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XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 07 October 2008
A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

====================================================
This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com
====================================================

HEADLINES:

* Visual Orchestration Tool for Service-Based Applications
* FEMA Says 'Yes' to CAP 1.1
* Mozilla Geode: Always Know Where You Are
* W3C Geolocation API Specification
* NIEM Ventures Forth
* The Portable Contacts API: Killing the Password Anti-Pattern Once
and For All
* An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol
(XCAP) Diff Event Package
* Real Web 2.0: Mastering the Creative Commons
* Open Source Workflow Solution: Nova Bonita
* Building BACnet: 2008 BACnet International Conference
* NetApp Faces Sun Lawsuit Loss

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Visual Orchestration Tool for Service-Based Applications
John K. Waters, Application Development Trends

Will the concept of a visual orchestration system usher in a new wave
of services-based applications? That's what Active Endpoints hopes.
The Waltham, Mass.-based makers of ActiveVOS have been sounding this
message with what approaches messianic fervor for the past eight months.
With the recent release of the 6.0 version of the product, industry
analysts are listening. ActiveVOS 6.0 is an all-in-one orchestration
and business process management system designed to allow Java developers,
business analysts and enterprise architects to automate business
processes. What makes the system a standout is its emphasis on
collaboration across IT and business boundaries. Dennis Byron pointed
out the company was an early mover in the commercialization of open
source development known for and its contributions to the Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL) standard. It's also known for
developing standards-based products that provide business process
management (BPM) functionality... ActiveVOS 6.0 offers what the company
calls a "stark contrast to SOA stack products," which requires the user
to assemble "a complicated puzzle from piece parts before any
applications can be built," said company CEO Mark Taber... Version 6.0
comes with a nice feature for Java jocks: It's designed to allow
developers to reuse plain old Java objects (POJOs) as native Web services.
According to the company, "processes can be thoroughly tested and
simulated in ActiveVOS 6.0 even when there are no actual services
available during the testing phase." There's also an emphasis in this
version on flexible deployment options that allow processes to be
versioned and policies dictating what the system should do when a service
is unavailable in production to be specified... It's also worth noting
that ActiveVOS 6.0 is 100 percent compliant with all major open standards.
Along with BPEL, the company lists several standards with which its
product is compliant, including: Business Process Modeling Notation
(BPMN), BPEL4People, and WS-Human Task specifications. ActiveVOS 6.0
is available now. A free, supported 30-day trial version is available
for download.

http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=23382
See also ActiveVOS 6.0 standards support: http://www.activevos.com/products-features.php#Standards

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FEMA Says 'Yes' to CAP 1.1
Randy J. Stine, Radio World Online

As part of an announcement of intent in July to integrate Common Alerting
Protocol (CAP) 1.1 as the standard for the Integrated Public Alert and
Warning System, FEMA reiterated that all participants in the next
generation of the Emergency Alert System would need to be in compliance
with CAP 1.1 within 180 days of CAP's adoption. That adoption -- which
hasn't happened yet but is expected during the first quarter of 2009 --
has some observers concerned about potential EAS equipment shortages.
With CAP, warning messages can be disseminated simultaneously over
interoperable warning systems developed by state and local emergency
managers. In addition to audio, multimedia such as video, digital photos
and text could be used. Some states use CAP for emergency warning now.
Some within the emergency management arena, while pleased with FEMA's
decision, question whether manufacturers of equipment will be able to
withstand a crushing demand for new decoder boxes and meet the 180 day
compliance mandate if every EAS participant is indeed required to have
a CAP-capable decoder. FEMA says that arriving at standards and protocols
that work for everyone is a complex process that includes partners across
government and the private sector... The exact wording of FEMA's July
2008 announcement has Art Botterell, one of the architects of CAP 1.1,
skeptical about the government agency's intent. Botterell also
speculates that any decisions made by FEMA could be "up for grabs"
again when a new administration takes over in Washington, with possible
leadership changes at the DHS and FEMA at the beginning of the year.
FEMA's July announcement did not address the issue of the funding and
training that likely will be needed for emergency mangers to originate
CAP messages for next-gen EAS properly...

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0052/t.15899.html
See also the EAS-CAP Profile Recommendation: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2008-09-26-a.html

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Mozilla Geode: Always Know Where You Are
Staff, Mozilla Labs Announcement

"You've arrived in a new city, a new continent, a new coffee shop. You
don't really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to
eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite
review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up
some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions
there. In order for this to be a possibility, your browser needs to
know where you are. To do this, future versions of Firefox plan on
supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native
ability for Web sites to request, and you to optionally grant access
to, your location. Geode is an experimental add-on to explore
geolocation in Firefox 3 ahead of the implementation of geolocation
in a future product release. Geode provides an early implementation
of the W3C Geolocation specification so that developers can begin
experimenting with enabling location-aware experiences using Firefox 3
today, and users can tell us what they think of the experience it
provides. It includes a single experimental geolocation service
provider so that any computer with WiFi can get accurate positioning
data. The potential here is for more than just resturant lookups. For
example, imagine an RSS reader that knows the difference between home
and work and automatically changes it's behavior appropriately. Or a
news site whose local section is, in fact, actually local. Or Web site
authentication that only allows you to login from certain physical
locations, like your house... With Geode when a web site requests your
location a notification bar will ask how much information you want to
give that site: your exact location, your neighborhood, your city, or
nothing at all... We're using Skyhook's Loki technology to map the Wifi
signals in your area to your location. Unlike normal GPS-based methods
which can take upwards of 45 seconds for a lock, Geode works both
inside and outside with an accuracy of between 10 to 20 meters, normally
within a second. Please note that in this early implementation, both
location and IP information is sent to the current provider, Skyhook,
everytime a website is granted access to your location. Skyhook's
privacy policy is that they do not store or use any personal identifying
information, and they promise to only keep data in anonymized agregate.
The ultimate plan for Firefox is that service providers and geolocation
methods will be pluggable and user selectable -- to provide users with
as many choices and privacy options as possible. As an experiment,
Geode is also the beginning of a conversation about location-based
privacy and integrating services that share personal data into Web
browsers..."

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/
See also the Channel Wire blog: http://www.crn.com/software/210800237

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W3C Geolocation API Specification
Andrei Popescu (ed), W3C Editor's Draft Specification

"This specification defines an API that provides scripted access to
geographical location information associated with the hosting device.
Implementors should be aware that the specification is not stable;
vendors interested in implementing this specification before it
eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the
mailing list and take part in the discussions... The Geolocation API
defines a high-level interface to location information associated with
the hosting device, such as latitude and longitude. The API itself
is agnostic of the underlying location information sources. Common
sources of location information include Global Positioning System
(GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address,
RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs. The
API is designed to enable both "one-shot" position requests and repeated
position updates, as well as the ability to query the last-known
position. Location information is represented by latitude and
longitude coordinates and optionally by reverse geocoded address
information. The Geolocation API in this specification builds upon
earlier work in the industry... Example use cases: (1) Finding points
of interest in the user's area; (2) Annotating content with location
information; (3) Automatic form-filling; (4) Showing the user's position
on a map; (5) Turn-by-turn route navigation; (6) Alerting when points of
interest are in the user's vicinity; (7) Up-to-date local information;
(8) Location-tagged status updates in social networking applications.
Example Requirements: must provide location data in terms of a pair of
latitude and longitude coordinates; provide information about the
accuracy of the retrieved location data; support "one-shot" position
updates; allow an application to register to receive repeated position
updates; allow an application to cheaply query the last known position;
provide a way for the application to receive updates about errors that
may have occurred while obtaining a location fix; allow an application
to specify a desired accuracy level of the location information; be
agnostic to the underlying sources of location information; allow an
application to request address information as part of the location data...
This specification is limited to providing a scripting APIs for retrieving
location information associated with a hosting device. The location
information is provided in terms of coordinates that apply to a
geographic coordinate system. The scope of this specification does not
include providing a markup language of any kind and does not include
defining new URI schemes for building URIs that identify geographic
locations.

http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html
See also the public discussion list 'public-geolocation': http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-geolocation/

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NIEM Ventures Forth
Joab Jackson, Government Computer News

A partnership between the Justice and Homeland Security departments,
the NIEM [U.S. National Information Exchange Model] initiative is a
program to develop information exchange standards for government agencies,
be they state, local or federal. Managed by the Integrated Justice
Information Systems (IJIS) Institute, NIEM is based on the Global
Justice XML Data Model, a highly successful data model for sharing law
enforcement information across local, state and federal agencies. Rather
than working on another major update, the NIEM design team decided to
tweak NIEM 2.0 with a number of new features, said Paul Wormeli, head
of IJIS. One feature is version independence for separate domains. NIEM
hosts several domains, each with its own standardized naming conventions --
one for intelligence work, one for law enforcement, one for emergency
management. And each domain is managed by a different working group.
Soon, each domain group will be able to update its vocabulary without
waiting for a full release of NIEM. NIEM 2.1 will also include new
vocabulary sets. Wormeli: "We're branching out into other disciplines;
it will be the first version to offer a vocabulary for juvenile justice
concerns, which uses slightly different terms than adult cases.
Biometrics is also a new entry. Although some basic biometrics terms,
as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, were
entered in Version 2.0, Version 2.1 will expand the schema for
widespread use. Biometrics crosses a number of domains, including
[the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology] program
as well as law enforcement applications." Since its introduction in
2005, NIEM has grown into perhaps the largest XML-based
information-sharing vocabulary across government. DHS, and more
than 18,000 law enforcement agencies, use NIEM for more than forty
programs. New York City just adopted it for all exchanges of tax and
health and human services information among agencies.

http://www.gcn.com/print/27_25/47300-1.html
See also on NIEM Naming and Design Rules: http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2007-09-07.html#cite1

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

The Portable Contacts API: Killing the Password Anti-Pattern Once and
For All
Dare Obasanjo, Blog

A common practice among social networking sites is to ask users to
import their contacts from one of the big email service providers
(e.g. Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or Gmail) as part of the sign up process.
This is often seen as a way to bootstrap the user's social network on
the site by telling the user who in their email address book is also
a user of the site they have just joined... Google has the Contacts
Data API, Yahoo! has their Address Book API and Microsoft has the
Windows Live Contacts API. Each of these is provides a user-centric
authorization model where instead of a user giving their email address
and password to random sites, they log-in at their email provider's
site and then delegate authority to access their address book to the
social network site. The only problem that remains is that each site
that provides an address book or social graph API is reinventing the
wheel both with regards to the delegated auth model they implement and
the actual API for retrieving a user's contacts. This means that social
networking sites that want to implement a contact import feature have
to support a different API and delegated authorization model for each
service they want to talk to even though each API and delegated auth
model effectively does the same thing. Just as OAuth has slowly been
increasing in buzz as the standard that will sweep away the various
proprietary delegated auth models that we have on the Web today, there
has been a similar effort underway by a similar set of dedicated
individuals intent on standardizing contacts and social graph APIs on
the Web. The primary output from this effort is the Portable Contacts
API. I've read been reading latest draft specification of the Portable
Contacts API and below are some of the highlights as well as some
thoughts on them [summary/critique]... Except for the subpar work with
regards to defining an XML serialization for the contacts schema this
seems like a decent specification. If anything, I'm concerned by the
growing number of interdependent specs that seem poised to have a
significant impact on the Web and yet are being defined outside of
formal standards bodies in closed processes funded by big companies.
For example, about half of the references in the Portable Contacts API
specs are to IETF RFCs while the other half are to specs primarily
authored by Google and Yahoo! employees outside of any standards body
(OpenSocial, OAuth, OpenSearch, XRDS-Simple, etc)...

http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/10/05/ThePortableContactsAPIKillingThePasswordAntiPatternOnceAndForAll.aspx
See also the Portable Contacts web site: http://portablecontacts.net/

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

An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol
(XCAP) Diff Event Package
Jari Urpalainen (ed), Internet Draft

The SIP Events framework (IETF RFC 3265) describes subscription and
notification conventions for the SIP protocol defined in RFC 3261. The
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)
defined in RFC 4825 allows a client to read, write and modify XML
formatted application usage data stored on an XCAP server. XCAP is a
set of conventions for mapping XML documents and document components
into HTTP URIs, rules for how the modification of one resource affects
another, data validation constraints, and authorization policies
associated with access to those resources. While the XCAP protocol
allows several authorized users or devices to modify the same XML
document, XCAP does not provide an effective synchronization mechanism
(beyond polling) to keep resources equivalent between a server and a
client. This memo defines an "xcap-diff" event package that, together
with the SIP event notification framework and the XCAP-diff format,
allows a user to subscribe to changes in an XML document, and to receive
notifications whenever a change in an XML document takes place. There
are three basic features that this event package enables with the
XCAP-Diff change notification format. Firstly, it can list the URI
references of XCAP documents from a collection located on an XCAP
server. This is important when a subscriber is doing an initial
synchronization or a comparison of existing server resources to the
locally cached XCAP documents, for example. The version-history of
document comparisons are based on the strong entity tag (ETag) values
of XCAP documents which are also indicated with the XCAP-Diff format.
Secondly, this event package can signal whenever a change is happening
in those resources. The changes can be reported with three ways. The
simplest model is that only document creations, updates and removals
are indicated. The actual contents of those documents are not included
in the notification and the subscriber uses the HTTP RFC 2616 protocol
for a retrieval of document contents. The two more complex modes allow
the changes of documents to be indicated straightaway with the
XML-Patch-Ops RFC 5261 semantics inside the XCAP-Diff format. A client
can then apply a conditional patch to locally cached documents based
on the strong ETag values of documents. The most complex model produces
the smallest documents but it doesn't necessarily show the full HTTP
version-history information unlike the other, typically more verbose
one. Lastly, XML element or attribute contents (XCAP components) can
be received "in-band", that is straight within the XCAP-Diff
notification format. For example, an XCAP element content can be
requested and indicated without the need of a separate HTTP GET request.
If this requested node either exists or is later created or modified,
the notification body indicates its content. And similarly, the
removals of subscribed XCAP components are reported, for example after
a successful HTTP DELETE request.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-sip-xcapevent-04.txt
See also the IETF Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Working Group: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/sip-charter.html

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

Real Web 2.0: Mastering the Creative Commons
Uche Ogbuji, IBM developerWorks

If the essence of Web 2.0 is in making it easier to share and re-use
information, technology is only part of the conversation. Throughout
the history of the Internet, lawyers have proven all too effective at
taking away much of what we gain through invention and collaboration.
For Web 2.0 to flourish, its community must be diligent about taking
matters into its own hands and expressing clearly the rules for sharing
specific content, images, video, audio, and other media. If it's easy
for a person or for programs to determine the license established by
copyright of such resources, it opens things up for creativity,
innovation, and collaboration to take center stage. Creative Commons
(CC) is an organization of lawyers, technical experts, and managers,
with a very broad community, whose goal is to "use private rights to
create public goods", by allowing creators to express degrees of
licensing between the knee-jerk "all rights reserved" and public domain
(in other words, "no rights reserved"). Creative Commons provides the
legal framework and text of licenses that allow you to say that "some
rights are reserved", and allows this to be clearly discovered by others,
so that they can determine whether their use is compatible with your
reservations. The lawyers are involved when these reusable licenses are
crafted and updated, with support and feedback from the community, with
the idea that afterwards, the sharing can proceed on the Web with much
less legal interference... Web 2.0 is not just about what you produce,
but how it can be combined with what's produced by others. CC also makes
it easy to find works that match licensing criteria. Suppose you are
producing a mashup for commercial purposes, and you want to use images
that are okay for such use as one of the sources. You can combine your
usual methods for keeping tabs on likely resources, such as following
specialized Web feeds, with automated validation of the license, reading
the format according to the file type. CC also has several partners
among media publishing sites and search engines. You can get to these
by clicking on the "Search CC Licensed Work", which includes search
forms for Google, Yahoo, Flickr, and more, through iframes. In this
article, you learn how to express CC licenses for your work, how to use
public services for finding work from others you can use, and how to
identify such work yourself.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-realweb8/
See also Creative Commons references: http://xml.coverpages.org/creativeCommons.html

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Open Source Workflow Solution: Nova Bonita
Gavin Terrill, InfoQueue

Bonita is a workflow open source solution for handing long-running,
user-oriented processes providing out of the box workflow and BPM
functionalities to handle your business processes. Bonita is compliant
to the XPDL workflow standard and is downloadable under the LGPL License.
"After 2 years of development, the Bonita project team have announced
the release of Bonita 4.0 (also known as Nova Bonita). Bonita 4.0 is
based on top of the PVM technology, and can be deployed as a lightweight
BPM product that runs on the Standard (JSE) and Enterprise (JEE) Java
platforms. Nova Bonita provides an integrated graphical environment
for BPM development and execution environments, and comprises three
modules: (1) Nova Bonita runtime: the Nova Bonita process engine.
Processes can be deployed, executed and monitored through a rich API
providing BPM services. (2) Nova Bonita console: a web 2.0 graphical
interface fostering the user experience during BPM deployment, execution
and monitoring phases. (3) Nova Bonita designer: a BPM development
environment allowing graphical definition of processes, as well as
BPM connectors for integration with existing system. Miguel Valdes:
"... we decided to build up the Process Virtual Machine technology two
years ago. Bonita 4.0 can now be embedded (as a BPM library) in any
existing application or be deployed remotely as a traditional BPM server.
In that sense, Bonita 4.0 comes with an Eclipse plug-in that allows
easy development of BPM processes and related Java connectors. This
plug-in can be easily added to developers Eclipse environment to speed
up the development of BPM applications. Bonita 4.0 also meets Web 2.0
with a powerful BPM console that improves the user experience so it's
not only targeted for developers and technical architects... XPDL has
been the standard supported by Bonita from its early days. The standard
has been evolving over the last few years to cover missing features
such process to process communication or events support, and especially
it has become the grammar to map the BPMN notation. Note that 7 of top
10 commercial BPM vendors are supporting XPDL... we decided to create
the Process Virtual Machine (PVM) technology. Among others key features,
the PVM allows multiple standards support. We have already added support
for XPDL with Bonita 4.0, we will soon release the BPEL 2.0 extension
in Orchestra 4.0 (also developed by the Bonita team) and Jboss is
currently adding support for JPDL as well..."

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/10/novabonita
See also Standards for Business Process Modeling: http://xml.coverpages.org/bpm.html

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

Building BACnet: 2008 BACnet International Conference
Andy McMillan, AutomatedBuildings.com

"This year's annual BACnet International conference, developed and
produced in conjunction with Engineered Systems magazine, was all about
connecting the dots in building automation. We looked at 'connecting
the dots' wirelessly, at the device level, and at the application level
with web services. We even talked about connecting the dots at the
sustainability level with discussions of how BACnet can contribute to
green initiatives, demand response programs and LEED certification.
Celebrating past effort and current success is necessary but not
sufficient in our rapidly changing world. We also need to accelerate
development in the BACnet community to address new requirements and
accommodate new technologies. It was clear at the conference that in
several areas products and applications are pushing the envelope of
the current specification. Web service applications, wireless devices
and multi-device object models are a couple of areas where application
requirements are driving suppliers to go beyond the limits of the current
standard... The need for building and energy related information sharing
will continue to increase as sustainability becomes more and more an
enterprise-wide initiative. Several case studies in the web services
session demonstrated the simplicity and development speed that make web
services the preferred platform for BAS and energy management application
information-sharing. Thanks to a lot of hard work by a few people a
couple of years ago, the BACnet standard provides a specification for
web services. The specification was designed around the fairly simple
information exchanges that were anticipated at the time. As generally
happens, though, the application requirements have continued to expand.
Users are now asking for large-scale exchange of building and energy
data both within their organizations and among the players in their own
energy ecosystems..." [Note: At BACnet 2008, announcement was made for
the incorporation of five addenda approved since the publication of
BACnet 2004. Addendum 'T' provides a new definition for an XML syntax
which can be used to represent building data in a consistent, flexible
and extensible manner. According to BACnet chair Dave Robin, "With this
new IT-friendly way of representing building data, we are opening up a
whole range of possible new ways to share data. XML can be used for
exchanging files between systems, integrating buildings with energy
utilities, and expanding enterprise integration with richer Web
services..."]

http://www.automatedbuildings.com/news/oct08/columns/080930115005mcmillan.htm
See also BACnet references: http://xml.coverpages.org/facilitiesXML.html#BACnet

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

NetApp Faces Sun Lawsuit Loss
Chris Mellor, The Register

A judicial ruling in the NetApp_Sun IP lawsuit has effectively
invalidated another NetApp patent. The US Patent Office also appears
to be rejecting NetApp's key patents in the law suit. NetApp's
position looks like it's crumbling. The dispute began with NetApp
claiming that Sun's free distribution of its ZFS technology infringes
NetApp's six patents for its WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout)
technology. WAFL is a core component of NetApp's SAN and filer
products... NetApp sued Sun last year and Sun counter-sued, saying
NetApp infringed 22 of its patents. The Sun strategy is to invalidate
the six NetApp patents by identifying prior use of the technologies
involved (prior art), meaning that NetApp did not itself invent the
technology. There have been two strands to this. One has been to ask
the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to re-examine the six NetApp
patents and test their validity. In June it granted re-examinations
on five of the six and invalidated one of them, leaving one down and
five to go. This begins to look bleak for NetApp. If these PTO
decisions result in three more NetApp patents going down the tubes
then that leaves just one NetApp patent in play, and not a core one
at that. It is NetApp policy not to comment on the Sun lawsuit. Sun's
win (if it is a win) and the PTO decisions potentially turn NetApp's
WAFL IP into, well, IP waffle...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/07/sun_gets_netapp_patent_invalidated/
See also on Sun's ZFS Flash initiative: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1191

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

XML Daily Newslink and Cover Pages are sponsored by:

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Oracle Corporation http://www.oracle.com
Primeton http://www.primeton.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

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