Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 04 June 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:

* IBM Lotus Symphony Supports Open Document Format (ODF)
* W3C Launches eGovernment Activity to Help Empower Citizens
* A Simple ISO NVDL Script for Preparing ODF XML for Validation
* Yahoo Opens Address Book Interface
* Offline Web Applications
* XProc: Meta-Programming and Rube Goldberg
* A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) based Location-to-Service
Translation Protocol (LoST) Discovery Procedure
* OASIS Members Submit Charter for Proposed DITA Adoption TC
* Enable Firefox Extensions for the Semantic Web
* PowerBuilder as a Client for UPS Web Services

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IBM Lotus Symphony Supports Open Document Format (ODF)
Staff, IBM Announcement

IBM has announced the commercial-grade, general availability of Lotus
Symphony, a suite of free, ODF-based software tools for creating and
sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The three core
tools comprising Lotus Symphony -- Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus
Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations -- handle the
majority of office productivity tasks that most people perform. Quick
reading reference cards and online tutorials on the Lotus Symphony Web
site show how easy it is to transfer documents between Symphony and
Word, PowerPoint or Excel. IBM offers a set of powerful, open APIs for
extending Lotus Symphony with a wide range of plug-ins -- including
Eclipse and Universal Network Object component model and others. This
can empower business people to harness powerful business processes
such as enterprise resources planning and customer relationship management
directly from their desktop. Companies and governments can integrate
Lotus Symphony tools into their custom applications and connect to myriad
data sources that allow individuals to work in a single view while
presenting and updating data from multiple sources instantly. IBM is
offering a free developer toolkit on the Symphony site that enables
individual users of Lotus Symphony, as well as independent software
developers, to create plug-ins, or software adaptors, and composite
applications, or mashups. These can transform static documents into
living information streams capable of managing primary business
functions such as shipping, sales and fulfillment. This announcement
affirms IBM's commitment to evolving office productivity software from
static, financially draining software to a dynamic, cost-effective
tool that allows businesses to invest in more innovative pursuits.
Launched in September 2007, Lotus Symphony has been downloaded by
nearly one million individuals in an open public Beta program. Lotus
Symphony is a truly global product, available in 24 languages,
developed by a worldwide team anchored in Beijing, China, and improved
through the community of individual users on the Symphony Web site.
While Lotus Symphony remains a free, easy download from the Web with
free online, moderated support, IBM is also announcing fee-based
services to support the needs of large organizations. This optional
service, IBM Elite Support for Lotus Symphony 1.0, delivers unlimited
remote technical support at a level consistent with other IBM software
products via an annual subscription to IBM's Passport Advantage or
Passport Advantage Express volume licensing programs.

http://xml.coverpages.org/SymphonyV10-ODF.html
See also the Lotus Symphony web site: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa

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W3C Launches eGovernment Activity to Help Empower Citizens
Staff, W3C Announcement

W3C has announced the launch of a new forum for governments, citizens,
researchers, and other stakeholders to investigate how best to use
Web technology for good governance and citizen participation. This
forum is open to the public. W3C invites any person or organization
interested in eGovernment to join the new eGovernment Interest Group.
The group is the culmination of several years of work by W3C in this
area, including two Workshops on eGovernment in 2007, one in Europe,
and one in North America. eGovernment refers to the use of the Web or
other information technologies by governing bodies to interact with
citizens, between departments and divisions, and between governments
themselves. Like any information provider, governments have found it
useful and efficient to interact with customers (citizens) via the
Internet, allowing them to file tax returns online, take drivers
education classes, apply for a visa, and vote. Access to information,
and efficient and secure interactions, contribute to fair governance.
Interoperable, Open Web Standards have benefitted governments around
the world in the past several years, including those from W3C in the
areas of XML, Semantic Web, Accessibility, Internationalization, and
Mobile access. These standards make it possible for people with diverse
capabilities, using various devices, to access information. Open
standards also make it more likely that data will remain available
long into the future, increasing the value of investments in the creation
and gathering of data. Semantic Web standards in particular lend
themselves to data aggregation (mashups) and thus to collaboration
(planned and unplanned) among government agencies and with other
eGovernment actors. Semantic Web technology also helps in the management
of accountability, which can help reduce errors and mistakes and build
trust. The new Interest Group, co-Chaired by Kevin Novak (American
Institute of Architects) and Josi M. Alonso (W3C/CTIC), will develop
good practices and guidelines for the use of Open Web Standards in
governance, identify and document where current technology does not
adequately address stakeholder needs. The Interest Group will seek to
work closely with other W3C Working Groups and international
organizations; some potential liaisons listed in the charter include:
the European Commission, the Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), OASIS, the Organization of American States
(OAS), the International Council for Information Technology in
Government Administration (ICA), and the World Bank eDevelopment
Thematic Group.

http://xml.coverpages.org/W3C-eGovernmentActivity.html
See also the W3C eGovernment Activity: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/

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A Simple ISO NVDL Script for Preparing ODF XML for Validation
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Articles

ISO Namespace Validation Dispatching Language (NVDL) is a little
language for taking an XML documents, sectioning it off into single
namespace sections, attaching or detatching these sections in various
ways, and then sending the resulting sections to the appropriate
validation scripts. NVDL solves several problems that come up with
namespaces, and as with DSRL takes a very different approach than XSD
takes (not saying one is better or worse: they have different
capabilities and therefore may even be used together). One of these
problems is the problem that often the official schema has a wildcard
to say "at this point you can put any element", but you really want to
limit this to your own elements only and you don't want to edit the
official schemas (and thereby create versioning and configuration issues).
Another of these issues can be found in ODF. It allows foreign elements
anywhere, and in order to validate against the schemas you have to strip
these out. However, this does not mean just remove the foreign element
and their children, you have to leave the non-foreign descendents in
place. Now this is something that W3C XSD cannot really handle well.
You can have a wildcard to allow foreign elements, and process them
laxly so that when you come to an ODF namespace you start validating,
but you don't have the capability of validating that these elements
are correct against the content model you want on the parent of the
wildcard. You lose synch... [The ODF spec constraint says, in part:]
'Conforming applications either shall read documents that are valid
against the OpenDocument schema if all foreign elements and attributes
are removed, or shall write documents that are valid against the
OpenDocument schema if all foreign elements are removed before validation
takes place.' Hmmm, seems like a job for NVDL... [This article's sample
script shows] a nice declarative way to specify the validation
pre-processing which can be actually run with the various NVDL
processors around the place.

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/06/a_simple_iso_nvdl_script_for_p.html
See also NVDL resources: http://xml.coverpages.org/dsdl.html#part4

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Yahoo Opens Address Book Interface
Stephen Shankland, CNET NEWS.com

Fulfilling a second major part of its promise to make the internal
workings of its Web site more extroverted, Yahoo is opening the
interface for its address book for outside use. The move could mean
that Yahoo, struggling under business pressures but still a stronghold
of Web activity, could become more tightly tied to others' Web services.
For example, a programmer starting up a social networking site could use
the interface to send invitations to a member's list of contacts stored
at Yahoo. Yahoo users have stored more than 500 million address books,
and the service is used by more than 150 million unique users each month.
Opening the address book API (application programming interface) is the
second major step taken so far in executing the Yahoo Open Strategy that
Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh announced in April 2008. Yahoo Open
Strategy is an attempt to link the company more with other Internet
activities rather than remain a sealed-off, if sprawling, Internet domain.
Through its open strategy, the company envisions outside programmers
building Web applications on Yahoo's site, Yahoo services being
incorporated into outside applications, and social connection information
within Yahoo being used more widely. Some highlights of what you can do
with the API, according to the announcement: (1) Obtain unique identifiers
(i.e., email addresses) to help build a social network; (2) Look up
phone numbers for mobile and SMS applications; (3) Look up email addresses
for content-sharing applications -- for example, you can enhance the
"share with friend" capability of your site, making it easy for users to
look up their contacts by combining the Address Book API with the YUI
auto-complete widget; (4) Make it a breeze for your users to send gifts
easily; they can add addresses from their Yahoo! Address Book with almost
no typing... XML Versioning and Validation: "All XML documents returned
by the API start with an XML prolog containing both an XML version/encoding
declaration, and a Document Type Declaration. The Document Type Declaration
(DOCTYPE) points to a versioned external DTD. Although a DTD is referenced,
the XML document is standalone. Clients of the API do not need to
DTD-validate server responses at run-time. XML documents that are POSTed
to the API must start with an XML prolog that contains at least the XML
version and encoding declaration. A Document Type Declaration can be used,
and if it is, it must match what the Address Book servers were using when
that particular integration was implemented. Independently of whether a
DTD is being referenced or not, the XML document must be standalone.
Address Book servers will not fetch and parse a remote DTD. This use of
DOCTYPE provides an informal versioning mechanism for the XML API. However,
even without this mechanism, properly implemented clients should be, by
design, forwards compatible, and Address Book servers will be written to
be backwards compatible."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9959469-7.html
See also the Address Book XML/JSON API Developer Guide: http://developer.yahoo.com/addressbook/guide/

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Offline Web Applications
Anne van Kesteren and Ian Hickson (eds), W3C Technical Report

W3C announced the release of an "Offline Web Applications" specification
published as a Working Group Note by the W3C HTML Working Group, part
of the HTML Activity. Users of typical online Web applications are only
able to use the applications while they have a connection to the Internet.
When they go offline, they can no longer check their e-mail, browse their
calendar appointments, or prepare presentations with their online tools.
Meanwhile, native applications provide those features: e-mail clients
cache folders locally, calendars store their events locally, presentation
packages store their data files locally. In addition, while offline,
users are dependent on their HTTP cache to obtain the application at all,
since they cannot contact the server to get the latest copy. The HTML 5
specification provides two solutions to this: a SQL-based database API
for storing data locally, and an offline application HTTP cache for
ensuring applications are available even when the user is not connected
to their network. This document highlights these features (SQL, offline
application caching APIs as well as online/offline events, status, and
the localStorage API) from HTML 5 and provides brief tutorials on how
these features might be used to create Web applications that work offline...
(1) The client-side SQL database in HTML 5 enables structured data storage.
This can be used to store e-mails locally for an e-mail application or
for a cart in an online shopping site. The API to interact with this
database is asynchronous which ensures that the user interface doesn't
lock up. Because database interaction can occur in multiple browser
windows at the same time the API supports transactions. To create a
database object you use the 'openDatabase()' method on the Window object.
It takes four arguments: a database name, a database version, a display
name, and an estimated size, in bytes, of the data to be stored in the
database. (2) Offline Application Caching APIs: The mechanism for ensuring
Web applications are available even when the user is not connected to
their network is the manifest attribute on the html element. The attribute
takes a URI to a manifest, which specifies which files are to be cached...

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-offline-webapps-20080530/
See also the W3C HTML Activity Statement: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity

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XProc: Meta-Programming and Rube Goldberg
Kurt Cagle, DevX.com

XProc, the XML Pipeline Language, is designed as a way of describing a
set of declarative processes. This article demonstrates how XProc neatly
solves a number of problems that tend to transcend working with any one
single XML operational language. Declarative programming can take a
little getting used to, especially if your standard mode of operation
is working with languages like Java or C#. In essence, such programming
requires that you think not of objects, properties and methods but
rather of rules, filters and pipelines. Indeed, one reason that the
future is looking increasingly declarative is that the web, as a network,
does not lend itself well to being described as a collection of objects
with methods and properties. That resistance is at least part of the
reason why SOA (service oriented architecture) essentially requires
that you build an entire infrastructure on top of the web just to make
it work properly.... XProc heralds a significant shift in the building
of XML pipelines and web applications. The specification itself will
likely be out either late in 2008 or early in 2009, and already a few
XML database creators are exploring the deployment of XProc within their
own systems, either as something that can be invoked from within other
processes (such as an XQuery call) or as scriptable entities in their
own right. Because of it's declarative nature, it's also not hard to
foresee a point in the near future where XProc will be used to marshal
actions across multiple server environments, though this first
specification only hints at that vision -- in short, XProc has the
potential to become a vehicle for larger scale multi-system orchestration.
In the more immediate term, you can get a first glimpse of XProc via
prototype implementations [available online]. If other standards like
XSLT2 and XQuery are any indication, adoption of XProc is likely to
be slow at first, given the presence of commercial workflow systems,
but like those two standards, adoption should pick up pretty quickly
with one or two solid implementations, as XProc neatly solves a number
of problems that tend to transcend working with any single XML
operational language. Developers are moving to ever larger levels of
abstraction as programming moves beyond single processor environments
or even standard client/server architectures and it is likely that
XProc will be one of the languages leading the charge to that next level.

http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/38037
See also XProc: An XML Pipeline Language: http://www.w3.org/TR/xproc/

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A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) based Location-to-Service
Translation Protocol (LoST) Discovery Procedure
H. Schulzrinne, J. Polk, H. Tschofenig (eds), IETF Internet Draft

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced the approval
of the specification "A Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
based Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST) Discovery Procedure"
as an IETF Proposed Standard. It describes how a LoST client can discover
a LoST server using DHCP. Although the LoST specification has been
implemented there are no implementations known for the DHCP-based
discovery procedure. From a deployment point of view it is likely that
the DNS-based discovery procedure will be available before this document
will see a deployment. The document was produced by members of the IETF
Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies (ECRIT) Working
Group, part of the Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area.
Emergency service numbers like 911 and 112 relate to an emergency service
context, and depend on a broad, regional configuration of service contact
methods and a geographically-constrained context of service delivery.
These calls are intended to be delivered to special call centers equipped
to manage emergency response. Successful delivery of an emergency service
call within those systems requires both an association of the physical
location of the originator with an appropriate emergency service center
and call routing to deliver the call to the center. However, calls
placed using Internet technologies do not use the same systems to achieve
those goals, and the common use of overlay networks and tunnels (either
as VPNs or for mobility) makes meeting them more challenging. There are,
however, Internet technologies available to describe location and to
manage call routing. The IETF ECRIT Working Group was chartered to
describe when these may be appropriate and how they may be used. The
"Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST)" specification describes
an XML-based protocol for mapping service identifiers and geospatial or
civic location information to service contact Uniform Resource Locators
(URLs). LoST servers can be located anywhere but a placement closer to
the end host, e.g., in the access network, is desireable. Such a LoST
server placement provides benefits in disaster situations with
intermittent network connectivity regarding the resiliency of emergency
service communication. In order to interact with a LoST server, the LoST
client eventually needs to discover the server's IP address. Several
mechanisms can be used to learn this address, including manual
configuration. In environments where the access network itself either
deploys a LoST server or knows a third party that operates a LoST server,
DHCP can provide the end host with a domain name. This domain name is
then used as input to the DNS-based resolution mechanism described in
LoST that reuses the URI-enabled NAPTR specification. This "Discovery
Procedure" document specifies a DHCPv4 and a DHCPv6 option that allows
LoST clients to discover local LoST servers.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-ecrit-dhc-lost-discovery-03.txt
See also the Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST): http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-ecrit-lost-10.txt

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OASIS Members Submit Charter for Proposed DITA Adoption TC
Staff, OASIS Announcement

A new "DITA Adoption Technical Committee" has been proposed by fourteen
members of OASIS. According to the draft Charter, the OASIS DITA
Adoption Technical Committee members "will collaborate to provide
expertise and resources to educate the marketplace on the value of the
DITA OASIS standard. By raising awareness of the benefits offered by
DITA, the Technical Committee increases the demand for, and availability
of, DITA conforming products and services, resulting in a greater choice
of tools and platforms and expanding the DITA community of users,
suppliers, and consultants. Since DITA adoption is stronger in the US
than in the rest of the world, especially the European Union, the
Technical Committee will actively solicit participation from non-US
members and help to facilitate providing information promoting DITA
adoption globally... The DITA Adoption Technical Committee is closely
allied with the DITA Technical Committee. The DITA TC is responsible
for the development, maintenance, and enhancement of the DITA
specification and the language reference. As such, the DITA TC
concentrates on clearly defining and developing the technical content
of the specification. It also supports the work of several subcommittees
that are creating industry-specific specializations of the DITA
specification. The DITA Adoption TC concentrates on the promotion of
the DITA standard to the global user community, helping to encourage
DITA adoption in new industries, new areas of content creation, and
new organizations. To this end, the DITA Adoption TC's focus is on
building public awareness of the standard, educating potential users
in the standard, and ensuring that miscommunications that may exist
are quickly corrected."

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200806/msg00004.html
See also DITA references: http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

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Enable Firefox Extensions for the Semantic Web
Rob Crowther, IBM developerWorks

The upcoming Firefox 3.0 release has built-in support for microformats
in the form of an API that you can access from a Firefox extension.
This article provides a simple example showing how to use this API
from within your extension code. We take a skeleton 'Hello World'
extension and give it the ability to store an hCard from any Web page
and then use that stored hCard to populate a Web form. To follow along
with this tip you need a basic understanding of how extensions are
built for Firefox. Fortunately, if you write JavaScript and HTML, you
already have almost all the knowledge you need. We take a standard
Firefox extension template and quickly give it the ability to use the
hCard microformats -- thanks to the new APIs in Firefox 3.0. You can
see that the API makes manipulating microformats data very easy. With
very little code, you can build an extension that is a massive time
saver, and to add similar features to your own extensions will be very
little work. As a next step, you might consider generalizing the paste
action to provide a mapping file for any form, and allow use of an
hCard microformats to fill it. A shared repository of mappings can
vastly simplify the process of filling in forms on the Web.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-tipffoxmicroapi/
See also the hCard microformat documentation: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

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PowerBuilder as a Client for UPS Web Services
Victor A Reinhart, SYS-CON JDJ

"Does your shipping department have any of these problems: Extra charges
due to incorrect addresses? Difficulty tracking packages? How about
duplicate entries? If your shipping department is really ancient, you
may even have rolls of pre-printed UPS shipping labels. UPS offers a
totally free solution where you directly access their Web Service using
XML. All data is secured via HTTPS. There's no software to install, no
expiration date, and no proprietary database. It's a lightweight elegant
solution. In case you have problems, UPS provides support. Imagine that,
support for a free solution! This technology is mature -- in three years,
we've never had to change our application due to a change in the XML
specs. To get started, go to 'ups.com', Business Solutions, Portfolio of
Services, and pick UPS Online Tools. This article covers the UPS Shipping
Tool. You'll need to get this tool from UPS and sign up with them... This
solution [as sketched in this article] has served us well. All we need
now is a label printer for each PC. eBay has many of these printers for
sale and even our oldest printer has never had a problem. As an added
bonus, the Zebra printer has its own language, which lets us print other
labels from PowerBuilder as well. You can also use the 'Shipping Tool' to
void a shipment. We use the Tracking Tool too. Every day, a batch job
uses a DataWindow to select all outstanding shipments. For each one, it
uses the Tracking Tool and looks up the status based on the Tracking
Number. The response tells us whether the package was delivered, and when.
We store this right back in our database. This shows that PowerBuilder
can act as a client for the UPS Web Services. Using these same techniques,
you could also code for FedEx or other Web Services too."

http://java.sys-con.com/read/582069.htm
See also the earlier notice: http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2007-02-09.html#cite8

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XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 04 June 2008