XRX: Performing Updates This is part 3 of a series in which I’m trying to implement a RESTful social bookmarking web service using the XRX (XForms, REST, XQuery) architecture. I’ve covered setting up queries in eXist and using Orbeon to expose those queries with nice URLs in the previous parts. This time I’m going to look at how to handle PUT and POST to make a read/write web service.… read more Jeni Tennison

Interview: Google Open Sources Protocol Buffers Data messaging formats represent the life-blood of any distributed application. The ability to pass information back and forth between disparate systems becomes crucial for any organization, but for companies such as Google, the challenge of setting up communications between the thousands of different servers that host the various Google services forced the need for a specialized format that met their needs in particular.<… read more Kurt Cagle

What are they so scared of? Why are these people so scared of openness? This may seem a strange and provocative thing to say. Surely ODF is the open technology and OOXML is the proprietary technology? Surely we know this because "ISO" is the organization which is just the puppet of MicroSoft while OASIS is a bastion of community openness!… read more Rick Jelliffe

What are they so scared of? Why are these people so scared of openness? This may seem a strange and provocative thing to say. Surely ODF is the open technology and OOXML is the proprietary technology? Surely we know this because "ISO" is the organization which is just the puppet of MicroSoft while OASIS is a bastion of community openness!… read more Rick Jelliffe

Simple Pretty Printing with XSLT The other day a coworker asked about a simple way to format an XML file. Basically, he just wanted to get some nicely indented output to look at. At first he try get things working with Eclipse's XML editor. From...… read more Eric Larson

AtomServer helps serve up AtomPub The most interesting development within the XML world of late is AtomPub. It abstracts the details (however simple they may be) of REST and provides them in a well specified protocol. Instead of writing home grown RESTfull web services, merely...… read more Taylor Cowan

Assertions in new XSD 1.1 draft The new XSD 1.1 draft has some revisions to the assertions system. The traditional argument against XSD 1.0 was that it had too little bang per buck: 1.1 has more bang, but more buck.… read more Rick Jelliffe

A standard for openness? I suggest..an ISO standard giving definitions for different kinds of openness. Openness is a motherhood term now, so of course there will be surprises and debate about what kind of motherhood we actually mean. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that RAND-z and RF is necessary but not sufficient for openness, and that governments embarking on an open standard policy need to put in place some patent-limitation plan which would bring existing, market dominating, royalty-bearing standards into the RAND-z fold by, say, 2010. This necessarily will mean that some successful consortia and even some SCs within ISO will have the ground cut out from under them… read more Rick Jelliffe

OSCON for FREE! I am offering a novel idea about Open Source. Ric Johnson

Grouping in XQuery One of the really convenient features introduced in XSLT 2.0 is Grouping. It is a typical second-generation change in a programming language: Not essential for the language itself (grouping can be done by hand using techniques such as the Muenchian… read more Erik Wilde

XML makes you stoopid! Everyone is missing the forest for the trees on Google Protcol Buffers not using XML. Ric Johnson

Google hates XML Goolge does not know how to use XML - in fact it seems the HATE it. Ric Johnson

Why M. David Peterson is WRONG The truth in blogging: follow the money to know where your favorite posting really are saying. Ric Johnson

Microsoft credible as blushing debutante at the standards ball? Effective participation in standards bodies involves quite specific commitment and development of expertise, it is not a generic capability that can be instantly redeployed, Rumsfield-style, to trouble spots. For example, while knowledge of OASIS procedures may help you understand some… read more Rick Jelliffe

Using SwiXML and Substance 5 SwiXML is Wolf Paulus' XML User Interface languge (XUI or XUL) which uses the regularity of the Java Swing GUI libraries to allow very lightweight implementation: XML elements are used for JComponents, XML attributes are used for properties (e.g. <frame… read more Rick Jelliffe

Why Jeff Atwood Is Right Firstly, I, like many of you, am glad to see that Dare Obasanjo's indefinite hiatus from the blogosphere was short lived. Secondly, while I most certainly agree with the premise of his recent "In Defense of XML" post -- which… read more M. David Peterson

CherryPy 3.1 Released CherryPy 3.1 is out and there are some exciting new features. The first exciting piece is the Web Site Process Bus. Robert Brewer had come up with an idea to create a generic server management API to help make management… read more Eric Larson

10% of top Google product features are broken every week. Result of Google culture - Roll out cool features, not focus on quality? My saga on problems with GMail continue. Despite of the -ve feedback ("GMail is working fine", "GMail is awesome', "Not sure why you are complaining GMail?" etc) to my posts, I continue to see the problems with GMail. I am… read more Hari K. Gottipati

RDF Parsing in XSLT During the recent discussion of the OAI-ORE drafts (which use RDF), the claim was made that RDF is serialized in RDF/XML and thus could be considered an XML representation of the underlying data model. My response to that was that… read more Erik Wilde

Freedom in Web Applications It is interesting to see the progression of free software along side the proliferation of the web. When I first started programming, I got involved with a web CMS I used in my contract work. I would write a new… read more Eric Larson

Associating Resources with Namespaces The W3C just published a new TAG Finding called Associating Resources with Namespaces. Here's the abstract: This Finding addresses the question of how ancillary information (schemas, stylesheets, documentation, etc.) can be associated with a namespace. I don't quite understand why… read more Erik Wilde

Permanent URLs for things in the real world At the Semantic Technologies conference in San Jose I attended an interesting presentation entitled “persistent identifiers for the real web”. XML often uses URLs for identifying schema namespaces, and I suppose could be credited for influencing RDF’s practice of using… read more Taylor Cowan

Castoff hints? Rethinking interoperability and fidelity First some jargon (from the Glossary of Typesetting Terms or Harrod's Librarians' Glossary full props to Google.) Castoff: The calculation the number of typeset pages a manuscript will make, based on a character count. Proof: An impression made from type… read more Rick Jelliffe