XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 06 February 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 06 February 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
IBM Corporation  http://www.ibm.com

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HEADLINES:

* XUL-Enhanced Web Applications
* W3C Publishes Revised CSS3 Working Drafts
* Oracle Submits Identity Framework to Liberty Alliance
* RSA 2007: Microsoft Marries CardSpace and OpenID 2.0
* webMethods Unites with Other Industry Leaders in Interop Vendor Alliance
* Get a Handle on the JAX-WS API's Handler Framework
* Jobs to Music Industry: Drop DRM
* Texas, Minnesota Eye Move to ODF

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XUL-Enhanced Web Applications
Cedric Savarese, XML.com

XUL (XML User Interface Language), according to the Mozilla Developer
Center web page, is "Mozilla's XML-based language that lets you build
feature-rich cross platform applications that can run connected or
disconnected from the Internet. These applications are easily customized
with alternative text, graphics and layout so they can be readily
branded or localized for various markets. Web developers already
familiar with Dynamic HTML (DHTML) will learn XUL quickly and can start
building applications right away."  This article by Cedric Savarese
presents a little-known use of XUL and shows how to take advantage of
its superior performance and accessibility over HTML while maintaining
cross-browser compatibility. He illustrates this using a proof-of-concept
JavaScript library that can render UI widgets using either XUL or DHTML.
The most obvious drawback to XUL is that it is not supported by most
browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera...). Any web application
relying on XUL needs to fall back on DHTML widgets for cross-browser
compatibility. So the question is not about choosing XUL or DHTML, but
if XUL and DHTML is a worthy development approach. The last thing a
developer wants is to maintain two different code-bases to support
different browsers. There are plenty of DHMTL-based widget libraries
(you may also call them JavaScript or Ajax widgets). Yahoo's YUI Library,
Dojo's widgets, Adobe's Spry to name just a few, so why would you want
to bother with XUL? XUL widgets are faster, more accessible, and come
with more built-in behaviors than their DHTML counterparts. Simply put,
with XUL the user experience feels much more like a desktop application
than a web-based one. The difference in performance is more striking
with complex widgets, as one can see by comparing a DHTML tree with a
XUL tree. The proof-of-concept library (hXUL) described here implements
the tabbed panel and tree widgets in both XUL and DHTML (including the
drag and drop for the tree), and is available for download. With such
a library, any developer could deliver a XUL-enhanced application with
a fast and accessible user interface for Firefox users without
sacrificing cross-browser compatibility.

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/01/31/xul-enhanced-web-apps.html
See also the XUL web site: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL

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W3C Publishes Revised CSS3 Working Drafts
Hakon Wium Lie and Ian Hickson (eds), W3C Technical Reports

W3C's CSS Working Group has announced the release of two updated CSS3
Working draft specifications. The "CSS3 Module: Generated Content for
Paged Media" module describes features often used in printed
publications. In particular, this specification describes how CSS style
sheets can express named strings, leaders, cross-references, footnotes,
endnotes, running headers and footers, named flows, new counter styles,
page and column floats, hyphenation, bookmarks, change bars,
continuation markers, named page lists, and generated lists. Along
with two other CSS3 modules -- multicolumn layout and paged media --
this module offers advanced functionality for presenting structured
documents on paged media. The Working Draft "Behavioral Extensions to
CSS" provides a way to link to binding technologies, such as XBL (XML
Binding Language 2.0), from CSS style sheets. This allows bindings to
be selected using the CSS cascade, and thus enables bindings to
transparently benefit from the user style sheet mechansim, media
selection, and alternate style sheets. A CSS UA is not expected to
support this module unless it also supports a binding language such as
XBL. A user agent cannot comply to this specification without also
supporting one or more binding languages such as XBL. Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) allows designers to create attractive, economical, and
flexible Web sites. Using a simple declarative style, designers can set
positioning, margins and alignment, layering, colors, text styling,
list numbering, and much more. Furthermore, writing direction, font
styles, and other conventions differ from one written language to
another. CSS supports an increasing number of different typographic
traditions and has made significant progress toward being able to
display multilingual documents. CSS has various levels and profiles.
In general, desktop browsers implement level 1, 2 or 3. Other programs
implement the appropriate profile for their platform, whether mobile
phone, PDA, television, printer, speech synthesizer, or other device.
CSS level 3 promises more power features at the same time it will make
CSS easier to implement and use. CSS3 includes all of level 2 and adds
new selectors, rich hypertext, more powerful borders and backgrounds,
vertical text, user interaction (e.g., styling of XForms), speech,
rendering on multimedia devices, and more.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-css3-gcpm-20070205/
See also Behavioral Extensions to CSS: http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-becss-20070205/

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Oracle Submits Identity Framework to Liberty Alliance
Jeremy Kirk, InfoWorld

InfoWorld reports that "Oracle has released a technology and policy
blueprint for how organizations can exchange sensitive identity
information among applications. Oracle has given the Identity Governance
Framework (IGF) to the Liberty Alliance, a consortium that develops
standards for Web-services applications, said Brett McDowell, Liberty's
executive director. It was developed with support from vendors such as
CA, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Novell. The IGF will be used
to develop technical standards for how identity information is stored
and shared across systems. Over the coming months, Liberty will gather
more technical requirements from users, McDowell said. Around June [2007],
a Liberty technical group will test the specifications before the final
phase, interoperability testing, he said. Oracle made the IGF available
to Liberty royalty-free so it can be used without licensing barriers in
a wider range of products, McDowell said. The IGF includes components
such as: (1) Client Attribute Requirement Markup Language (CARML) and
schema: an XML-based contract defined by application developers that
informs deployment managers and service providers about the usage
requirements of an application. (2) Attribute Authority Policy Markup
Language (AAPML): a set of policy rules regarding the use of identity-
related information that allow sources to specify constraints on use of
data. (3) CARML API: an application programming interface that makes it
easier for developers to write applications that consume and use
identity-related data in a way that conforms to policies.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/06/HNoracleidentityframework_1.html
See also the IGF web site: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/standards/idm/igf/index.html

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RSA 2007: Microsoft Marries CardSpace and OpenID 2.0
Dan Farber, ZDNet Blog

With the Vista launch behind him, Bill Gates and Craig Mundie,
Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer and security patron,
were on stage the 16th annual RSA Conference in San Francisco before
a crowd of about 15,000 security geeks and professionals. After
spending 45 minutes talking about security in general, most of which
the crowd was familiar with, Gates and Mundie announced support for
OpenID 2.0, marrying CardSpace and OpenID as Mundie expressed it.
"At the security level interoperability is fundamental," Gates said.
From the joint announcement by JanRain, SXIP Identity, VeriSign and
Microsoft, as posted by Kim Cameron: JanRain, Microsoft, Sxip, and
VeriSign will collaborate on interoperability between OpenID and
Windows CardSpace to make the Internet safer and easier to use.
Specifically: (1) As part of OpenID's security architecture, OpenID
will be extended to allow relying parties to explicitly request and
be informed of the use of phishing-resistant credentials. (2)
Microsoft recognizes the growth of the OpenID community and believes
OpenID plays a significant role in the Internet identity infrastructure.
Kim Cameron, Chief Architect of Identity at Microsoft, will work with
the OpenID community on authentication and anti-phishing. (3) JanRain,
Sxip, and VeriSign recognize that Information Cards provide significant
anti-phishing, privacy, and convenience benefits to users. Information
Cards, based on the open WS-Trust standard, are available though
Windows CardSpace. (4) JanRain and Sxip, leading providers of open
source code libraries for blogging and web sites, are announcing they
will add support for the Information Cards to their OpenID code bases.
(5) JanRain, Sxip and VeriSign plan to add Information Card support
to future identity solutions. (6) Microsoft plans to support OpenID
in future Identity server products (7) The four companies have agreed
to work together on a 'Using Information Cards with OpenID' profile
that will make it possible for other developers and service providers
to take advantage of these technology advancements.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4439
See also Kim Cameron's Blog: http://www.identityblog.com/?p=668

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webMethods Unites with Other Industry Leaders in Interop Vendor Alliance
Staff, webMethods Announcement

webMethods, Inc., a leading business integration and optimization
software company, announced that it has joined the Interop Vendor
Alliance. webMethods will be working with Microsoft, the initiator of
this collaborative effort, and other key vendors, including BEA Systems,
CA, EMC, GXS, Software AG, and Sun Microsystems, to simplify integration
and improve interoperability with Microsoft-based solutions. webMethods'
participation in the alliance is driven by the company's long-term
commitment to common standards and shared best practices as a means for
overcoming the complexity associated with heterogeneous systems. Marc
Breissinger, webMethods Chief Technology Officer: "As customers seek to
leverage service-oriented architecture to reduce development costs while
improving business agility, the need for real-world solutions for
achieving more universal interoperability becomes paramount; we view the
Interop Vendor Alliance as an excellent forum for helping to address
this goal as it recognizes the widespread influence of Microsoft
technology within Global 2000 enterprises." The Interop Vendor Alliance
is designed to better connect people, data and diverse systems through
enhanced interoperability with Microsoft technology. The organization
serves as a collaborative forum for developing and sharing common
technology models, facilitates scenario-based testing of multi-vendor
solutions, and works to communicate additional best practices to users.
Through its continuing participation in key standards groups, including
the W3C, OASIS and the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organization,
webMethods has aided the development and advancement of key Web services
standards such as SOAP 1.2, WS-BPEL 2.0, XML Schema, WSDL 2.0, UDDI,
WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-Notification and WS-RX. webMethods' long-
term collaboration with Microsoft includes the recent development of
the WS-MetadataExchange and WS-Discovery specifications.

http://www.webmethods.com/About/News/PressReleases/Details?pressReleaseDetails_param0=7082
See also the Interop Vendor Alliance: http://www.interopvendoralliance.org/

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Get a Handle on the JAX-WS API's Handler Framework
Young Yang, JavaWorld Magazine

The handler framework in the Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS)
allows applications to address cross-cutting and/or system-level
concerns by opening the service and client runtimes for applications
to plug in modular components. Reusability of these components across
the services portfolio is one obvious benefit that this framework brings
to service delivery. This mechanism also allows the separation of the
most fundamental concerns of application software in Web services
development, effectively abstracting the system service into handlers
and leaving the clients and services to focus on business logic. In
this article, I describe how the JAX-WS handler framework works and
demonstrate, with examples, how to work with some of its most useful
features. In JAX-WS, handlers are associated with services, and the
specification leaves the handler deployment architecture for developers
to decide, depending on the implementation. SOAP engines implementing
JAX-WS tend to bundle a service with its handlers as a single deployment
unit. This may make sense for handlers processing service-specific
logic. However, for more generic handlers, this practice makes reuse
across services inconvenient and unnecessarily complicates the
packaging and deployment of Web services reusing such handlers.
Following a different approach, Apache Axis2 deploys modules, which
serve more or less the same purpose as handlers in JAX-WS, directly
into the SOAP engine (instead of attaching them to services), and then
associates services and their operations with those modules through a
configuration file. I have always believed this should be the preferred
deployment architecture for components serving cross-cutting concerns
and hope a future version of JAX-WS will follow a similar approach
when standardizing handler deployment.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2007/jw-02-handler.html
See also Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=224

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Jobs to Music Industry: Drop DRM
Staff, Reuters

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs today called on the four major record
companies to start selling songs online without copy protection
software known as digital rights management. Jobs said there appeared
to be no benefit for the record companies, which sell more than 90%
of their music without DRM on compact discs while selling the remaining
small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system. "If such
requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an
influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores
and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music
companies," he said... Apple is due to reopen talks with the four
majors in early March to discuss the terms of their relationships with
the iTunes Music Store, according to a source familiar with the
discussions. The four major players in the industry -- Vivendi's
Universal Music Group; Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which is owned
by Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG; EMI Group; and Warner Music Group --
all negotiated one-year extensions with Apple last year, according to
the source. DRM critics, particularly at independent music companies,
have intensified calls in recent months for the companies to sell
their music without copy protection.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9010523
See also XML Standards and DRM: http://xml.coverpages.org/drm.html

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Texas, Minnesota Eye Move to ODF
Elizabeth Montalbano, InfoWorld

Texas and Minnesota may become the second and third U.S. states to
adopt ODF (Open Document Format for XML) as the standard file format
for government documents instead of the file format that Microsoft
uses in its Office 2007 software suite. Two separate bills up for
legislative consideration in each state propose to mandate the use of
an open, XML-based file format that is "interoperable among diverse
internal and external platforms and applications; fully published and
available royalty-free; implemented by multiple vendors; and controlled
by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process
for evolution of the standard," according to the Minnesota House of
Representatives bill; the Texas bill uses similar wording to describe
the file format the states intend to support. The Minnesota bill
proposes that the mandate would take effect beginning July 1, 2008,
while the Texas bill gives the state's Department of Information
Resources until Sept. 1, 2008 to develop a plan for the transition.
Though the bills do not specifically name ODF as the document format
under consideration, the explanation of what each state wants to move
to seems to fit the standard. ODF is an industry standard supported by
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is available
for free, and is supported by several vendors in their office suites,
including IBM, Sun, and Google. Currently, Massachusetts is implementing
a plan using ODF as the standard format for all state agency documents.
Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to adopt ODF. Microsoft also has
submitted Open XML as a global standard, and it is currently before the
ISO for approval. If approved and adopted by companies other than
Microsoft, it could theoretically fall under the description of an open,
XML-based file format as outlined in the Texas and Minnesota bills.
Novell plans to implement Open XML in its version of OpenOffice, and
Corel plans support for Open XML in its WordPerfect Office software.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/06/HNtexasminnodf_1.html

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