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Graham Perrin

Doug Mahugh : Standards-Based Interoperability - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...ds-based-interoperability.aspx

interop standard ODF OOXML Excel spreadsheet OpenFormula

shared by Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Standards-Based Interoperability
  • 05 June 09
  • Interoperability without Standards
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • First, let’s consider how software interoperability works when it is not standards-based. Consider the various ways that four applications can share data, as shown in the diagram to the right.  There are six connections between these four applications, and each connection can be traversed in either direction, so there are 12 total types of interoperability involved.
  • As the number of applications increases, this complexity grows rapidly.  Double the number of applications to 8 total, and there will be 56 types of interoperability between them:
  • In the standards-based scenario, the standard itself is the central mechanism for enabling interoperability between implementations: This diagram is much simpler
  • Here’s where those workarounds will need to be implemented: Note the complexity of this diagram.
  • In the real world, interoperability is almost never achieved in this way.  Standards-based interoperability is much better approach for everyone involved,
  • whether that standard is an open one such as ODF (IS26300)
  • or a de-facto standard set by one popular implementation.
  • or Open XML (IS29500)
  • The core premise of open standards-based interoperability is this:
  • each application implements the published standard as written, and this provides a baseline for delivering interoperability.
  • the existence of a standard addresses many of the issues involved, and the other issues can be addressed
  • through standards maintenance, transparency of implementation details, and collaborative interoperability testing.
    • Graham Perrin
      Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
       
      Issues relating to CalDAV are well addressed in these ways.
  • there is no question that users of other products are massively surprised by
  • How this all applies to Office 2007 SP2 I covered last summer the set of guiding principles that we used to guide the work we did to support ODF in Office 2007 SP2.
  • applied in a specific order
  • I’d like to revisit the top two guiding principles
  • Guiding Principle #1: Adhere to the ODF 1.1 Standard
  • Guiding Principle #2: Be Predictable
  • Being predictable is also known as the principle of least astonishment.
  • What about Bugs and Deviations? Of course, the existence of a published standard doesn’t prevent interoperability bugs from occurring.
  • deviations from the requirements
  • All complex software has bugs, and some bugs can present significant challenges to interoperability.  Let’s consider the case that 3 of the 4 applications have bugs that affect interoperability, as shown in the diagram to the right.
  • Our approach to the transparency issue has been to document the details of our implementation through published implementer notes.
  • Interoperability Testing The final piece of the puzzle is hands-on testing
  • What else would you like to know about how Office approaches document format interoperability?
  • a standard (evolved and improved as reality demands) is the proper foundation for resolving interoperabilty
  • different interpretations
  • (1) their spreadsheets having their formulas lost when interchanged with Excel 2007
  • (2) not being able to handle the formulase received in Excel 2007's ODF output.
  • I am creating my own fantasy about the state of affairs
    • Graham Perrin
      Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
       
      :-)
  • it is far too early to declare it to be unsuccessful
  • I cannot fault the Microsoft approach as incorrect
  • I was at the year-ago DII meeting where the guiding principles were announced and their application to spreadsheet formulas described.  I applauded the principles and understood the reasoning for formulas.
  • How this would impact various groups of users and non-users (who still want to interoperate) of Office 2007 did not surface in my consciousness.
  • there is NO published standard for ODF spreadsheet formulas yet.
  • Nor is there any de-facto standard that everyone agrees on.
  • the “spaghetti diagram" method, with all of the complexity and risk of bugs that entails
  • No implementer we know of has attempted that
  • In the case of spreadsheet formulas, help is on the way -- OpenFormula is under development for use with ODF 1.2.
  • I’d like to keep this thread on-topic
  • I appreciate the post, very good
  • Visually I would rather frame it in terms of convergence, a spiral.
  • and user satisfaction.
  • I doubt someone would ever find a magic bullet to interoperability
  • New Comments to this post are disabled
    • Graham Perrin
      Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
       
      Hurrah!
  • © 2009 Microsoft Corporation
  • Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
     
    Diagrams here are eye-catching.
Gary Edwards

Slamming the door shut on MS OOXML - 0 views

lists.oasis-open.org/...msg00033.html

cdf interoperability iso odf odf-tc officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • So your goal is a networked world where metadata is routinely trashed by apps developed by those who are too dumb or otherwise disabled to preserve metadata and only the big boys get to do interoperability, right? So if I send you a document for your editing, I can't count on getting it back with xml:id attributes intact. No thanks, Patrick. That sounds way too much like how things have worked ever since office productivity software first came on the market. In your world, interoperability belongs only to those who can map features 1:1 with the most featureful apps. And that is precisely why OpenDocument never should have been approved as a standard. Your kind of interoperability makes ODF a de facto Sun Microsystems standard wearing the clothing of a de jure standard. Why not just standardize the whole world on Microsoft apps and be done with it? Are two monopolies maintained by an interoperability barrier between them better than one? Fortunately, we don't have to debate the issue because the Directives resolve the issue. You lose under the rules of the game.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Marbux on metadata and the language of universal interoperability: Few people are aware of the raging debate that has pushed ODF to the edge. The OASIS ODF TC is split between those who support Universal Interoperability, and those who insist on continuing with limited ODF interoperability.

    ODF (OpenDocument), formally known as Open Office XML, began it's standards life in the fall of 2002 when Sun submitted the OpenOffice file format to OASIS for consideration as a office suite XML fiel format standard. The work on ODF did not start off as a clean slate in that there were near 600 pages of application specific specification from day one of the standards work. The forces of universal interop have sought for years to separate ODF from the application specific features and implementation model of OpenOffice that began with those early specification volumes, and continues through the undue influence Sun continues to have over the ODF specification work.

    Many mistakenly believed that submission of ODF to ISO and subsequent approval as an international standard would provide an effective separation, putting ODF on the track of a truly universal file format.

    Marbux is one of those Universal Interop soldiers who has dug in his heels, cried to the heavens that enough is enough, and demanded the necessary changes to ODF interoperability language.

    This post he recently submitted to the OASIS ODF Metadata SC is a devastating rebuttal to the arguments of those who support the status quo of limited interoperability.

    In prior posts, marbux argues that ISO directives demand without compromise universal interoperability. This demand is also shared by the World Trade Organization directives regarding international trade laws and agreements. Here he brings those arguments together with the technical issues for achieving universal interop.

    It's a devastating argument.

Gary Edwards

Slashdot | OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF in desperate search for something that w... - 0 views

slashdot.org/article.pl

cdf foundation odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • This fight is a distraction. Recognize both formats as legacy defacto standards and move on. This is actually a very common precursor in a standards process. CDF provides an opportunity to do the job right. People should not be translating OOXML into ODF, there simply isn't the value there. It is much more likely that OOXML will be a live format in twenty years time than ODF. We have a common standards based document language today - HTML. OK so I have a bias here but there is much more HTML than anything else. HTML is just a document format and it is somewhat presentation oriented but modern XHTML is changing those problems.
  • The problem for "you" is that Microsoft is the one who has 400 million or so installs of the dominant de facto office suite in the planet. "You" can either try to get them to play nice with you by applying pressure intelligently, or you can organize an exciting jihad to stick it to them. In a make-believe world where companies choose technology based on, well, technical merits and openness, the second approach will usually work. In the real world though, the former option would have been a better idea. But when you have well-paid shills like Rob Weir (courtesy of IBM) and his co-religionists who rarely take a break from hating Microsoft (except for lame attempts at making fun [robweir.com] of Microsoft) it's difficult to get away from the join-us-or-die approach. It just feels so right, I guess. I'm going OT here but seriously, Weir is just the cat's meow. Every single time Microsoft has challenged his hyperbolic rants and outright lies he's essentially ignored them or just penned some more. He thinks the OpenDocument Foundation is an irrelevant fly-by-night fanboy club (which I guess is possible), but he has no problem quoting obscure African groups [robweir.com] and his groupie bloggers to prop up his "Microsoft is evil and Office sucks and remember, IBM had nothing to do with this post" arguments. If the man spent 1/10th as much time writing some code or documentation as he does bitching about the Office toolbar buttons, ODF would have conquered the world by now. With people like that at the helm it's not difficult to see why a document format controlled by a single company and an elite group of testy technorati has gotten to where it is now. Not that I think OOXML is a particularly good idea, but at least there's someone out there with the balls to point out that the emperor is buck naked. I guess they better get ready for the DoS attacks, hate mail and death threats.
  • Blame Sun for this. Sounds like a populist position, or maybe troll flamebait. I'll be generous and assume the former, despite the fact your post seems like a digest from an anti-ODF briefing paper. Disclosure: My job [sun.com] includes the task of receiving complaints about Sun and trying to get Sun to fix whatever causes the problem. If you have proof of any of your accusations, let me know. I may have some of my facts wrong below as I'm working from memory; I'd welcome correction. With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this. That is indeed the constant assertion that the three guys who comprise the Foundation make. However, I have personally asked members of the ODF working group at OASIS and they tell me its not so. The Foundation guys wanted to add structures to ODF to preserve untranslateable tags in translated documents so they could be regenerated on the reverse translation. Sounds OK at first glance, but in practice it results in very brittle software solutions that work well in demos but not in real life. The proposal was thus rejected by the whole working group (not just the Sun employees). Rejected, that is, in conversation. A complete solution was never proposed for voting. To say Sun would not allow it ignores the actual dynamic of the working group (see below). Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more. Naturally every member of a standards group in the traditional standards process is looking out for the code base where they implement a standard, and will have serious questions of any feature that they regard as unimplementable. The features actually put to a vote by the guys from the Foundation would have resulted in very brittle implementations, highly dependent on the version of MS Office with which they were coupled. It may have been possible to come up with a solution that reduced this problem, but the discussion was not sustained. The assertion you make is not true in the general case.They control the ODF technical committee Untrue. The ODF TC [oasis-open.org] can have no more than three members from any one organisation and is not under the control of any organisation. The Foundation guys actually flaunted that rule at one point and sent many, many more representatives - OASIS had to step in to fix it. That intervention is one of the issues they have with OASIS, in fact. Sun happens to employ the people who act as Chair and Secretary to the TC but the voting remains democratic.and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like. I've heard that interpretation of the patent non-assert covenant [oasis-open.org] that Sun has made regarding ODF, but it's untrue. Sun covenants not to enforce any patents against ODF implementations based on any spec it participates in. To the extent that versions of the spec after Sun's departure are based on version in which Sun was involved, that covenant remains in effect even in the unlikely event of Sun leaving the TC. Sun can't stop the TC from continuing its work. Are you relaying this all as hearsay, or do you actually have data to back up your accusations? If you have, I'd like to see it (genuinely).
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Sun currently has SIX voting members on the TC. This statement is crap and easily disproven by the facts of actualy voting records. It's also true that Sun members have voted as a block since December 16th, 2002 The Foundation, at the height of it's work sponsored 28 particpants. Never once did the Foudnation member vote as a block. Never. Fopundation member are responsible for the OASIS ODF Open Formula Sub Committee and the ODF Metadata Sub Committee. This work would not exist without the sponsorship of the Foundation. It is true that a rule change OASIS inititated in December of 2006 cut the sponsorship of Foundation members from 15 to 2. And no more than 2! this effectively ended the Foundation's role in OASIS. The rule change was the elimination of the 501c(3) exception. Under normal rules, OASIS Corporations can sponsor as many employees as they like under a single membership. Under 501c(3) IRS rules, volunteers are considered the equivalent of employees. All OASIS had to do was eliminate the 501c(3) membership category and the Foundation was dead. And this is exactly what they did.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft opens Outlook format, gives programs access to mail, calendar, contacts - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...cess_to_mail_calendar_contacts

Microsoft Outlook interop de facto standards

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Microsoft on Monday said it will provide patent- and license-free use rights to the format behind its Outlook Personal Folders opening e-mail, calendar, contacts and other information to a host of applications such as antimalware or cloud-based services.
  • Documenting and publishing the .pst format could open up entirely new feature sets for programs such as search tools for mining mailboxes for relevant corporate data, new security tools that scan .pst data for malicious software, or e-discovery tools for meeting compliance regulations, according to Microsoft officials.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 09
     
    The ripples from the European Commission v. Microsoft decision continue to flow. The catch, of course, is that the patent rights will almost certainly be subject to the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, a weasel-worded document that actually grants no rights. http://law.bepress.com/unswwps/flrps/art71/ But someone with some clout will push that issue sooner or later.
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