W3C sets standards for SOA and Web 2.0
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Promises better web apps The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced two standards aimed at bringing order to the web.â¦
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EnterpriseWizard this week is releasing the 2.0 version of its CRM application, a product built on top of its SaaSWizard Web application development platform and designed to be easily customizable.
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With a mandate to consider the proper direction for the evolution of the lingua franca of the World-Wide Web, the W3 Consortium this morning officially re-launched the HTML Working Group. Its mission will be to deliver an updated HTML, for use by both stand-alone and XML parsers, by the last day of 2010.
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WSO2 seeks to bridge the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails Web framework with the SOA and Web services spaces.
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Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., and NEC Corporation have released their jointly developed messaging software as open source. This software implements the Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) standard, a
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(InfoWorld) - As any developer can tell you, creating interoperability between SOA components and existing IT environments isnât trivial. It requires a lot of effort and coding. But IBM says it has the antidote for the IT headache: composite business services in the form of wrappers around existing IT applications. Big Blueâs strategy to create reusable SOA services is largely built around technologies and tools that the company received from its August acquisition of Webify Solutions, a vendor of SOA software and services. Webify provides hundreds of industry-specific, prebuilt standards-based accelerators, tools, and frameworks. Its offerings help solve business problems that are specific to a given industry, such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance for the health care industry and ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) standards in the insurance industry. Within IBM, Webifyâs technology provides the basis for WebSphere Business Services Fabric (IBMâs SOA platform for modeling, assembly, and deployment of business services), says Brett MacIntyre, vice president for composite services development at IBM.                                                     âWebify (software) has given us the fabric, the view across the industry of common services used within the industry, and the tools and the methods with which to build these composite business services,â MacIntyre says. Webify also brought relationships with customers in the health care and insurance industries, and a portfolio of about 12 composite business services in the insurance and health care industries, MacIntyre says. Composite business services built by IBM will interoperate through the standard framework from Webify, with ontologies and data models associated with an industry added on top of the WebSphere Business Services Fabric to create a particular component, MacIntyre says. âFor example, a core data model that the insurance companies in the U.S. work with is part of the overall business fabric,â he says. Webify tools, processes and methodologies will also play a key role at SOA Solutions Centers in Beijing and Pune, India, says Jeby Cherian, the head of IBMâs Global Business Solutions Center, one of three organizations IBM set up to create reusable software assets.
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Can it deliver on its promises? Comment Service oriented architectures, or SOAs, have been positioned as the great leap forwards in how IT will finally come to be the major facilitator to the business.â¦
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The purpose of the Web Services Addressing Working Group is to produce a W3C Recommendation for Web Services Addressing. WS-Addressing is a key part of the core Web services architecture. In particular, the specification is designed to underlie other specifications, such as WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Federation and WS-AtomicTransaction, providing a consistent, interoperable and standards-based mechanism for Web services addressing.
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The first major upgrade to the HTML specification since 1997, HTML 5, was published in an early draft form Tuesday by the World Wide Web Consortium, featuring APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and control of audio and video content. The final version of the specification is not expected until late-2010, and it will be up to browser vendors to support it, one analyst stressed.HTML serves as the base markup language for building Web pages. HTML 5 is intended to boost interoperability and reduce software costs by providing rules on handling correct HTML documents and recovering from errors.With version 5, W3C has two main intentions: Catching up to how HTML actually is practiced versus what the specifications say should be practiced and adding new features, said Dan Connolly, a co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group. "We've been doing a lot of things [since the last upgrade], but basically, the scale of the Web went way up, and the scale of our efforts really didn?t match it until now," he said.New features mostly pertain to Web applications and integrating video as a first-class medium on the Web, Connolly said. In proposing its new features, W3C studied what people do on the Web and what leading-edge Web sites do. "Now it's time to standardize them," so these capabilities can show up in authoring tools, said Connolly.By standardizing these capabilities, they become easier to learn, and it is easier to hire someone who can tackle these tasks, according to Connolly.Other new capabilities planned for HTML 5 include the ability for users to edit documents and parts of documents interactively. Also planned are features to make it easier to represent familiar page elements, including section tags, page footers, and navigation elements. Maintenance of persistent client-side storage is another highlight in version 5.In developing a new standard, W3C was mindful of Web progressions, such as the emergence of media-rich Web sites over static page collections, and innovations like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Recent innovations have boosted demand for a standard for building Web applications that interoperate across mobile and desktop platforms, W3C said.W3C will need adoption of HTML 5 by companies supplying browsers, said Jeffrey Hammond, Forrester senior analyst. "I guess the big comment that I would have is [HTML 5 is] going to be important to the extent that browsers move forward and adopt it," he said. "Developers are interested in writing HTML that goes to as many browsers on as many devices as possible."Mozilla already is supporting HTML 5 in its Firefox browser, the company said."Mozilla has been actively involved in the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) applications spec, which is the basis for HTML 5," said, Vlad Vukicevic, infrastructuralist for Mozilla, in a statement released by the company. "Firefox 3 supports many parts of the proposed standard, including DOM (Document Object Model) Storage, offline apps, the HTML Canvas, and many smaller features. While we are supporting these parts, there are other parts of the full HTML 5 proposal that are still under discussion."Other browser companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Opera, are active participants in the HTML Working Group, W3C said.Capabilities offered in HTML 5 currently are being offered through plug-in technologies, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, Hammond said."The most interesting thing will be what happens when those capabilities get into native HTML and what impact that has on the rich Internet development market," he said. Specific plug-in technologies are not supported on every platform, he said. "[Thusly], as a developer I might be more interested in writing HTML 5," Hammond said.The finalization of the specification will take some time, though. The plan is to have it available in a preliminary candidate recommendation form in the middle of 2009 and as a formal, final recommendation by September 2010, Connolly said. The process is lengthy because it takes time to get the technology to the point where Web authors can rely on it, he said. "It's up to each Web author to decide when he wants to implement new features," he noted.Also new to HTML 5 is it will be the first version implemented under the W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy. This gives implementers greater assurance that standards can be implemented free of royalties, W3C said.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft says it will focus on four key areas to improve interoperability between its own software and other vendors' products. Senior Microsoft representatives met with InfoWorld on Thursday to highlight identity management; Web services and related development; collaboration between information workers and system management comprise the new interoperability focus. "We are really working on new protocols in the WS-* [spoken as Web services star] space that enable interoperability across identity systems," said Jean Paoli, Microsoftâs general manager of interoperability and XML architecture. Lat week, Microsoft vowed to integrate its CardSpace identity management system with the OpenID Web authentication standard. Paoli emphasized the move as evidence of the commitment. WS-* represents a series of Web services-related specifications for standardization in areas such as security and messaging. A lot of the issues Microsoft has in interoperability tend to fall into these four categories, said Tom Robertson, the companyâs general manager of interoperability and standards. "Those are the four areas that we're hearing about now," as needing attention, Paoli said. "It doesn't mean the list is closed." Microsoft's identity management push, however, apparently will not be centered on its previous Passport initiative for Internet security.Â  "I've not been hearing about Passport in so long," Paoli said. Microsoft plans to be creative in addressing interoperability, using a host of tools at its disposal. "It's going to mean making IP available in a range of ways," Robertson said. The company already has dabbled in open source as a way to boost interoperability, offering a bridge between the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML electronic document formats, said Robertson. Paoli and Robertson listed multiple Microsoft interoperability projects in the past several years, such as its work with Novell on interoperability between Windows and Novell's Suse Linux. The company's interoperability effort with Sun Microsystems also was noted. But they remained upset with IBM for what Microsoft perceives are IBM efforts to block Open XML from becoming approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The two co-authored an open letter this week entitled "Interoperability, Choice and Open XML," that pointed fingers of blame at IBM. "The open letter is an effort to clearly articulate what Microsoft is trying to do," Robertson said. It is important to shine a light on what IBM is doing to block Open XML and block choice, he added. In response, an IBM representative pointed to the ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog, which states there is "significant commercial opposition" to Microsoft's electronic document proposal. Microsoft made a "bad bet " that ODF would fail in the marketplace, the blog stated.
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(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems and Adobe Systems are partnering on rich Internet application development in an arrangement incorporating both SOA and Web 2.0 concepts. The deal is being announced Tuesday at the BEAWorld San Francisco conference. BEA will bundle Adobe Flex Builder 2 software with the BEA Workshop Studio Java development environment. Through this bundling, developers can build cross-platform rich Internet applications that integrate with SOA and Web 2.0 infrastructure. Enterprise mashups also can result. "[The agreement] gives our developers access to the most innovative, rich Internet application platform," said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop business unit. In the second part of the announcement, Adobe will distribute evaluation licenses of the BEA WebLogic Server Java application server with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite software for building customer engagement applications. Combining Flex Builder and Workshop Studio is intended to give developers a workflow for building applications like interactive dashboards, customer and employee self-service applications, and business-to-business systems, BEA said. Applications are deployed using the Adobe Flash Player runtime. BEA's Workshop Bundle includes Flex Builder 2, Adobe's Eclipse-based IDE, and the Adobe Flex SDK, which is slated to be released under the open-source Mozilla Public License. The bundle is to enable developers to add rich interactivity to enterprise applications. While Workshop already features an SDK and IDE, Roth insisted there was no redundancy. Both Adobe and BEA have built on the Eclipse platform. "That allows both Workshop and Flex Builder to exist in one IDE." Roth said. "Eclipse provides the basic IDE framework. Workshop and Flex fill it out." Rich Internet applications developed with Workshop and Flex can be integrated with other BEA products, such as offerings from the WebLogic and AquaLogic families. This provides enterprise benefits pertinent to Web 2.0 and SOA, BEA said. Applications can be deployed using the planned Adobe Integrate Runtime technology for extending rich Internet applications to the desktop. "The Web 2.0 angle is, I think, really where Flex is really strong in allowing a more focused user interface and allowing a richer environment," Roth said. "Web 2.0 is about collaboration," and interacting with the customer, he added. For SOA, Adobe's architecture offers the notion of presentation services as well a framework for Flex applications to integrate with standard enterprise Java applications and SOA, Roth said. BEA's endorsement of Flex does not necessarily mean the company is choosing it over the popular AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technique for Web development. "In fact, we view both AJAX and Flex as being important rich Internet options, and our customers are looking for that," Roth said. "We found that segments of the customer base that are more developer-centric have a preference for AJAX while those who are more concerned with the interaction and have fairly significant interaction needs in terms of flexibility and creativity tend to go with Flex," especially in an enterprise context, he said. AJAX leverages HTML and JavaScript while Flex runs in the Flash Player, extends the browser, and has capabilities around graphics rendering, animation, and client code performance, said Adobe's Phil Costa, director of product management for Adobe Flex and ColdFusion. The Flex programming model focuses on data-driven applications as opposed to HTML, which was developed primarily around a documents paradigm, Costa said. Workshop bundled with Flex Builder 2 is due to be available by the end of the year with pricing starting at $899 retail. Also under the agreement, customers can deploy LiveCycle ES applications that leverage characteristics of WebLogic Server including Java Message Service to support business events, clustering and failover. Web services interoperability technologies are supported such as WS-I Basic Profile 1.1. While LiveCycle has worked with WebLogic Server before, users with this announcement will be provided with turnkey infrastructure for enterprise deployments. LiveCycle with WebLogic Server will available as a turnkey product early in 2008.
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Media mark-up The first major update to HTML in 10 years - factoring in changing tastes around rich-media applications and online collaboration - has been unveiled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Heralding the most viable, "real-world" approach to building SOAs (service-oriented architectures)Â this week,Â MicrosoftÂ  unveiled new guidelines for partners create an enterprise service bus (ESB). Usually, BEA Systems and IBM beat the SOA drum the loudest, but Microsoft renamed its Business Process and Integration Conference for BizTalk partners "SOA and Business Process Conference" with the aim demonstrate that it, too, has a plan for helping customers build SOAs. Microsoft has had itsÂ business process integration product BizTalk since 2000, but it has not been as vocal as competitors BEA and IBM in discussing a comprehensive SOA strategy. SOA is the next generation of enterprise software architectures, in which applications and services within the IT system are loosely coupled and able to be integrated piecemeal to form custom, or "composite," applications from various components across the enterprise. Microsoft worked with partner Neudesic to provide sample code and documentation for using BizTalk Server to build an ESB, which Microsoft defines as a set of capabilities -- such as mediation, transformation and integration -- for connecting business processes and services throughout the organization, said Steven Martin, a Microsoft director of product management. The company also unveiled a new adapter for Extensible Markup Language-based BizTalk that enables customers to connect the product more easily to IBM mainframe and AS/400 systems. The technology, called the BizTalk Adapter for Host Systems, is based on technologies available in Microsoft's Host Integration Server product, which the company has had for some time, Martin said. John Devadoss, a Microsoft director of architecture, said it is still finding a lot of misconceptions about SOAs among its customers, who think they have to rearchitect their entire software infrastructure "from the top down" to build SOAs. On the contrary, Microsoft believes that SOAs are more successful if there is a "real-world business driver" behind the architecture, he said. "In the real world, the success stories we see are customers taking a pragmatic, middle-out approach," he said. "The only way to truly track to the needs of the business is to take small steps along the way. The mega projects are either big science projects that never get finished or they diverge from the needs of the business."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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WSO2 is offering its open-source WSO2 Mashup Server product, which leverages JavaScript and Web services in assembling mashups, on Monday. In positioning the product for use by JavaScript developers, the company is looking to enable delivery of more functional mashups than can be built with alternative GUI-based tools. A hosted online version of Mashup Server, called Mooshup.com, also will be launched Monday as a community site for developing and sharing mashups.With WSO2 Mashup Server 1.0, WSO2 anticipates a confluence of Web 2.0 social capabilities and enterprise needs. "Basically, what we believe is that enterprise IT is going to go more toward a social enterprise structure where the IT offerings are not only by IT staff but by anybody in the enterprise," said WSO2 Chairman/CEO Sanjiva Weerawarana.But WSO2 is targeting Web developers who can write JavaScript. "The main purpose of WSO2 Mashup Server is to allow developers to author new Web services in JavaScript," said Jonathan Marsh, WSO2 director of mashup technologies. These Web services can be consumed within other enterprise tools and exposed as an RSS or Atom feed, he said.WSO's mashup platform is not intended to complete head-to-head with more GUI-based business level mashup products. "There's a feeling that we had that limiting yourself to a GUI right off the bat gets you started very quickly, but you quickly reach walls that block you from doing precisely what you'd like to do," Marsh said. Eventually, users of those tools have to resort to JavaScript, he said.Mashups can be authored within the administrative UI, with a text editor, or with any popular IDE, WSO2 said."It's an interesting aspect to choose JavaScript as sort of the primary scripting language," said analyst Michael Cote of RedMonk. JavaScript has been primarily used in AJAX-style (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development, Cote noted. But plenty of people are familiar with JavaScript, he added.Built on the WSO2 Web services application Server, WSO2 Mashup Server can use information from Web services, HTML, and feeds and publishes the result as a Web service. Each service has metadata to simplify consumption by other mashups and Web services clients. Content and presentation are separated through XML and Web services to enable a service to be consumed by another mashup.Web service and UI artifacts are generated, such as WSDL, REST URLS and JavaScript stubs. Services can be composed from such sources as Web services, RSS, and HTML.Additionally, services can be accessed using a request-response pattern or be programmed to run over a long period of time. For example, a mashup initiating instant messaging alerts can warn transport companies about possible delays when there is snow.By leveraging WSO2's application server and registry, the mashup server gains capabilities for enterprise security, reliability, and governance, WSO2 said.Mooshup.com is being launched in a beta version. "The purpose is to help us drive downloads of Mashup Server," Marsh said.WSO2 sells support services for Mashup Server, with prices ranging from $2,000 per server per year to $8,000 per server per year, depending on levels of support.
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BEA Systems on Monday is releasing a version of its application infrastructure suite designed to enable ISVs to deliver products for SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
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Paul Lipton, Senior Architect and Strategist from Computer Associates, talks at length about the background to CA's flagship Web services management solution Unicenter Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) -- the latest features, customers and reactions, and CA' work towards open standards.
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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is considering a new effort called the "W3C Mobile Web Initiative," that will seek to make Web access from mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants), as simple, easy and convenient as desktop Web access.