Thursday  2002-07-18   Web of Services

Amazon's new services

The XML Cover Pages reports

Free Amazon.com Web Services Facility Supports XML/HTTP and SOAP. A new Amazon.com Web Services facility using XML/HTTP or SOAP allows developers to build applications and tools to incorporate information from Amazon.com into their web sites free of charge. The toolkit enables searching for Amazon.com products in a variety of ways (keyword, author, actor, director, ASIN, UPC, publisher, etc) and to get results in XML. One may pass the server an XSLT style sheet to get customized reports.

Wednesday  2002-07-17   Web of Services

Rendezvous

Apple is shipping OS X 10.2 "Jaguar". Its most interesting new feature is definitely Rendezvous.

Rendezvous lets ordinary users create an instant network of computers and smart devices just by getting them connected to each other. The computers and devices take over from there, automatically broadcasting and discovering what services each is offering for the use of others. The network could be as simple as two AirPort-equipped PowerBook users sitting in a hotel meeting room miles from the nearest AirPort base station with some large files they need to share. Before Rendezvous, frustration. With Rendezvous, their computers would discover each other making the file sharing completely simple.

Rendezvous makes the automatic discovery of available computer services possible on standard Internet Protocol networks. Based on ZeroConf and the IP standard DNS service, Rendezvous lets you connect to such networks without having to fiddle with settings. You can connect your computers and peripherals together however you like — wirelessly over AirPort and by physical connections such as FireWire or Ethernet. Additionally, Rendezvous provides a service-centric view of the network, so you can quickly tell what’s available.

Update on 2002-07-19: see also Jared White's "Rendezvous: It's Like a Backstage Pass to the Future" and his interview with Stuart Cheshire at Apple and chairman of IETF ZeroConf Working Group.
 
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Monday  2002-07-15   Web of Services

Interactions breed more interactions

Doc Searl's JabberConf presentation, "Anarchy and Infrastructure" notes that

Hollywood sees the Net as a plumbing system for intellectual property and other "content".

Wired magazine's recent article "The Bandwidth Capital of the World" covers online gaming mania in Korea and points out

In Asia, where copyright law is only loosely enforced, massively multiplayer online games are less risky for media developers than movies, music, TV programs, or console games. Unlike freestanding content, online worlds are almost impossible to pirate. Someone could copy the client application, but the game itself lives on a centrally maintained network. Even if that person were able to duplicate the backend system (it costs millions to run Lineage [a very popular online game] as a reliable service), there is no way to replicate the presence of 2 million people and the dynamics that occur in a human system of that scale. The value isn't bound up in the content. It's bound up in the interactions — in the group experience.

South Korea's broadband commons challenges North American assumptions about what bandwidth is for and why it's relevant. In the US, cable, telephone, and media companies spin visions of set-top boxes and online jukeboxes, trying to "leverage content" and turn old archives into new media streams. There is a profound fear of empowering consumers to share media in a self-organizing way on a mass scale. Yet this is precisely what makes South Korea the broadband capital of the world. It's not a futuristic fantasy that caters to alienated couch potatoes; it's a present-day reality that meets the needs of a culture of joiners — a place where physical and virtual are not mutually exclusive categories.

Sunday  2002-07-07   Software

XML Schema and Query - star crossed lovers?

XML-DEV blog eclectic reports that many people are discussing whether they need W3C XML Schema to use XML Query and the discussion is getting quite heated with some memorable words like "[Schema is] an environmental disaster".

This kind of discussion at this point in time does not bode well for both Schema and Query, whose specs have been around for quite a few years.

Monday  2002-07-01   Software

What ails native XML databases?

In the beginning, XML database vendors would tell a story:

As more and more data are stored in XML format, it is best to store and process XML in environment and platform specifically designed for XML using technology built for this express purpose ie XML database.

Problem was that almost nobody bought this story. There were few reasons to put data into XML databases because of

• stickiness of data ie most of data are stored in non-XML format,
• high cost of transforming existing and future data to XML,
• concerns over interoperability with existing data,
• and lack of capable, usable technology eg basic query language.

Kimbro Straken (of Apache Xindice nee dbXML fame) writes there will be room for embedded XML databases but native XML databases are doomed given that Oracle 9i and other RDBMS are for all intents and purposes native XML databases.
 
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Monday  2002-07-01   Software

XML schema languages, PSVI, Infoset

Out of many candidates for XML schema language W3C XML Schema is the only one to introduce PSVI or post-schema validation infoset. PSVI is returned by schema processor analogous to how Infoset is returned by parsers. Infoset is "an abstract data set ... that provides ... definitions to refer to the information in a well-formed XML document"; PSVI works for validated and well-formed XML document. PSVI provides not only information on validation of an XML document but also type information on elements and attributes as well as their default values. And yet even W3C working group does not have use cases!

PSVI inevitably raises many questions:

• Will majority of XML users use it? If so how?
• What is the cost of producing PSVI? Who pays for it?
• Doesn't it change XML as we know it to something different?

Especially PSVI's type system already generates strong objections and dissents like "One typesys to rule them, and in the darkness bind them."

PSVI will affect the future of XML profoundly, or will it?
 
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Monday  2002-07-01   Software

Against W3C XML standards

Simon St Laurent summarizes the most contentious issue facing XML digerati: "Rising Rebellion Against W3C XML Schema". Many developers are looking for alternative schema languages because they are afraid of massive complexity of Schema standard. Currently there is no clear winner.

Schema is already well-established and making far-reaching impacts on other standards eg SOAP, XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and XML Query 1.0. Because XML Query is trying to be statically typed query language, it needs Schema; because Query is to embed XPath, XPath 1.0 is to accomodate Schema and become 2.0; because XSLT uses XPath, it too becomes 2.0. As XPath and XSLT get "upgraded" they will be incompatible with the original 1.0. Even though some part of the upgrade may benifit users, much of the changes are happening for the sake of XML Query 1.0.

Unfortunately XML Query 1.0 when it's delivered some time in the future will not have CRUD capabilities. (It cannot update nor delete.) Once native XML database vendors disappear, who will use this language?

Maybe this year (2002) we will get an answer to the question of schema language after two years of debate and also see MathML, SVG, SMIL and others finally become usable and useful after many years of promises. There are still six months left.
 
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