apple quietly put in SOAP support in their updated apple script environment for OS X 10.1. now we are cooking. the (self declared) “biggest UNIX vendor by the end of the year” joins the frenzy that is SOAP. welcome apple. with so much support under its belt, SOAP will be ubiquitous before you know whats going on.
Tag: semweb
Critical Discussion Tools for the Web
Developed for the Foresight Institute to enable critical discussions and enhance productivity for those using the web, CritSuite takes vital steps toward a truly connected and interactive Web structure.
CritSuite consists of 3 pieces of integrated software which allow individuals to comment on and view existing hypertext documents (CritLink), to navigate the Web using a graphical interface (CritMap), and to archive email exchanges using the features of hypertext (CritMail).
Web navigation using CritSuite may be accomplished in 1 of 3 ways: by following a link in the document being viewed in the browser; by entering an URL in the CritLink location field at the top of each screen; or by selecting a link directly using the visual interface of CritMap. Each of the navigation methods are synchronized, i.e. when a new link is selected, CritLink and CritMap will each display the new site.
xanadu architecture
In the Beginning was the Docuverse: The docuverse can be thought of as a infinite number line with all the information it contains or ever will contain strung out along the line. Since the number line is infinitely divisible, we can insert new material at any point, similar to how real numbers work on a number line. We can also refer to a portion of the information, whether it exists today or will someday, using a (position, width) tuple.
SOAP for local app integration
“Jon Udell” wrote in message
news:3B4B2DC3.796B82ED@monad.net…
> bgsmith@bendcable.com wrote:
> > It is also interesting to read Dave Winer’s perspective:
I did. And I don’t entirely agree with Dave. Once you start thinking in terms of web services (and your language supports this in a seamless way) a whole lot of cross-language problems just go away. Now, this may not be the best performer (having SOAP flying around in-machine) but it really DOES work. I like it because its a loose integration (“objects” invoking each other via HTTP). I have a desktop app right now that has a process running in Ruby and one running in Visual Basic and they communicate with each other via HTTP in machine (both Ruby and VB have their own web servers). Its not even SOAP yet, but that’s my direction. I do all the complex OO stuff in Ruby, and use VB for a nice (native) UI wrapper (so I don’t have to try and integrate the win32 api into my Ruby app or use TK). The VB stuff is only going to take 3 weeks to write. If I move this app to another platform, I just throw away the VB part and replace it with something for that platform (like Objective C or Java on Mac OS/X). The app works wonders…with Ruby dynamically serving HTML to the ActiveX IE control wrapped in a native Windows application (complete with task bar integration, OLE drag-n-drop, and desktop toolbars).
One issue I realize that comes up is having to know what language environment (or app) is on what TCP port. This could get really busy (with 100s of ports used by running pieces of applications). One idea I was toying with was developing SOAP over multicast IP in machine. That way the SOAP requests would travel over more of a data bus architecture than a point-to-point (HTTP) architecture and each language environment could listen and grab appropriate request/replies (kind of like an ethernet).
Take this across a network and things get really cool 😉 (BTW: I realize that some of this kind of work is actually being done by the XML Protocol (XMLP) group at the W3C)
What I find particularly hopeful (if quixotic) about Mono is that it aims to bring an open source CLR not just to Unix/Linux, but to Windows as well. And not just the CLR, but key .NET Framework ingredients like WinForms and ADO.NET, which are excluded from the MS shared-source version.
If you think all this stuff defines the next-generation platform, client-side as well server-side — and I do — then it’s imperative to have a fully open version, and in fact it matters more on Windows, in my view, although that is not Mono’s primary objective of course.
If the open source approach does not get unleashed on the client side in a major way, but confines itself purely to the realm of cloud services, then open source can remain viable, but will be missing its largest opportunity.
www 9 / 10 papers
Web service user interface
its lets create a standard day. wsui is a vendor-neutral standard that enables application developers and sites to deliver entire applications over the Internet as Web services.
huh?
my reading of the spec, which is indeed nicely short, brings me to the analysis that wsui will
- facilitate integration on the gui level
- provide default actions like start, edit, admin
- provide a default style sheet for appearance
- provide default variables for user auth etc
with these properties wsui could come in handy to give user-machine web service interactions a boost. i think the significance of machine-machine web services is way overblown. more likely, they will make their first appearance as human-visible portal parts because humans tend to be more forgiving with less than perfect results. web services will have to prove their reliability with human interaction first before they will be deployed on purely machine-machine transactions.
wsui may therefore shape what users perceive of web services. it will be interesting to watch whether a proposal from a relatively unknown player will garner the attention it needs to be widely adopted. one further wonders whether vendors really have abandoned their traditional (highly profitable) lock-in strategies and don’t just pay lip service to interop on the wire level (like they do with soap). mix and match of components on the gui level would be unheard of, since it levels the playing field so much its scary.. so i am rather skeptical about the success of this proposal.. time will tell.
JXTA, JAX, .Net, ONE.. What a mess
I am still thinking about what the rest of the world will do to answer .net. In the process I have come across so many new acronyms it makes you puke.
- JXTA seems to be a peer to peer framework for the java language.
- JAX (Java API for XML)
- ONE (Open Network Environment)
Apparently Dave Winer is
working on a big-picture road map for XML storage, membership and other cool related stuff. It’s a technical, economic and political document. It’s not wussy. A declaration of independence from our Friends Up North. We can’t get locked in the trunk with the rest of our friends, there’s simply not enough room for comfort. We like lots of space.
Hailstorm alternatives
Dave Winer’s xmlStorageSystem is a proposal to implement a hailstorm like cloud to store xml data. Bery interesting. I hope this gets broad support. Google has already some juicy stuff.
xns.org has been developing xns for several years and aims for the hailstorm space. it seems like every day brings a new initiative in the web services arena. note to self: i ought to write up a comparison of the various identity services that are being developed:
- hailstorm
- xmlstoragesystem
- xns
oh my!
Gregor J. Rothfuss 