XML Daily Newslink. Friday, 16 February 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Friday, 16 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
SAP AG  http://www.sap.com

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HEADLINES:

* Common Policy: A Document Format for Expressing Privacy Preferences
* XHTML 1.1 - Module-based XHTML (Second Edition)
* Microsoft Sharpens Interoperability Focus
* Open Source Beta Ant Task for Schematron Now Available
* XML Events 2: An Events Syntax for XML
* Patent Reform: Beware of Unintended Consequences
* Software AG Announces SOA Active Governance Framework
* GPL Draft Has Microsoft/Novell Deal in Mind

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Common Policy: A Document Format for Expressing Privacy Preferences
Henning Schulzrinne (et al., eds), IETF Request for Comments

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced the
availability of a new Standards Track Request for Comments specification
in the online RFC libraries. The document was produced by members of
the IETF Geographic Location/Privacy (GEOPRIV) Working Group. The
document defines a framework for authorization policies controlling
access to application-specific data. This framework is the result of
combining the common aspects of single authorization systems that more
specifically control access to presence and location information and
that previously had been developed separately. The benefit of
combining these two authorization systems is two-fold. First, it allows
building a system that enhances the value of presence with location
information in a natural way and reuses the same underlying
authorization mechanism. Second, it encourages a more generic
authorization framework with mechanisms for extensibility. The
applicability of the framework specified in this document is not
limited to policies controlling access to presence and location
information data, but can be extended to other application domains.
The general framework defined in this document is intended to be
accompanied and enhanced by application-specific policies specified
elsewhere. The common policy framework described here is enhanced by
domain-specific policy documents, including presence and location.
According to the model defined, The PT (Presentity / Target) is the
entity about whom information has been requested. The Rule Maker (RM)
is an entity that creates the authorization rules that restrict access
to data items. (The Authorization Policy Server (PS) entity has access
to both the authorization policies and the data items; in location-
specific applications, the entity PS is labeled as location server
(LS). A Watcher / Recipient (WR) entity requests access to data items
of the PT. An access operation might be a read, a write, or any other
operation. Rules are encoded in XML. To this end, Section 13 of the
document contains an XML schema (XML Schema Definition) defining the
Common Policy Markup Language. This, however, is purely an exchange
format between RM and PS.  GEOPRIV Working Group Problem statement:
"As more and more resources become available on the Internet, some
applications need to acquire geographic location information about
certain resources or entities. These applications include navigation,
emergency services, management of equipment in the field, and other
location-based services."

http://xml.coverpages.org/IETF-RFC-4745.txt
See also Privacy Specifications: http://xml.coverpages.org/epal.html#privacySpecs

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XHTML 1.1 - Module-based XHTML (Second Edition)
Shane McCarron and Masayasu Ishikawa (eds), W3C Technical Report

W3C's HTML Working Group has released the second edition of "XHTML 1.1
- Module-based XHTML" as a Working Draft in preparation for Proposed
Edited Recommendation. XHTML 1.1 is a reformulation of XHTML 1.0.
It defines an XHTML document type that is based upon the module
framework and modules defined in XHTML Modularization. The purpose of
this document type is to serve as the basis for future extended XHTML
'family' document types, and to provide a consistent, forward-looking
document type cleanly separated from the deprecated, legacy
functionality of HTML 4 that was brought forward into the XHTML 1.0
document types. The XHTML 1.1 document type is a fully functional
document type with rich semantics. It is not, however, as varied in
functionality as the XHTML 1.0 Transitional or Frameset document
types. These document types defined many presentational components
that are better handled through style sheets or other similar
mechanisms. This 'Second Edition" release reflects clarifications
and corrections as a result of many years of use by the community.
It also includes an new implementation using XML Schemas. This
implementation has gone through the W3C process, including Last
Call, and is now integrated here in anticipation of its publication
as a W3C Recommendation.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xhtml11-20070216/
See also the W3C HTML Activity: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

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Microsoft Sharpens Interoperability Focus
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Senior Microsoft representatives met with InfoWorld on Thursday to
outline its focus on four key areas to improve interoperability
between its own software and other vendors' products: identity
management; Web services and related development; collaboration between
information workers; system management. "We are really working on new
protocols in the WS-* space that enable interoperability across
identity systems," said Jean Paoli, Microsoft's general manager of
interoperability and XML architecture. Last week, Microsoft vowed to
integrate its CardSpace identity management system with the OpenID
Web authentication standard. Paoli emphasized the move as evidence
of the commitment. WS-* represents a series of Web services-related
specifications for standardization in areas such as security and
messaging. Microsoft's identity management push, however, apparently
will not be centered on its previous Passport initiative for Internet
security. The company already has dabbled in open source as a way to
boost interoperability, offering a bridge between the OpenDocument
Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML electronic document formats,
said Robertson.  Paoli and Robertson listed multiple Microsoft
interoperability projects in the past several years, such as its work
with Novell on interoperability between Windows and Novell's Suse
Linux. The company's interoperability effort with Sun Microsystems
also was noted.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/16/HNmicrointerop_1.html
See also the Microsoft Interoperability home page: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/

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Open Source Beta Ant Task for Schematron Now Available
Rick Jelliffe, Software Announcement

Developers have announced the availability of an Java Ant task for
ISO Schematron validation. It can output error messages to the console,
or aggregate SVRL messages  for each file into a single file. It
supports phases and other  Schematron features, using the recent ISO
Schematron skeleton. The software was written by Christophe Lauret
and Willi Ekasalim at  Allette Systems for Topologi Pty. Ltd. and will
be released as open  source (probably as part of the standard tasks
for Ant). The current version is beta quality, test  reports and
comments are very welcome. Ant is a "make" system for Java; there is
also a .NET version. It is  useful for batch processing files,
especially for running the same  processes on multiple files that are
part of larger document sets. Note: the ISO SVRL (Schematron
Validation Report Language) implementation is also now available. SVRL
is an XML language to present the results of validating with a
Schematron schema. It can be used for testing implementations,
benchmarking, and for collecting validation data to be onsent to other
formatting or reporting stages. SVRL is Annex D of ISO Schematron. The
Schematron  differs in basic concept from other schema languages in
that it not based on grammars but on finding tree patterns in the
parsed document. This approach allows many kinds of structures to be
represented which are inconvenient and difficult in grammar-based
schema languages. If you know XPath or the XSLT expression language,
you can start to use The Schematron  immediately.  The Schematron can
be useful in conjunction with many grammar-based structure-validation
languages: DTDs, XML Schemas, RELAX, TREX, etc. Indeed, Schematron
is part of an ISO standard (DSDL: Document Schema Description
Languages) designed to allow multiple, well-focussed XML validation
languages to work together. You can even embed a  Schematron schema
inside an XML Schema 'appinfo' element or inside a RELAX NG schema.

http://www.schematron.com/resource/Using_Schematron_for_Ant.pdf
See also the Schematron web site http://www.schematron.com/

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XML Events 2: An Events Syntax for XML
Shane McCarron, Steven Pemberton, and T. V. Raman (eds), W3C TR

Members of the W3C HTML Working Group have published a Working Draft
for "XML Events 2: An Events Syntax for XML."  An 'event' is the
representation of some asynchronous occurrence (such as a mouse click
on the presentation of the element, or an arithmetical error in the
value of an attribute of the element, or any of unthinkably many other
possibilities) that gets associated with an element (targeted at it)
in an XML document. In the DOM model of events, the general behavior
is that when an event occurs it is dispatched by passing it down the
document tree in a phase called capture to the element where the event
occurred (called its target), where it then may be passed back up the
tree again in the phase called bubbling. In general an event can be
responded to at any element in the path (an observer) in either phase
by causing an action, and/or by stopping the event, and/or by cancelling
the default action for the event. The "XML Events 2" module defined in
the specification provides XML languages with the ability to uniformly
integrate event listeners and associated event handlers with Document
Object Model (DOM) Level 2 event interfaces. The result is to provide
an interoperable way of associating behaviors with document-level
markup. document neither specifies particular events, nor mandates any
particular methods of specifying actions. These definitions are left
to any markup language using the facilities described here. The Working
Draft reflects clarifications and corrections as a result of many years
of use by the community. It also includes updated implementations in
XML Schema and XML DTD that can readily integrate with the host
language's namespace.  W3C's HTML Working Group is charter is to
complete the transition from HTML to XHTML; this includes finishing
work on XHTML 2.0, the next generation of XHTML whose design goal is
to use generic XML technologies as much as possible. This XHTML document
type will include new features such as XForms and XML Events as
replacements for legacy HTML/XHTML features.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xml-events-20070216/

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Patent Reform: Beware of Unintended Consequences
Roy Mark, InternetNews.com

Lawmakers recently expressed concern about the laws of unintended
consequences as they opened the first of a series of hearings on
proposed patent reform. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the new chairman
of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual
Property, and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) are seeking wholesale reforms
of the patent system they say is issuing "low quality" patents and
encouraging infringement lawsuits. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told
the panel she is excited about the possibility of patent reform in the
110th Congress but she is "haunted" by Congress' last attempt to tinker
with the system. According to witnesses at Thursday's hearing, she has
good reason to worry. In the early 1980's, the process for judicial
appeal of patents and infringement claims was changed so that all appeals
were heard by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). A
decade later, Congress changed the fee structure at the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (PTO) to where the costs of operations are fees paid
by patent applicants. According to Adam Jaffe and other witnesses, CAFC
has consistently interpreted patent law to make it easier to obtain and
enforce a patent while making it more difficult for those accused of
infringement to challenge the validity of the patents. The result has
been a blizzard of litigation often resulting in huge financial
settlements. At the PTO, the new fee structure, combined with CAFC's
actions, has also made it easier to obtain a patent, awarding examiners
financial incentives to approve patents. As a result, the PTO approves
85 percent of all patent applications. By comparison, the European
Patent Office approves 72.5 percent of all applications and the Japan
Patent Office grants patents to just 44.5 percent of applications. Other
reforms proposed Thursday included a post grant review of issued
patents requiring all patent applications be published within 18
months of filing and allowing third parties to comment during the
application process.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3660356
See also Patents and Open Standards: http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html

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Software AG Announces SOA Active Governance Framework
Staff, Software AG Announcement

Software AG has announced the Active Governance Framework to help
organizations fully realize the business benefits of a Service-Oriented
Architecture (SOA) and better manage and control their SOA initiatives.
The Active Governance Framework provides transparency on how the IT
infrastructure supports business operations. Any changes to business-
relevant guidelines, such as policies or service level agreements, can
be immediately assessed at the IT level, enabling better communication
between business and IT. At the heart of the Active Governance Framework
is CentraSite, a leading SOA Registry and Repository co-developed by
Software AG and Fujitsu. CentraSite has been enhanced with advanced
capabilities that provide centralized, standardized and automated
business policy management. Through the automation of SOA policy
management, CentraSite is the foundation for compliance management and
allows organizations to manage the entire SOA lifecycle. The cornerstone
of the Active Governance Framework is a new policy editor plug-in for
CentraSite allowing effective central policy management and control.
Users, for example, are proactively alerted of attempted policy changes
incompatible with other business policies. This active, automated
approach to governance ensures that organizations can reap the true
benefits of SOA. The Active Governance Framework also provides
sophisticated federation through automated notifications for policy or
lifecycle changes and compliancy-relevant information based on open
standards, such as UDDI v3. This standards-based federation mechanism
synchronizes policies and other SOA-relevant metadata and enriches
the integration capabilities for CentraSite Community partners. The
CentraSite Community brings over 25 partners together to help
organizations successfully design, implement, manage, govern and
optimize a complete SOA ecosystem.

http://www.softwareag.com/Corporate/News/PressRoom/pressreleases/20070215_AGF_page.asp

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GPL Draft Has Microsoft/Novell Deal in Mind
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com

When the the third draft of the General Public License comes out, look
for language that addresses the recent Microsoft-Novell patent deal.
Members of the Free Software Foundation, which oversees the draft
change process for the GPL, said a new patent clause is being inserted
in the draft that could effectively thwart future patent pacts similar
to Microsoft's deal with Novell. The November agreement between
Microsoft and Novell provides Novell users with a promise from
Microsoft not to sue Novell's Linux customers for alleged Linux patent
infringements. Experts at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions summit said the
latest draft of proposed changes to the dominant open source license
would include an indirect patent license provision that will prevent
GPL version 3 users from striking deals similar to Novell's agreement
with Microsoft; Novell is not directly providing patent protection but
rather is receiving it indirectly via Microsoft. During a panel
discussion, Richard Fontana, legal counsel at the Free Software
Foundation's Software Freedom Law Center, argued that it is not clear
whether Novell's deal with Microsoft is in violation of GPL version
2, which is why the new clauses in version 3 are necessary.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3660231

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