XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 22 February 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 22 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
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

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HEADLINES:

* W3C Forms Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group
* Last Call Working Draft Review for XForms 1.1
* DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures
* Metadata Big Bang
* Raytheon to Construct N-Dex
* Out of Step: National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and N-DEx
* Google Takes a Swipe at Microsoft Office
* SA Government to Switch to Open Source

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W3C Forms Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group
Staff, W3C Announcement

W3C has announced the launch of a new "Protocol for Web Description
Resources (POWDER) Working Group" in the Semantic Web Activity. Phil
Archer (ICRA) will chair the group, which is chartered through
31-March-2008. The WG will develop a way for structured metadata,
called "Description Resources," to be authenticated, applied to groups
of Web resources, and retrieved independently of the resources. The
POWDER Working Group is chartered to specify an RDF vocabulary for
specifying authorship of and authentication of Description Resources, a
specification for associating a Description Resource with a class of Web
resources, predicates for declaring classes of resources based on string
functions of the resource URIs, and a protocol for accessing Description
Resources. The POWDER Working Group will base its work on the output of
the WCL Incubator Group. In its final report the Incubator Group
presents a data model for descriptions and lists 17 open questions. The
POWDER Working Group will resolve such questions as are necessary to
complete its deliverables. They include how a description for a resource
applies or does not apply to elements included within that resource
(for example, an image in an HTML page), the detail of how to link
resources to descriptions, how to resolve any conflicts in the
description's data, and several relating to the mechanism for grouping
resources ("label scope"). This last area is a vital aspect of the
POWDER model but has wider applicability, for example in the Evaluation
and Report Language (EARL), P3P's Policy Reference File (P3P) and in
the functionality offered by robots.txt. Once the open questions have
been resolved, the major tasks of the Working Group will be to define
a generalized method of specifying classes of resources as functions of
the URI string as well as other RDF properties, an HTTP-based method
of associating metadata with those classes of resources, and the
encoding and exchanging of Description Resources.

http://www.w3.org/2007/02/powder_charter
See also the W3C Semantic Web Activity: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

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Last Call Working Draft Review for XForms 1.1
John M. Boyer (ed), W3C Technical Report

W3C's XForms Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft for
the "XForms 1.1" specification, and invites public comment through
05-April-2007. Web applications and electronic commerce solutions have
sparked the demand for better Web forms with richer interactions.
XForms is the response to this demand, and provides a new platform-
independent markup language for online interaction between a person
(through an XForms Processor) and another, usually remote, agent. XForms
are the successor to HTML forms, and benefit from the lessons learned
from HTML forms. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is
intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML
or SVG. An XForms-based web form gathers and processes XML data using
an architecture that separates presentation, purpose and content. The
underlying data of a form is organized into instances of data schema
(though formal schema definitions are not required). An XForm allows
processing of data to occur using three mechanisms: (1) a declarative
model composed of formulae for data calculations and constraints,
data type and other property declarations, and data submission
parameters (2) a view layer composed of intent-based user interface
controls (3) an imperative controller for orchestrating data
manipulations, interactions between the model and view layers, and
data submissions. Thus, XForms accommodates form component reuse,
fosters strong data type validation, eliminates unnecessary round-trips
to the server, offers device independence and reduces the need for
scripting. XForms 1.1 refines the XML processing platform introduced
in XForms 1.0 by adding several new submission capabilities, action
handlers, utility functions, user interface improvements, and helpful
datatypes as well as a more powerful action processing facility,
including conditional, iterated and background execution, the ability
to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xforms11-20070222/
See also XML and Forms: http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlForms.html

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DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures
Eric Allman, Jon Callas (et al.), IETF Internet Draft

The IESG has announced the approval of the "DomainKeys Identified Mail
(DKIM) Signatures" specification as a Proposed Standard. The document
has been produced by members of the IETF Domain Keys Identified Mail
Working Group. Acording to the announcement, the DKIM working group
spent a good deal of effort refining this specification, along with
the preceding DKIM threats document. This document represents the
broad consensus of the DKIM working group. The protocol is a result of
work over about one-and-a-half years prior to its introduction to the
IETF, and one-half year since. There are three or four implementations
of current protocol specification, and the implementations are shown
to interoperate. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) defines a
domain-level authentication framework for email using public-key
cryptography and key server technology to permit verification of the
source and contents of messages by either Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs)
or Mail User Agents (MUAs). The ultimate goal of this framework is
to permit a signing domain to assert responsibility for a message,
thus protecting message signer identity and the integrity of the
messages they convey while retaining the functionality of Internet
email as it is known today. Protection of email identity may assist
in the global control of "spam" and "phishing".

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-dkim-base-10.txt
See also the associated DKIM web site: http://www.dkim.org/

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Metadata Big Bang
Norman Walsh, Blog

Semantic web enthusiasts among my readers will have encountered the
"hash vs. slash" debate, perhaps most famously in the TAG's attempt
to resolve the range of HTTP: URIs. When I first started this weblog,
I knew it was going to be built on top of a semantic web framework,
not out of any fervent belief that it's the future, but out of the
conviction that I won't be able to say whether or not I think it's
the future if I don't try it out.  I also knew about the hash vs.
slash debate. While I was never entirely convinced by the arguments
of the "anti-slash" camp, I decided to simply avoid the issue by
using a hash. There's never been any argument about hashed URIs, only
slashed ones. If you dereferenced the [hashed] URI, the server would
send you the whole 'who' file that contained all the metadata about
everyone. That file got to be big....linking to the hashed URI made
following the link way too expensive to be of practical value. I
could have cooked up an alternate URI for the link group, but that
would effectively have been an alias. Aliases: bad. Unable to come
up with a workaround I liked, I decided it was time for a big bang:
I decided to change a whole lot of URIs. Instead of using a hashed
URI to identify me (and everyone and everything else), I'd use a
slashed one... In order to do this, I felt I needed to implement
the TAG resolution on httpRange-14. Which I've done. Hopefully
this all 'just works' in every meaningful way.

http://norman.walsh.name/2007/02/18/bigBang
See also httpRange-14: http://norman.walsh.name/2005/06/19/httpRange-14

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Raytheon to Construct N-Dex
Wilson P. Dizard III, Washington Technology

Raytheon Co. of Waltham, MA has been awarded a contract from the FBI
to build out the National Data Exchange (N-Dex) law enforcement
information-sharing system, sources said. According to a bureau official,
FBI systems specialists expect to meet with their Raytheon counterparts
within the next two weeks to plan the IT work leading up to the N-Dex
system rollout. N-Dex uses advanced information sharing that harmonizes
data entered into various types of law enforcement systems for common
search, acquisition and analysis. N-Dex acts as a counterpart to R-Dex,
a regional data exchange system that provides a pointer to the location
of specific information held by other law enforcement agencies.
Technical descriptions of the N-Dex project emphasize its use of
standards such as the Global Justice XML Data Model and the National
Information Exchange Model to foster information sharing. The Justice
Department likely will provide funds for N-Dex during 2007 and 2008, and
the FBI will assume funding responsibility in 2009 and later, sources
said. N-Dex is intended to facilitate data analysis and the detection
of links among people and places, as well as events such as crimes,
objects such as weapons, drugs and currency, and gangs to help
intelligence analysis. The project has progressed for about six years
under the auspices of the bureau's National Criminal Information
Services Division in Clarksburg, W.Va. FBI officials have worked with
their counterparts in many federal agencies as well as states and
cities to create the framework and standards for the system. The N-Dex
likely will begin full-scale operation in about a year.

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/online/1_1/30142-1.html
See also GJXDM: http://www.it.ojp.gov/jxdm/

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Out of Step: National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and N-DEx
Neil Kurlander, XML Journal

This article looks at two federal data-sharing initiatives: the
National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and the National Data
Exchange (N-DEx). Each offers new information-sharing capabilities and
each faces major challenges. Is universal sharing of information
between governmental agencies actually doable? NIEM is an ambitious
new initiative that is taking a giant step towards making the dream of
government-wide data interoperability a reality. NIEM is a joint effort
of the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Its mission is to
create the means to seamlessly exchange information electronically
between multiple governmental agencies. NIEM will be designed to bridge
the divides between Justice, Health, Transportation, Intelligence, and
other domains. It will build upon the successful implementation of the
Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXML), which has already provided the
means to tie together data between all federal, state, local, and
tribal agencies in the justice community. One major objective the NIEM
is to prevent the creation of XML information silos. While GJXDM has
become the standard for interoperability in the justice domain, other
domains such as homeland security, emergency management, health and
human services, and transportation each have unique business rules
and information-sharing standards that are domain-specific. To prevent
domain silos, NIEM will provide the framework, architecture, security,
and metadata controls necessary to assure that interoperability between
domains will not be compromised. It will also develop domain-data
dictionaries and schemas to meet the business needs of each community.
The National Data Exchange (N-DEx) and Regional Data Exchanges (R-DEx)
are two NISS initiatives by the FBI to improve the sharing of
information among law enforcement agencies. Information concerning
criminal suspects including, their method of operation, the vehicles
they use, their accomplices, phone numbers, addresses, weapons used,
and many additional factors are shared locally and in some cases
regionally, but currently there is no national system for automatically
sharing investigative data from law enforcement records-management
software.

http://xml.sys-con.com/read/175403.htm

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Google Takes a Swipe at Microsoft Office
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, eWEEK

Google is now offering everyone from families to enterprises a bundle
of its Google Docs and Spreadsheets; Google Calendar; Gmail; Google
Talk; Google Page Creator, a simple Web page authoring tool; and a
Start Page to bring all these applications together. Individually,
there's nothing new here. All of these Google applications have been
around for more than a year now. Each of them brings at least basic
office functionality to its particular area. Thus, Google Talk is an
excellent IM (instant message) and VOIP (voice over IP) client. Google
Docs and Spreadsheets combines basic word processor and spreadsheet
functionality with the ability for multiple users to work on a single
document. Between them, Gmail and Google Calendar duplicate much of
Microsoft Outlook's features and so on. Collectively, Google is
offering businesses a 99.9 percent update SLA (service-level agreement)
in which customers will receive credits for downtime, a one-stop user
interface to all of its functionality and centralized management. On
top of this, with the $50-per-user-a-year Premium Edition, enterprises
get 10GB of e-mail storage per user, as well as API (application
programming interfaces) to enable data migration, mail gateways, user
provisioning and single sign-on to enable businesses to customize
their Google services. Google Apps doesn't have anything like the full
functionality of Microsoft Office. In particular, it has no answer to
PowerPoint. But, as for the rest, for the bread and butter of day-to-day
business life, Google Apps does give most users all the functionality
they need. Can you do advanced spreadsheets with multiple macros with
Google Spreadsheets? Nope. Can you put together an employee expense
report? A time sheet? A departmental budget? Yes, yes and yes. Now
consider the cost. Google Apps is $50 per user per year. An upgrade
to Microsoft Office Professional 2007 starts at $329.95. Of course,
there are multiple discounts, but you're not likely to get a legal
copy for anything close to $50.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2097725,00.asp
See also the announcement: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/google_apps.html

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SA Government to Switch to Open Source
Staff, Tectonic

The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free
and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current
software to free and open source software. At a Cabinet media briefing
government said that it had "approved a policy and strategy for the
implementation of free and open source software (FOSS) in government.
In a statement the cabinet said "all new software developed for or by
the government will be based on open standards and government will
itself migrate current software to FOSS. This strategy will, among
other things, lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills."
Government plans to set up a FOSS project office by April this year.
The office will be established by the department of ccience and
technology, the CSIR and the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).
South Africa joins governments in other emerging markets like Brazil,
China, Spain, India and Malaysia in adopting open source software,
with proponents of Linux arguing that the free software could help
slash the cost of getting computers into schools, homes and community
centres.

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1377

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