XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 20 March 2007

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

XML Daily Newslink. Tuesday, 20 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
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://sun.com

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

HEADLINES:

* Use Atom's Structure to Avoid Duplicates in Aggregate Feeds
* Justice Pursues Flexible Identity Management
* Three Major Foundations for SOA
* Debian Linux Founder Joins Sun Microsystems
* X-Trapolate: Use XForms to Create An Accounting Tool
* AtHoc's Emergency Notification System Achieves CAP Compliance
* Adobe Woos Web Developers With Apollo Alpha

COVER PAGES:

* Charter Proposed for New WS-Federation Work in OASIS WSFED Committee

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

Use Atom's Structure to Avoid Duplicates in Aggregate Feeds
Tyler Anderson, IBM developerWorks

Atom is a growing syndication format favored by many over the major
syndication format, RSS. With any indexing system like Atom, you never
want to intentionally create duplicate feeds as this can overwrite the
older, original id element. And duplicated entries (if they aren't
overwritten) waste hard disk space. But more importantly, duplicate
content confuses search engines, which can cause your rankings in the
search engines to suffer. This tip shows you how to take full advantage
of the id tag as the main identifier, including other information about
the feed entry (like the link id and source URL for the feed), to avoid
duplicates in your Atom feeds. The article discusses the importance of
keeping the 'atom:id' element unique. And more importantly, as you
develop code to create feeds, keep the concepts discussed in this tip
in mind to assure that a duplicate 'atom:id' element never occurs in a
feed entry. Though the structure of your blog, news Web site, or
whatever content that you syndicate might help you to prevent duplicate
id entries, it's bad practice to just use the URL as the content for
the atom:id element because of the potential for duplications. For
example, you might edit a blog post or article. When you save the new
content, the URL is the same. However, a new database entry is created,
which means that the Atom entry must have a unique id from the entry
that was updated. The fix is to properly format the atom:id element.
The most common method to format the id element is to use the 'tag'
URI scheme.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipatom1/
See also Atom references: http://xml.coverpages.org/atom.html

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

Justice Pursues Flexible Identity Management
Joab Jackson, Government Computer News

The U.S. Justice Department is piloting a federated identity management
system to tackle the problem of how to give thousands of potential
users, spread across multiple organizations, selective access to its
critical systems. Such a system could be used to verify government
online identities across different agencies, said Boris Shur,
Justice's manager for the pilot project. The Law Enforcement
Information Sharing Program (LEISP), run by Justice's Office of the
Chief Information Officer, could offer validated user credentials to
multiple applications that are being run across multiple agencies.
The primary driver for the pilot is to find ways that other federal
agency employees, as well as users at state, local and tribal law
enforcement agencies, can access Justice systems. Credentialing is
a multistep process. An agency must first positively identify the
individual who is being credentialed. It must then list the systems
that person is allowed to access. Finally, that person must be given
the passwords, smart cards or other identification keys. Because
employees need to access multiple systems, sometimes across agency
lines, the agencies themselves must recertify employees multiple
times. The pilot establishes a trusted broker to function as a
liaison between applications and pro- viders of user credentials.
The broker acts as a central repository, to which agencies submit
a set of credentials for each of their employees. The LEISP system
relies on open standards. It communicates credentials using
public-key infrastructure, the Security Assertion Markup Language
(SAML) and the Web Services Federation Language (WS-Federation). It
interacts with a number of applications as well as with a number
of identity servers, such as the Sun One Identity Server and the
Hewlett-Packard OpenView Select Federation.

http://www.gcn.com/print/26_06/43306-1.html

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

Three Major Foundations for SOA
Natan Gur, Blog

There aren't many successful or failed SOA stories to share since few
have really managed to complete SOA adoption, but there are many
enterprises that have started their journey in that field. As part of
my work I have the opportunity to be part of several SOA journeys and
although they are in the beginning stages there are already several
lessons that we've learned. In all the SOA engagements that I was part
of, we realized (sooner or later and sooner is better) that without
three major foundations the building that we're trying to build will
collapse. Those foundations are CxO support in involvement, Semantics
and a clear information ownership model. (1) CxO support and
involvement. Without direct support and involvement of the CxO level,
don't even try to start your SOA journey. (2) Semantics: semantics
are essential for SOA. Without business and information semantics it
will be impossible to create a SOA implementation. If your enterprise
hasn't any semantic model of the business and the information you
won't have the basics to create services that supply business functions
by using information as input and outputs. You will just have the
foundation to build another Babylon tower. Creating semantic models
might look obvious and simple but most enterprises don't have one
semantic model for business and information that (at least) most of
the enterprise business units accept. Furthermore it is a complex and
tedious process to build semantic models and support around them. I
believe that without a framework or proven methodology this task gets
even harder to accomplish. Whether it's complex or not, without a
clear and supported semantic model you'll find yourself in a dead-end
one way or another. (3) Clear information ownership model. Information
is the core component with SOA. At the end of the day services reflect
business capabilities that manipulate data. Most of the IT problems
in the enterprise usually derive from situations where information is
managed by two or more business units or is just an asset of one
business unit. If we want to build true SOA implementation, Information
ownership should be explicit and approved by all parties in the
enterprise. Services are about manipulating data and transfering the
results to prevent data silos and data duplications.

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/5951
See also on 'Semantic': https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/6110

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

Debian Linux Founder Joins Sun Microsystems
Neil McAllister, InfoWorld

Where to turn if you're committed to building a top-notch open source
operating system but are frustrated with the logistics of pure
community-driven development? In Ian Murdock's case, the answer is to
join Sun Microsystems. Sun announced today that Murdock has come on
board as the company's new Chief Operating Platforms Officer. Murdock
is better known to the Linux community as the founder of Debian. In
addition to being the Linux distribution that places the most emphasis
on the Gnu GPL and Richard Stallman's concept of Free Software, Debian
has long been known as the most democratic distribution. But in a
recent interview with Linux Format, Murdock reveals that he might
have preferred a more top-down approach. A union of Debian and Solaris
code could be an intriguing development for the Linux and Free
Software community. Sun has had an on-again, off-again relationship
with Linux, generally preferring to tout the merits of Solaris over
the competition (in particular, Red Hat). But Debian has arguably the
best package management software of any Unix-like OS, and a growing
number of Linux distributions are basing their offerings on the Debian
core, including Linspire and the fan-favorite Ubuntu. Doubtless the
speculation will be flying fast and furious in the coming months as
to what Murdock's contribution may mean and how this latest development
might affect Sun's relationship to the Linux market.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/010822.html

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

X-Trapolate: Use XForms to Create An Accounting Tool
Stony Yakovac, IBM developerWorks

This six-part series demonstrates how to leverage the power of XForms
in conjunction with MySQL and PHP for support processing to create an
online accounting tool called "X-Trapolate." Every good programming
technology possesses a range of problems it excels at solving. The
series highlights some of the problems that the XForms solves
effectively, such as the need for live calculations and greater
interactivity. This article, Part 1 of the series, provides an overview
of the different forms and functionality that will be created in this
series, examining some of the aspects of this type of tool you must
consider when undertaking the design. XForms brings desktop-like
interactivity into the picture while eliminating all of these
differences. It provides a standardized way to perform tasks like form
validation, calculations, and conditional output. It enables users to
save a form to the local machine while offline and submit it to the
server later. Perhaps most of all, it separates form from function,
providing a way to specify what a form does while leaving the
presentation up to the browser or other user-agent. That means that a
browser, a PDA, and a voice recognition system can all use exactly
the same form. XForms also provides a way to work with XML data
directly. The X-Trapolate accounting toolset showcases a variety of
standard XForms development methods and resources. The reader follows
through the interface development of a functional XForms implementation.
Fundamental form controls such as input, output, select, text entry,
and secret play appropriate roles in the accounting tool. The
introduction of each form control associates with a description of
the control and a discussion of the choices made while implementing
that control. Other non-visual XForms features also play an important
role and the tutorial addressing that feature highlights the usefulness
of that feature. Some examples of the features that will be covered
include calculation, relevant, and required properties, toggles in
conjunction with case and switch, interfacing to PHP, and interfacing
to native XML servers.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-xformsaccttool1/
See also XML and Forms: http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlForms.html

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

AtHoc's Emergency Notification System Achieves CAP Compliance
Staff, AtHoc Announcement

According to an announcement from AtHoc, Inc., the the company's
emergency alerting and management offerings are now compliant with the
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), a standard created by the Organization
for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). AtHoc
is a contributing member of OASIS. By complying with the OASIS Standard
for Emergency Information, AtHoc thus further expands its
interoperability and ability to manage emergency alerting across all
CAP-compliant notification channels. AtHoc, Inc. provides enterprise-
class, network-centric alert delivery and management systems for
emergency notifications, force protection readiness, anti-terror
warnings and critical communications. CAP is an open, non-proprietary
format for exchanging all types of hazard warnings and emergency alerts
over disparate, network-based emergency management systems. AtHoc's
systems are consistent with the OASIS CAP suggestions for
interoperability between emergency management and alerting systems,
including network alerting, radios, public address systems, telephony,
etc. CAP is one of several interface options that support the ability
for AtHoc's systems to communicate with network alerting, sirens,
telephony and emergency broadcast systems, creating an overarching,
multi-channel alerting system. Because the AtHoc product line includes
a powerful alert management console aimed at launching multiple
alerting systems through the click of a mouse, now any CAP-compliant
system can easily interoperate with the AtHoc offerings. The AtHoc
system functions as a CAP server, enabling the input and output of CAP
messages.

http://www.athoc.com/
See also the OASIS Emergency Management TC: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency/

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

Adobe Woos Web Developers With Apollo Alpha
Stacy Cowley, DDJ

Adobe released the first public alpha version of Apollo on Monday,
giving developers a first look at the fledgling rich-client development
platform that ties together technologies including HTML, Flash and PDF.
Adobe Systems on Monday released the first public alpha version of
Apollo, giving developers a first look at the fledgling rich-client
development platform, which ties together technologies including HTML,
Flash and PDF. Apollo is Adobe's effort to stay at the forefront of
Web development and fend of challenges from Microsoft, which is
deepening its Web tools offerings, and from new Web 2.0 technologies
like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and Extensible Markup Language),
which allows developers to create Web applications with the smooth
interface and responsiveness of desktop programs. Apollo is something
of an anti-AJAX: It brings elements of online interaction to a
desktop client application. Like Flash, Apollo includes a free runtime
that users will need to download to their PCs. Using Adobe's free
Apollo development kit, programmers can draw on their Web development
skills and build applications incorporating HTML, JavaScript, Flash,
PDF and other Web technologies.  Web services protocols and APIs for
online applications allow Apollo applications to pull data from online
sources. For example, programmers could incorporate photos from Flickr
or product information from Amazon.com into an Apollo application.
ISVs and Web developers are eyeing Apollo as a way to deliver
functionality that doesn't fit smoothly within a Web browser. Adobe
has given a handful of pilot-project developers early access to Apollo.

http://www.ddj.com/dept/webservices/198002075

======================================================================
Selected From The Cover Pages, by Robin Cover
======================================================================

Charter Proposed for New WS-Federation Work in OASIS WSFED Committee

OASIS has acknowledged receipt of a draft Technical Committee charter
proposal to establish a new Web Services Federation (WSFED) Technical
Committee. The TC would accept as input the December 2006 Version 1.1
"WS-Federation" specification as published by BEA Systems Inc., BMC
Software, CA Inc., IBM Corporation, Layer 7 Technologies, Microsoft
Corporation, Novell Inc., and VeriSign Inc. The purpose of the WSFED
TC is to extend basic federation capabilities enabled by other Web
service Security specifications (WS-Security, WS-SecureConversation,
WS-Trust, WS-SecurityPolicy) to provide advanced federation capabilities.
The proposed charter is open for commment through on April 02, 2007.
Federation capabilities envisioned by the TC proposers "includes, but
is not limited to: structure and acquisition of federation metadata;
sign-out notifications; the use of pseudonym and identity mapping
services and attribute services in conjunction with Security Token
Services; claims-based authorization; and protection of a principal's
privacy with respect to claims asserted in security tokens. In addition,
the TC will define an HTTP serialization mechanism allowing the richness
of WS-Trust security token based mechanisms for SOAP Web services --
brokered trust relationships and distributed authentication and
authorization -- to be used in browser-based scenarios. This work will
be carried out through continued refinement of the Web Services
Federation Language (WS-Federation) Version 1.1 specification.

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-03-20-a.html
See also the proposed TC Charter: http://xml.coverpages.org/WSFED-ProposedCharter.html#proposedCharter

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

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/

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