XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 15 January 2007

[Robin Cover <robin@oasis-open.org>]

XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 15 January 2007
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
SAP AG  http://www.sap.com

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HEADLINES:

* Application Deployment on Catallactic Grid Middleware
* W3C Report: How the Mobile Web May Help Bridge the Digital Divide
* A Brief History of Open Standards in Denmark
* Drummond Group Certifies Xenos terminalONE Transport v2.3 as OASIS ebXML
  Message Service v2.0 Interoperable
* European Commission Endorses Open Source
* OASIS Announces Public Review of SAML-Related Specifications
* Five Surefire Ways To Make Your SOA a Success
* Finite State Machines in JavaScript: Design a Widget

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Application Deployment on Catallactic Grid Middleware
Liviu Joita, Omer F. Rana (et al.), IEEE Distributed Systems Online

An architecture based on a decentralized market view integrates Grid
applications with Catallactic middleware. A prototype application showed
the concept's feasibility, as well as the middleware's effectiveness in
balancing query-request workload across multiple Grid services. In
previous work, we simulated Catallactic Grid markets and compared them
to centralized economic allocations. Our satisfactory results encouraged
us to investigate the feasibility of implementing Catallactic Grid
middleware and integrating it with Grid applications. The Catallaxy
approach is based on negotiation and price signaling between decentralized
autonomous agents. In our work, 'agents' refers to autonomous service
providers or users who can update or modify their services and determine
how much service information is accessible to other agents.) Catallaxy
lets applications inform individuals (agents) about other agents'
possible knowledge and facilitates information exchange. Here, we
describe an architecture that integrates Grid applications into a market
that supports the Catallaxy concept; we do this by integrating the
application with a Catallactic middleware. We also describe a prototype
based on a distributed database-query application that searches distributed
catalogs for building products in the architecture-engineering-construction
industry. To build this implementation, we used middleware toolkits: (1)
the DIET agent platform,5 which provides a modular, lightweight, and
scalable execution platform for agents; (2) JXTA, which offers a
peer-to-peer platform; and (3) the WSRF/OGSA implementation of GT4,
which offers full support for resource management in distributed,
service-based environments. We use JXTA protocols to route messages among
agent nodes and thus create an overlay network for object discovery and
communication... The WS-Agreement protocol specification, developed by
the Global Grid Forum's GRAAP (Grid Resource Allocation and Agreement
Protocol) Working Group, is an XML protocol for specifying an agreement
between a resource/service provider and a consumer. WS-Agreement generally
aims at a one-shot interaction and isn't directly intended to support
negotiation. However, it can form a useful basis for conducting
negotiation between two parties and choosing between multiple service
and resource providers.

http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/mags/ds/2006/12/oz001.pdf
See also WS-Agreement: http://xml.coverpages.org/WS-Agreement-13652.pdf

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W3C Report: How the Mobile Web May Help Bridge the Digital Divide
Stephane Boyera (et al, eds), Workshop Report

W3C has announced the publication of a areport on the "W3C Workshop on
the Mobile Web in Developing Countries," held in Bangalore, India on
5 and 6 December 2006. Workshop participants discussed the needs and
challenges facing people in developing economies who use a mobile phone
as the primary and often sole platform for accessing the Web.
Participants included mobile handset manufacturers, browser developers,
software companies, local Indian companies and universities, and
organizations working on information technology projects in rural
communities in India and Africa. The report presents their findings
and proposed next steps. This event demonstrated the need for a public
forum to share and capitalize experiences in running ICT projects in
developing countries. This may lead to the creation of best practices
and guidelines for providing mobile e-services in the developing world.
This forum would be a place where experts in the mobile technologies
and experts in ICT in developing countries could share expertise. Given
that SMS applications are successful, it is very important to analyze
what are the key points of success in order to understand how to ease
the transition to the mobile Web as the platform for applications. It
will be essential to lobby at handset manufacturers and international
organizations defining the basic specifications of handsets for
developing countries for them to integrate the minimum browsing
capabilities.

http://www.w3.org/2006/07/MWI-EC/exec_summary

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A Brief History of Open Standards in Denmark
John Goetze, Blog

This article discusses current and recent developments in Denmark, where
open standards have become a central policy issue. It concludes that
slthough Denmark is prone for leading the way in true, large-scale
openization, a full-blown effort towards these ends is highly unlikely.
In the e-government field, Denmark is almost always seen as a leader
when compared to other nations. We are considered the e-readiest society
with some of the most e-literate citizens. We got PKI and digital
signatures, we got e-procurement and e-invoicing, we got digital
registries and databases en masse, and so on. Denmark is also often
regarded as the ultimate "Microsoft country". Denmark is not only
hosting the largest Microsoft development division in Europe, but
Microsoft is also a de facto monopoly in Danish government and society
at large. Open standards have been on the political agenda in Denmark
for several years. Partly prompted by the situation with Microsoft and
other monopolies, but also as a widely supported openization proces. The
likely development will be a pragmatic government policy which is more
or less aligned with Microsoft's own, ongoing attempts at openizing
themselves. On the other hand, there is a good and solid business case
in ODF, and a Ministry of Finance out looking for good business cases,
so anything can happen.

http://gotze.eu/2007/01/local-history-of-standards.html

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Drummond Group Certifies Xenos terminalONE Transport v2.3 as OASIS ebXML
Message Service v2.0 Interoperable
Staff, Xenos Group Announcement

Xenos Group Inc., a leading provider of solutions that capture,
transform, transport and present data and electronic documents,
announced that Drummond Group Inc. (DGI) has certified Xenos terminalONE
Transport v2.3 software as "ebMS Interoperable". ebMS (ebXML Message
Service) is the messaging layer of the ebXML framework. ebMS version 2.0
is an important standard that enables secure and reliable internet data
interchange and is complementary to emerging Service Oriented
Architectures (SOAs). The purpose of this test is to provide software
vendors a neutral venue to test interoperability of ebMS v2.0 products
in a non-competitive environment with the goal to accelerate adoption of
high quality ebMS v2.0 deployments. ebMS adoption is growing in the
automobile sector, as well as in the U.S. public health industry, major
government projects in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Norway
and energy trading applications across the European Union. In DGI's ebMS
4Q06 2006 test round, five software companies demonstrated their
products' interoperability and were certified. "These innovative,
interoperable products based on the ebMS standard successfully passed
the certification test round designed by the Drummond Certified
program so companies can be more efficient and communicate better with
their supply chains at all levels," said Rik Drummond, DGI's chief
executive officer. "This empowers software companies to deliver a
variety of new, interoperable software products designed to enrich
business and trading partner relationships worldwide."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,44386.shtml

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European Commission Endorses Open Source
Richard Thurston, ZDNet UK

The European Commission has issued a ringing endorsement of open source
software, producing a confidence-boost for businesses considering the
deployment of Linux and other free software. In a lengthy report into
business deployments of open source software, published in full late
last week, the Commission said that in "almost all cases" savings would
be made by switching from proprietary to open source software. The bold
findings come in stark contrast to assertions by Microsoft that Linux
savings are a myth. The Commission's work is based on detailed analysis
of open source projects in six European Union countries. "Our findings
show that, in almost all cases, a transition towards open source
[produces] savings in the long term cost of ownership," said the report,
which was authored by academics at the United Nations University in
Maastricht, Netherlands. Microsoft has attempted to persuade IT
professionals and businesses that Windows can be cheaper than Linux,
though its Get The Facts campaign. Get The Facts cited examples where
Microsoft's software had offered a cost advantage over open source
software. The EC report also issued encouragement for organisations
considering the free Open Office applications suite. "Open Office has
all the functionalities that public offices need to create documents,
spreadsheets and presentations," the report said. "Open Office is free
and extremely stable." It added that users were as productive with Open
Office as they were with proprietary software.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39285468,00.htm
See also the report: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

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OASIS Announces Public Review of SAML-Related Specifications
Staff, OASIS Announcement

The OASIS Security Services (SAML) TC has recently approved a collection
of specifications as Committee Drafts suitable for public review: (1)
"SAML 2.0 Protocol Extension for Requested Authentication Context"
defines a protocol extension to SAML 2.0 specification that facilitates
a more flexible model for expressing Authentication Context than that
currently supported. The extension allows service providers to express
combinations of Authentication Context classes in their requests for
authentication assertions. The expectation is that the extension, when
its additional functionality was necessary, would be used in replacement
of the existing Authentication Context mechanisms in the authentication
request message. (2) "SAML 2.0 Shared Credentials Authentication Context
Extension and Related Classes" defines an authentication context extension
to the SAML 2.0 Authentication Context specification SAMLAC that allows
providers to distinguish whether or not the credential by which a
principal authenticates to the identity provider is known to be shared
amongst a group of users or unique to that user. Two new Authentication
Context classes and associated schemas are also introduced to distinguish
between these two cases. (3) "SAML V2.0 Text-Based Challenge/Response
Token Authentication Context Class" proposes an authentication context
class to cover the general case of text-based challenge/response tokens
to facilitate signaling their use in SAML. Such schemes include, for
example, scratch tokens, numbered list tokens, grid tokens, etc.
associated with a challenge/response authentication function. This
document also proposes an extension that enables text-based challenge/
response token parameters to be specified in relevant authentication
contexts. (4) "SAML V2.0 X.500/LDAP Attribute Profile" provides a profile
serving as a replacement for the X.500/LDAP Attribute Profile found in
the original SAML 2.0 Profiles specification; the original profile
results in well-formed but schema-invalid XML and cannot be corrected
without a normative change.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200701/msg00005.html
See also SAML references: http://xml.coverpages.org/saml.html

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Five Surefire Ways To Make Your SOA a Success
Dave Linthicum, InfoWorld

Most large enterprises have already launched some sort of SOA
initiative, the objective being an agile architecture that can respond
to business needs in near-real time. Along the way, SOA provides a
means for fixing systems that have languished in a dysfunctional state
for years. No wonder IDC expects spending on SOA-related software to
reach nearly $15 billion by 2009. An SOA is a long-term solution. Expect
no measurable ROI in the short term. For most enterprises, the value
will be understood in years, not months. This can be a tough sell when
you consider that most American businesses operate quarter to quarter,
and budgets and objectives change monthly. Long-term projects such as
SOA, which are both complex and systemic, are difficult if not
impossible to maintain across time in some organizations. If your
organization steadfastly resists a long term outlook, an SOA may not
be for you. The best advice is to get investment and commitment from
the top of the organization, so you have the political clout to protect
projects, and the bully pulpit to convince people of the long-term
value and importance of SOA to the enterprise. Anything less will
result in failure. If SOA is implemented as just another quick fix,
it can layer even more complexity onto the enterprise technology
infrastructure. Without a long-term commitment to SOA within the
organization, even the simplest SOA project will have a slim chance
of success.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/15/03FEsoa5_1.html

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Finite State Machines in JavaScript: Design a Widget
Edward J. Pring, IBM developerWorks

For years, Web designers have quietly exploited the JavaScript
interpreters in popular Web browsers to enhance the appearance of
their Web sites. They do this mainly by copying short snippets of code
into their HTML pages. Now, with the recent popularity of Ajax,
software engineers also use JavaScript to develop a new generation of
applications that execute within browsers. Browser-based applications
execute in a real-time environment where mouse, keyboard, timer,
network, and program events can occur at any time. When the behavior
of an event-driven application depends upon the order in which events
occur, its programming can become very tangled, and consequently
difficult to debug and modify. Software engineers have long used finite
state machines, sometimes called discrete or deterministic finite
automata in academic circles, as an organizing principle for developing
event-driven programs. The discipline imposed by finite state machines
adds rigor to the design by replacing tangled logic with straightforward
tables, resulting in simpler implementation and easier testing. In this
article series, you'll develop a sample finite state machine application
as an exercise to explore some distinctive features of the JavaScript
language: (1) Functions are first-class objects: they can be created,
assigned to variables, and passed as arguments, just like any other
object. (2) Functions can refer to any variable in their lexical scope
-- the nested braces surrounding the function's definition, such as
the local variables of a function that defines them. (3) Functions can
be stored in associative arrays (arrays that are indexed by names rather
than numbers).

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-finitemach1/

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