XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 01 March 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Thursday, 01 March 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:

* WS-BPEL Version 2.0 Submitted for Approval as an OASIS Standard
* Burton: Beyond BPEL Orchestration, SOA Needs Choreography
* Berners-Lee: Congress Should Consider Net Neutrality
* Sun's Latest Turn With Open Source Nuts and Bolts
* Identity Brings Microsoft and Internet 2.0 Together
* XML Document Text Memory (xml:tm) and GMX-V Official LISA Standards
* OGF WS-Naming Specification
* Last Call Working Draft for The XMLHttpRequest Object Specification
* Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" (CTP)
* Ruby Brightens the NetBeans Platform: Sun Extends Java IDE

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WS-BPEL Version 2.0 Submitted for Approval as an OASIS Standard
Staff, OASIS Announcement

Members of the OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language
(WSBPEL) Technical Committee have submitted an approved Committee
Specification of "Web Services Business Process Execution Language
Version 2.0" to be considered as an OASIS Standard. WS-BPEL is an
XML based language enabling users to describe business process
activities as Web services and define how they can be connected to
accomplish specific tasks. WS-BPEL is designed to specify business
processes that are both composed of, and exposed as, Web Services.
Business processes can be described in two ways. Executable business
processes model actual behavior of a participant in a business
interaction. Abstract business processes are partially specified
processes that are not intended to be executed. An Abstract Process
may hide some of the required concrete operational details. Abstract
Processes serve a descriptive role, with more than one possible use
case, including observable behavior and process template. WS-BPEL
is meant to be used to model the behavior of both Executable and
Abstract Processes. WS-BPEL provides a language for the specification
of Executable and Abstract business processes. By doing so, it
extends the Web Services interaction model and enables it to support
business transactions. WS-BPEL defines an interoperable integration
model that should facilitate the expansion of automated process
integration in both the intra-corporate and the business-to-business
spaces. WS-BPEL defines a model and a grammar for describing the
behavior of a business process based on interactions between the
process and its partners. The interaction with each partner occurs
through Web Service interfaces, and the structure of the relationship
at the interface level is encapsulated in what is called a partnerLink.
The WS-BPEL process defines how multiple service interactions with
these partners are coordinated to achieve a business goal, as well as
the state and the logic necessary for this coordination. WS-BPEL also
introduces systematic mechanisms for dealing with business exceptions
and processing faults. Moreover, WS-BPEL introduces a mechanism to
define how individual or composite activities within a unit of work
are to be compensated in cases where exceptions occur or a partner
requests reversal.

http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/CS01/wsbpel-v2.0-CS01.html
See also the announcement: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200703/msg00002.html

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Burton: Beyond BPEL Orchestration, SOA Needs Choreography
Rich Seeley, SearchWebServices.com

Right now developers working on complex service-oriented architecture
implementations face a Hobson's choice between an existing standard
that doesn't meet their needs and an emerging standard that they can't
use yet, according to a Burton Group report released this week. Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL) is the standard developers must use
for Web services orchestration, but it is a limited standard and will
eventually be subordinated to Web Services Choreography Description
Language (WS-CDL), argues Chris Howard, the Burton vice president who
authored the report. For the process execution component of business
process management (BPM), he notes that BPEL has vendor support in
tooling for Web services orchestration. But one of the limitations he
mentions is that even in the updated BPEL 2.0 standard, which is
expected to be finalized by OASIS this summer, "it still performs
orchestration from the perspective of a single service." Key to
Howard's argument is the distinction he draws between orchestration,
where BPEL plays a key role today, and choreography, where WS-CDL
will play the lead in the future. In Howard's view, choreography would
encompass the orchestration of sub-processes within the overall system.
Despite its limitations, Howard sees BPEL with its vendor tools support
continuing to play a role in SOA development. Eventually, however,
BPEL sub-processes will play a subordinate role in the larger
choreography and WS-CDL with vendor support will be the big picture
standard.

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci1245819,00.html
See also Messaging and Transaction Coordination: http://xml.coverpages.org/coordination.html

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Berners-Lee: Congress Should Consider Net Neutrality
Grant Gross, InfoWorld

Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocated that
the U.S. Congress protect net neutrality and questioned the value of
DRM (Digital Rights Management). Berners-Lee, speaking before the
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House
of Representatives, said it was "very, very important" for lawmakers
to protect the ability of users to access the Web content they want
regardless of their ISP. Berners-Lee didn't endorse specific net
neutrality proposals largely supported by congressional Democrats, but
he said the Web as a communications medium deserves "special treatment"
to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content. For the past two
years, many e-commerce companies and consumer groups have called on
Congress to pass a law prohibiting broadband carriers from blocking
or slowing Web content from competitors or from speeding up partners'
content. In mid-2005, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal
Communications Commission freed broadband providers from
nondiscriminatory carriage rules, and net neutrality backers say large
broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast will now be tempted to
provide tiered speeds based on which Internet companies pay them the
most. Broadband providers and many Republicans have opposed a net
neutrality law, and efforts to pass one failed in a Republican-
controlled Congress in 2006. Democrats took over Congress this year.
While Berners-Lee didn't hear a lot of opposition to his net neutrality
comments at the hearing, Representative Mary Bono, a California
Republican, challenged his assertion that DRM copy protections could
hinder the growth of some parts of the Web. Berners-Lee called for open
standards instead of closed DRM technologies. Instead of DRM, copyright
holders should "allow people to do the right thing" by providing the
information on how to legally use the material."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/01/HNcongressnetneutrality_1.html
See also the testimony transcript: http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item35

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Sun's Latest Turn With Open Source Nuts and Bolts
Clint Boulton, InternetNews.com

Sun Microsystems has updated its Java Enterprise System, a software
suite the company offers to prop up customers' Web services, composite
applications and collaboration tools. Java Enterprise System is Sun's
answer to IBM's WebSphere and BEA's WebLogic infrastructure software
suites. The three rivals try to lure customers with building blocks
for service-oriented architectures (SOA) that support newfangled Web
2.0 services, such as wikis, blogs and mashups. The Java ES 5.0
includes a new monitoring console to make it easier for customers to
watch applications run in a system, said Jim McHugh, vice president of
software infrastructure at Sun. Java ES 5.0 also features a new common
installer to help administrators install and configure in global,
local, sparse and root computing zones to boost system resource
utilization. At the component level, McHugh said Identity Manager 7.0,
Identity Auditor and Identity Manager Service Provider Edition have
been rolled into one product for Java ES 5.0, enabling developers to
automate periodic access review for legislative compliance. Software
that alleviates compliance pains is in demand, thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley
and HIPAA. Also, Application Server Enterprise Edition is the first
to incorporate Java EE 5.0, enabling it to deploy faster and work
better with NetBeans 5.0. The Directory Server Enterprise Edition
boasts a virtual directory to provide admins virtual views of data
pulled form multiple directories or databases. Java ES 5.0 Portal
supports AJAX for the desktop, while Service Registry supports ebXML
Registry Profile for Web Services and support for JavaDB running in
network server mode. Java ES 5.0 continues to be a free, subscription-
based software suite as per Sun's enlightened software model of
offering its software via an open source license.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3662941
See also the announcement: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-03/sunflash.20070301.2.xml

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Identity Brings Microsoft and Internet 2.0 Together
Mary Branscombe, The Register

Microsoft isn't the only one taking an interest in Open ID. AOL, Yahoo!
and Digg have all announced they'll accept Open ID credentials as a way
of identifying users online. But for Microsoft this is more than just
a technology partnership. It could be the first real step towards
creating the multi-platform, multi-system identity metasystem. Oh, and
it could mean one less headache for web developers too.  San Jose's
Redevelopment Agency's Kim Cameron was asked to identify why these deals
matter. Open ID doesn't replace other forms of identity and authorisation;
with the identity metasystem, that's not the point. And CardSpace isn't
replacing or re-engineering Open ID. When you use your Open ID to log
into a site, you currently get redirected to fill in the Open ID provider.
In future you'll be able to do that invisibly by using the CardSpace
interface in Vista or IE 7 (and eventually in other browsers when they
implement the information card system -- there are projects under way
for Safari and Firefox). There are some identities you care deeply about;
your credit card, the login to your company customer account system --
anything with money or private information involved. You create others
for the convenience of a website that wants to present you with relevant
content (or often advertising). You have to fill in your details and set
up a password -- and the site has to accept and store those. It's the
latter that Open ID can replace, and do it more securely with CardSpace,
according to Microsoft identity architect Kim Cameron. "There is a
continuum of use cases which goes from transferring a billion dollars
and the other end is I want to go to your blog. If you have a single
technology for that whole thing, it's absurd; it would be like using a
nuclear weapon on a mosquito. SAML, WS-Federation and WS-Trust have been
solving these very significant problems at the level of government and
at the level of enterprise.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/01/identity_microsoft_web2/
See also the Kim Cameron Identity Weblog: http://www.identityblog.com/

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XML Document Text Memory (xml:tm) and GMX-V Official LISA Standards
Andrzej Zydron, OASIS DITA TC Posting

Andrzej Zydron announced that both xml:tm and GMX-V have been approved
as official LISA OSCAR standards, culminating nearly four years of work.
OSCAR (Open Standards for Container/content Allowing Reuse) is LISA's
open standards body for the translation and localization industry. LISA
(Localization Industry Standards Association), founded in 1990,
provides professional support for the development of enterprise
globalization guidelines, best practices, and business standards. xml:tm
(XML-based Text Memory) is the vendor-neutral open XML standard for
embedding text memory within an XML document. xml:tm leverages the
namespace syntax of XML to embed text memory information within the XML
document itself. xml:tm provides a radical new approach to the task of
authoring and translating XML documents. xml:tm was designed from the
outset to integrate closely with and leverage the potential of other
XML based Localization Industry Standards as well as that of XML syntax
itself. In particular, it uses: SRX - Segmentation Rules eXchange;
Unicode Standard Annex #29-9; XLIFF 1.2; GMX-V - Global Information
Management Metrics eXchange - Volume;  TMX - Translation Memory eXchange;
DITA; W3C Internationalization Tag Set (ITS).  The W3C ITS Document
Rules is an XML vocabulary that specifies which elements contain non-
translatable text, which elements are inline, which inline elements form
a 'subflow' -- that is they do not form part of the linguistic entity
within which they occur, and which elements have translatable attributes.
The LISA Global Information Management Metrics eXchange Volume (GMX-V)
specification has also been approved. The purpose of this vocabulary is
to define the metrics that allow for the unambiguous sizing of a given
Global Information Management task. GMX-V is one of the tripartite Global
Information Management standards which encompass volume (GMX-V),
complexity (GMX-C) and quality (GMX-Q). GMX provides a variety of
statistics related to word and character counts that can be used to
precisely quantify the amount of text (of various types) in a document.
While it was designed with localization tasks in mind, it may be used in
any field where precise, standardized quantification of text is needed.

http://www.lisa.org/standards/xmltm/xml-tm.html
See also GMX-V: http://www.lisa.org/standards/gmx/GMX-V.html

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OGF WS-Naming Specification
Andrew Grimshaw and David Snelling, OGSA-Naming Working Group Report

Members of the Open Grid Forum (OGSA-Naming Working Group) have
published a "WS-Naming Specification" in the Recommendations Track.
The document provides information to the Grid and Web Services
communities on naming and name resolution. Past experience has led
developers to the conclusion that successful distributed systems must
provide robust forms of naming. Naming is the mechanism by which the
concept of identity is maintained and gives endpoints in the system
the ability to talk about other endpoints in a highlevel, abstract way.
Further, naming and dynamic name resolution are the means by which
some of the classic distributed systems transparencies, such as
location transparency and fault transparency, are achieved. This
document follows the recommendations of 'OGSA Profile Definition
Version 1.0' and describes an extension to the WS-Addressing
specification to include extensibility elements for abstract names
and for resolvers, as well as port types for the WSNaming resolution
services. "WS-Addressing has achieved almost universal acceptance as
the de-facto standard for endpoint addressing within the web services
community; targeting this addressing mechanism for use by WS-Naming
is a reasonable and obvious choice. Rather than proposing changes or
extensions to the WS-Addressing specification itself, we have chosen
the alternative route of defining WS-Naming as a profile on top of
the WS-Addressing specification. Neither web service clients nor web
service endpoints need to be aware of this profile and either is free
to fail to generate or understand the WS-Naming elements described
within. In such a case, the normal WS-Addressing behavior works
exactly as described in the WS-Addressing specification. WS-Addressing
describes an Endpoint Reference type with a single required element
(the Address element) and a number of optional elements. WS-Addressing
Endpoint References allow for extensibility elements to be added
(via an xsd:any declaration in the schema) without changing the
specification. Furthermore, the specification also notes that this
information is not authoritative and may be stale or incoherent. The
WS-Naming profile takes advantage of the open-content nature of
WS-Addressing and uses WS-Addressing extensibility elements for
various pieces of naming and rebinding information. Clients choosing
not to participate in the WS-Naming profile continue to communicate
without modification as per the WS-Addressing specification."

http://www.ogf.org/Public_Comment_Docs/Documents/Jan-2007/draft-ogf-ws-naming-spec-006.pdf
See also OGF documents for public comment: http://www.ogf.org/gf/docs/?public_comment

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Last Call Working Draft for The XMLHttpRequest Object Specification
Anne van Kesteren (ed), W3C Technical Report

W3C announced a Last Call Working Draft review for "The XMLHttpRequest
Object" specification. The document was produced by the Web API
Working Group, part of the Rich Web Clients Activity in the W3C
Interaction Domain. The core component of AJAX, the XMLHttpRequest
object implements an interface exposed by a scripting engine that'
allows scripts to perform HTTP client functionality, such as
submitting form data or loading data from a server. The name of the
object is XMLHttpRequest for compatibility with the web, though each
component of this name is potentially misleading. First, the object
supports any text based format, including XML. Second, it can be
used to make requests over both HTTP and HTTPS (some implementations
support protocols in addition to HTTP and HTTPS, but that functionality
is not covered by this specification). Finally, it supports "requests"
in a broad sense of the term as it pertains to HTTP; namely all
activity involved with HTTP requests or responses for the defined
HTTP methods. Comments on the Last Call Working Draft are welcome
through 2-April-2007.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20070227/
See also W3C W3C Rich Web Clients: http://www.w3.org/2006/rwc/

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Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" (CTP)
Thom Robbins, .NET Weblog

In case you hadn't heard. We have just released the March CTP for
'Orcas' and the .NET Framework 3.5. Check out the VPC with the
installed bits from here. As with all CTP's it is important to provide
any feedback. The .NET Framework 3.5 brings no breaking changes. New
technology is being added including LINQ, AJAX, WF, WCF and WPF
Developer Tools and BCL enhancements. Among the .NET Framework 3.5
New Features: (1) More WS-* Standards Support: Implementation in WCF
of the latest OASIS specifications Web Services Atomic Transaction
(WS-AtomicTransaction) 1.1, WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1,
WS-SecureCOnversation and Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination)
1.1; (2) RSS and ATOM Syndication API: Applications built using WCF
will be able to easily expose syndicated data which can be consumed
by an RSS or ATOM reader; (3) Workflow Enabled Services - Process and
Messaging together: Using workflow to provide for durable and long-
running services. New Tools, WF activities and new programming model
classes have been added to simplify building workflow-enabled
services using WF and WCF. This allows a .NET Framework developer to
build business logic for a service using WF and expose messaging from
that service using WCF. These improvements not only provide tools for
this scenario but they reduce the amount of glue code that was
previously required. (4) Web 2.0 Friendly and AJAX Enabled WCF
Services: Ajax is a web development technique for making asynchronous
exchanges of small amounts of data between browser and web service
calls from the browser client script to the web server. A programming
model is provided for building Ajax style web applications using WCF
services. An HTTP programming model is also provided allowing for REST
style web services.

http://blogs.msdn.com/trobbins/archive/2007/02/28/microsoft-pre-release-software-visual-studio-code-name-orcas-march-2007-community-technology-preview-ctp.aspx
See also InfoWorld: http://weblog.infoworld.com/tcdaily/archives/2007/03/microsoft_hails.html

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Ruby Brightens the NetBeans Platform: Sun Extends Java IDE
Paul Krill, InfoWorld

Sun Microsystems has added Ruby support to the NetBeans IDE and
bolstered the JRuby platform as well, company officials acknowledged
on Thursday. The early-access release of the NetBeans Ruby Pack is
comprised of a plug-in to the open-source NetBeans development
environment supporting Ruby and JRuby, which is a Java implementation
of Ruby that runs on the Java Virtual Machine. NetBeans has been
centered on Java but is being extended to Ruby. Ruby developers
typically have not been using IDEs, but Sun's announcement "really
gives you a much more productive environment than you've had for
Ruby before." Sun has taken notice of the popularity of Ruby. "Ruby
is the hottest scripting language out there right now," said James
Governor, who added he expects Sun to make a similar move to support
another popular scripting language, PHP. The NetBeans Ruby Pack enables
features like code completion. Integration documentation pop-ups are
offered for Ruby API calls. Also included is semantic analysis with
highlighting of parameters and unused local variables. Ruby support
is available for NetBeans 6 Milestone 7 as a download. The upcoming
NetBeans 6.0 platform, due in November, will be bundled with Ruby
support. Meanwhile, Sun is formally announcing the 0.9.8 release of
JRuby, with enhanced support for Ruby on Rails on Monday; compatibility
issues have been addressed.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/01/HNsunruby_1.html
See also the NetBeans IDE: http://www.netbeans.org/products/platform/

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