Australian W3C Office
Australian W3C Office Hello and welcome to the latest newsletter from the Australian W3C Office. This edition includes news about the W3C Day, CC/PP Structure and Vocabularies, the Modularization of XHTML, XML Query , WWW10 News and a Membership update.
W3C Day: http://evolve.dstc.edu.au/w3c.html
As part of the Australian W3C Office's commitment to local professionals it has instigated the W3C Day to showcase W3C activities and local membership involvement in the W3C. This year's event will be held on the 7th May at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Sydney. Sponsors for the W3C Day are the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Microsoft and the National Library of Australia.
Topics to be covered are XML, XSL, CSS, SVG and Accessibility. Dr Ivan Herman, W3C Head of Offices will give an overview of the W3C and of the most important W3C Recommendations which are available today. He will show how the newest recommendations (Schemas, Namespaces, XSTL, DOM, etc) fit and work together, and discuss how specifications like XHTML, SVG, or SMIL are built on the top of these architectural recommendations. Ivan will also briefly cover Issues around the semantic web, primarily the underlying RDF model, accessibility, and internationalisation will also be briefly addressed.
* Registration: $385.00
* Early Bird Registration: $330.00 (closes 13 April)
* W3C Member Registration: $275.00 (to find out if your organisation is
a member of W3C visit: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
)
* Full-time Student Registration: $80.00 Registration is available at: http://evolve.dstc.edu.au/
The associated conference, Evolve Conference 2001 includes a number of tutorials which may be of interest to you.
Information on these tutorials is available at: http://evolve.dstc.edu.au/tutesProgram.html
More information on the event and sponsorship by contacting the conference co-ordinator Ms Kelli Shanahan (kellis@dstc.edu.au).
The CC/PP Working Group has released a Working Draft of Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies and the Modularization of XHTML has advanced to Proposed Recommendation status.
There are currently significant efforts invested to integrate Web technologies into various devices. Web services are becoming accessible from a wide range of devices including cellular phones, TV, digital cameras and in-car computers. Commercial products and services are deployed or planned based on specifications which take the adaptability of those devices into account. A possible threat is that those devices and services would not be interoperable with each other or with the existing Web. That would cause fragmentation of the Web and make device independent authoring difficult. The W3C's Device Independence Activity is working to ensure seamless Web access with various kinds of devices.
How can a server know that a mobile phone with a very small screen is requesting a Web page, rather than a pocket-sized computer asking for the same information? The idea here is to store data about each device - and also the preferences of its user - as a device profile and to store device profiles as a kind of relational database located on a Web server. This has lead to Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP).
The Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP) is a user-side framework for content negotiation and was first issued as a W3C Note on 30th November, 1998. A Composite Capability/Preference Profile is a collection of information which describes the capabilities, hardware, system software and applications used by someone accessing the Web, as well as the particular preferences of the users themselves. The information collection includes a preferred language, sound on/off, images on/off, class of device (phone, PC, printer, etc.), screen size, available bandwidth, version of HTML supported, and so on.
Following that work, the W3C Note "CC/PP exchange protocol based on HTTP Extension Framework" described an application of the HTTP Extension Framework to exchange CC/PP information effectively over HTTP/1.1. This ultimately lead to the CC/PP Working Group.
The idea here is that, when a device makes a request over the Web for a Web page, a pointer to the device profile is appended to the request. In the case of a mobile phone, not only would the phone request a URI in the usual way, but it would also send a pointer in the form of a second URI to indicate where its device profile could be found.
The critical piece in the puzzle is that the "pointer" URI goes straight to the CC/PP database. CC/PP is written in Resource Description Framework (RDF), W3C's language for modeling metadata - descriptive information about items on the Web. Information encoded in RDF is always linked to Web addresses, for example: "the device with Web address http://www.deviceprofiles.example.com/abc1234 has the following profile..." etc. This means that by sending a URI for the device profile, all kinds of data about that device immediately becomes available.
The expectation is that different devices will make use of different modules of XHTML; similarly they will support different modules of style sheets. For example, one device might use the basic XHTML text module and the style sheet voice module. Another device with a large screen might also allow the XHTML tables module.
The modularization of XHTML refers to the task of specifying well-defined sets of XHTML elements that can be combined and extended by document authors, document type architects, other XML standards specifications, and application and product designers to make it economically feasible for content developers to deliver content on a greater number and diversity of platforms.
Modularizing XHTML provides a means for product designers to specify which elements are supported by a device using standard building blocks and standard methods for specifying which building blocks are used. These modules serve as "points of conformance" for the content community. The content community can now target the installed base that supports a certain collection of modules, rather than worry about the installed base that supports this permutation of XHTML elements or that permutation of XHTML elements. The use of standards is critical for modularized XHTML to be successful on a large scale. It is not economically feasible for content developers to tailor content to each and every permutation of XHTML elements. By specifying a standard, either software processes can autonomously tailor content to a device, or the device can automatically load the software required to process a module.
So, XHTML is being designed as a series of modules associated with different functionality: text, tables, forms, images etc. Future Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) specifications will have the same modular construction. If a content provider wants information to be available for different devices, different versions of that content can be generated, for example using only the text modules, or perhaps using full graphics with scripting. Thus in its document profile, the document specifies the expected capabilities of the browser in terms of XHTML support, style sheet support and so on. During the process of matching, the document profile would be compared with the device profile, the best fit between the two would be discovered, and a suitable document would be generated or the best fitting variant would be selected.
Together Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies and the Modularization of XHTML advancing to Proposed Recommendation status, progress towards the device independence of the future Web.
CC/PP Working Group - http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP/
Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-CCPP-struct-vocab-20010129/
Modularization of XHTML - http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/PR-xhtml-modularization-20010222/
Device Independence Activity - http://www.w3.org/2001/di/Activity
The W3C XML Query Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of XQuery: A Query Language for XML. The XQuery language is designed to be broadly applicable across all types of XML data sources from documents to databases and object repositories. Associated publications are:
* XML Query Data Model, the foundation of the XML Query Algebra;
* XML Query Algebra, taken with the data model, a formal basis for the XQuery
l language;
* XML Query Use Cases, specifying usage scenarios; and XML Query Requirements
specifying goals, requirements, and usage scenarios for the data model,
algebra, and XQuery language.
XML Query Working Group - http://www.w3.org/XML/query-wg
XQuery: A Query Language for XML - http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xquery-20010215/
from: http://xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1149
Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and IBM have decided to 'rationalize' their business organizations under the leadership of the World Wide Web Consortium. ……….
…… Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C, noted that "this is the opportunity I've always wanted to make the Semantic Web come to life. With these four companies behind it, I know we can make this work seamlessly."
Semantic Web - http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
Australian IPR Systems Pty Ltd recently submitted a NOTE to W3C specifying a Resource Description Framework (RDF) encoding of the vCard profile defined by RFC 2426 and providing an equivalent functionality to its standard format. The motivation behind the NOTE is to enable the common and consistent description of persons (using the existing semantics of vCard) and to encode these in RDF/XML.
This specification is in no way intended to create a separate definition for the vCard schema. The sole purpose of this NOTE is to define an alternative RDF/XML encoding for the format defined by [VCARD]. The RDF vCard does not introduce any capability not expressible in the format defined by [VCARD]. However, an attempt has been made to leverage the capabilities of the XML and RDF syntax to better articulate the original intent of the vCard authors.
To view the full document visit : http://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf
The Vendors Track provides WWW10 attendees the opportunity to hear directly from the companies whose commercial products shape the World Wide Web. Presentations will be technical, and focused on how vendors are integrating support for Internet technologies into their products. Presentations providing a technical vision for the future of the web will also be considered.
For details, please visit http://www10.org.hk/w10-calls-vendors.html
The number of Members has risen to 512 (13th March 2001). You can find information on how to Join W3C at:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Prospectus/Joining
ACORD Corporation : Since 1970, ACORD (the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) has been serving the insurance industry in the United States and abroad. Initially, they developed standard ACORD Forms to enable information sharing in the industry. In the 1980s, they began the task of providing the industry with standards for electronic data sharing. With the addition of the OLifE standard in 1996, they added data integration to their package of services. Today, ACORD has the support and participation of more than 1,000 insurance carriers and groups, 25,000 agencies, the major providers of software and services to the industry, and non-profit associations including agency system user groups, national producer associations, and the CPCU Society.
Autonomy, Incorporated : Autonomy's launch in 1996 was based upon the unique pedigree and ground breaking work of Cambridge Neurodynamics Ltd. Founded by Dr. Michael Lynch in 1991, Neurodynamics' software and systems is based on world-leading probabilistic modelling and digital signal processing technologies developed in-house from research originally undertaken by Dr. Lynch at Cambridge University. Autonomy has a broad, blue-chip customer base, a highly scalable business model and a sophisticated core-technology that enables the company to provide solutions to every digital domain including enterprise, web and e-commerce environments.
CSP s.c.a.r.l. : Integrated Networks LABoratory is a "Permanent Laboratory based on Integrated Networks", realized and managed by CSP & Politecnico of Torino, which contributes with the Electronic Department TLC networks Research Group. Grand Central Networks : Grand Central was founded in May 2000 by 12 Entrepreneuring, Inc. Grand Central's mission is to build the infrastructure for the world of network-centric computing
IDOOX s.r.o. : Zvon was founded by a group of people who feel that free information exchange can open new horizons and can be very benefitial for people of similar ideas and needs. Even though Zvon has grown in various ways its original idea is not altered. One offering is IdooXoap, a toolkit for communicating via SOAP. It primarily uses WSDL for service descriptions and is able to generate completely self-contained client stubs from such a description. With a WSDL description IdooXoap is even able to (de)serialize any linked graph.
Net2Phone : Since its formation in 1996, Net2Phone has been a leading provider of voice-enhanced Internet communications services to individuals and businesses. Their suite of services provides "low-cost, high quality phone calls using personal computers, traditional telephones, or Internet devices".
Planet 7 Technologies Corp : Planet 7 Technologies, the XML Network company, was formed in response to the demands of real companies, who found limitations in existing technologies for doing business on the Internet, intranets or extranets. Planet 7 was founded to improve customers' efficiency and profitability, and to provide a technological foundation that naturally extends to meet future opportunities.
Republica Corp. : Republica Corp. designs next generation technology supporting eBusiness and mBusiness. Republica's products enable the real-time information exchange between company and its interest groups, and facilitate easy and fast integration of different information systems. Republica is based in Finland, and it has offices in Helsinki and Jyväskylä. Since 1996 the company has been in the SGML and XML business
Schema Software, Inc. : is a high-end custom software engineering company working directly on key application and system software, such as Microsoft Office and Windows 2000 and specializing in XML technologies, File Format Parsers/Translators and Graphics Applications. Most recently released a technology preview of Catwalk, which introduces the concept of Graphical Stylesheets - XSLT transformations that produce SVG visualizations of arbitrary XML data.
Texar Corporation : Texar Corporation builds software that enables organizations to selectively share sensitive information with anyone, from anywhere, at any time - securely. Texar SecureRealms, their flagship product, allows organizations to share sensitive information while controlling its use and distribution based on customer business rules.
Unicorn Solutions Ltd : Currently in stealth mode, Unicorn Solutions, Inc. is laying the foundations for the next era of the Web. Founded in January 1, 2001 by Dr. Zvi Schreiber, previously the founder of Tradeum Inc., a B2B pioneer, and by co-founder Rannen Meir, Unicorn is backed by some of the technology world's most savvy investors.
180Solutions, Inc. : have developed exclusive technology to enable loyalty programs and make possible the delivery of one-to-one marketing via the Internet.
More information on W3C Members can be located at: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
Many thanks to the UK W3C Office and Dr Renato Iannella from IPR Systems Pty Ltd for contributions.
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