What is a cloud computing platform? Is it simply automated provisioning systems coupled with a resource virtualization, where the workload is policy driven, and resources over committed and any resource contention handled by policy driven resolution? As it turns out technologies that p...

Now think about how organizations are starting to rely on Cloud-based services, such as Amazon S3 (storage) and Force.com (sales force automation). These services are not on-premises SOA service, so they are not in the SOA registry/repository. But the organization relies on these servi...

Robert Meek has written a book review about my Delphi 2009 Development Essentials, which is sold as paperback from Lulu.com, or offered as free bonus for anyone who purchases Delphi or one or more courseware manuals in PDF format from me.

The thing about book reviews, like movie reviews, is the interpretation by the reviewer is subjective. The trick is for you the review reader to work out does the reviewer have the same tastes and likes as you. If yes that should mean that the book review will be relevant to you potent...

Liquid XML Studio is a free graphical XSD Editor & XML Editor that can also be used to edit WSDL and other XML based standards. It has a simple intuitive interface that makes developing for the complex W3C XML Schema (XSD) standard quick and easy. A validator is provided that strictly ...

BPEL or Business Process Execution Language is an XML and Web standards-based SOA (service-oriented architecture) standard that allows business people to combine services into automated processes. As described in this review, Active Endpoints' ActiveBPEL product family includes a visua...

The folks at Active Endpoints carefully thought through how to support users in their move to WS-BPEL 2.0. This resulted in the ability of BPEL 1.1 and WS-BPEL 2.0 processes to co-exist during design, test, and execution in both the designer and the engine. This lets users migrate thei...

Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is a popular native XML database. It can be accessed through the shell or within another program. This month I will show you how to use BDB XML in Java. BDB XML has similar APIs for all supported languages such as Java and C++, therefore the ideas presented in...

HTML forms are one of the best-known techniques for gathering data from a user and submitting that data to a server. However, HTML forms are only simple tools and don't natively support some of the features needed by current Web applications such as sophisticated data validation. Also,...

Apache Software Foundation's Xindice is an open source native XML database. Apache provides great software to developers such as the Apache Web Server, Tomcat Application Server, Cocoon Web Development Framework, Struts Framework, Ant, and many more under an open source license. Apache...

XML Development - the term can mean many different things given the technologies currently available. At the center of it all is XML Schemas, DTDs and instance documents. Building out from the base there's XSL, Web Services and XQuery just to name a few. Because of this, it's not uncom...

XML's surface-level simplicity hides a deceptively complex beast. At first glance, creating an XML document does not take a lot of effort. Create some tags, ensure they are well-formed, and that's it. Throw in a DTD or Schema and now there are a set of rules against which the document ...

If you haven't heard of BlueDragon, you're either new to the ColdFusion/CFML community or you've been under a rock somewhere. Back in September 2002, New Atlanta forever changed the CF landscape when it introduced BlueDragon 3.0.

Datawatch recently released version 3.0 of VorteXML Designer. In addition to schema support, this new version includes several updates and features that further simplify the process of generating XML by enriching any text document.

A successful XML publishing project inspired this article. The project's leader, who claims that the financial return gained for his company 'made his career' there, achieved success for two reasons: he focused on the right goals and executed the project in the right way.

What do you get if you cross an early 21st-century visionary CTO with a late 19th-century employee of the Edison Electric Light Company? Answer: a fantastic keynote address at Web Services Edge 2003 West, held in Santa Clara last month.

On September 24 the W3C set in motion a process that could radically change not only how XML is used and how XML-based applications are developed - but XML itself right down to its beloved (or detested) pointyangle brackets.

XML Schemas are quickly becoming the industry standard that Document Type Definitions (DTDs) used to be. Much has been written about the advantages of XML Schemas over DTDs.

With Oracle9i RDBMS Release 2, Oracle has moved further along on the road to a more complete implementation of XML in its database. This release also marks, I believe, one of Oracle's most significant uses of the object-relational capabilities of the database.

This year's JavaOne provided a good overview of the state of Web services today. This show report focuses on XML and Web services coverage at the event.

Aggregation in XML is not trivial. Altova's XMLSPY offers a number of features facilitating this process. This article presents an example, including best practices and practical programming techniques - especially useful for those who don't like typing a lot of angle brackets.

Over the last few years XML has become the standard for moving data across the Web. Relational databases, application servers, and operating systems such as .NET make XML a key part of their infrastructure and an integral part of their business plan for the future.

I recently undertook an extremely ambitious project in which I decided to convert an entire application user interface from Internet Explorer to the Flash-based .swf (pronounced 'swiff') format.

'Java and XML - portable code and portable data.' Even though this saying has been around since Java developers began using XML, developers have always faced a general XML programming-related productivity problem: manipulating XML content is rather different from manipulating Java obj...

When SYS-CON Media's sister company, SYS-CON Events, began preparing last year for this spring's 'XML Edge' Conference & Expo, one consideration was paramount: every effort in the nine-month preparation cycle should be geared toward making it indisputably the world's largest independen...

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 provides an out-of-box solution for integrating internal systems and external business partners. BizTalk Server 2002 is its second generation, succeeding BizTalk Server 2000. It is built on top of a core Microsoft Windows 2000-centric infrastructure runnin...

SOAP defines a set of serialization rules for encoding datatypes in XML. All data is serialized as elements rather than attributes. Attributes are only used for structural metadata; for example, when references are needed.

If you're a developer looking for a quick and useful reference on some of the fundamental standards around XML, look no more. In a handy paperback edition priced at $24.99, Essential XML Quick Reference from Addison-Wesley is a great buy. Regardless of which programming language you us...

Two foundation technologies, Java and XML, represent the marriage of portable code and data. A key ingredient of a successful marriage is compatibility. XML and a number of XML-based vocabularies are being used extensively as the standard data-exchange mechanism (and beyond) by both st...

XML is an accepted standard for transferring ASCII data over the Internet. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) allows the secure transfer of documents by encrypting communication between two parties. Client certificates like X.509 certificates allow a sender's identity to be verified, i.e., whe...

As a client/server application developer, I've often had to evaluate third-party user interface tools and weigh the value their functionality provides versus their cost and the inherent problems of integrating them within the application I was building.

Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) is a set of XML-based tags that can be added to existing Web-based applications, enhancing the user interface through interactive speech recognition.

Developers, and users, generally agree that the easiest medium through which to digest data is a graphical one. This rule is particularly true now, considering the volume of data that can be more easily obtained from various distributed data sources using either SQL or XML as a con...

The XML Schema Definition Language solves a number of problems posed with Document Type Definitions. Because DTDs prompted much confusion and complaining among XML developers, the W3C set about creating a new standard for defining a document's structure.

While I wandered, head down, among the detritus of the post dot-com era, a new world order was forming. When I looked up, I found the technical world rallying under a new banner - Web services. Savior or hype? I had to know. What better place to learn than the world's largest Web servi...

I've been in the XML world for about two years now - a dinosaur at today's rate. Still, I have problems with understanding conceptual and syntax issues of WSDL and XML Schema - especially the latter. In addition to being complex, XML Schema and WSDL are relatively new (or soon to be ne...

While XML is universally hailed as the most open methodology for describing and declaring data, technologists and vendors are still trying to find the means to implement the data the standard provides - particularly as the standard has continued to evolve and become more powerful. Two ...

HiT Software provides a line of standards-based XML and SQL middleware for application development and systems integration. HiT's Allora product line provides bidirectional XML access to databases and supports standard DOM/SAX parsers and, optionally, is accessible via SOAP interfa...

XML databases are different from traditional databases, and they require a new set of features and metrics for evaluating them. In my last column (XML-J, Vol. 3, issue 2) I talked about native XML database management systems (XDBMS), and I'd like to follow up with how they differ from...

Professional XML Web Services isn't really an XML book, but more a pure Web services book. The XML part is because XML is used to represent Web services (in the WSDL, for example). The book covers many types of Web services, not just XML Web services (a term that's like a binary execut...