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• [September 30, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases UDDI Registry Extensions.    An IBM alphaWorks development team has released a package of extensions that enhance IBM WebSphere UDDI product with advanced search capabilities. These UDDI Registry Extensions support Version 1.1.1 of the IBM WebSphere UDDI Registry. The new UDDI Registry Extensions provide "advanced search capabilities that enable the formation of complex queries comprising search criteria from two standard UDDI 'find' APIs, find_business and find_service, all in one query. With these advanced search capabilities, requesters can find businesses with services of specific names or in a specific category and vice versa to find services owned by businesses that match specified criteria. Such capabilities are not available with current UDDI search technology and these searches cannot be done without much effort. To make equivalent queries with the current UDDI search technology, the client search requester must perform two steps: (1) Issue two queries: a find_business query and a find_service query, and (2) Process the two sets of results returned by the queries and perform the appropriate intersection of the results, which is complex and error-prone." [Full context]

• [September 30, 2002]   US Internal Revenue Service Establishes Online XML Developers' Forum for Employment Tax E-file System.    The US Internal Revenue Service has set up an online "94x XML Developers' Forum" to provide information and technical guidance for software developers interested in developing software for the new Employment Tax e-file System in XML. The website provides links to the relevant XML Schemas, technical documents, news, and announcements. Supported tax forms include: Form 940 - Employer's Annual Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax Return (Forma 940-PR in Spanish), Form 941 - Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return (Form 941-PR in Spanish), Form 941-SS - Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return, Form 941c - Supporting Statement to Correct Information, and XML PIN Registration. An Employment Tax e-file System Implementation and User Guide and a Preliminary Guide to Creating 94x Return Transmission Files provide procedural guidelines and validation criteria for the Employment Tax e-file System. Section 5 of the User Guide ('Building XML Transmission Files') describes the procedure for creating a 94x return transmission file with XML structures for the SOAP Transmission Envelope, TransmissionHeader, PINRegistrationOriginHeader, PIN Registration Transmission Envelope, and a complete Transmission Envelope with the ReturnData and MIME parts. "The new Employment Tax e-file System has been designed to replace all previous electronic filing options for returns in the 940 and 941 families. Previous e-file formats will be maintained in order to allow for transition to the new XML based system." The IRS XML Development Teams also maintain two lists (XML Schema News and Information, XML Schema Discussion Group) for distributing communications, and encouraging open discussion on the overall XML development effort. An associated US Fed/State Employment Tax XML Forum provides guidance for software developers and Federal/State partners who are interested in developing a gateway and/or software to file both federal and state employment taxes along with payments. The state level XML schemas are designed to be used with the Federal 94x schemas. [Full context]

• [September 30, 2002]   STARLab Object Role Modeling Markup Language (ORM-ML) Represents ORM Models in XML.    The research team at STARLab (Systems Technology and Applications Research Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) has developed an Object Role Modeling markup language (ORM-ML) for representing ORM models in an XML based syntax. Stylesheets may be written to convert this ORM-ML syntax into other syntaxes for processing by business rule engines. The team "has chosen ORM for its rich constraint vocabulary and well-defined semantics and elected to use XML Schema to define this communication 'protocol' for conceptual schemas seen as XML document instances. The design approach respects the ORM structure as much as possible by not 'collapsing' it first through the usual relational transformer that comes with most ORM-based tools (or UML, or EER tools). ORM-ML allows the representation of any ORM schema without loss of information or change in semantics, except for the geometry and topology (graphical layout) of the schema (e.g., location, shapes of the symbols), which easily may be provided as a separate graphical style sheet to the ORM Schema." [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Specification Submitted to W3C.    W3C has acknowledged receipt of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Version 1.1 specification from IPR Systems, and has published the document as a W3C Note. The submission request and W3C Team Comment reference the possible chartering of a DRM/Rights Language activity within W3C, but no commitment has yet been made. The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) "is a proposed language for the Digital Rights Management (DRM) community for the standardisation of expressing rights information over content. The ODRL is intended to provide flexible and interoperable mechanisms to support transparent and innovative use of digital resources in publishing, distributing and consuming of electronic publications, digital images, audio and movies, learning objects, computer software and other creations in digital form. The ODRL has no license requirements and is available in the spirit of 'open source' software." The ODRL specification is presented in four main sections: Section 2 describes the model for the ODRL expression language; Section 3 describes the semantics of the ODRL data dictionary elements; Section 4 describes the XML syntax used to encode the ODRL expressions and elements; Section 5 describes how additional ODRL data dictionaries can be defined. The Expression Language and Data Dictionary elements are formally defined in two normative appendices: Appendix A provides the ODRL Expression Language XML Schema and Appendix B gives the ODRL Data Dictionary XML Schema. [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   W3C Publishes Note on Extensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL).    RealNetworks, Inc. has submitted the Extensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL) specification to W3C with the suggestion "that the Consortium start a working group to develop a W3C recommendation for XML based digital rights specification language." The Extensible Media Commerce Language is "an interchange format that describes usage rules that apply to multi-media content. It is designed to communicate these rules in an implementation independent manner for interchange between business systems and DRM implementations responsible for enforcing the rules described in the language." The submission notes that "a standard XML-based business rule definition language would bring DRM systems together on the back end and reduce the cost for the publisher/e-tailer; most importantly, a standard business rule definition language would enable the e-tailer to become independent of the particular implementation choices of any single DRM vendor and any single back-end system." XMCL "describes the minimum, self-complete set of business rules under which digital media is licensed for consumer use. These business rules support multiple business models including rental, subscription, ownership, and video on demand/pay-per-view. When a business system authorizes a customer transaction for digital media, it generates a XMCL document that is then acted upon and enforced by a specific trusted system." [Full context]

• [September 24, 2002]   Last Call Working Draft for SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature.    A Last Call Working Draft for SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature has been released by the W3C XML Protocol Working Group as part of the W3C Web Services Activity. The specification is based upon the IETF Internet-Draft "WS-Attachments" and "defines a SOAP feature that represents an abstract model for SOAP attachments. The compound SOAP structure model is abstract in the sense that it does not define an actual means by which compound SOAP structures are represented or transmitted by a SOAP binding. [The specification] provides the basis for the creation of SOAP bindings that transmit such attachments along with a SOAP envelope, and provides for reference of those attachments from the envelope. SOAP attachments are described using the notion of a compound document structure consisting of a primary SOAP message part and zero or more related documents parts known as attachments. The compound SOAP structure model is independent of the underlying protocol used for transmitting the primary SOAP message part and any of the secondary parts. That is, there is no requirement that all parts of a compound SOAP structure representation be transmitted within the same unit of the underlying protocol." The last call review period for the WD ends on 15-October-2002. [Full context]

• [September 21, 2002]   Discussion Forum for Web Services Security Quality of Protection.    An OASIS discussion list has been created on the topic Web Services Security Quality of Protection. Subscribers to the 'WSSQoP-Discuss' list will discuss the possible creation of an OASIS Technical Committee. Sponsors of the proposal include representatives from CommerceOne, Cisco, Entrust, IBM, RSA Security, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and VeriSign; the discussion leader is Tim Moses (Entrust). The stated purpose of the TC under discussion would be "to identify candidate solutions for communicating the required security tokens and quality of protection for a Web service, taking advantage of the common service definition tools, such as WSDL. The solutions are intended to allow a service consumer to determine (1) how to produce a SOAP message including security tokens and protection mechanisms, in accordance with WSS, that is acceptable to both the provider and consumer, and (2) whether the consumer is capable of performing the required security processing on the response from a Web service. Components of security policy include at least the set of acceptable types of security token, the set of acceptable cryptographic algorithms, (optionally) what key to use for encryption, and the payload nodes to be protected. The topic is potentially open-ended, leading to solutions for trust policy, authorization policy, personal privacy policy, etc. While recognizing this, it is the intention to limit the identified solutions to those that address the QoP of the initial mechanisms of WSS. This is analogous to the 'cipher suites' and "supported algorithms" mechanisms of TLS and S/MIME, respectively. In addition, the group will identify candidate process models for producing a WSDL instance from a security policy definition, and producing a language-specific API from a WSDL instance..." [Full context]

• [September 19, 2002]   Sun Offers Developers Interoperability Prototype for Liberty.    An Interoperability Prototype for Liberty (IPL) was among several announcements issued by Sun Microsystems at the SunNetwork 2002 Conference and Pavilion. The prototype is based upon the Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification, and has been designed "for developers (enterprise customers and ISVs) who want to build or test Liberty-enabled applications to manage and maintain their own identity management systems. Based on open standards such as SAML 1.0, XML, and SOAP, both the IPL prototype and the Liberty specification are available immediately for download. The Interoperability Prototype for Liberty is the first open-source implementation of the Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification based on Java technology. IPL is designed to help developers learn how the project Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification can be implemented. Written for the Java 2 platform, IPL provides the foundation for building liberty into applications and testing interoperability between liberty compliant solutions such as the Sun ONE Identity Server version 6.0. IPL consists of sample Java source code libraries, implementing the Liberty version 1.0 specification, and is not designed for commercial deployment." [Full context]

• [September 17, 2002]   W3C Issues Second Candidate Recommendation for XML Inclusions (XInclude).    The W3C XML Core Working Group has published a second Candidate Recommendation for XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 which incorporates implementation feedback based upon the first CR. The XInclude document "specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML information sets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI references). Feedback received during the first Candidate Recommendation has prompted some features to be removed from the specification, namely, full namespace fixup, and conformance to full XPointer in favor of a lower level made possible by the factoring of XPointer into the XPointer Framework and separate fragment schemes. The second Candidate Reommendation provides an opportunity for these changes to be reflected in implementations, and for the XML Core Working Group to collect additional test cases and information about implementations. [The WG] expects that sufficient feedback to determine its future will have been received by 1-November-2002." The working group welcomes feedback on patterns of implementation and use of this specification, as well as contributions of XInclude test cases. [Full context]

• [September 16, 2002]   IONA Orbix E2A XMLBus Version 5.4 Connects Corba with Web Services.    IONA has announced Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform 'XMLBus Edition' version 5.4 as the latest release of its visual environment for developing, deploying, integrating, and managing secure Web services. XMLBus Edition v5.4 delivers enhanced features that enable the bridging of CORBA systems to Web services. New features such as an Operation Flow Designer address the problems inherent in mapping complex CORBA systems into more abstract, business-focused Web services. The XMLBus is "a highly productive visual environment that enables developers to rapidly develop, deploy, integrate, and manage secure Web Services. XMLBus lets developers create Web services from existing applications, including existing Java Classes, EJB's, and CORBA systems. The result is a SOAP gateway that conforms to a WSDL interface derived from the original Java code. XMLBus Edition also provides a graphical tool to define the sequence of calls on fine-grain back-end components -- a capability that is required to create complex and truly loosely-coupled Web services. And XMLBus Edition is integrated with IONA's Process Engine, which enables the coordination of various business activities and Web services in a way that lets you integrate multiple activities into a single executable business process. [Full context]

• [September 16, 2002]   Altova Introduces New XML Product Line for Design and Development.    Altova Inc. has released a new XML product line consisting of three easy-to-use software tools designed to facilitate and advance the adoption of XML technologies. The XMLSPY 5 tool "builds on the previous XMLSPY version by adding XSLT debugging, WSDL editing, Java/C++ code generation, HTML Importing, and Tamino Integration. Altova's AUTHENTIC 5 is a standards-based browser enabled document editor; it allows business users to seamlessly capture thoughts and ideas directly in XML content for storage in any content management system, database, or XML repository, for later retrieval or transformation, unlocking corporate knowledge. The STYLEVISION 5 XML tool supports web developers by providing powerful conversion utilities for painless migration of traditional HTML websites to true XML-based sites; it consists of XSLT stylesheets, XML Schema/DTD, and XML content." Each of the tools is available from the Altova website for free trial download and evaluation. [Full context]

• [September 14, 2002]   freebXML Initiative Supports Open Source ebXML Implementations: Message Service Handler (MSH) and Registry/Repository.    A posting from Thomas Lee (CECID) announces the formation of a new 'freebXML' initiative that aims to foster the development and adoption of ebXML and related technologies. freebXML is an international effort comprising of founding members from technology firms, government organizations, standardization bodies, and academic institutions. The mission of freebXML is to provide a centralized Website for ebXML users and developers from around the world to access and share 'free' ebXML code and applications. Users and developers can also exchange their ebXML development and deployment experience at www.freebXML.org. Some features of www.freebxml.org include 'open source' projects for download, deployment or use cases of ebXML technology, a list of ebXML vendor products, latest news on freebXML, and discussion forums for developers and users. Access to www.freebxml.org is free of charge and open to all individuals and organizations interested in ebXML. Initially, two 'open-source' projects are available for download: Hermes and ebxmlrr. Hermes is a Message Service Handler (MSH) implementation of OASIS' ebXML Message Service V2 Standard. ebxmlrr is an implementation of the ebXML Registry/Repository V2 Standard. Donated to the ebXML development community by CECID, Hermes is released under the Academic Free License. ebxmlrr, hosted at SourceForge, is an international collaboration with developers from around the world based on the initial code donation by Sun Microsystems Inc. The ebxmlrr project is released under an Apache style open source license that permits royalty free use of the source and binaries." [Full context]

• [September 14, 2002]   W3C HLink Working Draft Defines Hyperlink Markup Facility for XHTML Family.    W3C's HTML Working Group has released a first public Working Draft specification for HLink: Link Recognition for the XHTML Family. The HLink module defined in the specification "provides XHTML Family Members with the ability to specify which attributes of elements represent hyperlinks, and how those hyperlinks should be traversed, and extends XLink use to a wider class of languages than those restricted to the syntactic style allowed by XLink." Normative 'Appendix A' documents three implementations defined in terms of XML DTD, RELAX NG, and W3C XML Schema. The HLink module defined in the WD uses the XML Namespaces identifier http://www.w3.org/2002/06/hlink. The new markup that can be used to describe links in XHTML Family members "consists of two elements; they are used to associate properties with markup elements and attributes to describe how they behave as links. Many of the descriptive properties are taken from XLink, but with additions to support the behaviour of links in XHTML. The <hlinks> element exists only to be a root element for a document containing only <hlink> elements. The empty element <hlink> is used to identify an element and/or attributes within a namespace, and associates properties with them to specify how the element should be treated as a link, or how the attributes contribute to an element that is a link. HLink may be used in two ways: (1) the first is by putting the <hlink>s in the <head> [element]; (2) the other is by putting them in a separate resource, and referring to that resource by a hlink:definition URI attribute on the root element of the document. At the time of publication, the Working Group believed there were no patent disclosures relevant to the HLink specification. [Full context]

• [September 11, 2002]   Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor Supports XML and SGML.    A posting from Rick Jelliffe announces the release of the Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor version 1.0.1. The Collaborative Markup Editor is a delimiter-aware text editor with markup-aware cut-and-paste operations, undo/redo, rectangular selection, clear diagnostics, and over a dozen innovative tools to handle common markup tasks. The editing environment is described as "a new tool for professional publishing teams and individuals which supports the whole of lifecycle for large and complex XML and SGML documents." The program design reflects an observation that "standard text editors don't provide enough validation but XML editors lack the flexibiltiy that publishers require." The Topologi Collaborative Markup Editor is suitable especially in contexts where the editing tasks involve markup, text conversion, efficient teamwork, multiple DTDs, larger files, and multiple languages or platforms. The tool supports Unicode and offers validation for both SGML and XML. It "gracefully handles long files and bad markup, offers fast text input and scrolling, and incorporates innovative tools in a familar interface framework. It provides flexibility by working with different document types, and adjusts readily to new document types, with special validation modes for incomplete documents." Topologi is based upon standards from ISO, IETF and W3C; it supports ISO RELAX NG, Schematron 1.5, W3C XML, Namespaces, and W3C XML Schema. The Community Edition for Wintel may be downloaded for evaluation from Topologi's website; Linux and Mac OS X versions are now in beta testing. [Full context]

• [September 10, 2002]   Workflow Management Coalition Publishes XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) Beta.    The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has released a draft beta version for the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL), together with a supporting XML schema. The document relates to WfMC's Interface One, supporting Process Definition Import and Export. The interface includes a common meta-model for describing the process definition and an XML schema specifying XPDL. Interface One is one of five functional interfaces to a workflow service identified by the WfMC as part of its standardization program. The draft document "describes the meta-model which is used to define the objects and attributes contained within a process definition. The XPDL grammar is directly related to these objects and attributes. This approach needs two operations to be provided by a vendor: (1) Import a workflow definition from XPDL; (2) Export a workflow definition from the vendor's internal representation to XPDL. The specification uses XML as the mechanism for process definition interchange. XPDL forms a common interchange standard that enables products to continue to support arbitrary internal representations of process definitions with an import/export function to map to/from the standard at the product boundary. A variety of different mechanisms may be used to transfer process definition data between systems according to the characteristics of the various business scenarios. In all cases the process definition must be expressed in a consistent form, which is derived from the common set of objects, relationships and attributes expressing its underlying concepts." [Full context]

• [September 09, 2002]   Creative Commons Project Releases RDF Metadata Specification for Copyright Licenses.    A posting from Aaron Swartz announces the release of a new draft Creative Commons Metadata Specification which defines RDF descriptions for copyright licenses. "Unlike Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, which tries to prevent people from doing things with digital works, Creative Commons is working towards promoting these uses of works." The draft Creative Commons Metadata specification "describes Works, Licenses, and License Characteristics (permissions, prohibitions, requirements). Licenses are created via tools and databases in a variety of data and metadata formats, including RDF metadata and application-specific XML vocabularies; this data and metadata will be made available for use by third-party software applications. An initial goal of Creative Commons Project is to release a public a set of copyright licenses free of charge; these licenses tell others that works are free for copying and other uses, but only on certain conditions. In addition to supporting fixed licenses, the software tools will help users mix and match preferences from a menu of options to create custom licenses. Custom licenses declare permission to copy, distribute, display, perform the work, create a derivative work (etc) with several variations, including terms for non-commercial use, copyleft license principles, etc. The CC licenses will be expressed in three forms: (1) a 'Commons Deed' written as a simple, plain-language summary of the license; (2) the 'Legal Code' fine print that one needs to be sure the license will stand up in court; (3) one or more 'Digital Code' machine-readable [XML/RDF] translations of the license which help search engines and other applications identify the work by its terms of use. The license tool will also help a user dedicate a work to the public domain in a legally accepted way. [Full context]

• [September 05, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Updates XML Schema Quality Checker.    A posting from Achille Fokoué (XML/XSL Transformational Systems, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) announces the release of the IBM XML Schema Quality Checker version 2.1.1 from IBM Alphaworks. XML Schema Quality Checker (SQC) "is a program which takes as input documents containing XML Schemas written in the W3C XML schema language and diagnoses improper uses of the schema language. Where the appropriate action to correct the schema is not obvious, the diagnostic message may include a suggestion about how to make the fix. For Schemas which are composed of numerous schema documents connected via <include>, <import> or <redefine> element information items, a full schema-wide checking is performed. The tool can also be run in batch mode to quality check multiple XML schemas in a single run. SQC may be installed as an Eclipse or WSAD Plugin." Changes in version 2.1.1 include: (1) improved error detection; (2) implementation of fixes based upon the W3C 'XML Schema 1.0 Specification Errata' document; (3) SchemaQualityChecker is now using Apache's XERCES-J version 2.1; (4) Additional command line options; (5) Eclipse progress meter. [Full context]

• [September 05, 2002]   W3C Publishes Note on XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema.    The W3C HTML Working Group has released a Note defining XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema. "This work in progress provides informative XML schemas corresponding to the XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, and Frameset DTDs. For the most part, these XML Schemas are written to imitate the structure of the XHTML 1.0 DTDs; major differences are those affecting the validation of XHTML 1.0 documents." Using XML Schema for XHTML 1.0 provides three principal benefits via-à-vis DTDs: (1) Strong datatyping and thus better validation; (2) Better expressive power for describing content models [e.g., fieldset]; (3) Better namespace support. "DTD validation and XML Schema validation are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes authors might want to use some DTD features (e.g., entities) while taking advantage of the XML Schema validation." [Full context]

• [September 04, 2002]   Cape Clear Software Releases Free WSDL Editor Graphical Tool.    Cape Clear Software has announced the availability of a free WSDL Editor graphical tool "that enables you to create and edit WSDL definitions of Web services. It facilitates the creation of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files and manages WSDL file syntax and validation." Designed for programmers interested in working with Web Services, the Cape Clear WSDL Editor "delivers the first complete environment for rapid Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) development. It supports novice programmers, while also providing sophisticated features for more experienced Web Services developers. The WSDL Editor includes powerful wizards that eliminate the complexity of WSDL, as well as WSDL validation, which simplifies testing, and support for the rapid creation of Web Services from XML Schema. It offers an intuitive graphical environment for the design of Web Services and, in particular, assists developers who wish to create Web Services from existing XML interfaces such as SWIFT, ACORD, BAPI, and RosettaNet. The WSDL Editor is an early access component of CapeStudio, Cape Clear's integrated Web services development environment. CapeStudio's design-time components include a WSDL Generator (generates WSDL files from existing server-side component interfaces, such as Java classes, Enterprise JavaBeans, or CORBA IDL definitions), a WSDL Assistant (automatically creates Visual Basic and Java client proxies, JSP pages to be deployed as Web clients, and Java and EJB skeleton code for server-side components), an XSLT Installer, and a Deployment Wizard." The Java-based WSDL Editor tool is available for download. [Full context]

• [August 30, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Draft of Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web.    An initial public working draft of "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web" has been published on the W3C website. The WD seeks to establish a reference set of principles for Web architecture. The World Wide Web, according to this working draft, "is a networked information system. Web Architecture is the set of principles that all agents in the system follow to create the large-scale effect of a shared information space. Identification, data formats, and protocols are the main technical components of Web Architecture, but the large-scale effect depends on social behavior as well." Agents are programs acting on behalf of another person, entity, or process that exchange information. The main sections of the document discuss identifiers, formats, and protocols; each section highlights principles of Web architecture and notes on good practice. The World Wide Web architecture "consists of: (1) Identifiers - a single specification to identify objects in the system, namely, the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); (2) Formats - a nonexclusive set of data format specifications designed for interchange between agents in the system; this includes several data formats used in isolation or in combination (e.g., XHTML, CSS, PNG, XLink, RDF, SMIL animation), as well as technologies for designing new data formats (XML, XML Namespaces); (3) Protocols - a small and nonexclusive set of protocol specifications for interchanging information between agents, including HTTP, SMTP, and others. Several of these protocols share a reliance on the Internet Media Type (or, 'MIME') the metadata/packaging system." The document is edited by Ian Jacobs, and its authors are the participants of W3C's Technical Architecture Group: Tim Berners-Lee (Chair, W3C), Tim Bray (Antarctica Systems), Dan Connolly (W3C), Paul Cotton (Microsoft), Roy Fielding (Day Software), Chris Lilley (W3C), David Orchard (BEA Systems), Norman Walsh (Sun), and Stuart Williams (Hewlett-Packard). [Full context]

• [August 30, 2002]   Web Services Security TC Receives WS-Security Profile for XML-based Tokens.    A communiqué from IBM, Microsoft, and Verisign to the OASIS WSS TC describes the submission of a WS-Security Profile for XML-based Tokens specification designed to supplement the existing WS-Security input specification. The authors request consideration of the specification by the WSS-TC, as the document "further clarifies how XML Tokens are used with WS-Security." The document "describes a general framework to enable XML-based security tokens to be used with WS-Security. Two profiles that use this general framework are provided: one for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and another for the Extensible rights Markup Language (XrML). Since these formats are described in standalone specifications, not unlike X.509 and Kerberos, the document describes their usage with respect to the WS-Security specification. The specification does not endorse any particular XML security token standard; the description of SAML and XrML are provided to show the mechanisms by which the bindings should be performed. Additional XML token formats may be added to the specification in future revisions as needed." A Web Services Security Addendum was submitted to the WSS-TC previously. [Full context]

• [August 29, 2002]   STAR and OAGI Approve XML Standards in the Automotive Retail Space.    A communiqué from Tom Campisi (STAR Communications Chair) describes the approval of XML standards for the retail automotive industry. Seven new XML specifications have been completed, and will be publicly available on the STAR web site. According to the announcement, STAR (Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail) and OAGI (Open Applications Group, Inc.) have recently approved seven new XML standards for automotive dealer-to-manufacturer transactions. STAR is a North American "non-profit, auto industry-wide initiative to create voluntary IT standards for the data elements and transmission format used by manufacturers, dealers, and retail system providers to communicate with each other. STAR's initiatives will result in a more efficient data exchange between dealers and manufacturers, with lower costs, more accurate and timely data, and increased levels of customer satisfaction. OAGI is a non-profit consortium focused on building reusable, interoperable XML messages." OAGI created the XML message methodology on which STAR standards, called BODs (Business Object Documents) are based. The seven standards govern Parts Order, Parts Pick List, Parts Return, Repair Order, Sales Lead, Vehicle Service History, and Warranty Reconciliation. [Full context]

• [August 29, 2002]   OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee Continues Work on Web Services Registry Foundations.    A UDDI Specification Technical Committee has been formed within the OASIS UDDI Member Section to "continue work on the Web services registry foundations developed and published by UDDI.org." The new technical committee has been chartered to support: "specifications for Web services registries and Web service interfaces to the registries; replication or synchronization mechanisms across multiple implementations; and security facilities for access or manipulation of the registry and maintaining data integrity." Specifically, the OASIS UDDI Specification TC will: "(1) Accept as input the UDDI version 2.0 and 3.0 specifications published by the members of UDDI.org; (2) Produce as output a specification for Web Services Description, Discovery and Integration; this specification will reflect refinements and changes made to the submitted version of UDDI that are identified by the UDDI Specification TC members, and for additional functionality within the scope of the TC charter; (3) Liaise and/or forge relationships with other Web services efforts to assist in leveraging UDDI as a part of their specifications or solutions; (4) Coordinate with the chairs of the other related OASIS Technical Committees via Joint Committees as appropriate; (5) Coordinate with the UDDI Business Registry operators in order to get early feedback from their implementation experiences; (6) Oversee ongoing maintenance and errata of the UDDI specifications." Members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee include BEA Systems, Cincom, Computer Associates, E2open, Entrust, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, IONA, Microsoft, MSI Business Solutions, NerveWire, Novell, Oracle, Perficient, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Verisign, webMethods, XML Global, and others. [Full context]

• [August 27, 2002]   IDEAlliance Announces Speaker Lineup for XML 2002 Conference and Exposition.    IDEAlliance has published a detailed program listing and roster of keynote presentations for the XML Conference and Exposition 2002, to be held December 8-13, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. XML 2002 "Putting the Pieces Together" is presented by IDEAlliance, co-hosted by DISA and OASIS. The Program Committee includes Paul Cotton, Eve Maler, and Marion Elledge. This comprehensive XML event, "now in its 16th year, is known for the quality of its program, which draws information technology experts from around the globe." The XML 2002 keynote speakers include: (1) Tim Bray, Chief Technology Officer, Antarctica Systems Inc.; (2) Whitfield Diffie, Chief Security Officer, Sun Microsystems; (3) Robert Haycock, Manager for the Office of Management and Budget's Federal Enterprise Architecture Initiative; (4) Craig Hayman, Vice President of Software Group Strategy, IBM; (5) Pam Samuelson, Professor, University of California at Berkeley; (6) Robert Wahbe, General Manager, XML Web Services, Microsoft Corporation. Lauren Wood, once again the Conference Chair, promises that "this year's keynote roster will give attendees the opportunity to hear leading technology visionaries share their insights on how business and government are putting the pieces of their XML-based systems together." The XML 2002 program includes "more than 150 presentations which will address current and emerging trends in e-business, ebXML, wireless communications, B2B, content management, web standards, syndication and metadata, security issues, graphics, XML tools, schemas, topic maps, and many, many other key issues relating to today's XML technologies." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Stream Index 'SIX' Used in XML Stream Processing Toolkit.    A research team at the University of Washington Department of Computer Science and Engineering has developed an XML toolkit using a highly scalable XML stream processor and an XML stream index. The XML toolkit "consists of a number of utilities that perform simple operations on XML files. [The team has built] a sort utility, an aggregation utility, a mapping utility to transform Unix directory hierarchies to XML, and some smaller utilities. The utilities can be combined sequentially, in pipes, to perform more complex XML processing. The toolkit defines a binary XML format that is more compact than XML (by a factor of two, on average). This format can be optionally used as communication format in a pipeline, to achieve speedups by a factor of two. The toolkit defines a novel index called stream index, SIX. All utilities check if the input data has a pre-computed SIX, and use it if it is available... From a technical point of view, it is essential for XML Toolkit commands to parse XML data and process a collection of XPath expressions. As a common library for these command, the team has implemented two technologies to realize a high-throuput XML data processing: (1) Lazy DFA-based XPath processor, a deteministic finite automaton that is constructed lazily, and (2) 'SIX' streaming index for XML data for the XML parser. They have implemented the Lazy DFA and SIX on a tokenized (binary) SAX parser and xerces1_4_0 SAX parser." The XML Toolkit library is available for download. [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Microsoft Announces Web Services Development Kit Technology Preview.    Microsoft has announced a technical preview for the Microsoft Web Services Development Kit (WSDK), which "provides the tools developers need to build advanced Web services applications using the latest Web services specifications, such as WS-Security, WS-Routing and WS-Attachments. The WSDK is a new Microsoft .NET class library for building Web services using the latest Web services protocols, including WS-Security, WS-Routing, DIME and WS-Attachments. The WSDK offers a low-level API that allows you to apply these protocols directly to individual SOAP messages being sent using HTTP. The library also integrates with the higher-level Microsoft ASP.NET Web service APIs (ASMX) included in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The design of the WSDK reflects the principles of the basic message-level protocols themselves, as outlined in the document 'Understanding GXA': Decentralization and federation; Modularity; XML-based data model; Transport neutrality; Application-domain neutrality... The WSDK incorporates Microsoft's recent work with industry customers and partners to develop Web services specifications beyond XML and SOAP, such as WS-Security, that address the core challenges of Web services in a way that is broadly interoperable across heterogeneous systems. The core features included in the technology preview of the Microsoft WSDK include (1) the ability to help secure XML Web services across platforms and trust domains, including digital signing and encryption of SOAP messages that are compliant with the WS-Security specification; (2) the ability to route an XML Web service through intermediaries using the WS-Routing specification; (3) communication between XML Web services can contain attachments that are not serialized into XML." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   New Draft Specifications from MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework Project.    An announcement from the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Convenor describes the advancement of important ISO draft specifications in ISO's MPEG-21 project. The goal of MPEG-21 is to "define a multimedia framework to enable transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices used by different communities. Its scope is the integration of the critical technologies enabling transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices to support functions such as: content creation, content production, content distribution, content consumption and usage, content packaging, intellectual property management and protection, content identification and description, financial management, user privacy, terminals and network resource abstraction, content representation and event reporting." The MPEG-21 Part 3 'Digital Item Identification' specification (DII ISO/IEC FDIS 21000-3) was elevated to Final Draft International Standard and will become an International Standard following a two-month ballot by JTC 1; DII supports the unique identification of digital items in the MPEG-21 framework. The MPEG-21 Multimedia Description Schemes Subgroup has completed Committee Drafts for MPEG-21 Part 5 'Rights Expression Language (REL)' and MPEG-21 Part 6 'Rights Data Dictionary (RDD)'. REL "specifies the expression language for issuing rights for Users to act on Digital Items, their Components, Fragments, and Containers"; RDD "forms the basis of all expressions of rights and permissions as defined by the MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language. The MPEG-21 REL and RDD work together to allow the machine-readable expression of rights associated with the use of multimedia. These parts will be finalized by MPEG over the next year." [Full context]

• [August 26, 2002]   Apache Xalan XSLT Compiler (XSLTC) Integrated into the Java Web Services Developer Pack (WSDP).    An announcement from Sun Microsystems' XML Technology Center describes the availability of a new Java Web Services Developer Pack integrating the Apache Xalan XSLT Compiler. The XSLT Compiler (XSLTC) is a "high-performance alternative to the Xalan Classic XSLT Processor for transforming XML documents into a variety of output formats. XSLTC is a free, open-source, Java-based tool that generates fast and lightweight Java class files called translets that can be plugged into existing applications or used directly for transforming XML files according to an input XSL stylesheet. It assists developers who need high-volume, portable, embeddable XML transformation capabilities in their applications." The Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP) is "a free, integrated toolset that in conjunction with the Java platform allows Java developers to build, test and deploy XML applications, Web services, and Web applications. The Java WSDP provides Java standard implementations of existing key Web services standards including WSDL, SOAP, ebXML, and UDDI as well as important Java standard implementations for Web application development such as JavaServer Pages (JSPTM pages) and the JSP Standard Tag Library. These Java standards allow developers to send and receive SOAP messages, browse and retrieve information in UDDI and ebXML registries, and quickly build and deploy Web applications based on the latest JSP standards. Java WSDP Version 1.0_01 also includes: (1) Java XML Pack [Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM); Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) with XML Schema support; Java API for XML Registries (JAXR); Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC); SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ)]; (2) JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library [JSTL] (3) Java WSDP Registry Server; (4) Web Application Deployment Tool; (5) Ant Build Tool; (6) Apache Tomcat 4.1.2 container. [Full context]

• [August 21, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases Conversation Support for Web Services.    A development team at IBM alphaWorks labs has released 'Conversation Support for Web Services'. Conversation Support for Web Services is "a technology that proposes and implements a conversational model of e-business interaction by extending and building on the Web Services architecture. In the conversational model, the interoperability technology consists of two distinct parts: messaging and conversation support. Messaging is the plumbing needed to send and receive electronic communications with others. Conversation support governs the formatting of messages that are to be sent, the parsing of messages that have been received, and the sequencing constraints on the exchange of multiple, correlated messages. It is a separate subsystem that mediates between the messaging system and business processes. These pre-programmed interaction patterns are captured in a progamming element called Conversation Policies." A companion document "Conversation-Enabled Web Services for Agents and e-Business" written by the 'Conversation Support for Web Services Team' at IBM T.J.Watson Research Center, describes IBM's Conversation Policy XML (cpXML), an XML dialect for describing conversation policies, now under development. cpXML "permits CPs to be downloaded from third parties (such as standards bodies, providers of conversation-management systems, or specialized protocol-development shops). Once downloaded and fed into a firm's conversation-management system, bindings are added to specify the connections between the decision points of the CP and the firm's business logic." [Full context]

• [August 21, 2002]   W3C Publishes Preview Candidate Recommendation for XForms Specification.    The W3C XForms Working Group has released an updated working draft for the XForms 1.0 specification. XForms is "an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts -- XForms model, instance data, and user interface -- it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing, reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG." The latest Working Draft incorporates the resolution of all last call issues reported on the XForms 1.0 Last Call Working Draft published on 18-January-2002. This draft is characterized as a "pre-version the Candidate Recommendation document [designed] to show the work on disposition of comments and allow authors of the Last Call comments to review the current XForms specification before advancing the specification to CR status." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   ISO Prepares Reference Ontology for Interchange of Cultural Heritage Information.    In collaboration with the International Council of Museums Committee for Documentation (ICOM CIDOC), ISO Technical Committee 46 is developing a reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information. The ISO/CD 21127 (Committee Draft) published August 8, 2002 provides a formal "domain ontology for cultural heritage information... it is intended to cover all concepts relevant to cultural heritage information, but most particularly those needed for wide area data exchange between museums, libraries, and archives. Due to the diversity of the subject matter and the nature of cultural heritage collections, this goal can ultimately be achieved only by extensions to the standard. However, thanks to its object-oriented nature, the ontology offers a backbone of powerful general concepts, which have a wide application... This proposed standard is already being tested and implemented by members of the working group. Mappings (crosswalks) have been established with major data schemas and metadata standards such as Dublin Core, ABC, and Spectrum. XML and RDFS implementations have been developed using the CRM and data migrations have been made using test data provided by different institutions. The scope of the CRM has been extended to provide enhanced support for archeology and natural sciences." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   Tiny API for Markup (TAM) and Parser for Lightweight XML Processing.    A posting from Simon St.Laurent announces the initial release of a Tiny API for Markup (TAM) and supporting Java 2 Micro Edition parser. "The Tiny API for Markup (TAM) provides a very small interface for parsing XML and similar documents, targeted at Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). TAM is designed to report pretty much everything the parser encounters, leaving it to applications to do some work (notably DTD interpretation) if they need it. TAM is based on a subset of SAX2, which is then slightly expanded. TAM is not a proper drop-in replacement for SAX; it uses similar method calls, and a similar approach, but it's been reduced to meet the needs of even smaller projects, and expanded slightly to reflect that TAM parsers are not required to process the DTD... This parser does support namespaces, and namespace declarations are reported as attributes. The startPrefix/endPrefix methods of SAX2 are not supported by TAM. The current version also does very little character checking of markup, and while it normalizes line-ends, it doesn't do attribute white-space normalization. These features (and DOCTYPE processing) will appear in a later version of the parser which supports more of XML 1.0 and also Markup Object Events (MOE)." [Full context]

• [August 20, 2002]   W3C Working Groups Update Specifications for XSLT, XML Query, and XPath.    Seven revised working draft specifications have been published by the W3C Working Groups for XML Query, XSL, and XML Schema. Several working drafts represent collaborative work by the XSL and XML Query Working Groups, which are jointly responsible for XPath 2.0, a language derived from both XPath 1.0 and XQuery; the XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Working Drafts are generated from a common source. The updated working drafts include: XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0; XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0; XML Query Use Cases; XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model; XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators. Comments on these drafts may be sent to the W3C Query and Transform mailing list ('public-qt-comments') set up for public feedback on W3C specifications published by the XML Query and XSL Working Groups. [Full context]

• [August 14, 2002]   SALT Forum Contributes Speech Application Language Tags Specification to W3C.    An announcement from the SALT Forum describes the contribution of the Speech Application Language Tags specification to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The SALT Forum has "asked the W3C Multimodal Interaction Working Group and Voice Browser Working Group to review the SALT specification as part of their development of standards for promoting multimodal interaction and voice-enabling the Web." The contribution is said to furthers the SALT Forum's goal of "establishing an open, royalty-free standard for speech-enabling multimodal and telephony applications." On July 15, 2002 the SALT Forum announced the public release of SALT Version 1.0. Version 1.0 of the SALT specification covers three broad areas of capabilities: speech output, speech input and call control. The specification's 'prompt' tag allows SALT-based applications to play audio and synthetic speech directly, while 'listen' and 'bind' tags provide speech recognition capabilities by collecting and processing spoken user input. In addition, the specification's call control object can be used to provide SALT-based applications with the ability to place, answer, transfer and disconnect calls, along with advanced capabilities such as conferencing, The SALT specification thus "defines a set of lightweight tags as extensions to commonly used Web-based markup languages. This allows developers to add speech interfaces to Web content and applications using familiar tools and techniques. The SALT specification is designed to work equally well on a wide variety of computing and communicating devices." [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   US OMB Publishes Business Reference Model for Its Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA).    The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has published a Business Reference Model as part of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). The Federal Enterprise Architecture is a "business-based framework for cross-agency, government-wide improvement; it provides OMB and the Federal agencies with a new way of describing, analyzing, and improving the federal government and its ability to serve the citizen." The new BRM is a "function-driven framework for describing the business operations of the Federal Government independent of the agencies that perform them; it represents the first layer of the Federal Enterprise Architecture and it is the main viewpoint for the analysis of data, applications and technology. The BRM identifies three Business Areas that provide a high-level view of the operations the Federal Government performs. These three Business Areas comprise a total of 35 external and internal Lines of Business, representing the services and products the Federal Government provides to its citizens, together with with 137 Sub-Functions or lower level activities that Federal Agencies perform." The accompanying XML schema describes and defines the type of content including the entities, attributes, elements, and notation of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. An XML document supplies detailed descriptions for the federal business areas, lines of business, and sub-functions of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   OASIS Technical Committee Proposed for XML e-Government Standards.    An initial proposal has been received by OASIS for a Technical Committee on 'XML based Standards for e-Government'. The proposers include John Borras (UK Office of e-Envoy), Jouko Salonen (Republica, Finland), and Marion Royal (U.S. General Services Administration - GSA). Rationale for the TC is given in the statement that "many, if not all governments worldwide, are now developing strategies to deliver e-government services to citizens and businesses, and to support the modernisation of government. A fundamental component of enabling e-government is the adoption and use of XML based standards. To ensure these standards are developed with government requirements in mind it is proposed to create a new Technical Committee to co-ordinate and present a single voice for governments." Suggested goals for the TC would be to: (1) provide a forum for governments internationally to voice their needs and requirements with respect to XML-based standards which can be handed off to relevant OASIS TCs; (2) provide a mechanism for the creation of best practice documents relative to the adoption of OASIS specs/standards within governments internationally; (3) promote the adoption of OASIS specs/standards within governments; (4) act as an information clearinghouse and work with other OASIS channels in the adoption of XML-based systems and standards. [Full context]

• [August 13, 2002]   Pilot Nasdaq-Hosted Web Service Features XBRL Financial Data.    Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers have announced the launch of a new pilot program "to provide investors with remote access to financial data from five years of financial reports for twenty-one (21) Nasdaq-listed companies. The pilot program, designed by PwC and stored on Nasdaq hardware, provides access to XBRL data through Microsoft Office. The online data, formatted in XBRL and publicly available via a Nasdaq-hosted Web Service, will showcase XBRL's ability to allow for easy comparisons of the financials of companies within a particular industry, like semiconductors. XBRL is a free XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to translate financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. XBRL streamlines the way companies report and publish their financial data, and how analysts and investors can review that information. For example, before XBRL, investors would need to pore through numerous reports and precisely program their computers to recognize any given value from a financial statement. With XBRL, data is tagged to instruct the system how to handle the data in question and enables the user to locate the necessary information without leafing through multiplenumerous financial reports. Today, more than 140 of the world's leading accounting, software, business and technology companies and organizations participate in a global effort to support the development and use of XBRL." [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   Proposed Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Rights Expression Language Based Upon ODRL.    A posting from Renato Iannella announces the public release of a draft Rights Expression Language Version 1.0 from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). The OMA was formed in June 2002 by the Open Mobile Architecture Initiative and the WAP Forum, together "with nearly 200 companies representing the world's leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies, and content providers; OMA has MOUs with the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF), SyncML, MMS Interoperability Group (MMS-IOP), and Wireless Village." The OMA REL document is one of several in the OMA Download specification suite. The rights expression language "describes the rights governing the usage of DRM content; it addresses requirements such as enabling preview, i.e., test-driving, of content, possibly prior to purchasing, expressing a range of different permissions and constraints, and optimisation of rights objects delivered over constrained bearers. It provides a concise mechanism for expressing rights over DRM content. It is independent of the content being distributed, the mechanism used for distributing the content, and the billing mechanism used to handle the payments." The OMA's REL document defines the syntax and semantics of rights governing the usage of DRM content based on the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) specification. The XML-based ODRL, recently released as version 1.1, provides the semantics for DRM expressions in open and trusted environments whilst being agnostic to mechanisms to achieve the secure architectures. Formal models for ODRL Expression Language and for the ODRL Data Dictionary are presented as XML schemas in normative appendices of the ODRL v1.1 specification. [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   W3C Acknowledges Receipt of Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) Submission.    The Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) 1.0 specification has been submitted to W3C by member companies BEA Systems, BPMI.org, Commerce One, Fujitsu Limited, Intalio, IONA, Oracle Corporation, SAP AG, SeeBeyond Technology Corporation, and Sun Microsystems. Initially released in June 2002 and now published as a W3C 'Note', the royalty-free WSCI specification provides an "XML-based interface definition language that describes the flow of messages exchanged by a Web service participating in choreographed interactions with other services. WSCI describes the dynamic interface of the Web service participating in a given message exchange by means of reusing the operations defined for a static interface. This is expressed in terms of temporal and logical dependencies among the exchanged messages, featuring sequencing rules, correlation, exception handling, and transactions. WSCI also describes the collective message exchange among interacting Web services, thus providing a global, message-oriented view of the interactions. WSCI works in conjunction with the Web Service Description Language (WSDL), the basis for the W3C Web Services Description Working Group. It can also work with another service definition language that exhibits the same characteristics as WSDL." The specification is being brought to the attention of relevant W3C working groups, including the Web Services Architecture Working Group, the Web Services Description Working Group, and the Web Ontology Working Group. [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases BPWS4J Engine and Editor.    A posting from Sanjiva Weerawarana announces the release of a BPEL4WS engine and editor from IBM alphaWorks. BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is one of three Web Services specifications recently released by Microsoft, IBM and BEA. BPEL4WS is "an XML-based flow language that defines how business processes interact. This interaction can involve processes contained within or between enterprises. It allows companies to describe complex business processes that can span multiple companies, such as order processing, lead management and claims handling. These business processes can use partner-provided Web services, and can also be offered as Web services business process functions internally or to partners in a reliable and dependable way." The IBM BPEL4WS Java Run Time (BPWS4J) "includes a platform upon which business processes written using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) can be executed, a set of samples demonstrating the use of BPEL4WS, and a tool that validates BPEL4WS documents. The BPWS4J Engine is an all-Java implementation of BPEL4WS that runs in a servlet container; the BPWS4J Editor is an Eclipse plugin that can be used with Eclipse v2.0+." [Full context]

• [August 12, 2002]   Web Services Specifications for Business Transactions and Process Automation.    Microsoft, IBM, and BEA have announced the publication of three specifications which "collectively describe how to reliably define, create, and connect multiple business processes in a Web services environment. The specifications will help organizations coordinate business processes and transactions within the enterprise and with partners and customers across heterogeneous systems and within the enterprise. Announced were the new specifications to address transacted communications of Web services (WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction) and a new language to describe business processes (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, or BPEL4WS). BPEL4WS allows companies to describe business processes that include multiple Web services and standardize message exchange internally and between partners. WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction provide companies with a reliable and durable way of handling multiple Web services interactions, regardless of the underlying computing infrastructure." [Full context]

• [August 08, 2002]   XFrames Application for Composing Documents to Replace HTML Frames.    W3C's HTML Working Group has released an initial public working draft specification for 'XFrames'. XFrames is an XML application which "addresses the usability, search, and security problems associated with HTML frames." The specification "defines a separate XML application (not a part of XHTML per se) that allows functionality similar to HTML Frames, but with fewer usability problems, principally by making the content of the frameset visible in its URI. The frames element forms the container for the composed document. The individual sub-documents ('frames') may be composed together in a rectangular space by placing them next to, or above, each other in rows and columns, or they may be displayed as separate movable window-like panes, or as tabbed panes, or in any other suitable manner. The collection of frames in an XFrames document is referred to as a frameset. All styling, positioning, and sizing of frames is done using a style sheet in CSS or some other suitable styling language. The specification does not require conformant XFrames user agents to accept or refuse any particular type of document for assignment to a frame." A DTD implementation projected for completion as a normative Appendix A is not supplied in this WD, but unofficial and experimental schemas have been drafted by Masayasu Ishikawa (XML DTD, RELAX NG schema, W3C XML schema). [Full context]

• [August 07, 2002]   Topic Maps for the Web.    Addison-Wesley Professional has announced the release of XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web, described as a "complete introduction and application guide to the world of topic maps." Edited by Jack Park and Sam Hunting, the book contains contributions from sixteen authorities on topic maps. The volume "introduces the topic maps paradigm, global federated knowledge interchange, the topic map standards and specifications, the basics of XTM markup, Published Subject Indicators, ontological engineering, open source topic map software, topic map visualization, topic maps and RDF, semantic networks, and knowledge organization and representation -- all with a wealth of technical detail. Originally designed to handle the construction of indexes, glossaries, thesauri, and tables of contents, [Topic Maps] can provide a foundation for the Semantic Web. They can serve to represent information currently stored as database schemas (relational and object). Where databases only capture the relations between information objects, topic maps also allow these objects to be connected to the various places where they occur. Knowledge bases can be designed that not only relate concepts together but also can point to the resources relevant to each concept." [Full context]

• [August 05, 2002]   RosettaNet and Uniform Code Council Inc. (UCC) Announce Merger.    A merger between RosettaNet and the UCC (Uniform Code Council) has been announced by the two entities as a "strategic partnership which will advance B2B integration in the marketplace and help strengthen standards adoption across multiple industries." Under this agreement, "RosettaNet will become a subsidiary of the UCC, while continuing to operate as an entity directly with its members. The UCC currently works within 23 industries with an emphasis on retail and grocery. RosettaNet focuses on the high tech sector, and specifically companies representing electronic components, information technology and semiconductor manufacturing. The UCC's XML-based business processes align with RosettaNet's strong business process standards development and global implementation strategy. The pairing of the two organizations will accelerate strategic innovation and leadership initiatives throughout the industries serviced by each organization, resulting in rapid supply chain integration across global trading networks. The merger is aimed at strengthening the development and adoption of business-to-business (B2B) standards across the industries served by the two organizations and expanding the standards-based business opportunities for respective member companies. A primary goal of the relationship is to accelerate B2B integration via industry implementation efforts for XML standards and emerging services. By forming a common architectural environment, the two organizations will drive joint development of B2B standards supporting multiple industries, thereby increasing the speed and number of implementations across user communities, and attracting adjacent industry sectors on a worldwide basis." [Full context]

• [August 02, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Draft on Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios.    W3C's Web Services Architecture Working Group has published an initial Working Draft specification for Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios. The document supplies a collection of some forty (40) usage scenarios and use cases "which illustrate the use of Web services, and which are used to generate requirements for the Web services architecture, as well as to evaluate existing technologies." The section on Use Cases provides additional context for some of the individual usages scenarios listed in the Usage Scenarios section (Travel agent use case; EDI-like purchasing). The Web services usage scenarios and use cases are categorized under the following labels: (1) Message exchange patterns, i.e., RPC, asynchrony, security, reliability, conversations; (2) Event based message exchange patterns; (3) System and other messages; (4) Service description above and beyond those outlined in '(1) - (3)'; (5) Discovery. Part of the document content was adapted from the XML Protocol Usage Scenarios document edited by John Ibbotson of IBM. The W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group has been chartered to draft a coherent architecture for a modular set of web services technologies by producing architectural documents and advising W3C regarding work in the Web services area. [Full context]

• [August 02, 2002]   Electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) for Pharmaceutical Regulatory Information.    The ICH Multi-disciplinary Group 2 (M2) Expert Working Group (EWG) is developing an XML-based specification governing electronic submission of pharmaceutical regulatory information. A version 1.0 XML DTD was completed in February 2002, along with the publication of a version 2.0 Electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) specification. The eCTD is defined as "an interface for industry to Agency transfer of regulatory information while at the same time taking into consideration the facilitation of the creation, review, lifecycle management and archival of the electronic submission. The eCTD specification lists the criteria that will make an electronic submission technically valid. The focus of the specification is to provide the ability to transfer the registration application electronically from industry to a regulatory authority. Industry to industry and Agency to Agency transfer is not addressed... The specification for the eCTD is based upon content defined within the CTD issued by the ICH M4 EWG. The CTD describes the organization of modules, sections and documents. The structure and level of detail specified in the CTD has been used as the basis for defining the eCTD structure and content but where appropriate, additional details have been developed within the eCTD specification. The XML eCTD DTD (Document Type Definition) defines the overall structure of the submission." [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   W3C Web Ontology Working Group Releases Working Drafts for OWL Semantic Markup Language.    Three initial working draft documents on 'OWL' have been published by the W3C's Web-Ontology Working Group (WebOnt). OWL is a semantic markup language for publishing and sharing ontologies on the World Wide Web. OWL is derived from the DAML+OIL Web Ontology Language and builds upon the Resource Description Framework. The designers expect that OWL will support the use of automated tools which "can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management." The OWL Web Ontology Language is being designed "in order to provide a language that can be used for applications that need to understand the content of information instead of just understanding the human-readable presentation of content. OWL facilitates greater machine readability of web content than XML, RDF, and RDF-S support by providing an additional vocabulary for term descriptions." The Feature Synopsis for OWL Lite and OWL introduces the OWL language. The OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 Reference provides a systematic, compact and informal description of all the modelling primitives of OWL. An OWL knowledge base is a collection of RDF triples as defined in the RDF/XML Syntax Specification; OWL prescribes a specific meaning for triples that use the OWL vocabulary. The Language Reference document specifies which collections of RDF triples constitute the OWL vocabulary and what the prescribed meaning of such triples is. The OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 Abstract Syntax document describes a high-level, abstract syntax for both OWL and OWL Lite, a subset of OWL; it also provides a mapping from the abstract syntax to the OWL exchange syntax. [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   IDEAlliance Announces XML Book Industry Transaction Standards Working Group (XBITS).    The International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance) has announced the formation of a new standards working group called XBITS (XML Book Industry Transaction Standards) representing "a group of major book publishers, printers, paper mills, and component vendors. The goal of XBITS is to design XML-based transactions to facilitate bi-directional electronic data exchanges within the book manufacturing supply chain through the application of the papiNet development process. The end result will be a set of electronic documents that facilitate the flow of information among supply chain partners in the publishing/print industry. The effort supports efficient business-to-business (B2B) communication, improves the reach and richness of communication throughout the supply chain, and increases efficiencies in transaction activities while supporting interoperability among trading partners. Working with the papiNet electronic standards initiative previously organized for the paper and forest products industry, XBITS will proactively develop, maintain and support the implementation of common electronic transaction formats for the book publishing industry. Major XBITS transactions scheduled for completion and publication by Summer 2003 include the [core] specifications, RFQ, RFQ Response, Purchase Order, Order Confirmation, Order Status, Delivery Message, Goods Receipt, Invoice, Usage, Information Request, Inventory Status, and Business Acknowledgement. [Full context]

• [July 31, 2002]   ACM Workshop on XML Security.    A call for papers has been issued in connection with the 2002 ACM Workshop on XML Security, to be held November 22, 2002 at the Johnson Center in George Mason University, Fairfax VA, USA. Chaired by Michiharu Kudo (IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory, Japan) and Phillip Hallam-Baker (Verisign, USA), the workshop will be hosted in conjunction with the Ninth ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS-9). The XML Security workshop "seeks submissions from academia and industry covering novel research on theoretical and practical aspects of the security required for XML-based systems. The organizers also encourage submissions from standardization communities such as W3C and OASIS, particularly from the technical viewpoint." Proposals should be submitted to Michiharu Kudo by email by August 10, 2002. The workshop "will address security problems faced by users who try to develop XML-based applications, Web services, and security middleware for XML. It ranges from specific security features, such as digital signatures and element-wise encryption and access control of XML documents, to XML-based infrastructure, such as Web services and XML databases. Since many security features for XML have already been standardized, experimental evaluations of these standards is one of the important topics covered by this workshop." [Full context]

• [July 30, 2002]   OASIS to Host UDDI Project Technical Work.    The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Project has announced the transition of its standards work to OASIS. OASIS will "serve as the steward for the UDDI project and activities and will continue development of the UDDI technical work" in a new technical committee. "This transition delivers on the goals laid out in the UDDI project's original charter. OASIS, a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards, will manage the future development of the UDDI specification and related activities. Existing business registries will continue to be made available by registry operators. Under OASIS, the UDDI specification will continue to advance as a standard, and interested companies can continue to incorporate the specification into future business and software plans. UDDI also will benefit from additional expertise in shaping, developing and coordinating the fundamentals for open standards based business interoperability. The UDDI Community is comprised of more than 300 business and technology leaders working together to enable companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find, and use Web services. As a part of the UDDI project, a UDDI Business Registry has been established to allow businesses to publish and discover Web services." [Full context]

• [July 30, 2002]   OASIS LegalXML Member Section Creates Four New Technical Committees.    Four new technical committees are being formed to support the standards activity of the OASIS LegalXML Member Section, complementing work currently underway in the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC. The LegalXML Member Section "unites legal and technical experts in a common forum to create standards for the electronic exchange of legal data." According to the new published charters for the OASIS TCs: (1) The eContracts Technical Committee will develop open XML standards for the markup of contract documents to enable the efficient creation, maintenance, management, exchange and publication of contract documents and contract terms. (2) The eNotarization TC has been chartered to develop an agreed set of technical requirements to govern self-proving electronic legal information. (3) The Integrated Justice TC plans to develop XML specifications for exchanging data among justice system branches and agencies. While its principal focus will be on data pertaining to criminal cases, its scope will include certain data exchanges in civil cases, such as civil protection order, child support enforcement and dependency and neglect cases. (4) The Transcripts TC will develop an XML compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents either as stand-alone structured content, or as part of other legal records. [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   Exclusive XML Canonicalization from IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group Becomes W3C Recommendation.    The IETF/W3C Exclusive XML Canonicalization specification has been advanced to a W3C Recommendation, signifying that it is "stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who are in favor of supporting its adoption by academic, industry, and research communities. The specification augments the previously published Canonical XML Recommendation to better enable a portion of an XML document (fragment) to be as portable as possible while preserving the digital signature. It works in combination with the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing Recommendation produced jointly by W3C and the IETF in February 2002, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for digital signatures. Exclusive XML Canonicalization provides a method of serializing an XML fragment into a portable and canonical form. This functionality, when combined with XML Signature, is critical for electronic commerce because it ensures the integrity of documents and protocol messages that travel between multiple XML processors." [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   Web3D Consortium Publishes X3D Final Working Draft.    The Web3D Consortium recently announced the publication of a final working draft for the X3D 'Extensible 3D' specification. Relevant XML DTDs and schemas are presented in Annex A of Part 3, 'Extensible Markup Language (XML) Encoding.' X3D "enables the creation and deployment of state-of-the-art 3D graphics on small, lightweight clients, and the integration of high-performance 3D into broadcast and embedded devices. X3D also works seamlessly with World Wide Web technologies including the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Document Object Model (DOM), providing extensive application-development capabilities. X3D satisfies these demanding requirements with an advanced componentized architecture that enables compact client players with add-on components, as well as a set of profiles designed to meet the demands of a variety of applications. Earlier this year the X3D Interactive Profile was accepted by the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the basis for lightweight, interactive 3D graphics in the MPEG-4 multimedia standard. The Web3D Consortium will deliver X3D with a rich set of base components and profiles with additional components and profiles to follow in the near future. The Web3D Consortium has also issued a Call for Implementations, inviting companies to evaluate and implement products using this open, royalty-free specification in preparation for submission of X3D to the International Standards Organization (ISO)." [Full context]

• [July 29, 2002]   ANSI ASC X12 Document Proposes Reference Model for XML Electronic Business Messages.    A document ASC X12 Reference Model for XML Design has been published by ANSI's Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, detailing a proposed reference model for electronic business messages based on XML. The document "proposes features of XML to use in e-business messages, and offers design principles for organizing business data into modularly flexible messages using XML. The reference model is built on the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) standards developed by OASIS and UN/CEFACT, specifically the specifications on semantic interoperability called core components. ASC X12 is also collaborating with OASIS's Universal Business Language Technical Committee that is developing XML schemas for standard business messages. With numerous innovations, ASC X12's reference model takes into consideration existing roadblocks to EDI implementation and standards development, new technologies, requirements defined by industry groups developing XML specifications, small-to-medium-sized company requirements, and the general marketplace. Some of the core benefits of the reference model include: (1) The Document Assembly Model, which enables users to take reusable components that can then be assimilated into a new document; (2) The Granularity Model, which turns subjective decisions in EDI into clear content decisions for both structure and semantic reuse; (3) Modular flexibility and designed autonomy, which provide both the ability to achieve application integration for industry-specific application and flexibility to achieve cross-industry solutions and interoperability; (4) Semantically specific standards, eliminating the EDI requirement for supplementary 'how to implement' bilateral agreements." [Full context]

• [July 25, 2002]   IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool Supports XML Metadata Description.    The IBM alphaWorks development team has released a downloadable MPEG-7 Annotation Tool which "assists in annotating video sequences with MPEG-7 metadata. Each shot in the video sequence can be annotated with static scene descriptions, key object descriptions, event descriptions, and other lexicon sets. The annotated descriptions are associated with each video shot and are put out and stored as MPEG-7 descriptions in an XML file. IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool can also open MPEG-7 files in order to display the annotations for the corresponding video sequence. IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool also allows customized lexicons to be created, saved, downloaded, and updated. The IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool takes an MPEG video sequence as the required input source. The tool also requires a corresponding shot segmentation file, where the video sequence input is segmented into smaller units called video shots by detecting the scene cuts, dissolutions, and fadings. This shot file can be loaded into the tool from other sources or generated when the video input is first opened. After IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool performs shot detection on a video, the shot file can be saved in MPEG-7 schema for later use. As an alternative, the shot file can also be generated by the IBM CueVideo Shot Detection Tool Kit." [Full context]

• [July 23, 2002]   OASIS Announces Technical Committee for Web Services Security.    OASIS has announced the formation of new Technical Committee for Web Services Security (WSS). The TC is designed to continue work on the Web services security foundations published in the WS-Security specification from IBM, Microsoft, and Verisign. Development will also follow the vision of the Web Services Security Roadmap published in April, 2002. The WS-Security specification "defines a standard set of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) extensions, or message headers, that can be used to implement integrity and confidentiality in Web services applications." The new Web Services Security specification will support security mechanisms of several types, each using implementation and language-neutral XML formats defined by XML Schema: use of XML signature to provide SOAP message integrity for Web services; use of XML encryption to provide SOAP message confidentiality for Web services; attaching and/or referencing security tokens in headers of SOAP messages; carrying security information for potentially multiple, designated actors; associating signatures with security tokens; representing specific forms of binary security tokens as defined in WS-Security specification. Participation in the OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee is open to all organizations and individuals. [Full context]

• [July 22, 2002]   New York Stock Exchange and FISD Develop Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML).    In cooperation with the SIIA's Financial Information Services Division, the Market Data division of the New York Stock Exchange is developing a new formal structure for vendor fulfillment of billing and reporting obligations. The new Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML) is "based upon the original VARS format but adds additional functionality and efficiency." Under the old system, vendors would send data files to TCB Data Systems, which would provide one level of processing and extraction, then disperse the files to the appropriate markets including NYSE Market Data. The teams are developing more efficient, industry-accepted data transfer methodologies to enable direct reporting via straight-through-processing. The new system also supports the transformation of an existing VARS file into a VRXML file. The June 2002 draft of Vendor Reporting Extensible Markup Language (VRXML) includes, in addition to prose specification, a conceptual model diagram in UML, an independent XML schema file defining standardized reporting and billing data elements, and sample XML instance. This draft "deals with NYSE reporting obligations but could be extended to cover a broader set of industry requirements." [Full context]

• [July 20, 2002]   Object Management Group Issues Web Services for Enterprise Collaboration (WSEC) RFP.    The Object Management Group (OMG) has issued an RFP on Web Services for Enterprise Collaboration. The RFP "provides for a two-way mapping between the Component Collaboration Architecture (CCA) portion of the Enterprise Collaboration Architecture (ECA) and WSDL such that enterprise collaborations described in CCA can be implemented with WSDL, XML Schema and SOAP. It also describes how existing WSDL services are represented in UML using CCA. This enables high-level and business focused collaborations to be automatically and deterministically mapped to web services infrastructures. It also allows existing services to be made part of new CCA collaborations. The RFP specifically solicits proposals for the following: (1) A Mapping from EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture to XML-Schema and unbound WSDL 1.1 with a SOAP binding; (2) A Mapping from XML-Schema and WSDL 1.1 with an optional SOAP binding to the EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture; (3) Any required extensions to the EDOC-Component Collaboration Architecture to represent WSDL semantics." The letter of intent deadline is August 28, 2002, and the initial submission deadline October 28, 2002. [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   SALT Forum Publishes Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) Version 1.0.    The Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) 1.0 Specification has been released by the SALT Forum, a "group of companies with a shared goal of accelerating the use of speech technologies in multimodal and telephony systems. The Forum is committed to developing a royalty-free, platform-independent standard that will make possible multimodal and telephony-enabled access to information, applications, and Web services from PCs, telephones, tablet PCs, and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs). Version 1.0 of the SALT specification covers three broad areas of capabilities: speech output, speech input and call control. The specification's 'prompt' tag allows SALT-based applications to play audio and synthetic speech directly, while 'listen' and 'bind' tags provide speech recognition capabilities by collecting and processing spoken user input. In addition, the specification's call control object can be used to provide SALT-based applications with the ability to place, answer, transfer and disconnect calls, along with advanced capabilities such as conferencing. The SALT specification draws on emerging W3C standards such as Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) and semantic interpretation for speech recognition to provide additional application control. Following previously announced plans, the SALT specification is being submitted to an established international standards body to provide the basis of an open, royalty-free standard for speech-enabling multimodal and telephony applications." [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   Free Amazon.com Web Services Facility Supports XML/HTTP and SOAP.    A new Amazon.com Web Services facility makes it possible for developers to "build applications and tools that will allow them to incorporate many of the unique features of Amazon.com into their web sites free of charge. Among its many features, Amazon.com's Web Services will allow third party sites to search and display products from Amazon.com's web site, and enable visitors to those sites to add items to their Amazon.com shopping carts. Developers can access AWS through two industry standards: XML and SOAP." The toolkit allows one to search for Amazon.com products in a variety of ways (keyword, author, actor, director, ASIN, UPC, publisher, etc) and to get results in XML, including customer reviews and product similarities. One can pass the server a URL that references a style sheet along with the SOAP or XML request, and receive the XML data rendered with the nominated style sheet. The developer's toolkit includes documentation on how to make calls to Amazon.com Web Services, a DTD and XSD specification, the SOAP WSDL file, an example XSLT style sheet, examples of 'lite and 'heavy' XML results documents, sample SOAP requests, and the Amazon.com Web Services license. [Full context]

• [July 17, 2002]   IBM alphaWorks Releases UDDI for Python Package (UDDI4Py).    The IBM alphaWorks development team has released a UDDI4Py Python package that "allows the sending of requests to and processing of responses from the UDDI Version 2 APIs. UDDI4Py supports access to the UDDI Registry by abstracting the underlying XML constructs and by the transmission/processing of the various SOAP API messages. It is meant to complement the UDDI tool kit available to the Java development community, and gives customers the alternative of using a different Web services development platform. UDDI4Py is not for the development of Web Services, but rather for discovering and/or publishing the technical interfaces that describe specific Web services using the UDDI Registry. UDDI4Py supplies glue that allows Python applications to dynamically discover and/or publish Web services to and from the public registry. The rapid application development that the Python language provides is leveraged by any system working within the Web services arena and utilizing the UDDI4Py package." [Full context]

• [July 16, 2002]   Liberty Alliance Project Publishes Version 1.0 Specifications for Federated Network Identification and Authorization.    The Liberty Alliance Project has released its version 1.0 open federated network identity specifications, and several vendors at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference in San Francisco have announced plans today to deliver Liberty-enabled products and services. The Liberty Alliance Project is a an alliance (60+ members) formed to deliver and support a federated network identity solution for the Internet that enables single sign-on for consumers as well as business users in an open, federated way. The version 1.0 specifications focus on interoperability between systems to enable opt-in account linking and simplified sign-on functionality. This allows users to decide whether to link accounts with various identity providers and makes it easier for both consumers and businesses to take advantage of the growing Web services space." Specific functionality outlined in version 1.0 includes: (1) Opt-in account linking; (2) Simplified sign-on for linked accounts; (3) Authentication context; (4) Global log-out; (5) Liberty Alliance client feature. The six-part specification includes: Architecture Overview, Architecture Implementation Guidelines, Authentication Context Specification, Bindings and Profiles Specification, Protocols and Schemas Specification, and a Technical Glossary. "The Liberty Alliance specifications leverage industry-standard security and data transfer protocols, including the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), developed OASIS; SAML is quickly becoming the de-facto means for exchanging user credentials between trusted environments." [Full context]

• [July 15, 2002]   Burton Group's Catalyst Conference Features SAML Interoperability Event.    The first day of a San Francisco Catalyst Conference organized by the Burton Group is focused upon 'Building Secure Relationships Through Directory and Identity Management'. A SAML Interoperability Event was also held as part of the conference. According to the announcement, the first public demonstration of the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) "was held Monday at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco. Twelve vendors, including IBM, Novell, Oblix, Sun Microsystems Inc., Baltimore Technologies, CrossLogix, Entegrity Solutions, ePeople, Overxeer, Netegrity, RSA Security, and Sigaba participated in the event, which demonstrated interoperability of SAML 1.0-conformant security software products. SAML allows authentication and authorization information to be exchanged among disparate Web access management and security products. The OASIS specification addresses the need for secure single sign-on among diverse Web access management environments implemented across various organizations, applications, Web sites and portals. Defining standardized exchanges of identity and access management information, SAML leverages such Web services standards as XML and SOAP." [Full context]

• [July 11, 2002]   OneName Corporation Releases Extensible Name Service (XNS) Protocol Specifications.    An announcement from OneName Corporation describes the release of the XNS specifications under a royalty-free license and the submission of these specifications to the non-profit XNS Public Trust Organization (XNSORG). "These XML-based specifications for eleven (11) Web services and an identity addressing syntax create the first open, federated, peer-to-peer infrastructure for identifying and linking any resource participating in digital transactions. Extensible Name Service (XNS) is a protocol for digital identity and relationship management that spans any number of devices and domains. Whereas DNS (Domain Name System) is a protocol designed for federated naming of Internet hosts at the TCP/IP level, XNS is designed for modeling and managing the identity of any actor at the SOAP level, including people, businesses, machines, applications, objects, classes, etc. XNS enables identity controllers to register and use XNS identities to automate the exchange of any set of data associated with an identity while providing protection for the security and privacy of this data. OneName will also make available open-source Java Reference Implementations (JRIs) based on the protocol; an open-source client JRI is available immediately and an open-source server JRI will be available in Fall 2002." [Full context]

• [July 11, 2002]   W3C Publishes Four Working Drafts for the XML Pointer Language (XPointer).    The W3C XML Linking Working Group has released four Working Drafts relating to XPointer. W3C XPointer "supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents, allowing for traversals of a document tree and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position." The four specifications refactor schemes presented in the earlier W3C Candidate Recommendation for XML Pointer Language (XPointer) Version 1.0. The XPointer Framework is "an extensible system for XML addressing and underlies additional schemes. Other XML-based media types are also encouraged to use this framework in defining their own fragment identifier languages. Many types of XML-processing applications need to address into the internal structures of XML-encoded resources using URI references, for example, the XML Linking Language (XLink), XML Inclusions (XInclude), the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and SOAP V1.2. The element() scheme allows basic addressing of XML elements, the xmlns() scheme is for interpreting namespace prefixes in pointers, and xpointer() scheme allows full XML addressing." [Full context]

• [July 09, 2002]   W3C Publishes Working Drafts for Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.2.    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the publication of initial working draft specifications for Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2 and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2: Bindings. WSDL is "an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information." The primary document "defines the core language which can be used to describe Web services based on an abstract model of what the service offers; the WSDL Version 1.2 Bindings document describes how to use WSDL in conjunction with the SOAP 1.2 Messaging Framework, HTTP/1.1 GET/POST, and MIME (IETF RFC 2045)." These WSDL v1.2 specifications are part of the W3C Web Services Activity which "currently consists of three Royalty-Free Working Groups whose focus is to develop an open, interoperable and extensible model for Web Services, as well as critical components, such as an XML-based protocol for data to be exchanged and processed by applications, and technologies for providing descriptions of Web Services." WSDL Version 1.2 provides a new conceptual framework approach to define the description components, language clarifications, support for W3C XML Schemas and the XML Information Set, better definition of bindings, and clarified process/technical requirements consistent with W3C's mandate for royalty-free technologies. [Full context]

• [July 03, 2002]   UDDI Working Group Publishes UDDI Version 3.0 Specification.    A posting from Luc Clément of Microsoft announces that the UDDI Working Group and Advisors Group has released the UDDI Version 3 Specification, Open Draft for public review. UDDI Version 3 "delivers upon the roadmap and requirements outlined at the launch of UDDI in September 2000, to develop a secure, general-purpose registry for Web services. UDDI V3 builds on the vision of UDDI, providing a 'meta service' for locating web services by enabling robust queries against rich metadata. Expanding on the foundation of Versions 1 and 2, Version 3 offers the industry a specification for building flexible, interoperable XML Web services registries useful in private as well as public deployments. UDDI V3 has a vast array of enhancements -- including multi-registry topologies, increased security features, improved WSDL support, a new subscription API, and core information model advances. The Version 3 specification offers clients and implementers a comprehensive and complete blueprint of a description and discovery foundation for a diverse set of Web services architectures." [Full context]

• [June 26, 2002]   BPMI.org Releases Business Process Modeling Language Working Draft Specification.    The Business Process Management Initiative has anounced the publication of the Business Process Modeling Language specification (BPML 1.0) as a first public working draft. The BPML specification "provides an abstract model and XML syntax for expressing business processes and supporting entities. It governs transactions and their compensation, data management, concurrency, exception handling, and operational semantics. BPML itself does not define any application semantics such as particular processes or application of processes in a specific domain; rather it defines an abstract model and grammar for expressing generic processes. This allows BPML to be used for a variety of purposes that include, but are not limited to, the definition of enterprise business processes, the definition of complex Web services, and the definition of multi-party collaborations. By leveraging the Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) specification developed by BEA Systems, Intalio, SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems, BPML 1.0 enables the modeling of end-to-end processes that can be translated into collections of private implementations executed as BPML processes and public interfaces defined using WSCI. Together, they provide an end-to-end view that depicts the role of each individual business process in the overall choreography, and the business activities performed by each role. BPML 1.0 and WSCI 1.0 appropriately share the same underlying process execution model, as well as similar syntaxes." [Full context]

• [June 26, 2002]   OpenTravel Alliance XML Specification Supports Multiple Travel Verticals.    An announcement from the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) describes a public review release of the enhanced Version 2002A XML Message Specification. This version of the OTA specification "addresses multiple levels of interoperability across the travel verticals, enabling o