XML Community of Practice
Meeting Notes
September 21, 2005
This meeting was hosted by the Logistics Management Institute (LMI) in McLean, Virginia.
Owen Ambur announced that AIIM’s Interoperable Enterprise Content Management (iECM) standards committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday, September 27, and AIIM’s C30, document and records management metadata, committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday, September 29. [Editor’s note: The C30 committee meeting has been postponed.] He noted that the Implementation Through Iteration and Testing (ITIT) team of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Data Reference Model (DRM) has begun meeting to draft a plan for testing and implementation of the DRM. He also mentioned that he would be meeting with representatives of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), National Archives and Records Adminstration’s (NARA) Office of the Federal Register (OFR), Federal Trade Administration (FTC) and Government Printing Office (GPO) to explore prospects for piloting and testing a taxonomy for government publications in the DRM. Finally, he noted that the October 19 meeting of the xmlCoP would be hosted by and conducted jointly with the Navy’s XML working group, and that he has proposed conducting the November 16 meeting as a town hall meeting at the XML 2005 conference in Atlanta.
Introducing the first presenter, Doug Privelege of Adobe, Owen said Adobe deserves commendation for leadership in AIIM’s iECM committee as well as for supporting the recent establishment of PDF-A as an ISO standard for long-term archival of records. Doug briefly spoke about Adobe’s intelligent document format, which combines presentation with business logic and XML transport and schema. With reference to Adobe’s intention to acquire Macromedia, John Weiland asked if those features would be incorporated into the Cold Fusion language. Doug indicated that he did not know but, if he did, he could not say since the proposed acquisition is being reviewed by the Department of Justice.
Standing in for Ed Chase, Doug demonstrated the PDF-Fillable that Ed developed to support Stage 1 of the ET.gov process. Doug noted that it takes advantage of the capabilities that can be turned on in the free Adobe reader to enable users to save and work off-line on forms as well as to add notes and digitally sign completed forms. Those features are turned on via a token received from the server. In addition, dynamic drop-down lists (validation/lookup tables) are supported on the client side, and data can be posted to a URL or a Web service.
Doug also demonstrated how forms can be developed from XML schemas in Adobe Designer, which is based upon Adobe’s Extensible Forms Architecture (XFA) specification. XML Data Packages (XDP) can be generated and Adobe is supporting Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) through XDP. Besides the ability to validate XML data against XML schemas, Java script can automatically be generated for data validation and all kinds of logic.
Owen encouraged Adobe to test and demonstrate the use of the DRM XML schema in PDF-Fillable forms.
Doug did not have a presentation, but the form Ed Chase has developed is available at http://mysite.verizon.net/ambur/etform.pdf and information on Adobe Designer is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/server/adobedesigner/main.html
Amin Hassam of i411, Inc., briefed the group on the plans of i411 and Business Technology Source (BTS) to prototype enhanced, multi-faceted search, discovery, and retrieval capabilities for the ET.gov process, and Paul Woods of BTS demonstrated the prototype. Owen indicated he plans to use the search service to keep the CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC) apprised of proposed additions to the FEA Service Component Reference Model (SRM) and Technical Reference Model (TRM).
Amin’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/i4112/ETgovsearchservice.htm and the prototype is at http://etgov.i411.com/index.jsp The prototype is a work-in-progress. i411 and BTS will refine it based on feedback from the xmlCoP and AIC.
Proposed additions to the TRM and SRM, respectively, can be seen at http://etgov.i411.com/etgov/WebSearchServlet?iv7=600 & http://etgov.i411.com/etgov/WebSearchServlet?iv3=200
Paul Macias of LMI updated the group on the status of the XML Naming and Design Rules and Guidelines (NDRG). Owen indicated it is his intention to deliver a consensus draft of the NDRG to the AIC at its October 20 meeting. He said the October 19 meeting of the xmlCoP would provide another opportunity to ensure that all points of view have been adequately taken into account, but that anyone who has concerns should convey them to the NDRG work group as soon as possible so that they can be addressed prior to the meeting.
Owen suggested that determining when minor changes to an XML schema may affect backward compatibility and, thus, warrant a new minor version might be a good requirement for NIST’s NDRG support tools to address.
Paul’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/lmi5/ndrg_files/frame.htm
Among those in physical attendance were:
Owen Ambur, xmlCoP
Tim Bornholtz, ED
Sharon Flank, DataStrategy
Amin Hassam, i411
Kim Koran, CSC
Paul Macias, LMI
KC Morris, NIST
Frank Napoli, LMI
Quyen Nguyen, NARA
Loren Osborn, Unicorn
Mark Steinberg, MarkLogic
Zubair Talib, i411
John Weiland, NMIMC/Navy
Paul Woods, BTS
Among those who identified themselves as participating via teleconference were:
Tom Merkle, NIJ
Allyson Ugarte, XBRL Spain & US
Please convey any additions or corrections to Owen_Ambur@ios.doi.gov