Cover Pages: SGML and XML News

Site Search: [VMS Indexed Search]

[September 30, 1999] Updates on the aecXML Working Group Specification for Architecture, Engineering and Construction. The aecXML Working Group for Architecture, Engineering and Construction has provided recent updates on the proposed XML specification and its implementation. "Today the aecXML Project represents a wide variety of software vendors, owner/operators, consulting and service organizations and building products manufacturers, organized into working groups on two continents to rapidly define and publish the aecXML schema." An aecXML Preliminary Specification Working Draft (Working draft 0.87. 13-September-1999) describes some of the project scope: "aecXML is an XML grammar to represent information in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. This information may be resources such as projects, documents, materials, parts, organizations, professionals, or activities such as proposals, design, estimating, scheduling and construction. It is intended to be used as an XML namespace and to facilitate information exchange of AEC data on the Internet. The following types of AEC information are within the scope of aecXML. This is meant to be a representative rather than an exhaustive list: Documents (RFP, RFQ, RFI, drawings, specifications, ASI, addenda, bulletins, change orders, contracts, building codes, purchase orders); Building Components (Items from a catalog, custom manufactured items, assemblies, materials), Projects (Design, construction, decommissioning, operations & maintenance, facility management); Professional Services and Resources (Engineers, architects, contractors, suppliers, specialties); Organizations (Standards bodies, government agencies); Software (CAD, estimating, project management, scheduling, document management)." In a WG meeting of September 15, 1999, "Five committees were established to continue the work of creating aecXML: (1) Design/Estimating/Scheduling/Cost Management, (2) Product Catalogs, (3) Procurement, (4) Operations/Maintenance/Facility Management, and (5) Project/Construction Management. Leaders from every facet of the AEC industry gathered in Dallas and Reading, UK, on September 15 for the first meeting of the aecXML Working Group. More than half of the 60 participants- representing software vendors, owner/operators, consulting and service organizations and building products manufacturers-volunteered to participate in committees to continue the process of creating aecXML." A recent press release also from Bentley to the effect that it now supports aexXML in its ModelServer Integrator product (an information broker for engineering projects): "Bentley's ModelServer Integrator Supports XML and aecXML. Server-level Information Broker for Engineering Projects Gains New Power to Integrate Information from Diverse Sources." Updated information is provided in the announcement "aecXML Project Unites Broad Coalition. Committees on Two Continents Moving Forward at Rapid Pace, Continuing on the Work Initiated by Bentley. Microsoft Validates Importance of XML Schemas." See the working group's Web site or the main database entry for other details.
[September 30, 1999] xmlhack.com: Developer News from the XML Community. Edd Dumbill has posted an announcement for the creation of 'xmlhack.com' to supply developer news from the XML community'. It is designed as a web site covering essential news, issues, opinions and programming advice from the XML developer community. xmlhack.com was founded by Edd Dumbill, an XML developer and writer. It also has the following contributing editors: (1) Gabe Beged-Dov, and (2) Simon St.Laurent." The site owners recognize that "there are some excellent XML resources already on the web [... but that] there ought to be another [...] to provide additional accessibility, community, timeliness, and depth."
[September 30, 1999] XML Packaging. An entire constellation of issues orbits around the notion of "packaging" XML resources in the context of network-based delivery and discovery. Tim Bray posted an announcement to the XML-DEV list concerning the availability of a "motivating statement" prepared for an XML Plenary meeting. In "Related-Resource Discovery for XML", he frames the problem in this way: "Many applications of XML are designed to process XML resources in combination with other related or supporting resources. Such resources currently include DTDs, stylesheets, RDF metadata, human-readable documentation, and executable code; many other types of related resource are in active development. In general, there is no standardized interoperable way for an XML resource to include information to aid applications in retrieving such related resources. W3C recommendations currently provide syntax for XML documents to include pointers to DTDs and to stylesheets. These methods are ad-hoc, not compatible with each other, and represent nobody's idea of a general solution to the problem of retrieval of related resources." The problem is general, however: resources of all kinds are "related" to other resources, whether encoded in XML or not. Simon St.Laurent announced that "there's a new draft of XPDL up at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/xpdl for those interested in packaging XML. XPDL provides descriptions of document classes, identifying the resources they use and specifying how they should be processed. There's also a presentation I gave at XML Developer Days that describes what XPDL is supposed to fix and how it should work. Anyone interested in the 'packaging' XML discussion may find it worth reading - if not necessarily for my particular answers, then perhaps for the questions." [1999-09-29, XML-DEV]
[September 30, 1999] Infoteria's XML Style Wizard 1.0. From a recent company announcement: "Infoteria Launches XML Style Wizard 1.0 For Free Creating XSLT File For XML Data In Easy and Quick Way." - "Infoteria Inc. today announced the immediate release of its XML Style Wizard 1.0. This simple and clear XSLT file generator for XML is offered free of charge and is available for download from Infoteria's web site. Infoteria boasts that by answering only six simple questions, the XML Style Wizard can produce an XSLT file for XML. XML Style Wizard creates the XSLT file by analyzing existing XML data. It allows users to create a table from the XML data, or create a list table from multiple records of XML data. The XSLT file created by XML Style Wizard is used by XML browsers such as Internet Explorer 5.0 from Microsoft and for XSLT processors such as iXSLT from Infoteria. In addition, XML Style Wizard supports both W3Cs latest XSLT specification and the specification implemented in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0." For related XSL/XSLT software, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[September 30, 1999] Stilo's Introductory Offer for Stilo WebWriter. Stilo recently announced an introductory offer [reduced price, 'try and buy'] for its Stilo WebWriter, described as a "comprehensive editor for creating XML." Stilo, "a world class provider of XML and SGML software products and related consulting services, is pleased to announce the launch of Stilo Webwriter, at the XML One Europe exhibition in London on October 7-8th, 1999. Stilo WebWriter is an industrial strength XML editing tool, providing all of the functionality expected of leading XML editors, but made so simple to use that it is not necessary to have any prior knowledge of XML in order to be productive." For related software, see "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[September 30, 1999] Paged Media Properties for CSS3. A new W3C working draft on Paged Media Properties for CSS3 has been released by the W3C as part of the Style Activity. Reference: W3C Working Draft 28-September-1999, by Robert Stevahn. This working draft document represents one in a collection of W3C Working Drafts "which will, when complete, define the next level of CSS." Abstract: "This document proposes an extension to CSS to permit finer control over the paged presentation, both printed and online, of Web pages. Some of the features described are useful for other media as well. Included are properties for describing headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes. These features require other features described here, such as cross-references and page-based counters. In addition, page-dependent floating elements are described." For other references on CSS3 and CSS2, see "W3C Cascading Style Sheets."
[September 30, 1999] IETF Internet Draft on XML Media Types. An IETF Internet Draft from the Network Working Group was published recently on the topic of XML Media Types. References: Internet-Draft September 24, 1999, draft-murata-xml-00.txt, by MURATA Makoto and Simon St. Laurent. Abstract: "This document proposes three new media subtypes, text/xml, application/xml, and application/xml-dtd, for use in exchanging network entities which are conforming Extensible Markup Language (XML). This document also proposes a convention for naming media subtypes outside of these three subtypes when those subtypes represent XML entities. XML entities are currently exchanged via the HyperText Transfer Protocol on the World Wide Web, are an integral part of the WebDAV protocol for remote web authoring, and are expected to have utility in many domains." [And] "Since XML is an integral part of the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol, and since World Wide Web Consortium Recommendations have conventionally been assigned IETF tree media types, and since similar media types (HTML, SGML) have been assigned IETF tree media types, the XML media types also belong in the IETF media types tree. Similarly, XML will be used as a foundation for other media types, including types in every branch of the IETF media types tree. To facilitate the processing of such types, media types based on XML, but which are not identified using text/xml or application/xml, should be named using a suffix of -xml. This will allow XML-based tools - browsers, editors, search engines, and other processors - to work with all XML-based media types." For background and references, see XML Media/MIME Types."
[September 28, 1999] Unicode Technical Committee and W3C Publish Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages. Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages is "a W3C Working Draft worked on jointly by the W3C Internationalization Working Group/Interest Group and the Unicode Technical Committee. References: Proposed DRAFT Unicode Technical Report #20, Revision 2 == W3C Working Draft 28-September-1999. Unicode URL: www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr20/tr20-2.html. By Martin Dürst, Mark Davis, and Asmus Freytag. The working draft "contains guidelines on the use of the Unicode Standard in conjunction with markup languages such as XML. The material in this draft is still in a rather early stage. Currently the draft shows the approximate range of intended coverage (e.g., in terms of which kinds of characters will be addressed, and what kind of information that is intended to be provided for each kind), while large parts still need more work and discussion. It is not exactly clear yet what the exact proposal for each character may be, and how this document will be related to other W3C specifications." Background to the joint TR: "The Unicode Standard contains a large number of characters in order to cover the scripts of the world. It also contains characters for compatibility with older character encodings, and characters with control-like functions included for various reasons. It also provides specifications for use of these characters. For document and data interchange, the Internet and the World Wide Web are more and more making use of marked-up text. In many instances, markup provides the same, or essentially similar features to those provided by formatting characters in the Unicode Standard for use in plain text. While there may be valid reasons to support these characters and their specifications in plain text, their use in marked-up text can conflict with the rules of the markup language. . ." The document is to be understood within the framework of the standard other technical reports. See other references [provisionally] in "XML and Unicode."
[September 25, 1999] New Working Drafts for the XML Schema Definition Language. The W3C XML Schema Working Group has published a new two-part public working draft which specifies a proposed XML Schema Definition Language. The first WD is XML Schema Part 1: Structures. Reference: W3C Working Draft 24-September-1999, edited by Henry S. Thompson (University of Edinburgh), David Beech (Oracle), Murray Maloney (Commerce One), and Noah Mendelsohn (Lotus). Part 1 "proposes facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML 1.0 documents. The schema language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs). . . The purpose of the Structures specification is to provide an inventory of XML markup constructs with which to write schemas." Such a schema is used "to define and describe a class of XML documents by using these constructs to constrain and document the meaning, usage and relationships of their constituent parts: datatypes, elements and their content, attributes and their values, entities and their contents and notations. Schema constructs may also provide for the specification of additional information such as default values. Schemas are intended to document their own meaning, usage, and function through a common documentation vocabulary. Thus, the Structures specification can be used to define, describe and catalogue XML vocabularies for classes of XML documents. Any application that consumes well-formed XML can use the XML Schema: Structures formalism to express syntactic, structural and value constraints applicable to its document instances. The Structures formalism will allow a useful level of constraint checking to be described and validated for a wide spectrum of XML applications. However, the language defined by this specification does not attempt to provide all the facilities that might be needed by any application. Some applications may require constraint capabilities not expressible in this language, and so may need to perform their own additional validations." The Structures document is available in XML format as well as HTML. It is accompanied by a formal specification expressed as an XML schema and in an XML DTD. This second working draft of XML Schema Structures "incorporates a substantial change to the concrete syntax from the previous public working draft, intended to simplify it and make it easier to use"; see the full text of the proposal from the working group's task force, along with a cover note containing a discussion of alternatives considered and outstanding issues. Part 2 of the new WD bears the title XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. Reference: W3C Working Draft 24-September-1999, edited by Paul V. Biron (Kaiser Permanente, for Health Level Seven) and Ashok Malhotra (IBM). The Datatypes document "specifies a language for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas and possibly elsewhere." As explained in the W3C's XML Schema Requirements document, the Datatypes design is motivated by the recognition that "document authors, including authors of traditional documents and those transporting data in XML, often require a high degree of type checking to ensure robustness in document understanding and data interchange." In many cases, "validity constraints exist on the content of the [XML] instances that are not expressible in XML DTDs. The limited datatyping facilities in XML have prevented validating XML processors from supplying the rigorous type checking required in these situations. The result has been that individual applications writers have had to implement type checking in an ad hoc manner. This [Datatypes] specification addresses the need of both document authors and applications writers for a robust, extensible datatype system for XML which could be incorporated into XML processors." The facilities in the Datatypes WD have been designed in light of the formal requirements, which stipulate that the XML Schema Language must: (1) provide for primitive data typing, including byte, date, integer, sequence, SQL & Java primitive data types, etc.; (2) define a type system that is adequate for import/export from database systems (e.g., relational, object, OLAP); (3) distinguish requirements relating to lexical data representation vs. those governing an underlying information set; and (4) allow creation of user-defined datatypes, such as datatypes that are derived from existing datatypes and which may constrain certain of its properties (e.g., range, precision, length, format)." The Datatypes document is available in XML format as well as HTML, and is released with an an accompanying XML schema and XML DTD. Comments based on review of the new WDs should be sent to www-xml-schema-comments@w3.org; they will be placed in a public archive. Observe the Note on this second W3C WD, from Henry S. Thompson.
[September 25, 1999] GNOME XML Library Supports Validation and XPath. The release notes from recent versions of the GNOME XML Library [libxml, gnome-xml] indicate that the library provides significant enhancements, including validation. The gnome-xml library, or 'libxml,' according to the documentation provided by Daniel Veillard, is an XML library in "the Gnome framework. The internal document repesentation is as close as possible to the DOM interfaces. Libxml also has a SAX interface; James Henstridge made a nice documentation expaining how to use it. The interface is as compatible as possible with Expat one. This library is released both under the W3C Copyright and the GNU LGP. The current version is 'libxml-1.7.2'. According to the developer, libxml-1.7[+] represents a great "improvement over release 1.4, which was flawed in many respects"; some major updates include: (1) DTD validation, (2) support for the fetching of remote entities and DTDs ('minimalist HTTP front-end, focuses on size, streamability, reentrancy and portability') - if turned on, and (3) removal of memory leaks. The GNOME xml library [libxml, gnome-xml] is being developed within the framework of the GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) project. GNOME, part of the GNU project, "is free software compliant with the OpenSource definition. The GNOME project intends to build a complete, easy-to-use desktop environment for the user, and a powerful application framework for the software developer. . . The GNOME Project's application development framework also includes a DOM-inspired document model, printing/font framework, XML library, file metadata (including MIME types), and extension language support." For other description and references, see "GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) XML Library [libxml, gnome-xml]."
[September 24, 1999] OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) Specification. On September 17, 1999, a joint submission in response to an OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) RFP was received from Dimension EDI, Genesis Development Corporation, Hyperion Solutions, International Business Machines, NCR, Oracle, UBS AG, and Unisys [supported by Sun Microsystems and Deere & Company]. Within the submission are sample documents consisting of some thirty-two (32) IDL, XML DTD, and XML instance files. The principal document of interest from the XML perspective is volume 2 of the sumbission, Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWMI) Specification. Volume 2. XML, IDL and DTD. Proposal to the OMG ADTF RFP: Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI). OMG Document ad/99-09-02, 761 pages. Chapter 1 (CWM Rendered in XML) "contains the definitive CWM metamodel expressed in XML using the MOF Model document type as defined in the MOF 1.3 Specification. This is the normative metamodel used to define interfaces and XML document types. Each outer package of CWM is defined in a separate XML document in its own section below. The first package called CWM combines all the other CWM packages to define a complete CWM metamodel. The other packages can also be used individually or in other combinations. The CWM model refers to and extends the UML 1.3 model. The UML 1.3 Specification does not include an XML rendition of the UML packages so the XML for UML is included at the end of this chapter so that links from the CWM XML can be interpreted. The UML packages are named Foundation Model_Management and Behavioral_Elements." Chapter 3 (CWM Document Type Definition) "contains an XML document type definition (DTD) for CWM metadata. The DTD is generated from the CWM packages in chapter 1 according to Rule Set 3 of the XMI 1.1 Specification. Rule Set 3 produces the smallest DTD of the XMI rule sets. However this DTD is large even with Rule Set 3 because it incorporates all of UML. When the XMI Specification is revised to support namespaces UML will be removed from the DTD and the DTD will be split apart so that each of CWM's outer packages has its own DTD. The CWM.dtd that follows requires complete metadata. Another DTD called CWMRelaxed.dtd permits incomplete metadata. Both DTDs are provided as separate files." An initial RFP (Request For Proposal) was issued by the OMG (Object Management Group) on September 18, 1998. The objectives were to "(1) Establish an industry standard specification for common warehouse metadata interchange; (2) Provide a generic mechanism that can be used to transfer a wide variety of warehouse metadata; (3) Leverage existing vendor-neutral interchange mechanisms as much as possible." For other description and references, see "OMG Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange (CWMI) Specification." See now [1999-09-27] the press release: "Oracle, Unisys, IBM, NCR and Hyperion Lead the Effort to Standardize Enterprise Information Sharing. Industry Leaders Propose Common Warehouse Metadata Interchange Standard and Advocate XML-based Common Data Format."
[September 24, 1999] New Ruby Working Draft Published. The W3C has released a new working draft specification for Ruby, W3C Working Draft 24-September-1999. The editors include Marcin Sawicki, Michel Suignard, Masayasu Ishikawa, and Martin Dürst. The working draft has been "published by the Internationalization Working Group. In a future version, this work is intended to be submitted to the HTML Working Group for inclusion as a module in the XHTML 1.1." The Ruby working draft "specification extends XHTML to support ruby text typically used in East Asian documents; some familiarity with HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.0 and the XHTML Modularization framework is assumed. XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application, and the modularization of XHTML provides a means for subsetting and extending XHTML. 'Ruby' is the commonly used name for a run of text that appears in the immediate vicinity of another run of text, referred to as the 'base'. Ruby serve as a pronunciation guide or an annotation associated with the base text. Ruby are used frequently in Japan in most kinds of publications, such a books and magazines, but also in China, especially in schoolbooks. East Asian typography has developed various elements that do not appear in western typography. Most of these can be addressed appropriately with facilities in stylesheet languages such as CSS or XSL. Ruby, however, require markup in order to define the association between base text and ruby text. This document defines such markup, designed to be usable with HTML, in order to make ruby available on the Web without using special workarounds or graphics. Section 1.2 ('Ruby Markup') provides an overview of the markup for ruby defined in this document. A formal definition can be found in Section 2. The markup is in XML notation. Appendix A ('Ruby modules in XHTML') describes the Ruby DTD modules - a DTD driver and a catalog file that can be used with the XHTML 1.1 DTD modules. These modules are conforming to the Module Conformance requirements as defined in the Building XHTML Modules specification. These modules are expected to be included in the XHTML 1.1 and are not intended to define a new markup language as an XHTML-family document type, so names are temporary and slightly different from the Naming Rules in the XHTML Family Document Type Conformance. The WD's changes from previous public Working Draft are presented in a final Appendix.
[September 24, 1999] New W3C Working Draft for CSS/XSL International Layout. The W3C Internationalization Working Group has released a new working draft on International Layout as part of the Internationalization Activity and Style Activity. Reference: World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft 10-September-1999, edited by Marcin Sawicki. The WD specification "extends CSS to support East Asian and Bi-directional text formatting. International typography contains types of formatting that are not yet exposed in the existing web standards and thus impossible to achieve on the web without using special workarounds or graphics. The working draft document introduces a number of new CSS properties to represent such formatting. For example, the features this proposal covers include two of the most important features for East Asian typography: vertical text and layout grid. Since the proposal predates the efforts on the part of the XSL and CSS&FP groups to create a common formatting model, it focuses on CSS2 only. It is however the intention of all the groups involved for the model presented in this document and the model being developed by the XSL Working Group (members only) to converge. The end result of this convergence is expected to form part of the common formatting model which will be expressed in both the CSS and XSL syntaxes."
[September 24, 1999] Last Call Review: Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification Version 1.0. As part of the W3C DOM Activity, the DOM Working Group has published a 'last call' working draft of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification Version 1.0, W3C Working Draft 23-September-1999. The last call period will end on October 8, 1999. An introduction to the DOM may be found in the latest revision of "What is the Document Object Model? The draft specification "defines the Document Object Model Level 2, a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents. The Document Object Model Level 2 builds on the Document Object Model Level 1. The DOM Level 2 is made of a set of core interfaces to create and manipulate the structure and contents of a document and a set of optional modules. These modules contain specialized interfaces dedicated to XML, HTML, an abstract view, generic stylesheets, Cascading Style Sheets, Events, traversing the document structure, and a Range object. With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been specified." Appendixes include documentation for the "Changes between DOM Level 1 and DOM Level 2," IDL Definitions (CORBA 2.2 specification), Java Language Binding, and ECMA Script Language Binding. This WD is available in Postscript, PDF, and plain text formats.
[September 24, 1999] W3C Working Draft on User Interface for CSS3. The W3C has published a working draft document User Interface for CSS3, W3C Working Draft 16-September-1999, edited by Tantek Çelik. It is one of several draft proposals designed to be incorporated into CSS level 3. "This document is a working draft of the W3C CSS&FP working group which is part of the Style activity. It contains a proposal for features to be included in CSS level 3. The working draft proposal provides specification for: (1) Completion of the user interface features in CSS2. (2) CSS mechanisms to simulate the look and feel of various standard form elements in HTML4. (3) CSS mechanisms to augment or replace the remaining stylistic attributes in HTML4. (4) A mechanism for CSS to enable full-screen or kiosk mode." For other information on CSS, see "W3C Cascading Style Sheets."
[September 24, 1999] FOP 0.10.0 Released. A posting from James Tauber announced a new release of FOP (version 0.10.0). FOP ('A Formatting Object to PDF Formatter/Renderer') is a "print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects. It is a Java 1.1 application that reads a formatting object tree and then turns it into a PDF document. The formatting object tree, can be in the form of an XML document (output by an XSLT engine like XT) or can be passed in memory as a DOM Document or (in the case of XT) SAX events." As for the new release: "This version is much faster. A 100-page test document that used to take 50 seconds in 0.9.x now takes 15 seconds. Some important bugs have been fixed. This version is approaching actually being usable for real work. Very simple support for a tiny bit of SVG. break-before and break-after implemented. Justification bug fixed. text-indent implemented. font-weight as number implemented. line-height as number implemented. Java source for properties now generated from XML document via XSLT. Added support for emdash, copyright, non-breaking-space and section Detects inline-sequence directly under flow. Display rules can go in blocks. List item labels now obey start-indent. Page breaks mid-list now (appear to) work. Along with the release of FOP 0.10.0, I've released a preliminary version of an XSL stylesheet for XHTML. It only covers those things FOP supports, but it might be useful either as a sample XSL stylesheet (that uses the FO vocabulary) or for printing HTML documents. This latter use will be a lot more viable once I implement keeps and tables in FOP. One of the things that's new in FOP 0.10.0 is that the Java source code for the classes for each XSL property is generated by applying an XSLT transform to an XML representation of the properties. This XML representation of the properties is a bit like the datatype definitions being worked on in the XML Schema WG. This got be thinking about turning what I've done into a more general solution. . ." For related XSL/XSLT tools, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[September 24, 1999] Release of Schema Converters, Version 1.0. Ronald Bourret recently posted an announcement for the version 1.0 release of 'Schema Converters', available for download. "The Schema Converters are a set of Java packages you can use to: a) model a DTD as Java objects, and b) convert to and from these objects from DTDs and XML schema languages. Thus, it is possible to build arbitrary converters between different schema languages, as well as to and from DTDs." In this initial release the software has some limitations; "only schema language currently supported is DDML, but the package includes the hardest converter -- from a DTD to the intermediate DTD objects -- which is most of an XML parser. The Schema Converter package is completely free for use in both commercial and non-commercial settings and comes with complete documentation and source code. The Schema Converters are a standard part of XML-DBMS, Java packages for transferring data between XML documents and relational databases."
[September 24, 1999] Release of XML-DBMS Version 1.0. Ronald Bourret has announced the release of XML-DBMS version 1.0. XML-DBMS is "a set of Java packages you can use to transfer data between XML documents and relational databases. It views the XML document as a tree of objects and then uses an object-relational mapping to transfer the data. Both the view of the XML document and the mapping are completely configureable through a simple, XML-based mapping language. XML-DBMS is both parser and database independent, as it is based on the DOM, SAX, and JDBC. It is currently being used or evaluated in a number of large European corporations and is, to my knowledge, the only XML data transfer middleware that is freely available, database-independent, and can transfer data both to and from any XML document. The software features: (1) The ability to generate a mapping from a DTD or DDML document; (2) User-controlled date/time/timestamp formats; (3) User-specified treatment of null data; (4) Caching/reuse of prepared statements for better speed; (5) Serialization of mappings from Map objects; (6) Additional user control over transactions. XML-DBMS mapping language, which is described in the mapping DTD, allows users to: (1) Declare how element types are to be viewed (as classes or properties), (2) Declare which subelements, attributes, and PCDATA are to be viewed as properties of a given element type-as-class (unmapped XML structures are ignored), and (3) State how to map the resulting classes and properties to the database. The resulting object-relational mapping maps classes to tables and properties to either columns in those tables or to subtables." For related tools, see "XML Application Environments, Development Toolkits, Conversion."
[September 22, 1999] Open eBook Publication Structure 1.0, Final Version. An announcement from the Open eBook Initiative describes the release of the final version of the OEB electronic book specification, Open eBook Publication Structure 1.0. The publication of this standard by the Open eBook (OEB) Authoring Group is "expected to accelerate the availability of reading material for electronic books and help ensure that consumers will have access to reading materials from different publishers in a single, universal format. Open eBook Publication Structure 1.0 defines the format that content takes when it is converted from print to electronic form. The Open eBook specification is based on HTML and XML, the same core languages that define the World Wide Web, and is designed to allow publishers and authors to deliver their material in a single format. The specification is expected to accelerate the availability of electronic reading material, because the single universal format will work on all reading systems that are compliant with the specification. As a result, publishers will be able to reach a wide audience without separately reformatting their titles for each reading system. The specification is also designed to allow existing eBook devices to accommodate it quickly." [...] "OEB is based on XML because of its generality and simplicity, and because this increases the likelihood that documents will survive longer. XML also provides well-defined rules for the syntax of documents, which decreases the cost to implementers and reduces incompatibility across systems. Further, XML enables extensibility because it is not tied to any particular set of element types, it supports internationalization, and it encourages document markup that can represent a document's internal parts more directly, making them amenable to formatting and other types of computer processing. OEB reading systems must be XML processors as defined in XML 1.0. All OEB documents must be well-formed XML documents, although they need not be valid XML documents. However, this specification ensures that for any basic OEB document, there is a syntax form that: (1) is a valid XML document, (2) conforms fully to the OEB document DTD, (3) is expected to conform to XHTML 1.0 when that specification is issued, and (4) is effectively previewable in typical version 4 HTML browsers." Two XML DTDs and an entity set provide the formal description for OEB documents and packages; these are available from the OEB Web site. See also: "Microsoft Applauds Success of Open eBook Members As Final Version of Specification Is Released. Microsoft Joins Wide Range of Organizations to Release Standard That Will Help Launch the eBook Industry." For other description and references, see "Open eBook Initiative."
[September 16, 1999] EDGARspace Portal Uses XML. In a previous generation, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) EDGAR database used SGML to organize filing information; now an enhanced Web-based technology using XML is being deployed. Some details are provided in an announcement from Invisible Worlds on the EDGARspace Portal. The web site supplies a collection of DTDs which define the structure of data stored in the SpaceServer, as well as examples. The announcement from Invisible Worlds describes how "a San Francisco-based startup company headed by a team of Internet veterans responsible for many of the most significant innovations and standards behind the Internet, today unveiled the EDGARspace portal, a new Web service that delivers dramatically refined searches of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) EDGAR filings. 'The EDGARspace service is the first glimpse into the way XML-based Internet information systems will work in the future,' said Invisible Worlds' CEO and Chairman Carl Malamud, who first put EDGAR on the Internet five years ago. 'For the first time, you can reach inside EDGAR filings for gems of knowledge that were previously buried in text and also rise above the immense collection of documents to make sense of broad searches.' The EDGARspace portal, one of the largest XML-based (Extensible Markup Language) information systems ever developed, demonstrates the potential of this new Web standard by giving investment, financial and research professionals better ways to search for and find information that had been difficult to obtain. . . The SEC filings are enhanced using industry-standard XML to tag key information. For example, a search can target all insider-trading reports within an investor's portfolio, or look for Initial Public Offerings within a particular industry segment. EDGARspace organizes search results with XML 'meta-information,' making large result sets more manageable. Complex search results can be organized by any type of meta-information, such as filing type, document section, industry code, date or company name. . . We believe this architecture of Mixers, SpaceServer engines, and Builders is suited to a wide variety of applications on the Internet. But we'd rather show real results than just tell a good story. EDGAR is an ideal database in many respects. It is very big and increasing by some 30 gigabytes per year. We think our software screams, but there is no better proof than trying it out on several hundred gigabytes of data and thousands of users." For other description and references, see the main database entry, "EDGARspace Portal"; see also the press release, "Internet Pioneers Build a Better EDGAR Using XML. New Web Service Delivers Dramatically Improved Searches of SEC Filings With the First XML-based Financial Information System."
[September 15, 1999] Open Forum on Metadata Registries. A Call for Participation has been released in connection with the next Open Forum on Metadata Registries, to be held January 17-21, 2000, at La Fonda Hotel, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. The conference is sponsored by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) / International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 32 (Data Management and Interchange), Working Group 2 (Metadata) and by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The complete program listing supplies abstracts for the sessions and individual presentations. "This is the fourth in a series of international conferences on this topic. Participants from private enterprise, government, academe and standards organizations will explore the capabilities, uses, content, development and operation of metadata registries, particularly those based on ISO/IEC 11179 [Specification and Standardization of Data Elements]. Emphasis is on managing the content (semantics) of data that is shared within and between organizations or disseminated via the World Wide Web. . . The Open Forum will focus on metadata registries that are based on the ISO/IEC 11179 family of standards. Metadata registries based on these standards may be World Wide Web (WWW) accessible -- using standards such as HTML, XML, XML-Schema, and XML-Query -- for both human and machine interfaces. Other related standards include IEEE P1489, Draft Standard for Data Dictionaries for Intelligent Transportation Systems, which is based upon the ISO/IEC 11179 standard and ISO/IEC Technical Report 15452, Information Technology - Specification of data value domains. Presentations will also cover terminology standards such as ISO 1087 and thesauri standards which are useful in extending the semantic management capabilities of metadata registries. A wide range of uses for metadata registries will be discussed, including standardizing data elements, documenting data for distribution/public access, data administration, supporting system development, recording arrangements between data trading partners, recording business rules for data standards, specifying "atomic" data elements to be used in standard business objects, and managing the underlying semantics -- concepts and terms structured as controlled word lists, keywords, glossaries, taxonomies, thesauri, and ontologies. Sessions will cover the use of metadata registries to record the results of interorganizational efforts to specify sharable data. Demonstrations will be made of registry capabilities and contents. A wide range of capabilities -- deployed and developmental -- will be demonstrated including web accessible registries; terminology management; capturing complex domains (such as mapping between systems of chemical names, formulas, and structures); use of registry content to map values during the integration of results produced by ontology-based, agent queries to widely dispersed information systems; and XML access to and transfer of metadata. The imminent release of freeware metadata registries will be announced and registry related commercial products will be described." [Another conference goal] "is to engage the standards and technology development communities to extend 11179 metadata registry capabilities. This includes tying data element metadata to terminology (taxononomies, thesauri, ontologies), case tool metadata (models), relational and object technologies, Extensible Markup Language constructs (XML-Schema, XML-Query), etc. This includes work being done by SC 32/WG 2 either internally or in collaboration with other standards organizations such as W3C, OMG, and other JTC 1 Subcommittees. The new work involves extending the capabilities of metadata registries and embedding metadata registries in other technologies, such as CASE tools, dictionaries/encyclopedias, object management systems, agent/mediator/broker information services." For other information, see the conference web site and the main conference entry.
[September 15, 1999] Electronic Business XML Initiative. A new "Electronic Business XML Initiative" was recently announced by OASIS and UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for the Facilitation of Procedures and Practices for Administration, Commerce and Transport). According to the announcement, "The United Nations body for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have joined forces to initiate a worldwide project to standardize XML business specifications. UN/CEFACT and OASIS have established the Electronic Business XML Initiative to develop a technical framework that will enable XML to be utilized in a consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business data. Industry groups currently working on XML specifications have been invited to participate in the 18-month project. The results of the Electronic Business XML Initiative will be placed in the public domain on XML.org." Rationale is provided by Bill Smith (Sun Microsystems, president of OASIS): "To be effective for global business, it is vital that XML specifications are based on a common framework. That framework does not exist today and, consequently, there are many -- often competing -- efforts underway worldwide. This new Electronic Business XML Initiative will end the confusion and duplication of effort that currently exists." The new Electronic Business XML Initiative "will be led by Klaus-Dieter Naujok of the Harbinger Corporation, a senior member of the UN/CEFACT Steering Committee, and Dr. Robert S. Sutor of IBM, the Chief Strategy Officer of OASIS." UN/CEFACT [United Nations Centre for the Facilitation of Procedures and Practices for Administration, Commerce and Transport] (www.unece.org/cefact) "is the United Nations body whose mandate covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade facilitation and electronic business. Headquartered in Geneva, it has developed and promoted many tools for the facilitation of global business processes including UN/EDIFACT, the international EDI standard. Its current work programme includes such topics as SIMPL-edi and Object Oriented EDI [OO-edi] and it strongly supports the development and implementation of open interoperable, global standards and specifications for electronic business." Details are provided in the text of the announcement, "United Nations and OASIS Join Forces to Produce Global XML Framework."
[September 15, 1999] W3C XML Phase III Activity Begins. Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems, XML Coordination Group Chair) recently posted an announcement from the W3C regarding the third phase of XML activity. "Phase III, which officially began 13-September-1999, continues the XML Linking and XML Schema Working Groups and creates an XML Core Working Group to continue the work of the former XML Infoset, Syntax, and Fragments WGs and provide a forum for further work on XML namespaces. It also adds an XML Query Working Group tasked with the development of an XML query language and provides for the creation of an XML Packaging WG when work on the other specifications reaches a point where resources can be devoted to it. As in Phase II, the XML Activity is managed by an XML Coordination Group, consisting of the chairs of the XML WGs, and an XML Plenary, which consists of the participants in the XML WGs and provides a forum for the discussion of requirements and architectural issues." Further details may be found in the official W3C XML Activity document; some additional and historical references are collected in "W3C XML Working Groups."
[September 15, 1999] Program Available for XML/SGML Asia Pacific '99. Marcus Carr (Allette Systems) posted an announcement to the effect that the XML/SGML Asia Pacific '99 Web site is now updated with the complete schedule and program for this year's conference. XML/SGML Asia Pacific '99 ("Standards for Document and Information Manaement") will be held October 18 - 21, 1999 at the Hotel Mercure, Broadway, Sydney, Australia. XML/SGML Asia Pacific '99 is "the region's annual conference on the applications, trends and technologies that support the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML), [sponsored by] The Graphic Communications Association (GCA), in conjunction with Allette Systems." Marcus writes: "With international representatives from Sun, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM complementing our regional and local speakers, this year's conference will unquestionably be the largest in the event's six year history. Despite our larger venue at the new Mercure Hotel, Sydney, Australia, space is strictly limited so register now to avoid disappointment." For other references, see the XML/SGML Asia Pacific '99 main conference entry.
[September 15, 1999] Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as an IETF Draft. Microsoft and DavNet [UserLand] have submitted an informational draft Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is described as "a way to create widely distributed, complex computing environments that run over the Internet using existing Internet infrastructure. SOAP is about applications communicating directly with each other over the Internet in a very rich way. . . SOAP defines an RPC mechanism using XML for client-server interaction across a network by using the following mechanisms: (1) HTTP as the base transport; (2) XML documents for encoding of invocation requests and responses. SOAP is both low-entry and high-function, capable of use for simple stateless remote procedure calls as well as rich object systems. SOAP works with today's deployed World Wide Web and provides extensibility mechanisms for future enhancements. For example, SOAP supports submitting invocations using both M-POST and POST."
[September 15, 1999] XED XML Editor for FreeBSD, Linux, WIN32, and Solaris 2.5. Henry S. Thompson (HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh) recently posted an announcement to the XML-DEV mailing list regarding a new release of XED which includes builds for FreeBSD and Linux, as well as WIN32 and Solaris 2.5. XED ('An XML document instance editor') "is a text editor for XML document instances. It is designed to support hand-authoring of small-to-medium size XML documents, and is optimised for keyboard input. It works very hard to ensure that you cannot produce a non-well-formed document. Although it does not validate, it does read DTDs and keep track of your document structure, and provides context-based accelerators to make element and attribute entry fast and easy. XED is based on the LTG's LT XML toolkit, and uses Python and Tk to provide an efficient and portable user interface. A (non-exhaustive) inventory of features currently provided by XED: (1) Single-window WYSIWYG presentation; (2) Detailed error messages with line and character position information in case of well-formedness errors on input; (3) Add, remove and rename balanced start/end tag pairs and empty elements; (4) Add, remove and rename attribute name/value pairs; (5) Add or remove comments, CDATA sections and processing instructions; (6) Context-sensitive tag and attribute menus; (7) 'Smart' diagnosis of mixed versus element-only content; (8) Filling of text content, indenting of element-only content; (9) Structure-sensitive point-and-sweep selection paradigm; (10) Structure-preserving cut and paste; (11) Multiple undo; (12) Single-key movement into, out of and around elements; (13) Key bindings based on xxxPad under WIN32 - based on Emacs under Unix." The new release of XED also contains bug fixes. For related tools, see "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[September 15, 1999] Oracle Announces Production Release of the Oracle XML Parser for Java v2.0.2. Mark Scardina of (Server Technologies - Oracle Corporation) recently announced that "first production release of the Oracle XML Parser for Java v2 is available for download at http://technet.oracle.com/tech/xml. The following are included features and specifications: (1) New high performance architecture including DTD cache; (2) Integrated support for W3C XSLT Working Draft (Aug99); (3) Supports validation and non-validation modes; (4) Built-in Error Recovery until fatal error; (5) Supports W3C XML 1.0 Recommendation; (6) Intergrated Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1.0 API; (7) Integrated SAX 1.0 API; (8) Supports W3C Proposed Recomendation for XML Namespaces; (9) Supports documents in the following encodings: UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-10646-UCS-2, ISO-10646-UCS-4, US-ASCII, EBCDIC-CP-*, ISO-8859-1to ISO-8859-9, Shift_JIS, BIG 5, GB2312, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, KOI8-R, ISO-2022-JP, ISO-2022-KR. Support is available in the XML Forum on OTN to provide a collaborative area for bug reporting, technical support, and discussing other Oracle/XML issues. This forum will be used for external as well as internal beta testers." For other XML parsers, see "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits."
[September 15, 1999] New XML Tools from IBM alphaWorks. Several new and updated XML tools were announced recently by IBM alphaWorks labs. Visual DTD is "a visual tool for creating, viewing, and editing existing DTDs. It will generate DTDs, and W3C XML schemas as it evolves. Using Visual DTD, you can: (1) Create DTD elements, attributes, entities, and notations; (2) Import existing DTDs into Visual DTD; (3) Create a DTD from existing XML documents; (4) Generate a DTD; (5) Generate an XML Schema. Note this is only preliminary support for the W3C XML Schema Language. We intend to provide complete support in subsequent updates. Visual DTD has three views: (1) Tree View -- displays the content of the DTD in a tree structure. You can use the Tree View to add and remove elements, attributes, notations, and attributes. The Tree View has 3 root folders: Notations, Entities, and Elements. (2) Design View -- when an object is selected in the Tree View, the Design View will show the detail information for that selected object. You can use the Design View to edit the information of a particular item, such as an element. When you select one of the root folders, (i.e. Notations, Entities, or Elements), the Design View displays a table that lists all the corresponding objects. You can click on the 'Name' table heading column to sort the table content. You can also double click on a particular row to position to a particular item. (3) Source View -- At any time, you can switch to the Source View to review the result DTD. You cannot edit the source from this view. If you have generated the XML Schema, you can also review the generated XML Schema by switching to the Source View, and then choose the XML Schema file from the title drop-down." XML Transformation Tool "is a tool that can help you compose a new XML document from existing XML documents." XSL Trace "allows you to step through XSL scripts and shows you the transformation rules as they are created and the XML or HTML as it is generated. The IBM XSL Trace application reveals the mystery of XSL transforms! XSL Trace allows a user to visually 'step through' an XSL transformation script, highlighting the transformation rules as they are fired. Additionally, an XSL Trace user can view the XML source and the corresponding XML or HTML result in 'real time'. XSL Trace users can set and remove 'break points' on the style sheet and source document as well as highlight all source nodes processed by each style rule. The XSL Trace UI features an XML 'source based' collapsable 'tree view' with dynamic font resizing for 'Zooming' in/out to handle small/large documents. The XSL Trace application is for anyone who is developing XSL scripts for either the client or server and is a natural complement to LotusXSL. Indeed, XSL Trace is built on the new LotusXSL trace API jointly developed by the LotusXSL and Advanced Internet Publishing Teams. As a consequence, XSL Trace adheres to the latest draft of the W3C XSL specification." XML Generator "generates instances of valid XML from a DTD."
[September 14, 1999] XML Semantics, Eskimo Snow, and Scottish Rain. A W3C 'NOTE' has been published under the title Eskimo Snow and Scottish Rain: Legal Considerations of Schema Design. Reference: W3C Note 10-September-1999, by Joseph Reagle. The document abstract: "Eskimos have many words for snow; Scotts have numerous words related to rain. This concept has achieved near urban myth status--though it continues to be contentious amongst linguists. The idea is compelling because it speaks to our belief that the mechanism of speech itself is a reflection or our world and what we wish to say. Within this paper I examine the mechanisms by which our computer agents will express and understand what we wish to say in order to form online agreements. This paper is about semantics. Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning. While the description seems vague, it is of immense importance to the practical field of computer protocol design. For a computer program to be useful, it needs to know what a token such as 'reset' means. The process of defining semantics within a specification (the document which details the structure and operation of some technical design) is critical to the operation of the protocol. How one defines -- or is permitted to define -- those semantics can have an effect on the social context and purposes the protocol serves. My purpose is to examine the relationship between protocol design, policy, and law in three parts. First, I focus on the definition of semantics within a protocol and two metadata technologies (XML and RDF). This technical introduction permits me to refer freely to the technical domain when I begin my policy and legal analysis. Second, I look at the processes by which metadata semantics are likely to be defined with respect to consensus, conflict, and clarity. Finally, I review contract law as related to 'the unruliness of words,' misunderstanding, and interpretation. Note, one might answer two questions when addressing the validity of computer mediated agreements: (1) computer agent competency and (2) the semantic clarity of the agreement. This paper addresses the issue of semantic clarity; agent competency and agency are addressed elsewhere."
[September 13, 1999] OASIS Announces Expansion of XML.org as an XML Information Clearinghouse. A press release from OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) announced "major enhancements to XML.org, the open, vendor-neutral industry portal for XML. New XML schemas from DataChannel and the HR-XML Consortium have been submitted to XML.org. Other content upgrades include the addition of the XML.org Specifications Catalog, a comprehensive list of XML specifications currently under development including links for more information." This catalog is described as "the precursor to the fully functional XML.org Registry and Repository, coming in early 2000; this XML Catalog provides an overview of organizations producing XML specifications." The Web site now publicizes a document describing "XML.org Recommendations, Working Drafts, and Submissions; it provides detailed information on specifications submitted to XML.org. An XML.org Recommendation is an XML specification that was developed for one or more industries in a vendor-neutral manner and has broad industry acceptance. An XML.org Recommendation is suitable for widespread use within the industry or industries for which it was designed and has been given the OASIS Board of Directors stamp of approval. An XML.org Working Draft represents a work-in-progress by an OASIS working group or an industry consortium. The ultimate goal of the group producing the Working Draft must be to seek XML.org Recommendation status. To be accepted as an XML.org Working Draft, the development organization must demonstrate that the specification was developed in a vendor-neutral manner. An XML.org Submission has been given to XML.org for consideration as an XML.org Recommendation, for input to an OASIS XML.org working group, or as an announcement of the availability of a specification for review or application. A Submission can only be forwarded to XML.org by the organization that developed the specification." The XML.org Web site also now incorporates the XML.org Specification Submission Form to encourage and enable organizations to share their XML specifications with the community at large. The form allows one to submit XML DTDs, XML schemas, XSL stylesheets, and descriptive web pages, together with keyword assignments from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes and descriptions. "Data Channel's [recent] submission to XML.org is the Portal Markup Language (PML), which is designed to support inter-portal communication by providing an XML-based description of portal-related data and metadata. PML incorporates the basics of vocabularies such as Dublin Core, Directory Services Markup and WebDAV and will continue to closely track applicable standards of relevance to this arena."
[September 13, 1999] XML Featured in Microsoft Announcements. XML is highlighted in a series of recent announcements from Microsoft Corporation in connection with Windows DNA (Distributed interNet Architecture) 2000 and the BizTalk Framework. The company "announced the availability of a freely downloadable BizTalk JumpStart Kit to aid developers in the immediate creation of BizTalk-compatible software applications. The Microsoft BizTalk JumpStart Kit makes it easier for developers to use XML schemas and the BizTalk Framework in current development projects and existing applications and to realize the benefits of industry-standard eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for electronic-commerce and application integration within and across organizations. In addition, a library for BizTalk-compatible schemas is now live on the BizTalk.Org Web site, with more than 100 freely available schemas submitted by 30 organizations." See "Microsoft Releases BizTalk JumpStart Kit for Developers. BizTalk.Org Library Open for Business Today With More Than 100 Schemas JumpStart Kit, Schema Library Allow Developers to Quickly Create BizTalk-Compatible Solutions Today With XML Schema, Tools, Services and Sample Applications." Press releases from several other companies (Ariba, Bentley, Clarus, Concur Technologies, HR-XML Consortium, Intelisys, KeyFile, Litefoot, Motiva DesignGroup, NetFish, PMSC, Prophet 21) are referenced in the "XML Industry News" section. XML features strongly in a related Microsoft announcement, "Windows DNA 2000 Provides Pervasive XML Support For Next-Generation Web Development Microsoft Deepens Commitment to XML as Industry-Standard Integration Mechanism." - "Microsoft Corp. today expanded its industry-leading commitment to eXtensible Markup Language (XML) with a series of announcements for far-reaching XML support in Windows. Distributed interNet Architecture (Windows DNA) 2000, the next generation of the Microsoft. platform for building distributed Web applications. XML, an industry-standard technology developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), enables heterogeneous interoperability of data, components, business processes and applications over the Internet. The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system, the cornerstone of Windows DNA 2000, is the first operating system with integrated, end-to-end XML support. Key products of the Windows DNA 2000 solution will offer new features and functionality based on XML, including Microsoft SQL Server, the 'Babylon' Integration Server, Microsoft Commerce Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server. The key enabler for Microsoft's vision of integrated, programmable Web services is XML. Through the exchange of XML messages, services can easily describe their capabilities and allow any other service, application or device on the Internet to easily invoke those capabilities. To help realize that vision, Microsoft today is submitting to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) an Internet draft specification for the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML-based mechanism that bridges different object models over the Internet and provides an open mechanism for Web services to communicate with one another. Highlights: (1) SOAP provides an open, extensible way for applications to communicate using XML-based messages over the Web, regardless of what operating system, object model or language particular applications may use. SOAP facilitates universal communication by defining a simple, extensible message format in standard XML and thereby providing a way to send that XML message over HTTP. (2) Microsoft is tightly integrating XML into the SQL. The next version of SQL Server, code- code-named 'Shiloh,' will be fully XML-enabled and will include a superset of the features available in the technology preview for SQL Server 7.0. (3) Microsoft announces XML Transaction Integrator (XML-TI), a new feature of the forthcoming 'Babylon' integration server that enables customers to easily integrate and commerce-enable their existing enterprise applications via XML. XML-TI allows developers to easily invoke transactions on a host with XML without having to change any existing host code or write any new code. XML-TI consists of a runtime proxy and a component builder that generates an XML document interface for executing legacy CICS and IMS transactions." On SOAP, see "Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)."
[September 10, 1999] Working Draft for XHTML 1.1 - Module-based XHTML. As part of the W3C HTML Activity, the W3C HTML Working Group has released the working draft XHTML 1.1 - Module-based XHTML. Reference: W3C Working Draft 09 September 1999; edited by Murray Altheim and Shane McCarron. The document abstract: "This working draft defines a new XHTML document type that is based solely upon the module framework defined in Building XHTML Modules and the modules defined in Modularization of XHTML. The purpose of this document type is to serve as the basis for future extended XHTML family document types, and to provide a consistent, forward looking document type cleanly separated from the deprecated, legacy function of HTML 4.0 that was brought forward into XHTML 1.0 document types. Note that the materials in this document were formerly part of the Modularization of XHTML document, but have been separated out for editorial purposes." And from the introduction: "With the introduction of the XHTML family of modules and document types, the W3C has helped move the Internet content-development community from the days of malformed, non-standard markup into the well formed, valid world of XML. In XHTML 1.0, this move was moderated by a goal of providing for easy migration of existing, HTML 4.0 (or earlier) based content to XHTML and XML. With the advent of the XHTML modules defined in Modularization of XHTML, the W3C has removed support for deprecated elements and attributes from the XHTML family. These elements and attributes were largely presentation oriented functionality that is better handled via style-sheets or client-specific default behavior. Going forward, XHTML family document types will be based upon this new, more structural functional collection. In this specification, the W3C's HTML Working Group has defined an initial document type based upon solely upon XHTML modules. This document type is designed to be portable to a broad collection of potential client devices, and applicable to the majority of Internet content. Content developers who based their content upon the functionality expressed in this specification can be confident that it will be consistently portable across XHTML family conforming user agents."
[September 10, 1999] W3C Working Draft: Building XHTML Modules. The W3C HTML Working Group has published a working draft document Building XHTML Modules. Reference: W3C Working Draft 09-September-1999, edited by Murray Altheim and Shane McCarron. The working draft "defines the mechanism for defining markup language modules that are compatible with the modularization framework used by XHTML. This includes a definition of the way in which an abstract module is specified, the way in which this abstraction is mapped into an XML DTD, and the way in which the resulting DTD module can be combined with other XHTML DTD modules to create new markup languages. In the future, it is expected that instructions will also be provided for mapping the abstract specifications into an XML Schema. Note that the materials in this document were formerly part of the Modularization of XHTML document, but have been separated out for editorial purposes." [And:] "XHTML is more than just a recasting of HTML into XML. It is also an extensible architecture that permits the ready definition of new document types. The W3C envisions that client manufacturers, document authors, and content providers may all use this architecture to define document types that are specific to their needs. The XHTML Modularization specification defines a collection of modules and a framework that make the definition of these new document types relatively easy. That architecture by itself may not be sufficient for the needs of all document type creators. In particular, people who are defining new functionality or combining new functionality with existing elements need a way to define that functionality. The XHTML method for doing this is through the definition of an XHTML module."
[September 10, 1999] W3C Working Draft: Modularization of XHTML. As part of the W3C HTML Activity, the W3C HTML Working Group has released a new version of the working draft Modularization of XHTML. Reference: W3C Working Draft 09-September-1999, edited by Murray Altheim, Frank Boumphrey, Sam Dooley, Shane McCarron, and Ted Wugofski. The working draft "specifies an abstract modularization of XHTML 1.0. A companion document, Building XHTML Modules, implements this abstraction as a collection of component XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs). This modularization provide a means for subsetting and extending XHTML, a feature desired for extending XHTML's reach onto emerging platforms." [And:] "XHTML is the reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an application of XML. XHTML 1.0 specifies three XML document types that correspond to the three HTML 4.0 DTDs: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset. XHTML 1.0 is the basis for a family of document types that subset and extend HTML. XHTML Modularization is decomposition of XHTML 1.0, and by reference HTML 4.0, into a collection of abstract modules that provide specific types of functionality. These abstract modules are implemented in the XHTML 1.1 specification using the XML Document Type Definition language, but other implementations are possible and expected. The mechanism for defining the abstract modules defined in this document, and for implementing them using XML DTDs, is defined in the document "Building XHTML Modules." These modules may be combined with each other and with other modules to create XHTML subset and extension document types that qualify as members of the XHTML family of document types."
[September 09, 1999] W3C Jigsaw Web Server Uses XML Serialization (JXML). The W3C has recently released Jigsaw version 2.1.0, which uses XML serialization. New XML serialization scheme implemented in the current version of Jigsaw is documented as the JXML format. "Jigsaw is W3C's leading-edge Web server platform, providing a sample HTTP 1.1 implementation and a variety of other features on top of an advanced architecture implemented in Java. The W3C Jigsaw Activity statement explains the motivation and future plans in more detail. Jigsaw is an W3C Open Source Project, started May 1996; see the license for details." The Jigsaw XML format (JXML) is a "format used by Jigsaw to store the resources metadata. A JXML file describes a set of resources metadata, each container (e.g.: a directory) save its children's metadata in such a file (via the ResourceStoreManager). The Jigsaw XML DTD is supplied as part of the documentation. An XSL example is also provided: "an example of what can be done with JXML and XSL. . . in this example, the JXML file is transformed to an HTML file using the following XSL rules." In this version a new administration exchange format, also using JXML, allows one to create administration scripts; a new upgrader will automatically convert the old Jigsaw stores to the new format, and the old stores are kept in a backup directory, as explained in the Jigsaw Release Notes. The Java source and the documentation are available for download. For other references, see "Jigsaw XML Format (JXML)."
[September 09, 1999] XHTML Document Profile Requirements. As part of the W3C HTML Activity, the W3C has released a public working draft document XHTML Document Profile Requirements. Document profiles: a basis for interoperability guarantees. W3C Working Draft, 6-September-1999. The document editors include Dave Raggett, Peter Stark, and Ted Wugofski. The abstract: "The increasing disparities between the capabilities of different kinds of Web user agents present challenges to Web content developers wishing to reach a wide audience. A promising approach is to formally describe profiles for documents intended for broad groups of user agents, for instance, separate document profiles for user agents running on desktops, television, handhelds, cellphones and voice user agents. Document profiles provide a basis for interoperability guarantees. If an author develops content for a given profile and a user agent supports the profile then the author may be confident that the document will be rendered as expected. The requirements for document profiles are analyzed." The rationale: "The range of user agent platforms is rapidly expanding to include television sets, handheld organizers, cell phones, in-car systems and regular phones. Each of these platforms presents different capabilities. Viewing distances for television sets are much greater than for desktop or notebook computers, reducing the legibility of text. In addition saturated colors tend to bleed and need to be avoided. Handheld devices have reduced resolution and limited color capabilities. Cell phones are even more limited with display resolutions of as little as 4 lines of 12 characters. Voice user agents substitute speech recognition for keyboards, using synthetic or pre-recorded speech for output. Users are likely to expect to be able to access Web services from wherever they are and at any time - from home, on the move or in the office. . . Document profiles offer a means to characterize the features appropriate to given categories of user agents. For instance, one profile might include support for style sheets, vector graphics and scripting, while another might be restricted to the tags in HTML 3.2. Document profiles can be used by servers to select between document variants developed for different user agent categories. They can be used to determine what transformations to apply when such variants are not available. Content developers can use document profiles to ensure that their web sites will be rendered as intended."
[September 09, 1999] IETF Internet Draft "Xdossier". A posting from Manuel T. Carrasco Benitez (EMEA) recently announced the availability of an IETF Intenet Draft for "Xdossier". Reference: draft-carrasco-xdossier-00.txt, 1-September-1999. The document abstract: "This is an informational memo for Xdossier. An Xdossier is a data object designed for browsing with web browsers and mappable to XML. It is based on a directory structure containing files in several formats." The recommendation is fundamentally "about organising files: they are organised into a data object called Xdossier. Informally, a Xdossier is a directory structure with files in several formats created for web browsing; direct browsing ('file:') or served browsing ('http:'). . . A directory structure is a tree similar to an XML document . . . With a formal mapping to XML, the directory structure could be transformed into an XML document. A strategy could be to start with the (main) "tree" and to progress with the organisation towards the content of the individual files (the 'leaves'): a few files could be XML files, eventually the whole Xdossier should be transformable into a XML document. This approach is particularly useful to organise large amount of legacy data in several formats for which there is no clear formal definition. . ."
[September 08, 1999] Product Definition Exchange. The PDX (Product Definition Exchange) Standard Group "consists of leading corporations and standards organizations in electronics manufacturing. [E.g., NIST, Intel, Agile, Digital Marker, Marshall, IPC, PeopleSoft, Solectron, Unicam, etc.] It is a working group of the NEMI VFIIP (National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project). The PDX standardization effort is focused on the problem of communicating product content information between original equipment manufacturers (OEM), electronic manufacturing service (EMS) providers and component suppliers. The PDX standard is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), which provides a simple yet powerful and flexible way to encode structured data into a format that is both human and machine-readable. The PDX standard provides a way to describe product content (BOMs, AMLs, Drawings, etc.), ECRs, ECOs, Deviations and RFQs in an XML format. This standard will enable dramatic efficiency improvements throughout the supply chain since partners will have a way to exchange product content and changes in a common language." For details, see "Product Definition Exchange (PDX)."
[September 03, 1999] Standardization Effort for an OMG IDL Representation of XML Documents. From a recent OMG announcement: "The Object Management Group recently concluded its Technical Meeting week in San Jose, CA, USA, sponsored by BEA Systems, Inc. Over 575 OMG members, Board of Directors representatives, and invited guests met to work on some 80 technologies in process. Finalization of a number of widely-anticipated new specifications - the CORBA Component Model, the Persistent State Service Specification, IDL mappings to the programming language LISP and the scripting languages Python and IDLscript, and the UML 1.3 revision - highlighted the meeting. In addition, the membership issued an RFP initiating a standardization effort for an OMG IDL representation of XML documents. . .The Platform Technology Committee (PTC), responsible for CORBA core and related specifications, issued two RFPs: one to standardize the representation of XML as OMG IDL values, and a second for enhancements to the current OMG Time Service." The OMG XML/Value Type RFP "asks for a standard way to represent XML values (documents) using OMG IDL non-object (value) types. This RFP solicits proposals for the following: A standard way to represent XML documents using OMG IDL data types -- primitive data types, constructed data types (structs, sequence, unions), and value types." LOI Deadline: November 15, 1999; Voting List Deadline: December 1, 1999; Initial Submission Deadline: December 19, 1999; Revised Submission Deadline: February 14, 2000. The XML/Value Type RFP [orbos/99-08-20] issued at the San Jose Meeting is available in PDF and Postscript formats. For an excerpt of the RFP description, see "Object Management Group XML/Value RFP." See also the text of the announcement as well as the note on the CORBA Component Model. OMG contact: Mr. Jeff Mischkinsky. For other information on OMG's XMI, see "Object Management Group (OMG)."
[September 03, 1999] Conference: XML For Information Resource Managers. A three day conference on "XML For Information Resource Managers" ('Unleashing the Power of your Data and Applications') is scheduled for October 27-29, 1999, Dallas, Texas. Conference sponsors to date include Unisys [The Unisys Universal Repository - UREP ], Sequoia Software Corporation, and WebMethods; additional sponsorships are available. The provisional program includes fourteen presentations by experts on (meta)data management from General Motors Corporation, Fidelity Systems, Hurwitz Group, Unisys, Arbortext, IBM Data Technology Institute, Microsoft, InfoWorld, American Management Systems, Virginia Commonwealth University, Object Design, WebMethods, etc. "At the conference you will hear from Ron Shelby, Chief Technology Officer of the world's largest corporation, explaining why he's such a proponent of XML, and how he's implementing it at General Motors. You'll also learn from Fidelity's VP of Development, Bill Emberton, on the impact of XML in the financial industry and share his lessons of experience as an early adopter of the technology. We have representatives of the Object Management Group and Meta Data Coalition working groups to help you cut through the acronyms and make sense of the various XML-based standards, like XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), Common Warehouse Metadata (CWM), and Open Information Model (OIM). You'll also hear a panel of major vendors explain how they are supporting XML in their products. Dana Gardner, editor at large of InfoWorld will moderate the panel, and will invite you to ask your questions as well.Additional topics include Enterprise Application Integration, Engineering Enterprise Portals, XML Query Language (XQL), how XML can be used to systems, and more." A full-day tutorial is offered by Clive Finkelstein ("acknowledged worldwide as the 'Father' of Information Engineering, [he] is Managing Director of Information Engineering Services Pty Ltd in Australia). His latest book, co-authored with Peter Aiken, is titled Building Corporate Portals with XML and is to be published by McGraw-Hill in September 1999." See the online paper (extracted from the book) "XML and Corporate Portals." For other references, see the main conference entry and the presentation abstracts in the conference brochure.
[September 03, 1999] Especificación XML 1.0 (eXtensible Markup Language) en Castellano. From a posting of Felipe Fernández (Epsilon Eridani): En esta página está la recomendación XML 1.0 en castellano, con algunos comentarios. .. [pero] no es un tutorial . . . es simplemente una traducción (más o menos libre) al castellano de la recomendación XML 1.0 (Feb. 1998) del WWC. Compare the earlier Spanish translation from the SGML-ESP List [archive copy, repaired] and the list of translations into other languages.
[September 02, 1999] Web Site Update for The Model Editions Partnership. The Model Editions Partnership ('Historical Editions in the Digital Age') was created "to explore ways of creating editions of historical documents which meet the standards scholars traditionally use in preparing printed editions. Equally important was the goal of making these materials more widely available via the Web. The Model Editions Partnership is a consortium of seven historical editions which joined forces with leaders of the Text Encoding Initiative and the Center for Electronic Text in the Humanities. The project is funded by a major grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and is supported by the University of South Carolina, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Alberta." The project director is David R. Chesnutt (University of South Carolina), and the co-coordinators are Susan Hockey and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, joined by a team of Steering Committee members and project staff. The documents have been prepared using SGML/XML markup. Of special note is the project documentation for markup used in the encoding of the Model Editions. The Markup Guidelines for Documentary Editions, by David R. Chesnutt, Susan M. Hockey, and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, provides a superb general guide to the use of SGML/XML in the markup of historical documentary editions. The document "provides a reasonably non-technical introduction to the SGML-based markup scheme developed by the Model Editions Partnership (MEP) for the production of historical documentary editions in electronic form. The most important element types (or 'tags') in the MEP markup system are introduced with examples. See particularly in this guide Section 2.7 MEP and XML, which explains: "Some readers may be curious about the implications for electronic historical editions of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a new formalism for markup which has (at the time this document is being prepared) recently been widely discussed in the trade press. For purposes of this document, SGML and XML are interchangeable: every valid XML document is at the same time a valid SGML document, and every SGML document constructed according to the rules described here can be processed by XML software. The differences between SGML and XML are thus not relevant to the creators of electronic documentary editions. All examples in this document are tagged in XML form. . ." For online navigation and searching: "the DynaText and Dynaweb software from Inso has been used to present the mini-editions; this software allows users to construct powerful searches or to use a series of built-in search forms. The mini-editions can be searched using the full range of standard search tools -- wildcards, proximity searching and Boolean searching." Dynatext also "has built-in support for search of tagged documents with hierarchical structures, such as HTML and XML. By permitting searches of words and phrases inside particular tags, as well as words in documents [and mixed text/structure queries], DynaText allows users to efficiently target their searches, resulting in more relevant, focused matches." As of September 1999, the MEP Web site hosted seven mini-editions. "Four of the experimental mini-editions are based on full-text searchable document transcriptions; two are based on document images; and one is based on both images and text." These include: (1) Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, (2) Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, (3) Papers of Henry Laurens, (4) Abraham Lincoln Legal Papers, (5) Papers of General Nathanael Greene, (6) Margaret Sanger Papers, (7) Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony." For complete references, see the MEP Web site and the local database entry.
[September 01, 1999] Sun Microsystems Offers Free StarOffice Productivity Suite. Sun Microsystems' acquisition of Star Division is described as part of an effort to "dot-com" office productivity software by making lightweight office applications and personalized data available on the Net. The catch-phrase in the recent announcement was "office applications for anyone, anywhere, anytime, any device." In a Webcast from New York, Sun's Scott McNealy characterized the announcement as "one small step for office software, one giant leap for the Web." Sun's newly-acquired StarOffice productivity suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, graphics tools, e-mail, calendar, database interface, news reader, equation editor, and other tools. The StarPortal initiative will support "portal computing" -- access to office software tools from any web browser and eventually from portable devices. "If you have used Microsoft Office in the past, you'll feel right at home. StarOffice runs on the Linux, Solaris Operating Environment, OS/2, and Windows platforms; and it can open (and save to) any of the common Microsoft Office file formats, such as Powerpoint, Excel, and Word." StarOffice is available for free download, and the source code will be made available under Sun's Community Source License. And the XML connection? It was referenced in an oblique Webcast statement by Star Division's Marco Boerries, to the effect that XML specifications created as part of the StarPortal initiative would be submitted to the W3C, and that the APIs would be submitted to ECMA. An article by Stephen Shankland in CNET News.com offers the same hint from an interview with Marco Boerries: "In line with the plan to become more open, Star Office file formats eventually will become XML, and the standard for interacting with it will become published openly and contributed to the ECMA standardization group." For other details, see also the two press releases from Sun: (1) "Sun Microsystems, Inc. Takes Office Productivity to the Net. 'StarPortal' Initiative to Accelerate Transition to Service-Driven Network. Desktop Software Suite Available Now for Free." (2) "Sun Microsystems' 'StarPortal' Initiative Captures Broad Industry Support. 27 [26] Industry Leaders and Partners Join Initiative to Accelerate Transition to Service-Driven Network.
[September 01, 1999] Enhanced XML Support in Ultraseek Server 3.1. Walter Underwood posted an announcement for improved XML support in a release of the Ultraseek Server 3.1. The Ultraseek Server 3.1 "is an internet search engine based on Infoseek/GO.com search, and designed for ease-of-admin, scalability, and relevant results. This is our third release with XML support. Ultraseek Server first supported indexing XML documents in version 2.1, way back in September 1998. The XML support is designed for providing search to users over sets of XML documents. It is not designed as a repository for authors, as a database-like search (SQL, XQL, etc.), nor for arbitrary searches depending on element context (XPath). It is designed for people to type in a word or a phrase and get the most relevant documents without having to learn a query language. The XML support in 3.1 allows admins to map text inside elements to search fields, and to have different mappings for different root element names (we can't rely on DTDs, since we only require well-formedness, not validity). If one document type uses <author>, another uses <docAuthor>, another uses <byline>, and yet another uses <creator>, all of those can be mapped to "author:name" searches. It ships with default mappings for TEI, DocBk XML V3.1.3, the Bosak religion collection, the Bosak Shakespear collection, FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata, XMLNews-Story -- and a fallback default mapping that covers some common conventions, like <title> or <TITLE> for the document title. Simple links in XLink format (that is, "href" attributes) will be followed by the spider. Elements qualified by namespaces can be mapped."
[September 01, 1999] 4DOM - Implementing the W3C Document Object Model in Python. A posting from Uche Ogbuji recently announced the release of 4DOM 0.8.0 from FourThought LLC. 4DOM is "an implementation of the W3C's Document Object Model in Python. 4DOM is a close implementation of the DOM recommendation, including DOM Core level 1, DOM HTML level 1, Node Iterator and Node Filter from DOM Level 2, and a few utility and helper components. 4DOM can work in a CORBA enviroment, or in a purely local set-up. 4DOM is designed to allow developers rapidly design applications that read, write or manipulate HTML and XML. Recent changes include: Support for non-CORBA usage, Improved performance, DOM Level 2 NodeFilters and NodeIterators, Pythonic interface for NodeLists and NamedNodeMaps, XML Namespace support (proprietary until W3C decides chooses between the proposed Level 2 interfaces), Several interface changes in Ext, Re-organized module structure, Explicit garbage-collection method, Better-tested Fnorb and Ilu support, Many bug-fixes. 4DOM was developed and tested on Python 1.5.2; you will also need to install the Python XML package. If you want to use 4DOM with CORBA, you'll need Fnorb or ILU installed."
[September 01, 1999] 4XPath and 4XSLT: XPath and XSLT Processors Written in Python. A recent posting from Uche Ogbuji of FourThought LLC announces the release of 4XPath: An XPath Processor Written in Python. 4XPath implements the W3C XPath language for indicating and selecting XML document components. 4XPath version 0.7.0 supports the full August 13th 1999 working draft of XPath. 4XPath is distributed under a license similar to that of Python. 4XPath was developed and tested on Python 1.5.2. You will also need to install the Python XML package and 4DOM. Also announced by FourThought: 4XSLT 0.7.0, a python implementation of the W3C's XSLT language. "4XSLT is an XML transformation processor based on the W3C's specification for the W3C XSLT transform language. Currently, 4XSLT supports a sub-set of the August 13th working draft of XSLT including the following: Full expression support and attribute-value template expansion, xsl:include, xsl:template, xsl:apply-templates, xsl:for-each, xsl:element, xsl:attribute, xsl:text, xsl:value-of, and literal elements and text. 4XSLT produces its result tree by throwing standard SAX events to a document handler, so it can be easily modified to supply results to any SAX consumer." For related tools, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[September 01, 1999] FO2PDF Engine from RenderX.com. Paul Tchistopolskii posted an announcement to the effect that RenderX.com has made Web site additions of files demonstrating the work of the RenderX.com FO2PDF engine. The goal of these demonstration is to show that it is already possible to use XSL and XSL FO standards in a production environment. The "Hammer Demo" has three steps: "(Step 1: xml + xsl = fo) - Taking the XML version of the hypotetical document hammer.xml, we apply an XSL stylesheet hammer.xsl, and run it through James Clarks' XT XSL processor. This creates the new XML file hammer.fo, the stream of XSL Formatting Objects. (Step 2: Optional Validation) - You may use XSL FO Validator online service running at www.RenderX.com to make sure that the stream of XSL FOs is consistent and reasonable. (Step 3: Rendering) - We now run FO2PDF rendering engine on this hammer.fo which creates the PDF file, hammer.pdf." See also among the demos the Formatting Object Parade: some formatting objects streams which produce the given PDF files running under the FO2PDF rendering engine. The validator has been updated, and consists of two steps: The first step is to invoke IBM XML4J validating parser with the special fo.dtd to be sure that FO stream has reasonable structure. The second step is to invoke the XML rendering engine in validate-only mode to perform some checks that could not be done with DTD." For related tools, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[August 31, 1999] W3C Working Draft on XHTML Extended Forms Requirements. The W3C HTML Working Group [Forms Subgroup] has published a first public Working Draft on requirements for the next generation of web forms: XHTML Extended Forms Requirements, World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft, 30-August-1999. The draft has been edited by Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer, Malte Wedel, and Dave Raggett (W3C/HP - HTML Activity Lead). The document abstract: "Forms were introduced into HTML in 1993 and have proven to be a valuable part of many Web pages. The experience of the last few years has led to demands for improvements to HTML forms. XHTML Extended Forms is a major revision of HTML Forms. Key goals for the next generation of web forms include improved interoperability and accessibility, enhanced client/server interaction, advanced forms logic, support for internationalization and greater flexibility in presentation." The requirements specify "well-formed XML" as the target markup notation for forms: "This ensures that user agents can rely on standard parser technologies. The form semantics (fields and form logic) should be expressed directly in XML to avoid the need for user agents to support additional syntaxes, for instance full scripting languages, which may be impractical for devices with very limited resources." The HTML Working Group "has decided that the goals for the next generation of forms are incompatible with preserving backwards compatibility with browsers designed for earlier versions of HTML. It is our objective to provide a clean new forms model ('XHTML Extended Forms') based on a set of well-defined requirements. The requirements described in this document are based on experience with a very broad spectrum of form applications. Web forms are being used in various contexts as a standardized mechanism for bidirectional data exchange over the web. In many occasions, it is desirable to enable an open data dialog between the recipient of a hypertext document and the sender. Forms need to provide effective support for various kinds of data exchange. The design of XHTML Extended Forms focusses on the increasing demands for improved human-computer interaction as well as the interaction mechanisms between the browser (user agent) and the server. This document provides a comprehensive set of requirements for W3C's work on XHTML forms. We envisage this work being conducted in several steps, starting with the development of a core forms module, followed by work on additional modules for specific features. The Modularization of XHTML provides a mechanism for defining modules which can be recombined as appropriate to the capabilities of different platforms."
[August 30, 1999] Extensible Financial Reporting Markup Language (XFRML). A communiqué from Charles Hoffman reports on the public announcement of XFRML. XFRML is the code name for a new XML-based specification designed for use within the financial community. An overview of the specification is provided in the press release "AICPA, Information Technology Companies, and Five Largest Accounting and Professional Service Firms Join Forces in Developing XML-Based Financial Reporting Language." XFRML (XML-based Financial Reporting Markup Language) is designed to help solve two significant problems: "(1) efficient preparation of financial statements in many forms and (2) reliable extraction of specific detailed information from the different forms of financial statements. XFRML will be the digital language of business. XFRML is a framework that will allow the financial community (accountants, investors, bankers, industry analysts, regulators, and others in the financial reporting supply chain) a standards-based method to prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze financial reports and the information they contain. XFRML, which will be free licensed, will also permit the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information among various software applications. The XFRML working group was begun by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). The following organizations have already joined this important effort: Arthur Andersen LLP, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ernst & Young LLP, KPMG LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, FRx Software Corporation, Great Plains, e-content (a division of Interleaf, Inc.), FreeEDGAR.com, Inc., EDGAR Online, Inc., The Woodburn Group, and Microsoft Corporation." For other references, see provisionally the FAQ document and "XML and XFRML Executive Summary." Further description is found in the main entry, "Extensible Financial Reporting Markup Language (XFRML)."
[August 30, 1999] Call Processing Language (CPL). A communiqué from Jonathan Rosenberg (IETF IPTEL Working Group Chair) references design and development work in the IETF on an XML-based Call Processing Language (CPL), "which is scheduled to be complete by the end of the 1999." According to the desc


SEARCH \| ABOUT \| INDEX \| NEWS \| CORE STANDARDS \| TECHNOLOGY REPORTS \| EVENTS \| LIBRARY