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Weekly XML News Archives - January 2000
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This page collects recent
XML developments from many
different sources. It is updated monthly.
Contributions
of newsworthy items will be considered.
Older news items are also archived.
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Week Ending Jan. 30
XHTML 1.0 Now a W3C Recommendation
XHTML 1.0 finally became a W3C
recommendation of January 26, 2000.
XHTML 1.0 is the first step toward a modular and extensible Web based on XML.
The W3C home page is written in XHTML 1.0, which means that it will work in
current HTML browsers and XML-enabled tools.
"XHTML 1.0 connects the present Web to the future Web," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C
Director. "It provides the bridge to page and site authors for entering the structured data,
XML world, while still being able to maintain operability with user agents that support HTML
4."
To learn more about XHTML, see:
Microsoft XML, XSL, XPath Updates
On January 26, Microsoft posted a
XML Parser Technology Preview Release
with these highlighted features and tools:
XML writer Elliotte Rusty Harold
lists a number of shortocmings and
concludes (Jan. 27, 2000): "In short this release handles the
basic templates, but falls apart in a lot of the trickier, special case
scenarios. While it's an improvement over the XSLT support built-in to
IE5, it's still missing way too much to be considered for real work."
Netscape 5 Alpha Released
The first alpha release of Netscape 5,
also called Milestone 13, is available from mozilla.org.
I have used several of the pre-alpha Milestones and they are safe to
run with your regular Netscape 4.*. However, this is for experimental purposes,
not everyday browsing. The alpha is supposed to be solid enough for everyday use,
but unfortunately is not, based on my preliminary tests under Windows 98.
XML DevCon 2000, East Coast
XML-Journal,
published by SYS-CON Publications,
announced a key XML-focused conference and expo.
XML DevCon 2000: Maximizing XML for the Enterprise
will be presented June 25-28, 2000, at the New York
Hilton in New York City. XML DevCon 2000 is cosponsored by OASIS.
Join 1,500 XML enthusiasts will be at
XML DevCon 2000, along with the
industry's most respected technical experts, sought-after gurus and
advanced users. Benefit from their expertise. Immerse yourself in 4 days of
XML intellect and master new skills from those who are defining XML's
future.
SAX2 Beta Release
David Megginson announced the
SAX2 beta release.
SAX2 is a new Java-based release of SAX, the Simple API for XML. A C++ version (at least) is
planned as well. SAX2 introduces configurable features and properties and adds support for XML
Namespaces; it includes adapters so that SAX1 parsers and applications can interoperate with SAX2.
SMIL Animation
SMIL Animation
is a "working draft of a specification of animation functionality for XML
documents. It describes an animation framework as well as a set of base XML
animation elements suitable for integration with XML documents. It is based
upon the SMIL 1.0 timing model, with some extensions."
DDbE Updated by IBM
DDbE (Data Descriptors by Example)
is a Java component library for inferring a DTD or XML
Schema from a set of well-formed XML instances. (The Schemas satisfy the Dec 1999 XML
Schema WD.)
Week Ending Jan. 23
XLink and Canonical XML Updated
On January 19, 2000, W3C released its second update of the
XLink Working Draft in as many months.
See XLinks, Chapter 16 of the XML Bible by E.R. Harold.
A Last Call Working Draft of Canonical XML was also released.
(Two XML documents whose Canonical-XML form is identical will
be considered equivalent for the purposes of many applications.)
Design Patterns in XML Applications
XML.com published the
first of two articles focused on the
applicability of some well-known design patterns to XML-specific contexts.
Apache's Cocoon XML Publishing Framework
The Apache XML Project released
Cocoon XML Publishing Framework.
"The Cocoon project aims to change the way web information is created,
rendered and served. This new paradigm is based on fact that document
content, style and logic are often created by different individuals or
working groups. Cocoon aims to a complete separation of the three
layers, allowing the three layers to be independently designed, created
and managed, reducing management overhead, increasing work reuse and
reducing time to market....[T]he Cocoon model divides the development of
web content in three separate levels:
XML creation, XML processing, and XSL rendering."
XML.com Resource Guide
XML.com has updated and expanded its very useful
Resource Guide.
XML Lightweight Extractor (XLE) from IBM
IBM's XML Lightweight Extractor (XLE):
Given a set of relational tables stored in any JDBC compliant relational
database management system (e.g., DB2, Oracle), the XML access service
Lightweight Extractor (XLE) extracts data from the database, and
converts and assembles the data into XML documents. XLE is an early
release of a technology for accessing relational data as XML documents
in a simple yet flexible manner.
Quick for XML
Quick
is a collection of Java packages which
greatly simplifies the processing of XML.
The pre-production release adds support for
opaque data--allowing you to control which
portions of an XML document are validated.
A QJML
binding schema is used by Quick to bind the elements and attributes of an XML
markup language to various Java classes.
When developing an application using Quick, the first step is to write a
QDML schema,
which describes the XML documents to be processed. The second step is to convert that
schema into a QJML binding schema, which specifies how the XML elements and
attributes are converted into Java objects.
XML Security Suite from IBM
The XML Security Suite
provides security features such as digital signature,
element-wise encryption, and access control to Internet business-to-business transactions.
"XML is expected to facilitate Internet B2B messaging because of its
simplicity and flexibility. One big concern that customer may have in
doing Internet B2B messaging is security. Internet is a public network,
and there has been no protection against attacks such as eavesdropping
and forgery. If messages are stolen or modified during transmission, B2B
messaging will be almost useless. Fortunately, the recent advancement of
public-key cryptography has remedied most of the security problems in
communication. Using modern cryptographic protocols such as SSL, the
Internet became as secure as any other networks, including VANs and
intranets."
Week Ending Jan. 16
XSL Working Draft Updated
On January 12, 2000, the
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Working Draft
was updated.
This is the first XSL update in almost 9 months, which is almost a W3C record.
However, in all fairness, during that time, the XSL Working Group
spun off XSLT (transformations) and XPath.
XSL Editor, Release 2
IBM's XSL Editor allows a user to import, create, and save XSL and XML documents.
Release 2 includes enhanced editing capability with syntax highlighting,
improved installation for different platforms, and the ability to
run the transform without tracing.
XML APIs for Databases
This JavaWorld article presents a way to blend the
power of a database with the features of XML. It also provides a simple, pure Java implementation of
XML APIs for databases that works with any JDBC data source. With this approach, XML tools can
treat a database as a virtual XML document.
Datatypes for DTDs Submitted to W3C
Datatypes for DTDs (DT4DTD) 1.0
was submitted as a Note to the W3C by Extensibility, Charles F. Goldfarb, Paul Prescod.
The document abstract says "The presented specification
allows legacy systems that may presently be unable to convert their
DTD markup declarations to XML Schema, to utilize XML Schema
conformant datatypes."
XML Master (XMas) from IBM
IBM alphaWorks' new
XML Master (XMas) consists of two parts:
XMas application - an editor for designing and generating custom Java beans to work
with XML documents that conform to a certain DTD (Document Type Definition); and
XMas Bean Suite - a collection of Java beans that can be used for modeling XML
structures and getting access to their parts via XML-oriented GUI components.
Week Ending Jan. 9
Internet Explorer 5.5 Preview
Internet Explorer 5.5 Preview
release is available for download.
IE 5.5 is a beta release with improved support for DHTML and CSS.
3 XHTML 1.1 Working Drafts
Three XHTML working drafts were issued on January 5, 2000:
The unrelated working draft
XML-Signature Core Syntax and Processing
was also posted.
XML E-Business Standards
XML E-Business Standards: Promises and Pitfalls
by Robert Worden, a consultant information
architect, highlights the significant challenge ahead for
companies wanting to use XML for electronic business. This
challenge is the proliferation of competing "standard" vocabularies
for business applications, and the associated risk of committing
to any one of them alone.
Week Ending Jan. 2
E-Commerce Messaging System
On December 29, 1999,
BASDA
(the Business & Accounting Software Developers' Association) published the world's first fully
operational XML messages for business-to-business eCommerce. The BASDA
eBIS-XML initiative enables the direct exchange of
purchase orders and invoices
between different accounting software packages, via E-mail and
the Internet, without the need for EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
middleware or Value Added Networks.
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