XML Community of Practice

Meeting Notes

June 21, 2006

This meeting was hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) at its office in Washington, DC.

Attendees and teleconference participants introduced themselves. Owen Ambur noted a couple upcoming events, the DC area XML user group meeting scheduled for that evening and the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) public sector conference hosted by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on June 27. He also mentioned that IBM had tentatively agreed to host the xmlCoP’s July 19 meeting for the purpose of providing a briefing on Extensible Forms Description Language (XFDL) and perhaps XForms and Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Quyen Nguyen of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) asked whether it would be possible to include in that agenda consideration of the XML-related features of DB2 Viper (now known as DB2 version 9), and Owen indicated he would ask IBM to do so.

Dave Edstrom provided an overview of Open Document Format (ODF), noting that Dr. Doug Johnson of Sun Microsystems is the expert on ODF. He noted that Sun’s strategy is based on competing to provide the best support for open standards. He cited the Liberty Alliance as another example besides ODF and he said that Sun plans soon to release Java into the open source community. He noted some of the myths and truths about open source and commented that one of the problems with open source is the plethora of difference licenses. Owen noted that one of the elements in the draft Federal Transition Framework (FTF) issued by the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Program Management Office (PMO) relates to usage of government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software components and the perhaps it might make sense to use GSA’s SmartBuy program to acquire and provide support for open source software components. Dave also commented that with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) firewalls have essentially been eliminated because anything can be shared through port 80. Owen asked Cindy Howard about Corel’s plans with respect to ODF and she responded that they are currently in the process of assessing customer requirements.

Dave’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/sun/odf.pdf

Robert Weir, who was dialing in from Massachusetts, noted that, in addition to the ODF Technical Committee, he is also serving on OASIS’s metadata and accessibility TCs. He indicated the primary focus of the 1.1 release of ODF, scheduled for November 2006, will be on accessibility. The 1.2 release, scheduled for 2007, will focus on support for metadata, beyond the Dublin Core, to help realize the vision of the semantic web through mechanisms to support ontologies. Better support for XForms integration is also planned as well as the specification of spreadsheet formulas. Interoperability with the Chinese UOF standard format, which is neither ODF nor Ecma XML, will also be addressed. Quyen asked about vendor support for ODF and Marino Marcich responded that a listing of vendors is provided on the ODF Alliance’s Web site. http://www.odfalliance.org/about.php David LeDuc added that the free Open Office suite supports ODF and that Sun has commercialized it in Star Office. Robert noted that IBM’s Workplace suite supports ODF and suggested that a lot of interesting activity will occur on servers, rather than in the client software.

Quyen also asked how far back Open Office can support Microsoft Office Suite files, noting the need to archive documents for long periods of time. Dave Edstrom indicated that Open Office provides better backward compatibility support for Microsoft Office formats than Microsoft itself does. Robert added that ODF will provide users with more choice with respect to which wordprocessors to use without being encumbered by proprietary formats. Dave Edstrom noted that search engine vendors like Google want to be able to look into documents, so they are supporting ODF. In response to a question about support for ODF by other States besides Massachusetts, David LeDuc noted that ODF is only a little more than a year old but that support for accessibility is coming. Marino encouraged those who want to keep up with progress on ODF to subscribe to the Alliance’s free newsletter via E-mail. Finally, Robert commented on the power of combining XML with Unicode, and he cited the relationships between ODF, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO).

Robert’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/ibm2/odf.pdf

Anne Anderson briefed the group, via teleconference, concerning Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). She emphasized the need for a language for security and privacy at the enforcement level, rather than merely at the user level, and that access control lists (ACLs) are inadequate for such purposes. She explained the need for policy enforcement points (PEPs) and policy decision points (PDPs) and noted that PDPs are completely standardized in XACML. In essence, XACML is an XML format for the expression of access control policies. A XACML profile has been specified for privacy, including documentation of the purposes for collecting personal data and the policies relating to access to such data. Owen expressed interest in knowing whether XACML’s privacy profile has been incorporated into the FEA Security and Privacy Profile.

[Editor’s note: A word search of the document pulls up no instance of the acronym “XACML” at http://www.cio.gov/documents/FEA_Security_Profile_Phase_I_Final_07-29-2004.pdf.]

Anne also pointed out that an XACML profile has been specified for role-based access control (RBAC) and that one exists for Security Assurance Markup Language (SAML) as well. Without a common language for policy and enforcement, she noted that inconsistencies occur. Sol Safran observed that IRS is piloting an ebXML registry, which supports XACML but is not being used in the IRS pilot. He also noted that SAML is not yet supported by ebXML, and he asked if XACML is interoperable with Active Directory. Anne responded that Active Directory is like an ACL but does not provide much in the way of support for the expression and enforcement of fine-grained policies.

Anne’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/sun/xacml.pdf

Rob Cardwell briefed the group on the capabilities Metamatrix’s Dimension product to service-enable data assets. The first customers for the product were the intelligence community (IC) in the U.S. and United Kingdom. Now the Department of Defense is a primary customer but the product has been used less by civilian agencies. Web Services provide access to data from outside the firewall. Such data services were formerly known as federated data. Rob said the lines blur quickly between structured versus unstructured data, a point he has discussed with Bryan Aucoin of the IC, who co-chairs the CIOC Architecture and Infrastructure Committee’s new Data Architecture Subcommittee. Dimension was released in May and almost all of the implementations in the Federal space have been by integrators.

Metamatrix received pushback that the enterprise version was too complex and expensive, since it entails several tiers for distributed nodes, rather than a single server. Performance was another point on which pushback was received. Dimension uses the Eclipse framework. Rob asserted that users should not have to write software programming code in order to share data, and that less code means less maintenance and thus less cost. With respect to where to start, he said two different approaches include starting with the data stores themselves or, if XML schemas and XML formatted views of the business data are available, it may be appropriate to start with the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) model to enable Web Services operations to be deployed on a Web server.

Owen asked if Metamatrix’s product is a component of SAP’s Netweaver, and Rob said it is for queries but not for design purposes.

Rob’s presentation is available at http://xml.gov/presentations/metamatrix/dataservices.htm

Those who registered their presence at this meeting included:

Owen Ambur, Co-Chair, xmlCoP

Brenda DuVall, CSC

Dave Edstrom, Sun

Amin Hassam, i411

Joab Jackson, GCN

Bohdan Kantor, LOC

Argyn Kuketayev, Axescon

David LeDuc, SIIA

Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance

Glen Mazza, DoD (EDS)

Quyen Nguyen, NARA

Sol Safran, IRS

Nasra Sakran, FileNet

Allyson Ugarte, XBRL - Spain & US

Those who identified themselves as participating via teleconference were:

Anne Anderson, Sun

Cindy Howard, Corel

Robert Weir, IBM

Please convey any additions or corrections to Owen_Ambur@ios.doi.gov