpenSolaris
Henry Kingman, Linux-Watch

Sun Microsystems officially launched OpenSolaris (OS) today. Available
pre-built as a combo live/install CD, the initial "2008.05" binary
distribution download of the OS features a GNOME user interface, highly
fault tolerant ZFS root filesystem, IPS package managment, and "DTrace"
tuning tools. The news came at Sun's CommunityOne warmup for its big
annual JavaOne show this week. Debian creator Ian Murdoch, now vice
president for developer and community marketing at Sun, delivered the
opening keynote. At the show, Sun also announced that OpenSolaris
computing services will be offered by Amazon via its EC2 (Elastic Compute
Cloud) service suite, which will also continue to offer MySQL following
Sun's acquisition of MySQL A.B., one of the companies that offers
commercial licenses for the open source database. Features include: (1)
ZFS used for root filesystem: A fault-tolerant filesystem claimed to
support multiple simultaneous drive failures. ZFS is a new kind of file
system that provides simple administration, transactional semantics,
end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an
incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally
new approach to data management. ZFS presents a pooled storage model
that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated
problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded
storage. Thousands of file systems can draw from a common storage pool,
each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined
I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems
at all times. (2) IPS: (image packaging system) package management.
pkg(5), the image packaging system, is an attempt to design and implement
a software delivery system with interaction with a network repository as
its primary design goal. Other key ideas are: safe execution for zones
and other installation contexts, use of ZFS for efficiency and rollback,
preventing the introduction of incorrect or incomplete packages, and
efficient use of bandwidth. (3) DTrace: The binaries in the OpenSolaris
release are built with support for this profiling/analyzing tool, which
is also obviously included in the distribution OpenSolaris is licensed
under Sun's CDDL license, accepted as an "open source" license by the
Open Source Initiative (OSI), despite incompatibilities with many other
open source licenses, such as the GPL. Sun also licensed Java under the
CDDL for many years, before offering its Java runtimes and development
kits under the GPL more recently. Aaid Stephen Lau, OpenSolaris Governing
Board member. "OpenSolaris provides an ideal environment for students,
developers and early adopters looking to learn and gain experience with
innovative technologies like ZFS, Zones and DTrace. And yes, it uses
bash by default."

http://linux-watch.com/news/NS8724930569.html
See also the announcement: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-05/sunflash.20080505.2.xml

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

Google: Unicode Conquers ASCII on the Web
Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com

"I picture it happening this way. The Roman alphabet is on the run,
pursued by a much larger army of Arabic characters with long scimitar-like
ligatures, Chinese characters that look like throwing stars, and European
peasant letters bristling with umlauts, cedillas, and tildes. Unicode
has overtaken ASCII as the most popular character encoding scheme on
the World Wide Web, [according to Mark Davis, Google's senior
international software architect]. Also vanquished at almost exactly
the same time was the Western European encoding. Unicode is a character
encoding standard that gracefully accommodates dozens of languages as
well as Roman characters with diacritical marks. ASCII, a tried-and true,
decades-old standard, is limited to 128 or 256 characters and has a hard
time extending beyond the range of a century-old Remington typewriter.
Google's a fan of Unicode Web sites. When it processes data from Web
sites, it converts it into Unicode first if it's not already there. That
improves international search abilities." Davis (blog): "Google has just
begun supporting Unicode 5.1, less than one month after it was released.
It's now available in search, so people speaking languages such as
Malayalam can now search for words containing the new characters in
Unicode 5.1. Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings,
like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252, or Unicode. Most encodings can
only represent a few languages, but Unicode will handle anything from
Chinese to French to Arabic. We have long used Unicode as the internal
format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted
to Unicode for processing..."

http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9936329-39.html?tag=nefd.top
See also XML and Unicode: http://xml.coverpages.org/unicode-xml.html

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

Microsoft DAISY XML Add-In and DAISY Pipeline Support Accessibility
Staff, Microsoft Announcement

Microsoft Corp. has joined with industry and advocacy group leaders
worldwide to launch new software that will make it easier for anyone
to create documents and content that will be accessible for blind
and print-disabled individuals. The new 'Save as DAISY XML' add-in,
designed for Microsoft Office Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP, allows
users to save Open XML-based text files into DAISY XML, the foundation
of the globally accepted DAISY Standard for reading and publishing
navigable multimedia content. The add-in was created through an open
source project with Microsoft, Sonata Software Ltd. and the Digital
Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium and can be downloaded
by Microsoft Office Word users for free. Also released today is the
newest version of the DAISY Pipeline, a free downloadable transformation
suite that supports the seamless conversion of DAISY XML into DAISY
Digital Talking Book (DTB) format. Together these technologies provide
a comprehensive solution for converting text documents into accessible
formats for people with print disabilities. Information about other
technologies that can convert DAISY XML into DAISY DTB format and other
products that support the DAISY standard is available on the DAISY Web
site. This new 'Save as DAISY XML' tool presents the opportunity for
organizations and independent software vendors to consider ways in
which the technology may be employed to meet the needs of those not
yet served by text-only or audio-only formats. Corporations such as
insurance agencies, healthcare providers and companies that publish
training manuals require a method to deliver fully accessible documents
to their customers and employees with different needs. The open source
nature of the Open XML to DAISY XML translation project enables
technologists to utilize the source code and other resources for their
own applications. As Open XML adoption continues to expand across the
software industry for use on various platforms, including Linux,
Windows, Mac OS and the Palm OS, solution providers interested in
creating their own Open XML to DAISY XML translators can reference
information available through the SourceForge open source project site.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-07SaveAsDAISYPR.mspx
See also SourceForge Open XML to DAISY XML Translator: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxml-daisy

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

JavaOne: Sun Rolls Out JavaFX
Dan Farber, CNET NEWS.com

Following a flurry of T-shirts catapulted by Java creator James
Gosling and a hot dance troop performance, 75 hours of JavaOne got
under way this week. Sun Microsystems' software chief, Rich Green,
took the stage to talk about consumers... Enterprises have to recognize
that the enterprise moat barriers are coming down, he added, with
consumers driving innovation. As part of Sun's effort to enable
consumers to innovate, Green introduced JavaFX, a rich Internet
application environment set to compete with Adobe Systems' AIR and
Microsoft's Silverlight. He showed a JavaFX application with Flickr
and Twitter feeds running in Facebook within the browser, and then he
dragged it out of the browser -- to the desktop. The same application
also was shown running on a Java-enabled phone via JavaFX Mobile. Sun
is hoping to tap into 2.2 billion mobile devices and the vast majority
of desktop PCs that are Java-enabled. JavaFX was shown running on
Google's Android mobile platform. Green noted that 85 percent of cell
phones, 91 percent of desktops, and 100 percent of all Blu-ray Disc
players will run JavaFX. Sun also plans to deliver JavaFX from the
cloud and to gather instrumented user action data via JavaFX that goes
back to developers. It could be used for advertising or to provide
information to customers... According to Stewart's ZDNet blog, "JavaFX
is just one part (albeit a very snazzy part) of many enhancements to
the Java runtime which includes the Java Update 10 browser plugin that
would enable JavaFX developers to target the browser with animations
and vector art. But JavaFX is part of a larger Java ecosystem and is
in some ways a lynchpin to allow developers and designers to create
RIA experiences across a lot of devices. As Coté mentions, this is a
lot like Adobe's Open Screen Project and I think it shows an industry
trend of moving towards a more cohesive multi-demensional platform.
Java has been down this road before so anyone counting them out isn't
giving them enough credit. They have a LONG way to go especially when
you look at Adobe's RIA strengths and Microsoft's very enthusiastic
entry into the space. But I think JavaFX will be a breath of fresh air
for people and will help in expanding the RIA footprint further."

http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9937054-80.html
See also the ZDNet blog: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=834

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

Don't Show Me Problems Show Me Answers, And Don't Show Me Them Either!
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Blog

Alex Brown is [...] trying to faithfuly fulfill his normal committee
responsibilities, which include checking through standards. Alex has
long been involved in Data Quality issues for publishing professionally,
and has been very involved in the development of ISO DSDL at SC34,
which includes RELAX NG and Schematron. So what is it that Alex found
about ODF [validation errors] that has caused the fuss? It is quite
technical, but the gist is this, as I understand it: if a schema is not
itself valid, no documents can be formally valid against it. When the
invalid part of the schema is only detected at run-time when exercised
by a particular instance document structure, and the document does not
contain such a triggering instance, the implementation may report that
the document is valid, but that is a false positive. And you make look
at the schema and say 'I know what was intended, and the false positive
is in fact correct against the intent of the schema' but this is lucky
accident, i.e. hacking, not formal validity. The particular issue is
quite interesting because it relates to an area in a W3C Schema standard
where the user requirements for XSD could not be supported by the facet
model used, and where XSD fudges it. OASIS RELAX NG, also to an extent
inherited this problem. The problem is with attributes of type ID in
the ODF schema. Alex Brown has provided a very simple fix, which I hope
gets adopted into ODF 1.2. The problem with IDs is this. XML inherits
ID type attributes from SGML. They have various constraints, which
include that they are XML names (tokens), that their values are unique
within the document, and that an element can only have one ID attribute...
Alex has found the fix for ODF, but I think RELAX NG and XSD could well
have some extra clarifaction text (non-normative) to stop basic mistakes.
If a schema, whether DTD, XSD or RELAX NG, says something is an ID, it
has all the semantics of an XML ID... Alex Brown is right that the
schema has a flaw, and right to point it out and offer a fix; Rob Weir
is right that it is unnecessary for this to be a static error (the
positive point I would infer from his over-reacting blog), but wrong
that the way to fix it is to turn off validating that constraint...

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/05/dont_show_me_problems_show_me.html
See also the smoke test: http://www.griffinbrown.co.uk/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f0384bed-808b-49a8-8887-ea7cde5caace

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

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. Wednesday, 07 May 2008