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16851 of 19643 | SMIL 2.1 Is a W3C Candidate Recommendation - 2005-05-16: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1) to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 15 June. SMIL (pronounced "smile") puts animation on a time line, allows composition of multiple animations, and describes animation elements for any XML-based host language. Version 2.1 extends SMIL 2.0 and supports enhanced interactive multimedia presentations, reuse of SMIL syntax and semantics, and new mobile profiles. Visit the synchronized multimedia home page. (News archive)...

16852 of 19643 | System.Xml 2.0: XmlReader is now IDisposabe - Another handy feature implemented in .NET 2.0 Beta2 is that XmlReader class now implements IDisposable interface and so can be closed automatically when using with "using" statement in C#: using (XmlReader r = XmlReader.Create("../../source.xml")) { while (r.Read()) Console.WriteLine(r.NodeType); } Really handy. And implemented in literally couple of lines. It`s a pity we don`t have such simple but useful stuff in .NET 1.1. ...

16853 of 19643 | XInclude and W3C XML Schema Will Play Nice Together in .NET Framework v2.0 - Stan Kitsis, who replaced me as the XML Schema program manager on the XML team, has a blog post about XInclude and schema validation where he writes A lot of people are excited about XInclude and want to start using it in their projects. However, there is an issue with using both XInclude and xsd validation at the same time. The issue is that XInclude adds xml:* attributes to the instance documents while xsd spec forces you to explicitly declare these attributes in your schema. Daniel Cazzulino, an XML MVP, blogged about this a few months ago: "W3C XML Schema and XInclude: impossible to use together" To solve this problem, we are introducing a new sy......

16854 of 19643 | XInclude and W3C XML Schema Will Play Nice Together in .NET Framework v2.0 - Stan Kitsis, who replaced me as the XML Schema program manager on the XML team, has a blog post about XInclude and schema validation where he writes A lot of people are excited about XInclude and want to start using it in their projects. However, there is an issue with using both XInclude and xsd validation at the same time. The issue is that XInclude adds xml:* attributes to the instance documents while xsd spec forces you to explicitly declare these attributes in your schema. Daniel Cazzulino, an XML MVP, blogged about this a few months ago: "W3C XML Schema and XInclude: impossible to use together???" To solve this problem, we are introducing a new system.xml va......

16855 of 19643 | Yet One More Thing We Have Eve Maler To Thank For - 05/13/05 - Sun and Microsoft Announce New Identity Specifications and Additional Measures for Product InteroperabilityCEO Steve Ballmer today announced a series of measures to enhance product interoperability, including the development of new specifications that enable Web single sign-on (SSO) between systems that use Liberty and WS-* Web service architectures. The very last contract I took at Microsoft was with the Passport team which, I`m assuming, will probably become fairly transparent with the Libery Alliance offerings. I don`t know any technical details but I`m guessing that Eve Maler might have some extended information in this regards as its my understanding that she has something ......

16856 of 19643 | DataContract Projection, Part I - Now that Indigo is starting to roll into the hands of more developers, I think I`ll start talking more about it. The first item I want to discuss is how a DataContract is "projected" into XSD. This is going to be a multi-part post, as I get bored quickly and I have children. ;-) Suppose I have the below:     [DataContract]     class Person     {         [DataMember]         string Name;         [DataMember]         int Age;     } Which yields the following XSD (using dc.exe -- included with Indigo): http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/ConsoleApplication1" xmlns:ser="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/" elementFormDefault="qualified" t......

16857 of 19643 | First real Saxon.NET sample code to play with - As TechEd and the Saxon.NET Birds of a Feather session quickly approach it seems its time to start pushing hard at both finalization of the bits as well as sample code to help gain some momentum as we begin to get deeper into the year and, while its unknown exactly when, a little but closer to the final XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery specs, support for which is available for all three in (of course) Saxon and as such Saxon.NET.This is just a stopping point for the day on a library which has quite a few satellite libraries that add further extension and functionality that are already well under development and will hopefully be available in the next week or two for further consumption and d......

16858 of 19643 | Interlude: Working from home - A co-worker just reminded me that I promised to discuss the effects a home network could have on your Indigo Service, and how that could differ based on the transport you are using. The first thing to realize about a home network is that your computer is likely behind a NAT. Most DSL [...]...

16859 of 19643 | New version of txw posted - This version includes the schema compiler from W3C XML Schema....

16860 of 19643 | Resurfacing from Deep Dive - I’ve just attended the latest of the BizTalk Deep Dive training courses in the UK, which Quick Learn have developed, and are running with a special invite to Microsoft Partners. (I was lucky enough to get a place on one of the free sessions.)The “entrance exam” for the course ensured all the delegates had a solid grasp of most of the product, and brought with them real world experience of BizTalk development. Ensuring this high-level of expertise on the course kept the discussions and questions at the appropriate level; also if you’re new to the product, you would quickly fall over in the hands-on sections. The course coverage was broad as well as deep, going through the Share Point, WSE2, ......

16861 of 19643 | xmltramp - Learning Python has been on my todo list for far too long, I finally got around to reading Dive Into Python and have been tinkering away (on Ubuntu, might as well learn everything at once) with some xml related ideas. I tried out Aaron`s xmltramp, and it absolutely rocks, now if it could just do serialization as well, I`d be all set. I`m currently using the Python wrapper for GenX, which is working great, but feels long winded in the world of everything is a 5 line Python script....

16862 of 19643 | Backbase RIA - This week at the Ajax Summit in San Francisco (where Kevin demonstrated integration between JavaScript and Flash), Alex Russell (founder of Dojo) stressed the importance of using markup to design UI. Ajax has gained tremendous amount of traction since the term was coined less than three months ago, but it is for the first time that Ive come across an impressive XML-based implementation. Backbase. The demos on Backbases website might not seem all that impressive to a Flex developer, but think about it for a moment, about the underlying technology its directly within the web browser, not inside Flash,...

16863 of 19643 | Backup and Restore of your SQL resources (w/ sample automation scripts) - First, sorry I have disappeared for a while. I seem to say sorry a lot. We are pushing hard over here to build an awesome next version of the product and to fix up a number of things you guys have given us feedback on. I`m also still working on my Tech-Ed presentation so, well, life is busy in BizTalk world. However, that is no reason for me to not try and help your life be less busy. Here is a question I often hear posed and I thought I would give a couple of pointers. BizTalk itself has a number of databases. The base engine has a mananagement database, a tracking database, a messagebox database. It also uses the SSO database and then you have BAM and BAS and HWS to add into the mix. Whe......

16864 of 19643 | Backup and Restore of your SQL resources (w/ sample automation scripts) - First, sorry I have disappeared for a while. I seem to say sorry a lot. We are pushing hard over here to build an awesome next version of the product and to fix up a number of things you guys have given us feedback on. I`m also still working on my Tech-Ed presentation so, well, life is busy in BizTalk world. However, that is no reason for me to not try and help your life be less busy. Here is a question I often hear posed and I thought I would give a couple of pointers. BizTalk itself has a number of databases. The base engine has a mananagement database, a tracking database, a messagebox database. It also uses the SSO database and then you have BAM and BAS and HWS to add into the mix. Whe......

16865 of 19643 | Excellent News Around Web Service Federation - Yesterday we published two articles on the concepts of a federated identity metasystem on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center.  Today we took the next step -- we published two new Web service specifications: Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile and Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol. But what is really important about today`s publications is who the authors on these specs are: Microsoft and Sun.  There was initially a lot of concern and a lot of downright competition on where a federated security system was going to come from.  Microsoft has Passport and was pushing the WS-* system and Sun (and others) created the Liberty Alliance to build a different system.  There was......

16866 of 19643 | Excellent News Around Web Service Federation - Yesterday we published two articles on the concepts of a federated identity metasystem on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center.  Today we took the next step -- we published two new Web service specifications: Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile and Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol. But what is really important about today`s publications is who the authors on these specs are: Microsoft and Sun.  There was initially a lot of concern and a lot of downright competition on where a federated security system was going to come from.  Microsoft has Passport and was pushing the WS-* system and Sun (and others) created the Liberty Alliance to build a different system.  There was......

16867 of 19643 | Happy 27th Birthday Dare! - Today, the esteemed Dare Obasanjo, MSN Maestro, RSS Bandit Ruler, XML Guru Extraordinaire, Social Software Seminarian has just completed his 27th trip around the sun. Happy birthday you old man....

16868 of 19643 | JSON encoder for ColdFusion - Jehiah Czebotar has just released a JSON encoder for ColdFusion, which is great news for those wanting a light-weight data interchange format (AJAX apps for instance). CFJSON is a ColdFusion implementation of the JSON data format. JSON is a lightweight replacement for xml which translates (or serializes if you like) native datatypes into across languages. While xml is great for storing data, it...

16869 of 19643 | Moving On...Federation Calls... - I`ve been silent the last few months on WSE topics, the reason is actually simple: at the turn of the year I changed roles (was he pushed or did he jump) to work on Active Directory Federation Server (ADFS) and InfoCard. ADFS will ship as part of the Windows Server 2003 R2 release and implements the WS-Federation Passive Profile, over time ADFS will evolve to become a full-blown WS-Federation / WS-Trust Security Token Service. InfoCard, a system for managing your identities, will be part of Indigo. Whilst I`m a little sad to have left WSE behind, I`m sure that Mark......

16870 of 19643 | New specifications enable browser-based Web Single Sign-On (SSO) between security domains that use Liberty ID-FF and WS-Federation - Customer feedback has driven the development of two specs to enable browser-based Web single sign-on across domains. The Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile and Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol specs define interoperability between Liberty Identity Federation and WS-Federation for WebSSO....

16871 of 19643 | Receiving RawStrings... - If you have attempted to send email from BizTalk, you’ve gotten pretty comfortable with this documentation topic. It discusses how to use a sample class (Microsoft.XLANGs.CustomFormattersSDK.RawString) and associated custom formatter to deal with messages that contain raw string content.  As the docs say, “Sending a message of type System.String will not work, because the string gets formatted as an XML document in the message, which is not your desired solution.”  (In other words, whether you send or receive, using System.String as a message type means you are dealing with a wrapping tag.) However, th......

16872 of 19643 | Receiving RawStrings... - (See update below) If you have attempted to send email from BizTalk, you’ve gotten pretty comfortable with this documentation topic. It discusses how to use a sample class (Microsoft.XLANGs.CustomFormattersSDK.RawString) and associated custom formatter to deal with messages that contain raw string content.  As the docs say, “Sending a message of type System.String will not work, because the string gets formatted as an XML document in the message, which is not your desired solution.”  (In other words, whether you send or receive, using System.String as a message type means you are dealing with a wrapping tag.) However, though the docs cov......

16873 of 19643 | W3C Proposed Recommendation for XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0) - The W3C XML Key Management WG has released a Proposed Recommendation for the XKMS specification version 2.0, including "XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0)" and "XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0) Bindings." XKMS specifies protocols for distributing and registering public keys, suitable for use with the XML-Signature and XML Encryption Recommendations. The Bindings document defines different protocol bindings with security characteristics....

16874 of 19643 | WS-Security Interop using WSE 2.0 and Sun JWSDP 1.5 - An update to my WS-Security interop series got posted today.  This article shows WS-Security interoperability (using X.509 certs) between WSE 2.0 and Sun`s JWSDP (Java Web Services Developer Pack) 1.5.  ...

16875 of 19643 | WS-Security Interop using WSE 2.0 and Sun JWSDP 1.5 - An update to my WS-Security interop series got posted today.  This article shows WS-Security interoperability (using X.509 certs) between WSE 2.0 and Sun`s JWSDP (Java Web Services Developer Pack) 1.5.  ...

16876 of 19643 | Deciding local-or-remote at runtime - I`ve seen a number of Web service implementations where there was a possibility that when deployed, the Web service and its client could end up on the same machine. This is most common when the client is a Web (HTML) application. In these scenarios, you certainly wouldn`t want your Web application to spin up the TCP stack when it could just call into the local assemblies. But how can the Web application automatically handle both scenarios with the least amount of effort Hmm, that would make a good interview question ;-) Well, I thought it was an interesting questions so I whipped up this idea for how to handle it. Keep in mind, when developing Web services, a common best practice is to sepa......

16877 of 19643 | Microsofts enlightened identity metasystem - On the final day of Digital ID World 2005, John Shewchuk, CTO for distributed systems at Microsoft, and Kim Cameron, identity and access architect at Microsoft, outlined their company`s plan for delivering a unifying identity metasystem, an abstraction layer, based on WS-* Web services technology. "The essential concept of the metasystem is you have a bunch [...]...

16878 of 19643 | Problems posting code - I`ve noticed some problems with posting code samples here from my Infopath form. I`m cutting and pasting code from my editor into the form and it`s not coming out quite right; spaces seem to go missing for some reason. In a couple of cases I`ve deleted an entry and gone back and hand edited the XML in the Infopath form. Although this does solve the problem it`s rather time consuming and I don`t have time (or will!) to do it for every entry. If this causes problems for anyone (i.e. you can`t read the code because of the occasional missing space) let me know. Even better, if you know of a fix for the problem ( that doesn`t involve me giving up my Infopath entry mechanism ) let me know about t......

16879 of 19643 | Prune IT Systems, Not Budgets - Very - very - nice article. (via erp4it). If you want to cut costs but avoid painful consequences to the business, don`t just slash IT spending; prune redundant systems, and make sure your CFO and CEO know why. Redundancy vs Reuse is one of the main motivations why we are suggesting SOA Registry as a key element (service) of SOA......

16880 of 19643 | Securing Indigo - I’m getting a great introduction to the security culture at Microsoft. One of the Indigo components that I have PM responsibilities for is a long-running service (of the NT variety) that listens on the network. Because it’s basically the front door of Indigo, we’re spending a lot of time making sure our threat models and mitigations stay up-to-date as the product evolves in its lifecycle. We have lots of threat models and mitigations in place to make sure that our component doesn’t get hacked. But even so, a lot of our threats start with “assume that the Listener gets hacked…” Why do we do this Defense in depth. We want to make sure that even if our compone......

16881 of 19643 | SOA in Phases - Jeff Schneider describes SOA phases. I also tend to describe the state of SOA in phases. Jeff`s phase II is certainly not finished yet but it`s true that phase III already started. Many smart companies do this: You see SOA Phase III is really about putting cleaning up our distributed architectures and applying SOA appropriately.......

16882 of 19643 | The Density of `Smartness` Theory | What happens when you get too many smart people in the same room at the same time - DISCLAIMER: This is in no way a slam against anyone directly or indirectly. In fact this is a very general statement in regards to any committee tasked with any project of any type. And its really quite a simple and complimentary theory at that. While I will be using an example from a recent post from Dr. Kay to XSL-List this is nothing that should be seen as anything other than a random sample of a likely response gathered together by somebody who`s speaking from obvious experience (and more than likely frustration in some regards) of working in the committee trenches with a perfect random sampling for this theory.The theory is simply this:As the density of "smartness" contained in any ......

16883 of 19643 | The Identity Metasystem: Who are you - Who Who   Who Who Today we published two articles Identity on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center.  These are very interesting reads since they define the context of Identity systems (The Laws of Identity) and then provide the general vision on how the identity problem can be solved (Microsoft`s Vision for an Identity Metasystem). For more information, check out Kim Cameron`s Identity Blog.    -Matt...

16884 of 19643 | The Identity Metasystem: Who are you - Who Who   Who Who Today we published two articles Identity on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center.  These are very interesting reads since they define the context of Identity systems (The Laws of Identity) and then provide the general vision on how the identity problem can be solved (Microsoft`s Vision for an Identity Metasystem). For more information, check out Kim Cameron`s Identity Blog.    -Matt...

16885 of 19643 | Wait, what You`re recommending a competitors product over your own - You know what, I wasn`t going to say anything on this but I am so disoriented at the moment by the latest twist in the Data Direct saga I`m hoping that maybe someone can give me some clarification as to whats going on over in DD land...Recently Elliotte Rusty Harold posted a question to XML-DEV asking about open source XML editor plugins for Eclipse. Arjan Huijzer responded pointing him to the Web Standard Tools project on the Eclipse project and I responded regarding the latest offerings from IBM. Johnathon Robie, XQuery Evangelist for Data Direct (if not painfully obvious already Data Direct and Sonic, makers of Stylus Studio, are part of the same organization) followed up with the foll......

16886 of 19643 | Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 - The Web Services Description Working Group has published Working Drafts of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.......

16887 of 19643 | XInclude and schema validation - A lot of people are excited about XInclude and want to start using it in their projects.  However, there is an issue with using both XInclude and xsd validation at the same time.  The issue is that XInclude adds xml:* attributes to the instance documents while xsd spec forces you to explicitly declare these attributes in your schema.  Daniel Cazzulino, an XML MVP, blogged about this a few months ago: "W3C XML Schema and XInclude: impossible to use together" To solve this problem, we are introducing a new system.xml validation flag AllowXmlAttributes in VS2005.  This flag instructs the engine to allow xml:* attributes in the instance documents even if they are not defined in the schema.  Th......

16888 of 19643 | BizTalk Server 2004 and SQL Server 2000 SP4 - I found a post on the BizTalk Discussion Groups about SQL Server 2000 SP4 in combination with BizTalk Server 2004 Here his post : Installed SQL Server 2000 SP4 on two development servers over the weekend with no problems and on two production server on Monday with only slight problems during the Analysis Server SP4 installation. The problem (bug) has been reported to MS and they`re issuing a KB article. It`s related to the MDAC update on servers running MOM2005. ...

16889 of 19643 | Converging federation standards - Key members of the federated identity specification and standards gangs—OASIS, Liberty Alliance and the IBM/Microsoft led WS-* --met at Digital ID World 2005 today to discuss their different approaches to deriving specifications and the possibility of convergence.Moderator Mike Neuenschwander of the Burton Group tried to locate any sensitive areas among the different parties, represented by George [...]...

16890 of 19643 | Customizing Authentication and Authorization in WSE Using AzMan - Web Services Enhancements (WSE) supports message-based security, policy-based administration, and has the flexibility to move message-exchange out of the HTTP-only world. But despite the combination of support for authentication and authorization for cross-platform principals there`s still the question of how to deal with custom principals. AzMan can help....

16891 of 19643 | DBNETLIB Errors (Network Errors) after adding Multiple Publication MessageBoxes BizTalk Server 2004 SP1 / Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP3 - At one of our customers we installed a complete new BizTalk infrastructure to improve the performance (throughput). The following machines are involved:  1 x SQL Server dedicated to master message box processing wit publication disabled, single default instance.       Software      Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with SP3a and BizTalk SQL Hotfix SQL2000-KB810185-8.00.0878-ENU.exe      Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1      Database Instance BizTalkMsgBoxDb  2 x SQL Servers dedicated to message box publication, each 1 named instance.       Software      2 x Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with SP3a and BizTalk SQL Hotfix SQL2000-KB810185-8.00.0878-NU.exe      Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1      Data......

16892 of 19643 | Excel XML Toolbox for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 - A must have tool for every Information-worker-technology developer, get it from the MS Download Center. The Excel XML Toolbox for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 provides many useful tools for working with XML in Excel. This toolbox helps developers in a number of ways: Working with Custom-defined XML Schema Reload schema into workbooks while preserving cell mappings. Build a schema or add to an existing schema, directly from Excel. View the schema for XML maps stored within workbooks. Working with XML and the Excel Object Model Quickly refresh all XML maps with bound data sources. Refresh XML maps with bound data sources and persist cell formulas for mapped cells.......

16893 of 19643 | Exceptional BizTalk Resource #1 and Persisting State - Aaron Skonnard is a really smart guy who Ive worked with recently. He asked me to present BizTalk Server 2004 from an Indigo perspective at a version of the .NET Campsight which he and his comrades regularly hold. I did a redelivery of Orchestrating Service-Oriented Apps with Indigo and BizTalk from a VS Live conference earlier in the year.   Id forgotten to refill the prescription for my meds before the Campsight session and I think I was kind of spacey. Aaron still speaks to me so it must have been OK.   Aaron also maintains an exceptional BizTalk resource. It is the BizTalk Wiki. Highly recommended; please ch......

16894 of 19643 | Flex Dashboard & Product Selector (videos) - Since I cant publish the links just yet I still wanted to show the Dashboard app and the Product selector were building for some clients. I captured the usability with some videos. All the data from the Product Selector and Dashboard are pulled from web services. Dashboard Product Selector...

16895 of 19643 | Folien und Demos zum MSDN TechTalk "Web Services, sechs Jahre spter: Missverstndnis oder Heilsbringer" - Folien Demos Nochmals herzlichen Dank an alle Teilnehmer – es hat viel Spaß gemacht und das Feedback motiviert zu neuen Schandtaten ;)  ...

16896 of 19643 | Forming Consensus - In his latest XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko outlines a plan for combining the XForms and Web Forms 2.0 communities. ...

16897 of 19643 | I`m still here..... - So, I`m looking at my blog today, and I see I haven`t posted anything in 2 months and a day.  Shameful!!!  Anyway, I`m climbing back in the saddle. In what little free time I had before, I was working on a whitepaper for MSDN for the BizTalk Adapter for SQL Server.  I`m glad to say the paper is complete, and should be on the MSDN site very shortly.  I will post some examples from the paper here very shortly. The question came up at work today about debatching in Orchestrations.  This is a very common scenario in business processing, or at least the issue of dealing with batch style messages is.  Stephen Thomas has done a great job in writing up some examples of how to deal with this.  So go......

16898 of 19643 | Messages from Scratch with Embedded Resources - There have been several folks who have discussed how to create messages “from scratch” within an Orchestration context – you can read Matt’s thoughts and check out a BizTalk documentation excerpt. This is a common question, and I had an additional technique I thought I would share…  Background: When you have a schema that has many promoted properties (or distinguished fields), or many elements that can be set via xpath expressions easily, it can be useful to simply start with a “template” document instance and populate the element content that you are interested in.  In this situation, you will of......

16899 of 19643 | Messages from Scratch with Embedded Resources - There have been several folks who have discussed how to create messages "from scratch" within an Orchestration context - you can read Matt's thoughts and check out a BizTalk documentation excerpt. This is a common question, and I had an additional technique I thought I would share...  Background: When you have a schema that has many promoted properties (or distinguished fields), or many elements that can be set via xpath expressions easily, it can be useful to simply start with a "template" document instance and populate the element content that you are interested in.  In this situation, you will often have a "Message Assignment" shape that looks something ......

16900 of 19643 | Recursion and FOR XML - Kent just published an example on how to get recursive XML structures (think employee-manager). The new version of the FOR XML whitepaper actually contains a section with such a sample (I need to get the MSDN team to publish it). I don`t want to spoil the content of the whitepaper here, but I would like to add some comments to Kent`s approach (I am sending some comments on minor coding issues to Kent directly). First, there is a recursion limit of 32 for executing recursive functions in SQL Server. This should not be a problem for most hierarchies, but somebody is bound to run into it. Secondly, since SQL is a declarative language, there is no guarantee that the select clause (the projectio......