XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 26 February 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 26 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
BEA Systems, Inc.  http://www.bea.com

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HEADLINES:

* Microsoft and Friends Tout .Net, BizTalk as BPM Foundation
* Microsoft Provides BPEL 2.0 in WF: BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation
* How To Dismantle a BPM Solution
* Extensible Markup Language Evidence Record Syntax
* Sun Enlists in Free Software Foundation
* Understanding SOA Architectures and Models...SOA RA
* NIST Offers New Release of the XML Content Checking Tool
* Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0 Advances to PR

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Microsoft and Friends Tout .Net, BizTalk as BPM Foundation
Barbara Darrow, Computer Reseller News

If you're building business process management (BPM) for customers,
Microsoft wants to make sure you're doing so atop its  .Net
foundations and factor in  BizTalk. To hasten the process, the
company today launched the Microsoft Business Process Alliance at
a Gartner Business Process Management Summit in San Diego. And, it
trotted out partners who've signed on including AmberPoint, Ascentn,
IDS Scheer, Fair Isaac, Glboal360, InRule, Metastorm, and SourceCode
Technology.  IDS Scheer, a big-time SAP partner is aboard because
BPM must work across technologies and stacks, Kapi Attawar said. SAP
has endorsed both .Net and Java technology stacks inand works with
Microsoft on NetWeaver-.Net interoperability. The two companies, who
increasingly compete in mid-market ERP, have also agreed to forge
between Office and back-office applications. The very nature of
business process management, as with SOA and Web Services, is
predicated that there must be linkage between unlike systems, services
and applications for anything to work right. The fact is that many
IDS Scheer customers work on Microsoft technology already; Attawar
noted: "Microsoft can also connect at both the middleware and desktop
layers and that is important if you look at BPM as the operating system
that connects the business with the applications." Microsoft also said
it would add support for BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)
2.0 into its core Windows Workflow Foundation over time. A CTP for
BPEL 1.1 support in WWF is due within weeks, and 2.0 support is
anticipated by year's end, pending ratification of the spec, a Microsoft
spokesman said. In the short term, there will be a BizTalk adapter for
BPEL 1.1 (then 2.0) and beyond that BPEL support will be built right
into BizTalk. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is due in the third quarter.

http://www.crn.com/sections/vista/vista.jhtml?articleId=197008775
See also the BPEL spec: http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/serviceref

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Microsoft Provides BPEL 2.0 in WF: BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation
Paul Andrew, Blog

In March 2007 Microsoft plans to release a CTP of a set of BPEL
activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This will be called
BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP and the CTP release will
implement the BPEL 1.1 specification. The final release of BPEL for
Windows Workflow Foundation will implement the OASIS BPEL 2.0 standard
and is planned for release in Q4 of calendar year 2007.  The download
will be separate from the .NET Framework and it will be required for
developing BPEL based workflows in Visual Studio. The same download will
provide runtime operations for executing BPEL based workflows. It will
include a set of BPEL activities for Windows Workflow Foundation that
will implement the BPEL standard. Import and export tools are provided
so that BPEL can be loaded into the XAML format used by Windows Workflow
Foundation and vice versa. Visual Studio is not required for the
import/export but developers will benefit from using the workflow
designer that runs in Visual Studio 2005. The next major version of
BizTalk Server will be built on Windows Workflow Foundation. This was
announced back when Windows Workflow Foundation was first disclosed in
September 2005. BizTalk Server will be able to take advantage of these
BPEL activities at that time to also allow for BPEL 2.0 support. At that
time both Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk Server will support
BPEL 2.0.

http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2007/02/25/Microsoft-provides-BPEL-2.0-in-WF-_2D00_-BPEL-for-Windows-Workflow-Foundation-March-CTP.aspx

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How To Dismantle a BPM Solution
Mariano Benitez, BEA dev2dev

Building BPM solutions is very different from building traditional
applications. Consequently, defining the architecture for such
solutions requires a different approach. In this article I describe
the concepts around BPM solutions and the major architectural blocks
that define a software solution built using BPM. In future articles I
will provide ideas and tips on how to make a proper assessment of the
requirements and turn them into a suitable solution architecture. This
article is for people responsible for defining architectures or people
trying to understand how BPM is implemented in the real world. A BPM
solution is a business process running inside the infrastructure of an
organization. A BPM solution is a 'live' business process doing the
real work. The solution is everything you need to 'execute' a business
process, interacting with people and systems. The architect needs to
make sure the proposed solution fulfills all the requirements, by
defining module specifications and layout. We are positioned here at
a high-level view, focused on the major conceptual blocks. We don't
worry how the pieces are implemented or about the complexity of each
one; we are laying out the components. A business process is a set of
activities arranged in a flow that reflects a real work process to
achieve a business goal. Here, the business process can be thought of
as the process-driven application, with the model and all the
integration, presentation, and logic. The infrastructure of a solution
is the set of services and applications that allow business processes
to execute. To execute a business process you require a BPM execution
engine, along with client applications, management tools, and more,
to interact with it. It is critical to properly understand the
requirements of the business and the organization, and transform them
into an architecture that can fulfill the requirements, making the
best use of resources. The output of this exercise is not a detailed
list of items or roles or participants; it is more a set of rules,
guidelines, or policies that have to be used when building the
infrastructure, the organization, and the processes.

http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2007/01/dismantle_bpm.html

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Extensible Markup Language Evidence Record Syntax
A. Blazic, S. Saljic, T. Gondrom (eds), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Long-Term Archive and Notary Services Working Group
have published an initial release of an "Extensible Markup Language
Evidence Record Syntax" specification. In many scenarios, users must
be able to demonstrate the (time) existence, integrity and validity
of data including signed data for long or undetermined period of time.
This document specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating
evidence for long-term non- repudiation of existence of data. ERS-XML
incorporates alternative syntax and processing rules to ASN.1 ERS
syntax by using XML language. The ERSXML draft specifies XML syntax
and processing rules for creating evidence for long-term
non-repudiation of existence of data in a unit called "Evidence Record".
An Evidence Record may be generated and maintained for a single data
object or a group of data objects that form an archive object. Data
object (binary chunk or a file) may represent any kind of document or
part of it. Dependencies among data objects, their validation or any
other relation than "a data object is a part of particular archived
object" are out of scope. Evidence for an archive object is created
by acquiring a timestamp from a trustworthy authority for a specific
value that is unambiguously related to all data objects within an
archive object. The Evidence Record syntax enables processing of several
archive objects within a single processing pass and by acquiring only
one timestamp to protect all archive objects. Due to the fact that
digest algorithms or cryptographic methods used may become weak or that
certificates used within timestamp (and signed data) may be revoked or
expired, the collected evidence data must be monitored and renewed
before such event occurs. Procedures for generation of such evidence
are already specified within the ERS draft, but they depend on defined
ASN.1 data structures. For a purpose of renewal of the evidence, digest
values of ASN.1 formatted data must be calculated and used in further
processing. Besides replacing an ASN.1 scheme with an XML scheme, this
document modifies underlying procedures to use XML data structure.
IETF's LTANS working group was chartered to define requirements, data
structures and protocols for the secure usage of the necessary archive
and notary services. Work done by the IETF Working Groups PKIX, S/MIME
and XMLDSIG are being used as the basis to define relevant structures
and protocols.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-ltans-xmlers-00.txt
See also the LTANS Working Group Charter: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ltans-charter.html

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Sun Enlists in Free Software Foundation
Charles Babcock, InformationWeek

Sun Microsystems, which has viewed open source code alternatively as
a competitor and as a friend, announced today that it is joining the
Free Software Foundation, origin of the freely downloadable tools that
helped spawn the open source era. Simon Phipps, chief open source
officer, announced Sun would become a patron supporter of FSF during a
Saturday 24 Feb. keynote at the Free and open Source Software
Developers European Meeting in Brussels. FSF patrons make a financial
contribution to the foundation in exchange for the right to use its
logo on the Sun Web site. Patrons also get free consulting on the FSF's
General Public License. Sun recently announced that Java would become
GPL-licensed open source code. With Sun turning to the GPL, in addition
to its own Common Development and Distribution License, "it seemed
obvious that the connections should become stronger," Phipps said in
his blog on the move. The CDDL license option allows Java users to
produce and sell a product that includes proprietary code without being
obligated to disclose the source code for the proprietary parts. In
becoming an FSF patron, Sun joins the likes the Intel, IBM, HP, Google,
MySQL, EMC and JBoss. Sun and Oracle declined to support Linux-oriented
open source consortiums, such as the Open Source Development Labs. As
OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group to become The Linux
Foundation, Oracle became a corporate sponsor of the new group. Sun
still steers clear of Linux-oriented organizations.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197008890

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Understanding SOA Architectures and Models...SOA RA
Dave Linthicum, InfoWorld Blog

While there are SOA Reference Architectures all over the place,
including mine, the best known SOA Reference Architecture (SOA-RA)
is defined by OASIS. So, what's a reference architecture and how does
it relate to a reference model? In short, a reference architecture
is a description of how to build a class of artifacts. An architecture
describes how to build a particular artifact. The appropriate way
to write the description for a reference architecture depends on the
particular artifact. While the definition is changing according to
those writing the standard, the SOA-RA provides a bridge between the
concepts and vocabulary defined by the SOA Reference Model (SOA-RM)
and the implementation of a SOA. In other words, the SOA reference
architecture models the abstract architectural elements for a SOA
independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used
to implement a SOA. I have to agree with this, albeit it is a bit
confusing. They are describing a high level of abstraction to define
a SOA, the "reference architecture," and the "architecture" as an
instance of a SOA. I get that. However, the larger issue is the fact
that the problem domains I'm seeing are not as similar as you think,
thus the questions is: Can you define a single class of artifacts, and
thus provide a sound "jumping-off-point" for the instance? I think a
few use cases will prove this out. There really needs to be some
fundamental discussions about the use of the Reference Architecture
and the Reference Model in the real world. Based on what I found out,
as an outsider, there seems to be an impedance mismatch between the
way the architecture and model is defined and what's currently going
on in the world of SOA. I'm assuming that will "self correct" over
time. It's unclear as to how all of this reaches up into the domain
of the Enterprise Architecture...perhaps not as a replacement, but
an augmentation. If so, how do we approach that considering the
other frameworks employed?

http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2007/02/
See also OASIS SOA Reference Model TC: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/soa-rm/

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NIST Offers New Release of the XML Content Checking Tool
KC Morris, Software Announcement

"NIST is pleased to announce a new release of the online XML Content
Checking Tool.  The Content Checker assists in the application of XML
Schema specifications to real business transactions.  Many content
standards are emerging today based on XML Schema.  These specifications
define semantics and structure for data to be exchanged between systems.
However, in the interest of creating reusable standards, the
specifications often do not capture the full range of semantics which
will be needed in individual transactions.  An extensively sophisticated
schema specification would be too complex a specification for
implementers to effectively use in a wide range of transactions. A
simplistic schema specification, on the other hand, is too loose and
allows for imprecise data exchanges.  The Content Checker seeks to
complement XML schemas by providing a facility to precisely specify,
share, extend, and test for conformance data being exchanged based on
semantics not captured in an XML schema. The Content Checker is one of
several tools provided by NIST for developing XML schemas for the
purpose of data exchange and systems integration."

http://www.mel.nist.gov/msid/Content_Checker/
See also the Quality of Design Tool (QOD): http://www.mel.nist.gov/msid/QOD

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Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0 Advances to PR
Christian Lieske and Felix Sasaki (eds), W3C Technical Report

Members of W3C's Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group have
published a Proposed Recommendation for the "Internationalization Tag
Set (ITS) Version 1.0" specification. Comments are invited through
26-March-2007. Content or software that is authored in one language
(so-called source language) is often made available in additional
languages or adapted with regard to other cultural aspects. This is done
through a process called localization, where the original material is
translated and adapted to the target audience. In addition, document
formats expressed by schemas may be used by people in different parts of
the world, and these people may need special markup to support the local
language or script. For example, people authoring in languages such as
Arabic, Hebrew, Persian or Urdu need special markup to specify
directionality in mixed direction text. From the viewpoints of
feasibility, cost, and efficiency, it is important that the original
material should be suitable for localization. This is achieved by
appropriate design and development, and the corresponding process is
referred to as internationalization. For a detailed explanation of the
terms "localization" and "internationalization", see [l10n i18n]. The
increasing usage of XML as a medium for documentation-related content
(e.g. DocBook and DITA as formats for writing structured documentation,
well suited to computer hardware and software manuals) and software-
related content (e.g. the eXtensible User Interface Language -- XUL)
creates challenges and opportunities in the domain of XML
internationalization and localization. ITS is a technology to easily
create XML which is internationalized and can be localized effectively.
On the one hand, the ITS specification identifies concepts (such as
"directionality") which are important for internationalization and
localization. On the other hand, the ITS specification defines
implementations of these concepts (termed "ITS data categories") as
a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag
Set. Organized by data categories, the ITS set of elements and
attributes supports the internationalization and localization of
schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML
Schema and Relax NG, and can be used with new or existing vocabularies
like XHTML, DocBook, and OpenDocument.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/PR-its-20070226/
See also the ITS implementation report: http://www.w3.org/International/its/itstagset/ImpReport

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The Atom Publishing Protocol
Joe Gregorio and Bill de hOra (eds), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF atompub Working Grouphave published an updated
(version -13) release of "The Atom Publishing Protocol." The Atom
Publishing Protocol (APP) is an application-level protocol for
publishing and editing Web resources. The protocol is based on HTTP
transport of Atom-formatted representations. Two significant changes
in -v13: (1) Atom Format Type Parameter: RFC 4287 defines the
'application/atom+xml' media type to identify both Atom Feed and Atom
Entry Documents. Implementation experience has demonstrated that
Atom Feed and Entry Documents can have different processing models
and that there are situations where they need to be differentiated.
This document therefore defines an optional 'type' parameter used to
differentiate the two types of Atom documents. (2) New in Section 4.1,
'Client Implementation Considerations': The Atom Protocol imposes few
restrictions on the actions of servers. Unless a constraint is
specified here, servers can be expected to vary in behavior, in
particular around the manipulation of Atom Entries sent by clients.
For example, although this specification only defines the expected
behavior of Collections with respect to GET and POST, this does not
imply that PUT, DELETE, PROPPATCH and others are forbidden on
Collection resources -- only that this specification does not define
what the servers response would be to those methods. Similarly while
some HTTP status codes are mentioned explicitly, clients should be
prepared to handle any status code from a server. Servers can choose
to accept, reject, delay, moderate, censor, reformat, translate,
relocate or recategorize the content submitted to them. Only some of
these choices are immediately relayed back to the client in responses
to client requests; other choices may only become apparent later,
in the feed or published entries. The same series of requests to two
different publishing sites can result in a different series of HTTP
responses, different resulting feeds or different entry contents. As
a result, client software has to be written flexibly to accept what
the server decides are the results of its submissions. Any server
response or server content modification not explicitly forbidden by
this specification or HTTP ([RFC2616]) is therefore allowed.

http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-13.txt
See also Atom references: http://xml.coverpages.org/atom.html

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