Robin Cover

XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 17 July 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
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com
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HEADLINES:

* Public Final Committee Draft for Topic Maps Query Language (TMQL)
* Inspired by Annotea: Annotating the Web with Atom
* Draft Guidance Issued for Electronic Regulatory Submission
* EFFICIENT: Open Source Project for Visualizing Electronic Transactions
* Draft Technical Standard: Service-Oriented Architecture Ontology
* CMU Launches Mobility Research Center
* Five Web 2.0 Dev Lessons for Enterprise IT
* Study: Reform Copyright Law to Save Digital Works
* OOXML Will Take Second Place

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Public Final Committee Draft for Topic Maps Query Language (TMQL)
Lars Marius Garshol and Robert Barta (project editors)

An announcement issued by Toshiko Kimura for the Secretariat of ISO/IEC
JTC 1/SC 34 (IPSJ/ITSCJ - Information Processing Society of
Japan/Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan) reports on
the public release of the Final Committee Draft (FCD) Ballot text for
Topic Maps Query Language. ISO/IEC 18048 was prepared by Joint Technical
Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information Technology, Subcommittee SC 34,
Document Description and Processing Languages. "This [FCD] International
Standard defines a query language for Topic Maps known as TMQL (Topic
Maps Query Language). The draft was informed by 'Topic Map Query Language,
Use Cases' and 'TMQL Requirements', and is submitted for review for
interested parties... The document defines a formal language for accessing
information organized according to the Topic Maps paradigm. This document
specifies syntactic rules to form valid query expressions to extract
information from a Topic Maps instance and also provides an informal and
a formal semantics for every syntactic form. To constrain the interaction
and information flow between a querying application and a TMQL query
processor (short: processor) this International Standard also describes
an abstract processing environment, loosely defines the passing of
parameters into the query process and the exchange of result values. This
environment also includes a minimal, predefined set of functions and
operators every conformant processor must provide. This International
Standard does not define an API (application programming interface) to
interact with query processors and also refrains from naming certain
error conditions. It also remains silent on other implementation issues,
such as optimization or error recovery.

http://xml.coverpages.org/topicMaps.html#TMQL-N1054-FCD
See also the associated document ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 N1054: http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/1054c.htm

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Inspired by Annotea: Annotating the Web with Atom
Uche Ogbuji and Eric Larson, IBM developerWorks

What we call Web 2.0 came from several related impulses to make the
Web more valuable. One of those impulses is for a 'read-write Web'.
Most of the time we use the Web as mere spectators. There are a few
publishers (writers) and innumerable readers. More and more people
do have the tools to write the Web, but again they are usually just
writing to a few small areas where they have control. Many would like
to see a more balanced Web where more people can contribute and can
do so more widely. The most important Web 2.0 developments (weblogs,
weblog comments, wikis, and forums, for example) and resource or
media sharing sites (del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, and Digg, for
example) make it more of a read-write Web. Still there is room to
go further. In this article we introduce a subtle but effective
approach for widening the space in which average users can write the
Web... Comments on weblogs and such sites are a suitable and fairly
well-understood starting point for annotating the Web. They associate
snippets of text with a URL, which might be a weblog entry, a news
article, a media resource, or something similar. There is a limited
concept of typing for such comments (grouping them by nature or source).
Some are merely pointers to other primary URLs, such as weblog
track-backs and ping-backs... The key [...] is to build on the
scaffolding of well-established standards. The Atom group of standards,
in particular, has a lot to offer. The Atom Threading Extension extends
the core Atom syntax with a means of providing context for an Atom
entry. Simply, the Atom Threading Extension allows you to declare an
entry or feed as being a response or reply to some resource. This
extension makes creating feeds for comments and threaded conversations
rather obvious... The Atom syntax provides a format for expressing
Web annotations. The Atom Publishing Protocol ("AtomPub") provides a
framework for building annotation services. In this article we present
an annotation server that's no more than a slightly specialized
AtomPub server. The only extra requirement is that Atom entries contain
a threading element that will be indexed for later queries. The general
ideas were explored in the Annotea project of W3C staffers in the early
part of this decade. The framework of our approach is the established
Atom syntax and the Atom protocol. The code we've presented is just one
possible flavor, and you'll find there are many languages and libraries
you can use to craft your own implementation. The big lesson is that
RESTful architecture makes it pretty easy to build on existing work,
and that once you get used to thinking that way, you start focusing
less on narrow solutions such as weblog comments, and more on expansive
ideas such as annotating the Web.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-annotate/
See also Atom references: http://xml.coverpages.org/atom.html

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Draft Guidance Issued for Electronic Regulatory Submission
Angie Drakulich, ePT

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a 'Draft Guidance for
Industry on Providing Regulatory Submissions in Electronic Format' in
the Federal Register on July 11, 2008. The draft guidance establishes
a pilot program for the industry to voluntarily submit drug-establishment
registration and drug-listing information in an electronic format.
The e-format ideally will allow the agency to process, review, and
archive information more easily and quickly... The standard for
electronic submissions will be Extensible Markup Language (XML) in a
standard structured-product labeling (SPL) format. The draft guidance
explains how companies can transition from paper to an SPL format.
The document also discuses how companies can submit additional, useful
but not required information that is often included in paper submissions.
FDA does not anticipate much new cost associated with electronic
submission. According to the draft guidance, free software to create an
SPL document will be available and a minor $20.00
electronic-submission-gateway-certificate fee to submit the file will
be necessary. The FDA estimates that it may take an additional two
hours to prepare an SPL-format submission, according to the draft
guidance. The agency also predicts, however, that the burden will
decrease over time as companies become familiar with the format.
In addition, the new SPL format will allow for multi-establishment
and multidrug submissions instead of individual forms currently used
with the paper format system.

http://tinyurl.com/54phr4
See also Structured Product Labeling (SPL) Guidance: http://xml.coverpages.org/healthcare.html#GuidanceSPL-2008

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EFFICIENT: Open Source Project for Visualizing Electronic Transactions
Don Martin and Carl Mattocks, BCM TC Posting

Don Martin, Product Manager with Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor,
presented to the OASIS BCM TC an overview of the EFFICIENT software
toolset. "EFFICIENT is a visual toolset for the planning, design and
prototyping of electronic transactions (messages). The idea is to
force business uses to define their e-business environment using UML
and to then get them to validate the messages at the transaction level.
The toolset is composed of three parts: a CASE plug-in for MagicDraw
UML that allows for the export of UML activity and class diagrams in
XPDL and XML Schema format. It incorporates a workflow engine (WFM
Open with an Exist XML database) that manages the model based on the
UML models and user defined business rules. The last part is a web
client (Chiba xForms) that allows business users to 'play' the model
just as if they were in a normal business environment... The choreography
of messages exchanged between partners is represented using an UML
activity diagram, where Swim-***s represent the different roles of
the transaction, and object flows represent messages exchanged between
activities in these roles. Other UML constructs can be used, like forks,
joins, and decisions (the latter in a limited way, as for now only
choices between messages are supported)... Inter-Message Rules allow
linking data between different messages. They are represented using
notes on class diagrams. Default rules can be generated based on the
classes reused in different diagrams and the order of messages exchanged.
They can also be edited with a small user-interface, or manually.
Business Rules allow modelling more advanced constraints on the model.
Our toolset support the JBoss Drools rule engine, and its web based
management tool 'BRMS' (to be installed separately) can be opened from
the plug-in to define business rules. In addition, nested transactions
can be defined on activity diagrams, by using a sub activity flow
linking to the activity diagram in another package containing the nested
transaction... The EFFICIENT project, which was launched in order to
help organizations clearly define their electronic transaction standards,
is an open-source inititive based on scientific modeling research.
Martin's posting contains a file attachment for "Business Models:
State of the Art" (describing languages that link business with
business process or transaction models).

http://efficient.citi.tudor.lu/
See also the posting: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/bcm/200807/msg00007.html

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Draft Technical Standard: Service-Oriented Architecture Ontology
Staff, Open Group Draft Technical Standard

On behalf of the Open Group, Chris Harding announced the release of
public review draft for the "Service-Oriented Architecture Ontology."
The authors believe it complements work on OWL-S and WSMO, in that it
includes a compatible concept of "Service" and relates this to concepts
in other areas, including Enterprise Architecture and Business Process
Modeling. This 112-page document defines a formal ontology for Service
Oriented Architecture. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an
architectural style that supports service orientation: a way of thinking
in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes
of services. The ontology is written in the Web Ontology Language (OWL)
defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium (OWL). It contains classes and
properties corresponding to the important concepts of SOA. The formal
OWL definitions are supplemented by textual explanations of the concepts,
with graphic illustrations of the relations between them, and examples
of their use. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the whole document.
Chapter 2: 'Services, Basic Definitions' describes the basic concepts
associated with services. Chapter 3:'Services as Business Activities'
describes the concepts associated with activities, and in particular
business activities, and describes how they relate to services. Chapter
4: 'Design and Implementation' describes concepts related to the
implementation of services, such as choreography, and orchestration.
Chapter 5: 'Architecture and Governance' describes concepts related to
the development and management of service-oriented architectures, and
to the governance of their development, implementation and operation. The
Appendix contains the formal OWL definitions of the ontology, collected
together... The document goal is to to improve alignment between the
business and information technology communities, and facilitate SOA
adoption. It does this in two specific ways: (1) It defines the concepts,
terminology and semantics of SOA in both business and technical terms,
in order to create a foundation for further work in domain-specific areas,
enable communications between business and technical people, enhance the
understanding of SOA concepts in the business and technical communities,
and provide a means to state problems and opportunities clearly and
unambiguously to promote mutual understanding. (2) It potentially
contributes to model-driven SOA implementation. The ontology is designed
for use by: Business people, to give them a deeper understanding of SOA,
and its use in the enterprise; Architects, as metadata for architectural
artifacts; and Architecture methodologists, as a component of SOA
metamodels." The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral
consortium, whose vision of Boundaryless Information Flow will enable
access to integrated information within and between enterprises based
on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group works
with customers, suppliers, consortia, and other standards bodies.

http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-ontology/uploads/40/16940/soa-ontology-200-draft.pdf
See also the reference page: http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-ontology/doc.tpl?gdid=16940

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CMU Launches Mobility Research Center
Staff, DDJ

Carnegie Mellon University has launched the Mobility Research Center
to study business, organizational, and technical issues related to
cell phones, home appliances, and building infrastructures, and to
develop underlying technologies that will ensure the privacy, security,
and reliability. In conjunction with the new research center, the
university's Information Networking Institute (INI) has launched a
new master's degree program in mobility. Because handheld devices are
so ubiquitous, the demand for the growth and adoption of new technologies
to manage data and streamline connections to share photos and video has
already exploded into a $70 billion industry. Carnegie Mellon's Mobility
Research Center will conduct research to improve hardware and software
technology for mobile devices, including studies of how people work,
play, shop, and collaborate, and how new applications and services can
change their lives, according to Pradeep K. Khosla, the founding
director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab and dean of Carnegie Mellon's College
of Engineering: 'Several hand-held manufacturers, including Motorola
and Nokia, are on board to work with us, and we will continue to work
with industry to improve mobile applications; the new center is part
of our strategy to integrate our campus in Silicon Valley with Pittsburgh.'
Increasingly, consumers want handheld devices that can help them find
the best route through rush hour traffic or the nearest restroom.
Carnegie Mellon researchers are working to expand these 'context aware'
systems that ultimately know enough about a user's surroundings to
anticipate when the consumer needs certain information." From the Center:
"Mobile systems, including notebook computers, mobile phones, and
specialized devices, are becoming the dominant mechanism for Internet
access, with various networking technologies enabling anywhere-anytime
computing, communication and collaboration. Services such as mobile
shopping, advertising, reservations and social networking are on the
increase. Embedded wireless sensors in appliances, vehicles,
infrastructure and the environment will dramatically increase the
available information and sources of context. Mobile professionals and
young people are already early adopters of these technologies which are
dramatically transforming the way in which people work, shop, collaborate
and play."

http://www.ddj.com/mobile/209100437
See also the Mobility Research Center: http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/default.aspx?id=2453

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Five Web 2.0 Dev Lessons for Enterprise IT
Heather Havenstein, InfoWorld

Application development 2.0 emphasizes quick, incremental updates,
along with heavy user involvement, and can be beneficial for some
enterprises... Yahoo's Flickr unit recently reported that the latest
update to the photo sharing Web site went live just before 5 p.m. with
9 changes made by three of its developers. The "deployment" was the
36th new release in a week where 627 changes were made by 21 developers.
Such constant tweaking (called a perpetual beta in the Web 2.0 world)
is common for companies like Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Flickr that
build applications for a consumer market that's always in flux. The
quick, incremental updates, along with heavy user involvement, are key
characteristics of an emerging software development paradigm championed
by a new generation of Web 2.0 startups. The new process, which some
champions call application development 2.0, contrast markedly with the
traditional corporate waterfall process that separates projects into
several distinct phases, ranging from requirements to maintenance.
Nonetheless, application development 2.0 could bring significant benefits
to corporate IT shops if managers and developers are willing to change.
Based on interviews with analysts and executives of Web 2.0 firms,
Computerworld compiled a list of five ways that corporate IT managers
can benefit from using Web 2.0 development processes. They are: (1) Break
the barrier between developers and end-users and involve users in
quality assurance processes; (2) Keep it simple; (3) Stick to the script:
Web 2.0 companies are partial to dynamic scripting languages like Ruby,
Python, Perl, and PHP, finding them better choices for their projects
than Sun's Java or Microsoft's .Net; (4) Release early and often; (5)
Let users, not developers, determine new features... An overwhelmingly
majority (70 percent) of developers surveyed agreed that traditional
corporate development teams could benefit from Web 2.0 techniques,
specifically the incremental feature release, quick user feedback loops
and quality assurance programs that include users.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/16/Five_Web_20_dev_lessons_for_enterprise_IT_1.html
See also Wikipedia on Web 2.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

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Study: Reform Copyright Law to Save Digital Works
William Jackson, Government Computer News

Although digital works are ubiquitous and easily duplicated, they are
also ephemeral and at risk of disappearing unless preservation efforts
begin soon after they are created, according to a study by the Library
of Congress and three international partners. The library's National
Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and
organizations in Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom
called for reform of national and international copyright laws to
encourage and enable preservation of such works. 'Traditional works
of authorship are increasingly created and disseminated to the public
in digital form,' the authors wrote in the study, titled International
Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation. Libraries,
archives and other institutions are hampered in preserving those
materials by copyright laws that are geared toward more persistent,
physical works. The study recommended that laws permit institutions
to preserve works according to international best practices, which
include making copies for administrative and technical purposes,
migrating works to different formats as technology changes, and
maintaining backup copies at multiple institutions to protect against
catastrophic loss. In addition to the Library of Congress, the United
Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee, the Open Access to
Knowledge Law Project at Australia's Queensland University of Technology
and the SURFfoundation in the Netherlands participated in the study.
They reviewed current laws in the four countries and made recommendations
for changes. Technology that encourages the production of such works
threatens to shorten their lifespan. The report states: "Digital
information is ephemeral: It is easily deleted, written over or corrupted.
Because information technology, such as hardware, software and digital
object formats, evolves so rapidly, it can be difficult to access and
use digital materials created only a few years ago. Countless born-digital
works are created every day, but countless born-digital works are also
lost every day as they are removed, replaced, superseded or left,
forgotten, in obsolete formats and media. Digitized and born-digital
materials are an important part of the world's cultural heritage, but
unless active steps are taken to preserve them, they will be lost."

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/46644-1.html

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OOXML Will Take Second Place
Alex Brown, SourceWire

"Microsoft's recent announcement that its next version of Office will
add native support for ODF creates speculation among software rivals.
The recently standardised OOXML format will now take second place to
Open Document Format (ODF), according to Dr Alex Brown, director of
Griffin Brown, and an industry leading data quality specialist who has
been closely involved in the International Standardisation of
Microsoft's format. According to Dr Brown, OOXML will now represent
the 'legacy' of MS Office documents that the world has accumulated to
date, following Microsoft's announcment that its Office suite will add
native support for ODF. Microsoft's announcement in May of this year
that it will support the Open Document Format (ODF) has stimulated
discussion in the software industry and among pundits. A free and open
file format for electronic office documents, originally developed by
Sun Microsystems, ODF is already actively promoted by companies like
IBM, Novell, and Sun. Dr Brown commented: 'The world has changed and
companies that lock users into propietary software are no longer
tolerated. Indeed, many governments have come to view open formats as
a public policy issue. One objective of open formats like ODF is to
guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers.'
ODF was intended to be an alternative to proprietary formats, including
those used by Microsoft Office and other applications... Dr Brown went
on to say, 'Software companies should compete on the basis of the
quality of their products. The last 18 months have seen them try to
compete by influencing the natural course of the International standards
process. Now the focus should shift from the standards committees, so
that software vendors can concentrate on delivering software that users
want'..."

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=40352
See also Brian Jones on Open XML Formats: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/

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XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 17 July 2008