Glossary | XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution


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	XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution By Frank P. Coyle
	Table of Contents

.NET: A Microsoft development framework that integrates earlier Microsoft technologies with newer technologies built around XML. Microsoft's .NET packages earlier COM+ component services and the ASP Web Development framework with XML and support for XML protocols such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.

ANSI (American National Standards Institute): The United States government body responsible for approving U.S. standards in many different areas, including computers and communications.

API (application program interface): The calling conventions by which an application accesses the services of a software library. An API provides a level of abstraction between the application and the library to ensure code portability.

ASC X12 (Accredited Standards Committee X12): The U.S. standards organization responsible for defining national and industry EDI messaging protocols.

B2B (business-to-business): Electronic commerce between businesses, replacing the exchange of paper documents.

B2C (business-to-consumer): Electronic commerce between businesses and their consumers, usually through a Web browser.

B2E (business-to-employee): Communication between an organization and its workers using the Internet and related technologies.

BizTalk: Both a Microsoft framework for XML-based B2B e-commerce and the name of the Windows-based server that supports the BizTalk Framework. Related to BizTalk is the Web site www.biztalk.org that acts as a repository for XML schemas that describe the structure of BizTalk documents for various businesses and business processes.

C# (pronounced "C sharp"): An object-oriented language that allows programmers to build applications for the new Microsoft .NET platform. C# is similar to Java in that programs are compiled to an intermediate language and then interpreted at runtime.

C++: An object-oriented programming language developed by Bjorne Stroustrop at Bell Labs. C\up1 ++ adds object-oriented features to the C programming language. In both C and C\up1 ++, the term C\up1 ++ has the technical meaning "add 1 to C," so that the name of the language is also a play on words.

CA (certificate authority): A trusted third-party organization or company that issues digital certifications used to create digital signatures and public and private key pairs. A CA guarantees that the individual or company granting a certificate is in fact that entity. CAs usually maintain relationships with banks or credit card companies that confirm a claimed identity.

Canonicalization: An XML technique that reduces an XML document to its essential (or canonical) form. Canonicalization addresses the fact that when XML is read and processed using standard XML parsing and processing techniques, some surface representation information may be lost or modified. Some of the actions taken in creating a canonical form include replacing character and parsed entity references, replacing CDATA sections with their character content, removing the XML declaration and DTD, converting empty elements to start-end tag pairs, replacing special characters in attribute values and character content by character references, and adding default attributes to each element.

CICS (Customer Information Control System): IBM's general-purpose online transaction processing software. First released in 1968 and continuing to evolve , CICS is an application server that runs on a range of operating systems from the desktop to the largest mainframe. When many computing and data-access tasks must be executed as a single atomic operation, the operations are grouped together as a unit of work or a transaction.

CLR (Common Language Runtime): A Microsoft Windows-based execution environment for over 15 languages that sits behind the .NET framework. Languages including Visual Basic, C\up1 ++, Perl, C#, and COBOL compile to an Intermediate Language that executes in the CLR.

COM (Component Object Model): The Microsoft Component Object Model that for the past decade has been the standard for components that run on Windows machines. Tools such as Visual C\up1 ++ and Visual Basic facilitate the creation of COM components . Many features of the Windows operating system are implemented using COM and many companies have significant investment in COM-based systems.

COM+ (extension to Component Object Model): Services that include transactions, security, synchronization, and events-handling for both COM and .NET component-based applications.

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture): A vendor-independent tightly coupled architecture and infrastructure from the Object Management Group that applications use to communicate over networks. Based on the IIOP protocol, CORBA programs can interoperate with other CORBA programs independent of vendor, operating system, programming language, and network. CORBA requires purchasing a CORBA implementation from a vendor and compiling code with CORBA libraries.

CSS (cascading style sheets): A simple mechanism for adding style (such as fonts, colors, or spacing) to Web documents. Multiple levels of CSS can be used to allow selective overriding of styles.

DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model): Often called "COM on the wire," DCOM supports distributed object communication across platforms by running a protocol called Object Remote Procedure Call.

DHTML (Dynamic HTML): An extension of HTML that provides greater control over the layout of a Web page and allows Web pages to change based on user interaction without requiring additional communication with the server.

digital certificate: Digital documents issued by a trusted certificate authority.

digital signature: The use of public-key encryption to authenticate the identity of the sender and validate the content of the message. Analogous to signing one's name across the face of a document.

DLL (dynamic link library): A library of software-support modules that is linked to application programs when they run rather than during compilation. This means that the same library code can be shared between several programs rather than each program containing its own copy of the library module it uses. DLLs, however, suffer from problems when one application requires a version of a DLL that is incompatible with what another application requires.

DOM (Document Object Model): A platform- and language-neutral interface defined by the W3C that allows programs and scripts to access and update the content, structure, and style of documents.

DTD (document type definition): A description of the structure and the elements and attributes that define a class of XML documents. A DTD can be declared within an XML document or as an external reference. An XML document that conforms to a DTD is said to be valid with respect to the DTD.

EAI (enterprise application integration): The use of middleware to integrate application programs, databases, and legacy systems involved in an organization's critical business processes.

ebXML (Electronic Business XML): A global initiative to define processes around which businesses can interact over the Web. It is a technology aimed at bringing the benefits of B2B data exchange to a global audience of small, medium, and large businesses. It has been developed under the auspices of the United Nations' technical and e-business group (UN/CEFACT ) and OASIS, the international, nonprofit consortium of technology companies formed to promote open , collaborative development of interoperability specifications based on standards such as XML and SGML.

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange): A collection of standard message formats that businesses may use to exchange data across any underlying network. EDI message formats are undergoing a transition to XML formats, creating a new XML/EDI framework.

EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans): A component architecture for building distributed object-oriented business applications in Java. EJB is the basis for J2EE, a framework that provides services such as transactions, security, and persistence to programs executing in EJB containers.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol): A client-server protocol allowing a user on one computer to transfer files to and from another computer over a TCP/IP network. The protocol may also be used to transport SOAP and XML.

GovTalk: The British government initiative to use XML as the basis for exchanging information between government systems, and between the government and its citizens .

GUI (graphical user interface): The use of graphics and images rather than just words to represent interaction with a program.

HR-XML: A nonprofit consortium dedicated to enabling an XML-based e-commerce and human resources data interchange format for human resources.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A tag-based language widely used across the Web to render documents in browsers. The intent of HTML is to leave the formatting details up to a browser. The tags defined in HTML are intended as hints on how to display content.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol): A protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems, in use since 1990, for initiating requests and moving data across the Web. It has found use beyond its original function for hypertext transfer and is currently used to communicate with servers and to distribute XML and SOAP messages.

HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol over Secure Sockets Layer): A protocol for the transfer of encrypted information between computers over the Web. HTTPS is essentially HTTP using a Secure Socket Layer, an encryption protocol for moving data securely across the Web. HTTPS is widely used for online purchasing and the exchange of private information.

IDE (Integrated Development Environment): A system that supports the process of writing software. An IDE may include a programming-language-specific syntax-directed editor, graphical tools for program entry, and integrated support for compiling, running, and debugging programs.

IDL (Interface Definition Language): A language that provides a standard interface between objects and is used as the base mechanism for object interaction. CORBA uses an IDL so that objects written in different programming languages can communicate.

IE (Microsoft Internet Explorer): Microsoft's World Wide Web browser, which is the main rival to Netscape Navigator. Both support the same core features and offer incompatible extensions. Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows 95 became the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice antitrust trial in late 1998.

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force): An open international community of network designers, vendors , and researchers whose goal is to coordinate the operation, management, and evolution of the Internet and to resolve protocol and architectural issues.

IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol): A protocol that allows different implementations of a CORBA ORB to communicate with each other.

IL (Intermediate Language): A term used to describe the result of the compilation of programs designed for execution by a runtime engine that interprets the IL for execution on a specific platform. Both Java and programming languages that are supported by .NET are compiled into ILs.

InfoSet (XML Information): A W3C initiative to provide a consistent set of definitions for use in other specifications that need to refer to the information in a well-formed XML document.

J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition): A specification for the development and deployment of Java-based enterprise server applications. J2EE applications are hosted within a container that provides transaction, security, and persistence services, simplifying the work of the developer. J2EE has recently been extended to include support for XML and Web services.

Java: An object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Java has aspects of both C\up1 ++ and Smalltalk. It is supports single inheritance and automatic garbage collection for reclaiming used memory. It is the underlying language for J2EE.

JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding): A Java API with an accompanying toolset that automates the mapping between XML documents and Java objects. Based on an XML Schema, JAXB automatically generates Java classes that provide access to XML data.

JAXM (Java API for XML Messaging): A Java API that enables applications to send and receive XML messages using SOAP.

JAXP (Java API for XML Processing): A Java API that supports the processing of XML documents using DOM, SAX, and XSLT. JAXP enables applications to parse and transform XML documents independent of a particular XML processing implementation.

JAXR (Java API for XML Registries): A Java API for a set of distributed registry services that enable B2B integration based on protocols under development by ebXML.org and OASIS. The JAXR specification assumes that all communication between a registry and clients will be based on JAXM.

JAX-RPC (Java API for XML Remote Procedure Calls): A Java API that supports building Web applications that incorporate XML-based RPC as defined in the SOAP specification.

JCP (Java Community Process): An open organization of Java developers and licensees chartered to develop and revise Java technology specifications. JCP reflects the trend toward open, collaborative development in order to identify design problems early in the development lifecycle.

JDBC (Java Database Connectivity): A Java API that lets developers tabulate data sources from a Java program. JDBC provides connectivity to a wide range of SQL databases as well as data sources such as spreadsheets or flat files.

JINI (pronounced "Genie"): A network-centric computing architecture which enables plug-and-play on the network. JINI clients request services through Java interfaces, and JINI services deliver code to clients based on the service request.

JMS (Java Message Service): A standard Java-based interface to the message services of a MOM. JMS handles publish-subscribe, point-to-point, and request-reply messaging.

JRMP (Java Remote Method Protocol): The transport protocol for Java RMI, which is the basis for communication using Enterprise JavaBeans.

JSP (Java Server Pages): A Java technology that uses XML-like tags and scriptlets written in Java to provide the logic for generating Web page content.

JSR (Java Specification Request): A document submitted to the Java Community Process by one or more members to propose the development of a new specification or major revision to an existing specification.

loose coupling: A term that describes distributed systems where senders and receivers aren't required to know each other or be active at the same time. Communication in loosely coupled systems occurs through an intermediary that brokers communication between participants . The intermediary may be message-oriented middleware or a tuple space as found in JavaSpaces and TSpaces.

MathML: An XML language for describing mathematics. It may be used as a basis for machine-to-machine communication and is used to standardize the display of mathematical expressions in Web pages.

metadata: Literally data about data. XML element and attribute names are considered metadata in that they may be used to describe the data contained in a document.

metainformation: Literally information about information.

metalanguage: Literally a language about languages. XML is a metalanguage because it can be used to define other tag-based languages.

MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions): A standard for multi-part, multimedia electronic mail and hypertext documents on the Internet. MIME provides the ability to transfer nontextual data, such as graphics, audio, and fax.

MISMO (Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization): An organization that is working to define XML vocabularies for electronic commerce issues in the mortgage industry.

MOM (Message “Oriented Middleware): A reliable way for programs to create, send, receive, and read messages in a distributed, loosely coupled network. MOM ensures reliable asynchronous electronic communication, with options for guaranteed message delivery, receipt notification, and transaction control.

MQSeries: An IBM middleware product used to integrate software applications on dissimilar systems. It supports a messaging scheme requiring the application that receives a message to confirm receipt. If no confirmation materializes, the message is resent by the MQSeries.

MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server): Microsoft middleware that offers both a transaction monitor and distributed object communication.

namespaces: XML namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in XML documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references.

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards): A nonprofit international consortium that creates interoperable industry specifications based on public XML and SGML standards. OASIS supports vertical industry applications, conformance tests, and interoperability specifications that make vertical standards usable.

OFX (Open Financial Exchange): An XML-based language enabling brokerage clients to download account information directly into their accounting and tax-preparation software, such as Quicken or TurboTax. OFX also supports the exchange of financial information between financial services companies, their technology outsourcers, and consumers using Web- and PC-based software.

OMG (Object Management Group): The consortium responsible for defining a cross-compatible distributed object standard known as CORBA. The first CORBA standard appeared in 1991.

ORB (Object Request Broker): A central object bus over which objects interact transparently with other local or remote objects. CORBA uses an ORB through which a client can acquire an object reference to a CORBA server object and make method calls on the object reference as if the CORBA server object were local in the client's address space. The ORB is responsible for locating the requested object's implementation, preparing it to receive requests, communicating requests to the object, and returning the reply to the client.

ORPC (Object Remote Procedure Call): The transport protocol built on the earlier DCE model of RPC and used as the basis for DCOM communication.

PKI (public-key infrastructure): A system of digital certificates and certificate authorities that verifies and authenticates the validity of parties involved in electronic commerce.

public-key cryptography: A technology based on a complex mathematical formula to generate two separate but related keys, one open to public view and the other private, known only to one individual. Documents encrypted with the private key can only be decrypted with the public key and assure the reader that the document was generated by the owner of the public key (that is, that the document is authentic ). Documents encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted by the owner of the public key.

RDF (Resource Description Framework): A foundation for processing metadata. It provides interoperability between applications that exchange machine-understandable information on the Web. RDF emphasizes facilities to enable automated processing of Web resources.

registry: A server that is part of the Web services framework and that provides information describing the services of a Web entity or business. The registry describes a company and its services across three directories: white pages that store the addresses and contact information of companies in the registry, yellow pages that organize entries by industry classification, and green pages that provide detailed descriptions of services offered .

RMI (Remote Method Invocation): Java's technology for doing distributed object communication across networks based on the Java Remote Method Protocol. RMI is based on Java's capability to serialize objects where objects can be transmitted as a byte stream across networks. Because object serialization is specific to Java, both the RMI server and client objects must be written in Java.

RPC (Remote Procedure Call): A protocol that allows a program running on one host to cause code to be executed on another host without the programmer explicitly writing networking code. A RPC is initiated by the caller (client) sending a request message to a remote system (the server) to execute a specific procedure or function using arguments supplied by the client.

SAX (Simple API for XML): A standard interface for event-based XML parsing, developed collaboratively by the members of the XML-DEV mailing list.

schema: A general term that refers to the structure and content of a document. In the XML world schemas take the form of either DTDs or XML Schemas.

Semantic Web: An extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. Tim Berners-Lee is a driving force behind the W3C's Semantic Web initiative.

SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language): An international standard for the description of marked -up electronic text. More precisely, SGML is a metalanguage, that is, a means of formally describing a language. SGML is the precursor to XML, a simpler metalanguage for describing languages.

Smalltalk: The pioneering object-oriented programming system developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s. Smalltalk took the concepts of class and message from an earlier language, Simula-67, and made them part of the programming vocabulary. The Java programming language has been influenced by many of the concepts found in Smalltalk.

SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language): A broad-based effort to use XML to define instructions for the creation of Web-based interactive multimedia presentations. SMIL provides an XML alternative to technologies such as Flash or JavaScript that are widely used to control animation in browsers.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): A protocol for the reliable and efficient delivery of mail over the Internet.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol): An XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP defines an XML envelope for delivering XML content across HTTP as well as other protocols and specifies a set of rules for servers to follow when receiving a SOAP message. SOAP supports the notion of message paths whereby servers can perform intermediate processing along a path from a SOAP source to final destination.

SOAP with Attachments: A binding for a SOAP message that allows additional information to be transported with the message using HTTP's multipart (MIME) messaging. This allows information such as DTDs, style sheets, and digital digests to be sent as auxiliary information with a single SOAP message.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer): A protocol developed by Netscape for delivering documents securely over the Web, using public and private keys.

Sun ONE (Sun Open Net Environment): Sun's standards-based platform for building and deploying Web-based applications and Web services.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics): A W3C Recommendation that defines an XML grammar for creating vector-based 2D graphics for the Web and other applications. SVG is an alternative to delivering GIF or JPEG images to browsers. Because SVG is defined as an XML grammar, SVG graphics can easily be generated dynamically on Web servers using standard XML tools and delivered with a style sheet to a browser for rendering.

TELNET: The Internet protocol for creating a connection with a remote machine.

tight coupling: A term used by Glenford Myers to describe the dependence between two modules that complicates their design and limits their ability for reuse. In the context of the Web, "tightly coupled systems" refers to networks whose ability to transmit data is coupled with the technology used to transport the data from one place to another. Tight coupling stands in opposition to loose coupling.

TP Monitor (Transaction-Processing Monitor): A program that monitors a transaction to insure that it completes in an all-or-none manner.

TSpaces: IBM's implementation of the loosely-coupled P2P distributed computing model introduced as part of the Linda system at Yale in the 1980s. Similar to Sun's JavaSpaces architecture.

TupleSpace: The part of the Linda distributed computing model that acts as a central repository for communication primitives known as tuples.Linda supports asynchronous interprocess communication through synchronous communication with a central tuple space.

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration): A protocol for describing Web services components. UDDI allows businesses to register with an Internet directory so they can advertise their services and companies can find each other and carry out transactions over the Web.

UML (Unified Modeling Language): An industry-standard language for specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems. It supports the software development process through the provision of numerous standard diagrams that describe the structure and interactions of object-based systems.

UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business): A United Nations organization whose objective is to develop recommendations and standards to help foster cooperative relationships between private business and public organizations.

UN/EDIFACT (United Nations Directories for Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport): A United Nations organization set up to improve the ability of business, trade, and administrative organizations from developed, developing, and transitional economies to exchange products and relevant services effectively, thereby contributing to the growth of global commerce.

URI (Uniform Resource Identifier): A short string used to identify a Web resource such as a document, image, downloadable file, or electronic mailbox.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): An informal term (no longer used in technical specifications) associated with popular URI schemes such as HTTP, FTP, and mailto.

VB (Visual Basic): A programming language widely used to develop Microsoft applications.

VB.NET: Visual Basic, updated to support .NET features.

VisualStudio.NET: A development environment for building applications that are tightly integrated with the Microsoft Windows platform and the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server environment.

VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language): An XML language for programming dialogs for voice-enabled devices over the Web. VoiceXML has built-in features for collecting data from forms and presenting choices as menus .

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): An organization that develops interoperable technologies in the form of specifications, guidelines, software, and tools, with the objective of leading the Web to its full potential as an infrastructure for information, commerce, and communication.

Web services: An umbrella term that describes a process and protocols for discovering software as services across the Web. Key protocols in Web services include UDDI and WSDL.

WebLogic: BEA's software platform built around J2EE that provides application program interfaces for XML enterprise Java and Web services.

WebSphere: IBM's software platform, built around J2EE, that provides application program interfaces for XML enterprise Java and Web services.

World Wide Web: An Internet-based, client-server, hypertext, distributed, information retrieval system, originating at the CERN laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. On the Web all content is presented to the user as a hypertext link in HTML format. A client program called a browser runs on a user's computer and provides the capability to follow links or to send a query to a server.

WSDL (Web Services Description Language): An XML description of both the service interface and the implementation details of how to connect to and use a particular Web service.

XForms: A specification of Web forms that can be used with a wide variety of platforms including desktop computers, handheld computers, cell phones, and information appliances.

XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language ): A family of current and future document types and modules that extend HTML. XHTML is XML based and designed to work as part of the XML family of technologies.

X-KISS (XML Key Information Service Specification): Part of the XML Key Management Specification. X-KISS defines a protocol for a trust service that resolves public-key information contained in XML Signature elements.

XKMS (XML Key Management Specification): A W3C initiative that targets the delegation of trust processing decisions to one or more specialized trust processors, to give businesses an easier way to manage digital signatures and data encryption.

X-KRSS (XML Key Registration Service Specification): Part of the XML Key Management Specification. X-KRSS defines a protocol for the registration of public keys.

XLink: A technology that allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can describe links similar to the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well as more sophisticated links.

XML (Extensible Markup Language): The universal format for structured documents and data on the Web.

XML Encryption: A W3C specification for the encryption of a all or part of an XML document.

XML Query: A W3C initiative to provide query facilities for extracting data from XML documents.

XML Schema: A W3C Recommendation (May 2001) that expresses shared vocabularies providing a means for defining the structure, content, and semantics of XML documents.

XML Signature: A W3C specification that defines processing rules and syntax for specifying the integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication for data located within an XML document.

XML-RPC (XML Remote Procedure Call): A protocol for doing remote procedure calls over the Web where the information about what procedure to call and what parameters to pass are encoded as XML in the body of an HTTP POST request to a server.

XPath: An expression language used to access or refer to parts of an XML document.

XPointer: An expression language that supports addressing the internal structures of XML documents so that links may be composed that connect directly to specific parts of a document rather than the entire document.

XQuery: A query language that uses the structure of XML to express queries across all kinds of data, whether structured as XML or viewed as XML via middleware.

XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language): A language for expressing style sheets. It consists of three parts: XSL Transformations, a language for transforming XML documents; XPath, an expression language used by XSLT to access or refer to parts of an XML document (XPath is also used by the XML Linking specification); and XSL Formatting Objects, an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics.

XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects): An XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics.

XSLT (XSL Transformations): A language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents.


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