XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 12 March 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Monday, 12 March 2007
A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

====================================================

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by
SAP AG  http://www.sap.com

====================================================

HEADLINES:

* Last Call: The Atom Publishing Protocol
* Linking Service to Open Access Repositories
* Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries
* Microsoft Guns Open XML onto ISO Fast Track
* Open-Xchange (Partially) Embraces GPL
* WS-Policy 1.5 Goes to CR
* Windows Workflow Foundation and BPEL
* Microsoft: Make Our HD Photo Format a Standard
* Rights in the PREMIS Data Model

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced that it has
received a request from the IETF Atom Publishing Format and Protocol WG
(ATOMPUB) to consider "The Atom Publishing Protocol" as a Proposed
Standard. The document is in Last Call review, and the the IESG plans
to make a decision in the next few weeks. Public comments are solicited
on this action, and may be sent to the IETF mailing lists by 2007-03-26.
Appendix B supplies the RELAX NG Compact Syntax Grammar for the Atom
Protocol.  "The Atom Publishing Protocol is an application-level
protocol for publishing and editing Web resources using HTTP and XML 1.0.
The protocol supports the creation of Web resources and provides
facilities for: (1) Collections: Sets of resources, which can be
retrieved in whole or in part; (2) Services: Discovery and description
of Collections; (3) Editing: Creating, updating and deleting resources.
The Atom Publishing Protocol is different from many contemporary
protocols in that the server is given wide latitude in processing
requests from clients. Atom Protocol Document formats are specified in
terms of the XML Information Set, serialized as XML 1.0. The Atom
Publishing Protocol uses HTTP methods to author Member Resources as
follows: GET is used to retrieve a representation of a known resource.
POST is used to create a new, dynamically-named, resource. When the
client submits non-Atom-Entry representations to a Collection for
creation, two resources are always created - a Media Entry for the
requested resource, and a Media Link Entry for metadata (in Atom Entry
format) about the resource. PUT is used to update a known resource.
DELETE is used to remove a known resource. The Atom Protocol only
covers the creation, update and deletion of Entry and Media resources.
Other resources could be created, updated, and deleted as the result
of manipulating a Collection, but the number of those resources, their
media-types, and effects of Atom Protocol operations on them are
outside the scope of this specification. Along with operations on
Member Resources, the Atom Protocol defines Collection Resources for
managing and organizing Member Resources. The representation of
Collections are Atom Feed documents, and contain the IRIs of, and
metadata about the Collection's Member Resources. The Atom Protocol
does not make a structural distinction between Feeds used for
Collections and other Atom Feeds. The only mechanism that this
specification supplies for indicating a Collection Feed is its
appearance in a Service Document." The IESG is responsible for
technical management of IETF activities and the Internet standards
process. As part of the ISOC, it administers the process according
to the rules and procedures which have been ratified by the ISOC
Trustees. The IESG is directly responsible for the actions associated
with entry into and movement along the Internet "standards track,"
including final approval of specifications as Internet Standards.

http://xml.coverpages.org/atom.html#Protocolv14
See also the IESG web site: http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Linking Service to Open Access Repositories
Shigeki Sugita, Shin Kataoka (et al.), D-Lib Magazine

Link resolvers are extremely effective tools that offer appropriate
means of obtaining primary documents from licensed e-journals, open
access journals, library print holdings and through Interlibrary Loan
requests. Link resolver software and services are now available from
a number of vendors and have been deployed in many types of
organizations all over the world. However, link resolvers have not
been offering satisfactory article-level resolution for Open Access
(OA) documents that have been accumulated in repositories such as
arXiv and RePEc, and in institutional repositories (IR). In May 2006,
five universities and an institute in Japan initiated the Access path
to Institutional Resources via link resolvers (AIRway) Project. The
Openly Informatics Division of OCLC, which is the vendor of the Cate
link resolver software, joined this project to provide implementation
of the strategy in a production link resolver. The link resolver we
used in this demonstration project is the production version of Cate,
an OpenURL solution produced by OCLC Openly Informatics. Cate is
implemented in a three-tier architecture. The back end is a MySQL 4.1
database running on a linux server; Middleware is an XML data source
implemented in a Java Servlet running in the Tomcat Servlet container
on the same server running the MySQL server. The front end link
resolver servlet runs in Tomcat on a second server and uses an open-
source dynamic text engine called "JSText" to combine data from the
data source with presentation templates specified in the server
instance. To keep the link resolver extremely responsive, we used a
javascript-based technique to incorporate an IR query into the user's
result page. In this technique, a remote javascript is invoked to
write out dynamic content into the user's web page. In our case, the
javascript is composed using a separate Cate thread that retrieves
an xml response from the IR server, then invokes XSLT on the server-
side to format the javascript response.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/sugita/03sugita.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries
Leonardo Candela, Donatella Castelli (et al.), D-Lib Magazine

The term "Digital Libraries" corresponds to a very complex notion with
several diverse aspects and cannot be captured by a simple definition.
A robust model of Digital Libraries encapsulating the richness of these
perspectives is required. This need has led to the drafting of "The
Digital Library Manifesto", the aim of which is to set the foundations
and identify the cornerstone concepts within the universe of Digital
Libraries, facilitating the integration of research results and
proposing better ways of developing appropriate systems. The Manifesto
is a result of the collaborative work of members of the European Union
co-funded DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries. It exploits
the collective understanding that has been acquired, over more than a
decade, on Digital Libraries by European research groups active in the
Digital Library field, both within DELOS and outside, as well as by
other groups around the world. This article presents the core parts of
the Manifesto that introduce the entities of discourse of the Digital
Library universe.  There are three distinct notions of "systems"
developed along the way: Digital Library, Digital Library System, and
Digital Library Management System; these correspond to three different
levels of conceptualization of the universe of Digital Libraries...
Despite the seeming richness and diversity of existing digital
libraries, in actuality, there is only a small number of core concepts
defined by all systems. These concepts are identifiable in nearly
every Digital Library currently in use. They serve as a starting point
for any researcher who wants to study and understand the field, for
any system designer and developer intending to construct a Digital
Library, and for any content provider seeking to expose its content
via digital library technologies. Six core concepts provide a
foundation for Digital Libraries. Five of them appear in the definition
of Digital Library: Content, User, Functionality, Quality, and Policy;
the sixth one emerges in the definition of Digital Library System:
Architecture.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/castelli/03castelli.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Microsoft Guns Open XML onto ISO Fast Track
Eric Lai, ComputerWorld

The International Standards Organization (ISO) agreed Saturday to put
Open XML, the document format created and championed by Microsoft Corp.,
on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an
international standard by August. That's despite lingering opposition
to Open XML by several key voting countries, including some of whom
whose governments are moving forward to adopt the alternative Open
Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) format, which the ISO
approved as a standard last year. According to an e-mail sent Saturday
by Lisa Rajchel, the secretariat of ISO's Joint Technical Committee
(JTC-1) on Information Technology, the Open XML proposal, along with
comments and criticism by nations that have already reviewed it, will
be put on the ISO's five-month balloting process. The e-mail did not
give a date when the proposal would officially be put on a ballot and
distributed to all 157 countries represented in the ISO, though it is
likely to happen this week, according to Stacy Leistner, director of
communications at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI),
which is assisting the ISO in this issue. Microsoft did not immediately
return an e-mailed request for comment. IBM, through a spokesman,
declined to comment. IBM has consistently opposed Open XML's approval,
and Microsoft has accused IBM, which is supporting ODF in its
applications such as Lotus Notes and Workplace, of inappropriate
meddling in Open XML's approval process.   Rajchel wrote that she
decided to move Open XML forward after consulting with staff at the
International Technology Task Force. She did not mention that the
6,000-page proposal, submitted by another standards body, Ecma
International, had garnered comments and criticism from 20 out of
the 30 countries sitting on the JTC-1 committee.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012860

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Open-Xchange (Partially) Embraces GPL
Sean Michael Kerner, InternetNews.com

Open source isn't always synonymous with collaborative community
development, even when it comes to open source collaboration
applications. Open-Xchange is hoping to change that for its open
source collaboration suite with the launch of a new community project
partially licensed under the GPL. The new collaboration project comes
on the heels of Open-Xchange's recent big ISP win with 1&1 Internet
and will see an open source project being set up around the Open-Xchange
1&1 MailXchange server. The server will be released under the GPL,
while the AJAX  user interface for the server is being made available
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
license. Just don't expect to be able to take the newly available
components and be able to directly clone what 1&1 has. "Open-Xchange
makes a clear distinction between the source code related to the
program and digital content/trademarks/Java browser script code,"
Paul Sterne, CFO and general manager of Americas for Open-Xchange
said. "The source code of the project, program and digital content,
are freely available to use, share and change/remix." Sterne added
that right now, Open-Xchange has released the source code to two
program components -- the collaboration server and the administration
module. The third and fourth program components, the installer for
Ubuntu and the Wiki OXtender, will be released as soon as they have
been vetted by the community.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3665046

----------------------------------------------------------------------

WS-Policy 1.5 Goes to CR
Chris Ferris, Blog

The W3C Web Services Policy 1.5 - Framework and Attachment specifications
have transitioned to Candidate Recommendation status. This latest
milestone for WS-Policy is right on schedule (amazingly enough) with
the WG's charter. This puts us on track to reach Proposed Recommendation
in July 2007, also consistent with our chartered schedule, and
Recommendation shortly thereafter. The Candidate Recommendation phase is
also known in W3C circles as the "Call for Implementations" phase (CFI).
We already have two published endpoints doing interoperability testing
of the set of test scenarios that the WG has agreed upon as the exit
criteria for the CFI phase. We will be holding an interop workshop,
coincident with the up-coming WS-Policy WG face-to-face meeting later
this month in Sunnyvale, Ca. and another in May in Ottawa. It should be
noted that participation in this interoperability workshop is not
limited to WG members, nor is it limited to W3C member companies. If you
are interested in bringing an implementation to the interop, please don't
hesitate to drop me a note and I can provide you with all the specifics.
Of course, there is still much to be done. The WG is working on the next
drafts of its Primer and Assertion Author Guidelines documents, as well
as the WSDL1.1 Element Identifiers specification.

http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/chrisferris?entry=ws_policy_1_5_goes
See also the W3C news item: http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item33

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Workflow Foundation and BPEL
David Chappell, Blog

Two things are worth pointing out about Microsoft's recent announcement
of BPEL support in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). First, it's not
a surprise. The company has been talking about its intent to do this
since WF went public in the fall of 2005. The only real surprise is
that it's taking so long. This delay is probably indicative of the
second point, which is that no one should interpret the announcement as
an embrace of BPEL-based development by Microsoft. True, WF's BPEL
activities will let developers create workflows that can be directly
exported as standard BPEL. But the developer sees those workflows in
the usual WF way, i.e., as .NET-based code, rather than as XML-based
BPEL. Similarly, any imported BPEL workflows will be converted into WF's
internal representation. Like BizTalk Server today, WF treats BPEL as
a way to move process logic between different workflow engines, not as
an executable format (and certainly not as a development language). If
the popularity of BPEL in BizTalk is any indication, we shouldn't expect
widespread use of WF's BPEL support. I very rarely run across
organizations that are using BPEL with BizTalk Server today, and I
remain skeptical about BPEL ever achieving widespread popularity.
Adding the ability to export and import BPEL workflows to WF -- and
thus to Windows itself -- will help WF in situations where support
for BPEL is a political necessity. Yet I'll be surprised if it becomes
a widely used aspect of WF applications.

http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2007/02/windows-workflow-foundation-and-bpel.html
See also the OASIS WSBPEL TC: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsbpel/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Microsoft: Make Our HD Photo Format a Standard
Stephen Shankland, ZDNet News

If you love something, set it free. Such is the reasoning behind a step
Microsoft plans to announce Thursday: it will submit its HD Photo
image format to a standards body. Making HD Photos a neutral industry
standard, not just a Microsoft technology, is a significant step in the
company's ambitious plan to establish a higher-quality replacement for
today's ubiquitous JPEG standard. "Microsoft...intends to standardize
the technology and will be submitting HD Photo to an appropriate
standards organization shortly," the company said in a statement. The
company plans to announce the move Thursday at the Photo Marketing
Association trade show in Las Vegas.  Microsoft isn't commenting on
its motives, but the standardization move follows earlier lowering of
barriers. In November, it liberalized the licensing policy -- dropping
fees, for example. At that time, it adopted the neutral HD Photo name
instead of the Microsoft-centric Windows Media Photo, though Windows
Vista uses the older name. And the company has said HD Photo technology
is covered by the Open Specification Promise, an agreement under which
Microsoft pledges not to assert its patent rights, which makes it more
palatable to potential rivals -- in particular open-source programmers.
Standards bodies can be a mixed blessing for technology companies. On
the one hand, they can build broad industry support for a technology,
enabling different companies' products to work better together. Ideally,
standards rise above a particular company's agenda to reflect the needs
and experience of several companies. On the other hand, the consortia
that create and approve standards are notoriously sluggish, especially
when compared to the fast-moving computer industry, as Josh Weisberg,
Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism, observed in January.
And standards efforts aren't immune to competitive jockeying: Microsoft
has faced obstacles trying to standardize its OOXML office document
file formats. Microsoft has put years of research into HD Photo and
knows it has years more work to create a JPEG alternative, much less
replacement. The company knows it has to woo partners from every corner
of the industry, including camera makers and those who build photo
printing kiosks.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6165004.html
See also the announcement: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-08HDPhotoPR.mspx

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rights in the PREMIS Data Model
Karen Coyle, Report for the U.S. Library of Congress

The PREMIS standard contains a rights entity that allows the association
of rights with specific digital preservation actions. This paper looks
at the various definitions of rights, the state of rights metadata, and
surveys legislative actions taking place in many nations that will
provide a legal standing for digital preservation activities. The
Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) Working Group
developed the Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, which is a
specification containing a set of "core" preservation metadata elements
that has broad applicability within the digital preservation community.
It constructed a data model that defined entities involved in the
preservation process and their relationships. One of the important
entities in this data model is rights statements, which specify terms
and conditions for using the objects in a preservation repository. The
PREMIS Working Group chose to consider only rights required for
preservation activities in scope for its work, rather than rights for
access. In order to make progress, the Group included minimal metadata
that a repository needs to know about the rights to preserve digital
objects. Rights in PREMIS take the form of structured permission
statements, which are defined in terms of preservation actions. The
group felt that, as the laws were clarified in terms of preservation
rights and permissions were better understood, that this section of
the PREMIS data dictionary could be expanded.

http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/Rights-in-the-PREMIS-Data-Model.pdf
See also XML and DRM: http://xml.coverpages.org/drm.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------

XML Daily Newslink and Cover Pages are sponsored by:

BEA Systems, Inc.         http://www.bea.com
IBM Corporation           http://www.ibm.com
Innodata Isogen           http://www.innodata-isogen.com
SAP AG                    http://www.sap.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc.    http://sun.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsletter subscribe: xml-dailynews-subscribe@lists.xml.org
Newsletter unsubscribe: xml-dailynews-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org
Newsletter help: xml-dailynews-help@lists.xml.org
Cover Pages: http://xml.coverpages.org/

----------------------------------------------------------------------