February 11, 2008

OASIS has announced the approval of the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) specification v1.2 as an OASIS Standard. It was produced by the OASIS XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) TC. The purpose of the XLIFF vocabulary is to store localizable data and carry it from one step of the localization process to the other, while allowing interoperability between tools. XLIFF is tool-neutral and supports the entire localization process.

January 31, 2008

The Open Geospatial Consortium announced the approval of the Observations and Measurements Encoding V1.0 specification as a final OpenGIS Implementation Standard. The standard defines an abstract model and an XML schema encoding for observations and measurements as part of a framework required for use by other OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards and for support of OGC compliant systems dealing in technical measurements in science and engineering.

January 22, 2008

W3C announced a First Public Working Draft of "HTML 5: A Vocabulary and Associated APIs for HTML and XHTML" as a major revision of the World Wide Web's core language. HTML 5 is intended to replace HTML4, XHTML 1.x, and DOM2 HTML. New features are introduced for Web application authors; new elements are introduced based on prevailing authoring practices; processing models and clear conformance criteria are defined for user agents to improve interoperability.

January 16, 2008

SPARQL (recursive acronym for "SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language") has been released as a standard by W3C. The three-part specification was produced by the RDF Data Access Working Group as part of the W3C Semantic Web Activity. SPARQL defines a standardized query language for RDF enabling 'joining' of decentralized collections of RDF data. SPARQL queries hide the details of data management to lower costs and increase robustness of Web data integration.

January 14, 2008

OASIS member companies have submitted a charter proposal for a WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee. Companies sponsoring the proposal include Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Software AG, and Sun Microsystems. Building upon the June 2007 two-part industry BPEL4People specification, this TC would define extensions to WS-BPEL 2.0 to enable human interactions, along with a model enabling the definition of human tasks.

December 13, 2007

W3C announced the formation of the Emergency Information Interoperability Framework Incubator Group, chartered through 01-December-2008 to review and analyze the current state-of-the-art in vocabularies used in emergency management functions and to investigate the path forward via an emergency management systems information interoperability framework. Initiating Members include National ICT Australia, Google, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and IBM.

November 30, 2007

OASIS issued a charter for a new Testing and Monitoring Internet Exchanges TC. The proposed TaMIE TC will define an event-centric test case scripting markup and execution model for systems that use Internet-based messages or events in collaborations between partners, or between components, where collaboration is achieved via choreographed exchanges of discrete units of data. Deliverables include requirements, specification, examples, and an implementation.

November 20, 2007

W3C has published WS-Policy "Primer" and "Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors" documents supporting the recently approved Web Services Policy 1.5 Recommendations (Framework, Attachment). WS-Policy defines a general policy framework for expressing Web service capabilities and requirements, including a policy data model, processing model (for combining/comparing Web service capabilities), and XML Information Set representation for the policy data model.

November 02, 2007

SNIA announced successful interoperability demonstrations of the Extensible Access Method (XAM) specification. XAM addresses management of reference information, viz., fixed content, as distinct from transactional content. XAM defines an XML-based XSet Canonical Format to support interoperability. XAM features globally unique names for objects, metadata as a first class object, pluggable storage architecture, and a standard XAM storage provider interface.

October 30, 2007

W3C has published "XForms 1.0 (Third Edition)" as a W3C Recommendation based upon positive feedback from W3C Members, software developers, and other interested parties. XForms is an XML application representing the next generation of forms for the Web. It splits traditional XHTML forms into three parts: XForms model, instance data, and user interface. The separation of presentation from content enhances reuse, strong typing, accessibility, and usability.

October 26, 2007

The DRAMA team at Macquarie University has released Muradora V1.0, described as a turnkey GUI for the Fedora Repository supporting federated identity and flexible access control. Key Muradora modules include Shibboleth (SAML) authentication for federated identity/single-sign-on, a Fedora authorization framework based on XACML, an extended XACML engine using DB XML for policy enforcement, and web service interfaces for XACML requests and responses.

September 13, 2007

W3C has published "Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL)" and "GRDDL Test Cases" as final Recommendations. GRDDL represents an important link between the Semantic Web and microformats communities. With GRDDL, transformation software can automatically extract information from structured Web pages to make it part of the Semantic Web. Transformations are based upon included markup or indirect reference through profile documents.

September 11, 2007

Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, and XenSource have submitted the Open Virtual Machine Format Specification (OVF) to DMTF industry standardization. OVF describes an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for packaging and distribution of collections of virtual machines. OVF uses existing packaging tools to combine one or more virtual machines together with a standards-based XML wrapper to correctly install and run virtual machines.

August 28, 2007

W3C has published the "Semantic Annotations for WSDL and XML Schema" specification as a Recommendation, together with a Usage Guide, Implementation Report, and Test Suite. SAWSDL defines how semantic annotation is accomplished using references within WSDL and XML Schema components to semantic models (ontologies). Association of semantic annotations with a Web service can be used for classifying, discovering, matching, composing, and invoking Web services.

August 27, 2007

The VoiceXML Forum has published a new specification describing a methodology for collecting, storing, and retrieving runtime data for speech-based services to make data-analysis and service-tuning tools platform-independent. VoiceXML, part of the W3C Speech Interface Framework, supports audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken/DTMF key input, recording spoken input, telephony, and mixed initiative conversations.