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Gary Edwards

The Merging of SOA and Web 2.0: 2 - 0 views

www.eweek.com/...0,1895,2158559,00.asp

2.0 ajax mashup odf ooxml soa web

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07 - Cached
  • In many cases, the mashups' data or information sources have incompatible formats so integration becomes a problem.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
     
    Great article series from eWeek.  A must read.  But it all comes down to interoperability across two stack models:  The Microsoft Vista Stack, and an alternative Open Stack model that does not yet exist!

    Incompatible formats become a nightmare for the kind of integration any kind of SOA implementation depends on, let alone the Web 2.0 AJAX MashUps this article focuses on.

    I wonder why eWEEK didn't include the Joe Wilcox Micrsoft Watch Article, "Obla De OBA Da".  Joe hit hard on the connection between OOXML and the Vista Stack.  He missed the implications this will have on MS SOA solutions.  Open Source SOA solutions will be locked out of the Vista Stack.  And with 98% or more of existing desktop business processes bound to MSOffice, the transition of these business processes to the Vista Stack will no doubt have a dramatic impact on the marketplace.  Before the year is out, we'll see Redmond let loose with a torrent of MS SOA solutions.  The only reason they've held back is that they need to first have all the Vista Stack pieces in place.

    I don't think Microsoft is being held back by OOXML approval at ISO either.  ISO approval might have made a difference in Europe in 2006, but even there, the EU IDABC has dropped the ISO requirement.  For sure ISO approval means nothing in the US, as California and Massachusetts have demonstrated. 

    All that matters to State CIO's is that they can migrate exisiting docuemnts and business processes to XML.  The only question is, "Which XML?  OOXML, ODF or XHTML+".

    The high fidelity conversion ratio and non disruptive OOXML plugin for MSOffice has certainly provided OOXML with the edge in this process. <br
Gary Edwards

The Merging of SOA and Web 2.0: 3 - 0 views

www.eweek.com/...0,1895,2158560,00.asp

odf ooxml soa web-2.0

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07 - Cached
  • the SOA world is we're reaching the services tipping point—from a focus on building services to consuming services. This has given rise to the mashup. A mashup is a flexible composition of services within a rich user interface environment."
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Bloomberg is on fire here!
  • "This is where the information assets and people productivity issues come together,"
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      But does IBM have a stategy for SOA that includes Lotus Notes? Or will the MS Exchange/SharePoint OOXML juggernaut knock out the enterprise collaboration king?
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 24 Aug 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 24 Aug 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

» Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee Unplugged: Semantic Web better than APIs for d... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07 - Cached
  • the general idea is for there to be a layer of data on the Internet that he calls the “data bus” and the way the data bus works is not too different from how we’ve heard Microsoft’s WinFS filesystem described where connectivity between related data items is organic rather than synthesized. For example, whereas today, a mashup developer may have to call upon two APIs to show where a specific Starbucks is on a map, the Semantic Web approach might involve little more than a simple query of that data bus using a query technology called SparQL.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07
     
    Great explanation of the Semantic Web, RDF, SparQL versus big vendor Web API's
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch Finally Gets it - It's the Business Applications!- Obla De OBA Da - 1 views

www.microsoft-watch.com/...obla_de_oba_da.html

odef odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument vista-stack

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jul 07 - Cached
  • To be fair, Microsoft seeks to solve real world problems with respect to helping customers glean more value from their information. But the approach depends on enterprises adopting an end-to-end Microsoft stack—vertically from desktop to server and horizontally across desktop and server products. The development glue is .NET Framework, while the informational glue is OOXML.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      OOXML is the transport - a portable XML document model where the "document" is the interface into content/data/ and media streaming.

      The binding model for OOXML is "Smart Documents", and it is proprietary!

      Smart Documents is how data, streaming media, scripting-routing-workflow intelligence and metadata is added to any document object.

      Think of the ODF binding model using XForms, XML/RDF and RDFA metadata. One could even use Jabber XMP as a binding model, which is how we did the Comcast SOA based Sales and Inventory Management System prototype.

      Interestingly, Smart Documents is based on pre written widgets that can simply be dragged, dropped and bound to any document object. The Infopath applicaiton provides a highly visual means for end users to build intelligent self routing forms. But Visual Studio .NET, which was released with MSOffice 2007 in December of 2006. makes it very easy for application and line of business integration developers to implement very advanced data binding using the Smart Document widgets.

      I would also go as far to say that what separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 is going to be primarily Smart Documents.

       Yes, there are .NET Framework Libraries and Vista Stack dependencies like XAML that will also provide a proprietary "Vista Stack" only barrier to interoperability, but Smart Documents is a killer.

      One company that will be particularly hurt by Smart Documents is Google. The reason is that the business value of Google Search is based on using advanced and closely held proprietary algorithms to provide metadata structure for unstrucutred documents.

      This was great for a world awash in unstructured documents. By moving the "XML" structuring of documents down to the author - workgroup - workflow application level though, the world will soon enough be awash in highly structured documents that have end user metadata defining document objects and
  • Microsoft seeks to create sales pull along the vertical stack between the desktop and server.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      The vertical stack is actually desktop - server - device - web based.  The idea of a portable XML document is that it must be able to transition across the converged application space of this sweeping stack model.

      Note that ODF is intentionally limited to the desktop by it's OASIS Charter statement.  One of the primary failings of ODF is that it is not able to be fully implemented in this converged space.  OOXML on the other hand was created exactly for this purpose!

      So ODF is limited to the desktop, and remains tightly bound to OpenOffice feature sets.  OOXML differs in that it is tightly bound to the Vista Stack.

      So where is an Open Stack model to turn to?

      Good question, and one that will come to haunt us for years to come.  Because ODF cannot move into the converged space of desktop to server to device to the web information systems connected through portable docuemnt/data transport, it is unfit as a candidate for Universal File Format.

      OOXML is unfi as a UFF becuase it is application - platform and vendor bound.

      For those of us who believe in an open and unencumbered universal file format, it's back to the drawing board.

      XHTML (XHTML CSS3 RDF) is looking very good.  The challenge is proving that we can build plugins for MSOffice and OpenOffice that can fully implement XHTML .  Can we conver the billions of binary legacy documents and existing MSOffice bound business processes to XHTML ?

      I think so.  But we can't be sure until the da Vinci proves this conclusively.

      One thign to keep in mind though.  The internal plugins have already shown that it is possible to do multiple file formats.  OOXML, ODF, and XML encoded RTF all have been shown to work, and do so with a level of two way conversion fidelity demanded by existing business processes.

      So why not try it with XHTML , or ODEF (the eXtended version of ODF en
  • Microsoft's major XML-based format development priority was backward compatibility with its proprietary Office binary file formats.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      This backwards compatibility with the existing binary file formats isn't the big deal Micrsoft makes it out to be.  ODF 1.0 includes a "Conformance Clause", (Section 1.5) that was designed and included in the specification exactly so that the billions of binary legacy documents could be converted into ODF XML.

      The problem with the ODF Conformance Clause is that the leading ODF application, OpenOffice,  does not fully support and implement the Conformance Clause. 

      The only foreign elements supported by OpenOffice are paragraphs and text spans.  Critically important structural document characteristics such as lists, fields, tables, sections and page breaks are not supported!

      This leads to a serious drop in conversion fidelity wherever MS binaries are converted to OpenOffice ODF.

      Note that OpenOffice ODF is very different from MSOffice ODF, as implemented by internal conversion plugins like da Vinci.  KOffice ODF and Googel Docs ODF are all different ODF implementations.  Because there are so many different ways to implement ODF, and still have "conforming" ODF documents, there is much truth to the statement that ODF has zero interoperabiltiy.

      It's also true that OOXML has optional implementation areas.  With ODF we call these "optional" implementation areas "interoperabiltiy break points" because this is exactly where the document exchange  presentation fidelity breaks down, leaving the dominant market ODF applicaiton as the only means of sustaining interoperabiltiy.

      With OOXML, the entire Vista Stack - Win32 dependency layer is "optional".  No doubt, all MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub applications will implement the full sweep of proprietary dependencies.    This includes the legacy Win32 API dependencies (like VML, EMF, EMF ), and the emerging Vista Stack dependencies that include Smart Documents, XAML, .NET 3.0 Libraries, and DrawingML.

      MSOffice 2007 i
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Microsoft's backwards compatibility priority means the company made XML-based format decisions that compromise the open objectives of XML. Open Office XML is neither open nor XML.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      True, but a tricky statement given that the proprietary OOXML implementation is "optional".  It is theoretically possible to implement Ecma 376 without the prorpietary dependencies of MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub - Vista Stack "OOXML".

      In fact, this was first demonstrated by the legendary document processing - plugin architecture expert, Florian Reuter.

      Florian has the unique distinction of being the primary architect for two major plugins: the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, and, the Novell OOXML Translator plugin for OpenOffice!

      It is the Novell OOXML Translator Plugin for OpenOffice that first demonstrated that Ecma 376 could be cleanly implemented without the MSOffice application-platform-vendor specific dependencies we find in every MSOffice OOXML document.

      So while Joe is technically correct here, that OOXML is neither open nor XML, there is a caveat.  For 95% of all desktops and near 100% of all desktops in a workgroup, Joe's statment holds true.  For all practical concerns, that's enough.  For Microsoft's vaunted marketing spin machine though, they will make it sound as though OOXML is actually open and application-platform-vendor independent.


  • Microsoft got there first to protect Office.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      No. I disagree. Microsoft needs to move to XML structured documents regardless of what others are doing. The binary document model is simply unable to be useful to any desktop- to server- to device- to the web- transport!

      Many wonder what Microsoft's SOA strategy is. Well, it's this: the Vista Stack based on OOXML-Smart Documents-.NET.

      The thing is, Microsoft could not afford to market a SOA solution until all the proprietary solutions of the Vista Stack were in place.

      The Vista Stack looks like this:

      ..... The core :: MSOffice <> OOXML <> IE <> The Exchange/SharePoint Hub

      ..... The services :: E/S HUb <> MS SQL Server <> MS Dynamics <> MS Live <> MS Active Directory Server <> MSOffice RC Front End

      The key to the stack is the OOXML-Smart Documents capture of EXISTING MSOffice bound business processes and documents.

      The trick for Microsoft is to migrate these existing business processes and documents to the E/S Hub where line of business developers can re engineer aging desktop LOB apps.

      The productivity gains that can be had through this migration to the E/S Hub are extraordinary.

      A little over a year ago an E/S Hub verticle market application called "Agent Achieve" came out for the real estate industry. AA competed against a legacy of twenty years of contact management based - MLS data connected desktop shrinkware applications. (MLS-Multiple Listing Service)

      These traditional desktop client/server productivity apps defined the real estate business process as far as it could be said to be "digital".  For the most part, the real estate transaction industry remains a paper driven process. The desktop stuff was only useful for managing clients and lead prospecting. No one could crack the electronic documents - electonic business transaction model.  This will no doubt change with the emer
  • By adapting XML
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      The requirements of these E/S Hub systems are XP, XP MSOffice 2003 Professional, Exchange Server with OWL (Outlook on the Web) , SharePoint Server, Active Directory Server, and at least four MS SQL Servers!

      In Arpil of 2006, Microsoft issued a harsh and sudden End-of-Life for all Windows 2000 - MSOffice 2000 systems in the real estate industry (although many industries were similarly impacted). What happened is that on a Friday afternoon, just prior to a big open house weekend, Microsoft issued a security patch for all Exchange systems. Once the patch was installed, end users needed IE 7.0 to connect to the Exchange Server Systems.

      Since there is no IE 7.0 made for Windows 2000, those users relying on E/S Hub applications, which was the entire industry, suddenly found themselves disconnected and near out of business.

      Amazingly, not a single user complained! Rather than getting pissed at Microsoft for the sudden and very disruptive EOL, the real estate users simply ran out to buy new XP-MSOffice 2003 systems. It was all done under the rational that to be competitive, you have to keep up with technology systems.

      Amazing. But it also goes to show how powerfully productive the E/S Hub applications can be. This wouldn't have happened if the E/S Hub applications didn't have a very high productivity value.

      When we visited Massachusetts in June of 2006, to demonstrate and test the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, we found them purchasing en mass E/S Hubs! These are ODF killers! Yet Microsoft sales people had convinced Massachusetts ITD that Exchange/SahrePoint was a simple to use eMail-calendar-portal system. Not a threat to anyone!

      The truth is that in the E/S Hub ecosystem, OOXML is THE TRANSPORT. ODF is a poor, second class attachment of no use at the application - document processing chain level.

      Even if Massachusetts had mandated ODF, they were only one E/S Hub Court Doc
  • Microsoft can offer businesses many of the informational sharing and mining benefits associated with the markup language while leveraging Office and supporting desktop and server products as the primary consumption conduit.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Okay, now Joe has the Micrsoft SOA bull by the horns.  Why doesn't he wrestle the monster down?
  • Microsoft will vie for the whole business software stack, a strategy that I believe will be indisputable by early 2009 at the latest.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Finally, someone who understands the grand strategy of levergaing the desktop monopoly into the converged space of server, device and web information systems.

      What Joe isn't watching is the way the Exchange/SharePoint Server connects to MS SQL Server, Active Directory Server, MS LIve and MS Dynamics.

      Also, Joe does not see the connection between OOXML as the portable XML document/data transport, and the insidiously proprietary Smart Documents metadata - data binding system that totally separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 OOXML!
  • I'm convinced that Office as a platform is an eventual dead end. But Microsoft is going to lead lots of customers and partners down that platform path.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Yes, but the new platform for busines process development is that of MSOffice <> Exchange/SharePoint Hub.

      The OOXML-Smart Docs transport replaces the old binary document with OLE and VBA Scripts and Macros functionality.  Which, for the sake of brevity we can call the lead Win32 API dependencies.

      One substantial difference is that OOXML-Smart Docs is Vista Stack ready, while the Win32 API dependencies were desktop bound.

      Another way of looking at this is to see that the old MSOffice platform was great for desktop application integration.  As long as the complete Win32 API was available (Windows MSOffice VBA run times), this platform was great for workgroups.  The Line of Business integrated apps were among the most brittle of all client/server efforts, bu they were the best for that generation.

      The Internet offers everyone a new way of integrating data, content and streaming media.  Web applications are capable of loosly coupled serving and consuming of other application services.  Back end systems can serve up data in a number of ways: web services as SOAP, web services as AJAX/REST, or XML data streams as in HTTPXMLRequest or Jabber P2P model.

      On the web services consumption side, it looks like AJAX/REST will be the block buster choice, if the governance and security issues can be managed.

      Into this SOA mash Microsoft will push with a sweeping integrated stack model.  Since the Smart Docs part of the OOXML-Samrt Docs transport equation is totally proprietary, but used throughout the Vista Stack, it will provide Microsoft with an effective customer lockin - OSS lockout point.

  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
     
    Great article series from eWeek.  A must read.  But it all comes down to interoperability across two stack models:  The Microsoft Vista Stack, and an alternative Open Stack model that does not yet exist!

    Incompatible formats become a nightmare for the kind of integration any kind of SOA implementation depends on, let alone the Web 2.0 AJAX MashUps this article focuses on.

    I wonder why eWEEK didn't include the Joe Wilcox Micrsoft Watch Article, "Obla De OBA Da".  Joe hit hard on the connection between OOXML and the Vista Stack.  He missed the implications this will have on MS SOA solutions.  Open Source SOA solutions will be locked out of the Vista Stack.  And with 98% or more of existing desktop business processes bound to MSOffice, the transition of these business processes to the Vista Stack will no doubt have a dramatic impact on the marketplace.  Before the year is out, we'll see Redmond let loose with a torrent of MS SOA solutions.  The only reason they've held back is that they need to first have all the Vista Stack pieces in place.

    I don't think Microsoft is being held back by OOXML approval at ISO either.  ISO approval might have made a difference in Europe in 2006, but even there, the EU IDABC has dropped the ISO requirement.  For sure ISO approval means nothing in the US, as California and Massachusetts have demonstrated. 

    All that matters to State CIO's is that they can migrate exisiting docuemnts and business processes to XML.  The only question is, "Which XML?  OOXML, ODF or XHTML+".

    The high fidelity conversion ratio and non disruptive OOXML plugin for MSOffice has certainly provided OOXML with the edge in this process. <br
Gary Edwards

Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge : Office 2.0 and Google Apps - 0 views

weblog.infoworld.com/...013777.html

cdf html odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 07 - Cached
  • the fact is that Redmond could own this new space if it wanted to. All it would need to do is push interoperability and integration between lightweight Web versions of Office applications and its desktop fatware. Advanced features would be absent from the lightweight versions, but the company could ensure any Office doc would load on the Web -- whatever new desktop service packs and upgrades might appear -- and online document management could be integrated with Windows for offline access.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 07
     
    Great quote from Eric Knorr.  He hits the nail on the head here, pointing out the problem Office 2.0  Web Apps and SaaS apps face:  If these Web wonders have interoperability and high fidelity document exchange with MSOffice, their collaborative features are value added wonders for existing business processes and workgroup-workflow scenarios.  If, on the other hand they lack this level of interop - integration with MSOffice documents and processes, the value add becomes a problematic split in a business process.  The only way to overcome that kind of a split is to take the entire process.  Which is difficult for lightweight mashup happy web wonders to do.

    Which leaves each and every one of these Office 2.0 - Web 2.0 - Saas Apps vulnerable to Microsoft.  As long as Micrsoft owns the interop-integration keys to MSOffice, the web wonders live a precarious life.  At any time Microsoft can swoop in and take it all.

    Today, the MSOffice OOXML file format displays perfectly in a browser.  It's 100% web ready, but only the MS Stack of applications gets to play.  Web wonders are not likely to recieve a Redmond invite now or ever.

    Which brings us to the issue of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice.  da Vinci is a clone of the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, and fully leverages the same internal conversion process that OOXML enjoys.  It can achieve the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion that OOXML is capable of.  Maybe even better. 

    The problem for da Vinci isn't conversion fidlelity.  Nor is it capturing  business process important VBa scripts, macros, OLE, and security settings.  da Vinci can do that just fine.  The problem is that da Vinci cannot pipe MSOffice developer platform documents into ODF!!  For the love of five generic eXtensions, called the iX "interoperability enhancements", which the OASIS ODF TC blew off, ODF
Gary Edwards

Most Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools In Business - Technology News by Infor... - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml

exchange iso microsoft msoffice oasis odf ooxml opendocument openxml sharepoint vista xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 07 - Cached
  • How should an IT team start thinking about an Enterprise 2.0 strategy? One way is to carve it into two main areas. The first is Web-based information sharing--think business versions of Wikipedia, MySpace, and Flickr. A sizable minority of companies are finding effective business uses for blogs, wikis, syndicated feeds, pervasive search, social networking, collaborative content portals like SharePoint, and mashups that use easier-to-integrate APIs and fast-response development techniques such as Ajax. One example: Wikis, which let multiple people access and edit a document online, are widely used at 6% of companies in our survey and used effectively by a few employees at 25% of companies. The second area is voice and messaging, where voice over IP, instant messaging, presence, videoconferencing, and unified communications can make it possible to connect people in more relevant ways. Unified communications entails the blending of voice calls, video, and messages, coupled with functionality like embedded click-to-call links in documents and contact lists and the ability to see if colleagues and partners are available to chat. It's widely used at 13% of companies surveyed and effectively by a few at 24%.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 07
     
    Great coverage from InformationWeek about the emerging Enterprise 2.0 arena.  Author Michael Hoover does not get too deep into the Information Processing Chain, as exampled by the integrated Vista Stack of desktop, server, device,Internet systems and services.  But he provides a more than adequate framework for evaluating chain components.

    As the ODF - OOXML battle contiues to expand, engulfing swallowing and swamping near everythign in it's path, the day is not too far off when the battle will move to the center of Enterprise 2.0 considerations.  It has to.  XML Hubs are how these converging technologies are going to be gathered, integrated and configured to impact rapidly changing business processes.  There has to be a universal transport in these systems that all applications can work, and nothig matches the highly portable and interactive document/data capabilities of ODF and OOXML.  They alone own the desktop prodcutivity environment migration to XML.  And it will be through XML - RDF/XML that the Hubs finally integrate the flow of information between desktops, servers, devices and Internet systems.

    ~ge~

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