Considering Fluency in XML Design

CMSWatch -- OpinionWatch: XML Authoring -- Considering Fluency in XML Design: by Mark Baker, Principal, Analecta Communications
2004-03-29

Fluency is perhaps the most neglected aspect of XML markup language design. Fluency is the ability of an author to write with ease and confidence. A fluent author has all the tools of language at their fingertips.

The property that provides for the easy development of fluency is lucidity. How do we ensure the lucidity of markup languages? First, we must recognize a markup language for what it is: a user interface.

The greatest virtue of XML is that it is easy to transform one XML tagging language into another. You may need an elaborate document structure language to drive your publishing process, but that doesn’t mean that you have to force authors to create content directly in that language.

Getting the cooperation of authors is one of the biggest challenges that content management leaders face, both at the local level and at the enterprise level. Authors are already enormously reluctant to abandon their familiar authoring tools and methods. You can greatly improve your chances of getting authors to cooperate with your content management initiatives if you demonstrate that you understand to the importance of protecting their fluency, and if you show that you are willing and able to create lucid interfaces that let authors create content without loss of fluency.

Macromedia flexes Flash muscle

Macromedia flexes Flash muscle: "By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com, March 29, 2004.

Macromedia released on Monday a new server product intended to expand the use of its Flash format for presenting Web applications.

Flex, formerly code-named Royale, allows developers to create scripts in common languages such as Java and .Net and to run them on top of Web applications. Flex breaks them down into a Macromedia dialect of extensible markup language (XML) that can be read by the Flash Player, the widespread Flash client commonly used to spice up Web pages.

Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! - Making sense of it all

Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps!: "Making sense of it all" By:Lars Marius Garshol, Development Manager of Ontopia.

The title says it all.

An excellent, highly readabls paper.

Serving it up fast: Efficient CGI page generation

Serving it up fast: Efficient CGI page generation: "By Nigel McFarlane, CNETAsia Builder.com Monday, September 30 2002 12:01 PM

Efficient delivery of dynamic Web pages remains a challenge for Internet developers, especially when moving static HTML pages to CGI. I will review some performance numbers I obtained from testing three CGI strategies during the generation phase of page delivery.

Candidate CGI technologies
My testing assessed three common Perl techniques for page generation performance:

• HERE documents


• Templatization


• CGI.pm module

(The WINNER is......... in-line HTML embedded in your Perl script - "HERE" documents)

Six Sigma and Software/Systems Process Improvement

Presentation to ICSQ, 11th Oct. 2001, by Jeannine Siviy of Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute Measurement and Analysis Initiative:- Six Sigma and Software/Systems Process Improvement
In a PPT style presentation, provides an overview introduction to Six-Sigma, with a Software Engineering slant. Includes illustrations of the 5 stages of the Six-Sigma Improvement Framework - "Define", "Measure", "Analyse", Improve" and "Control".

Also includes a very interesting overview of how various Six-Sigma concepts, processes and metrics relate to the 5 CMM levels.

Data warehousing: Seven don'ts

By Scott Robinson, TechRepublic
Tuesday, March 16 2004, on CNETAsia-IT Manager:- Data warehousing: Seven don'ts:

"Data warehouse implementation is a formidable undertaking. Most of the experience you bring to the task won?t fit a data warehouse?s unique requirements and challenges. There are several things you might ordinarily do that you should steer clear of when working on a data warehouse. "

1. DON'T write code you can't modify quickly.


2. DON'T use a database access API that won't allow modifications.


3. DON'T design anything that isn't extendable.


4. DON'T insinuate anything between the data and the user unnecessarily.


5. DON'T take shortcuts on data cleanup or source analysis.


6. DON'T avoid granularity and partitioning issues.


7. DON'T try to work OLAP without asking business questions.

Supporting enterprise knowledge management with weblogs: A weblog services roadmap

Michael Angeles' presentation "Supporting enterprise knowledge management with weblogs: A weblog services roadmap" at the Computers in Libraries conference - follow the link to the PDF slide-show file.

Consuming Web services in PHP

By Sanders Kaufman, Jr., at CNET-Asia Builder.com | Thursday, March 11 2004: Consuming Web services in PHP:

"There are currently three major ways to build a Web service with PHP. I say, 'major' because there's really almost an infinite number of ways to do it--but most are based on one of three methods: SOAP, XML-RPC and REST.

"Which one fits your project?" With SOAP calls, you get ubiquity. With XML-RPC calls, you get performance. With REST calls, you get control."

Open Text adds IM to content management

By David Becker Staff Writer, CNET News.com, March 10, 2004: Open Text adds IM to content management

Content management software specialist Open Text announced Wednesday that it plans to add instant messaging functions to its main product.

Open Text CEO Tom Jenkins told CNET News.com recently that growing regulatory and legal pressure for routine preservation and cataloging of documents--from instant messages to legal briefs--is the main force behind dramatic growth in the enterprise content management market. You have to make a leap of faith to put everything on the server...and regulatory compliances force you to make that leap of faith," he said.

The Generation Lap

James Hall writes in Australia's CIO magazine on 10/03/2004, The Generation Lap:

"To some, the tech wreck proved the idea of the Internet as a catalyst for social revolution was hyperbolic. However, a generation born into a digital world is starting to enter the workforce, bringing with it expectations informed by a world of technological connectivity and information democracy."

A fascinating article, with too much to summarize here, looking at changes we might expect in the work-a-day world over the next 20 years as the "N (Net) Generation" takes over the reigns from the "Baby Boomers" and Gen-X'ers.

A "Must Read".

How to Create a KNOW-IT-ALL Company

Sue Bushell wrote in Australia's CIO magazine on 10/03/2004, How to Create a KNOW-IT-ALL Company

Put simply, the effort of sharing knowledge has to be less than the value of participating.

An initial low-cost pilot for 30 staff taught the company a few valuable lessons: Do not use systems as your starting point. Do make sure your CI (Competitive Intelligence - KM by another name) efforts are integrated into the core processes of your business. And above all, do make sure CI becomes a part of the organizational culture.

CI is really important to our roles, but at the end of the day, if it imposes an additional burden on us, it is not going to get done.” The answer was to build CI into business processes.

CI is still mainly about people, and about planning, says Professor Daniel McMichael, group leader for business intelligence CMIS at CSIRO’s division of Mathematical and Information Sciences.

McMichael recommends organizations take a look at the CSIRO’s P@noptic, a new search engine for corporate and government intranets that he says makes information more accessible, improves information flow to clients and significantly increases efficiency.

Consider these tips for making knowledge sharing work for your organization

• Start with the enthusiasts.
  
• Convince the influencers.
  
• Make it a no-brainer.
  
• Hire a knowledge coordinator.
  
• Tell stories.
  
• Recognize contributors.
  
• Create in-person knowledge forums.
  

What Not to Do

• Don’t call it knowledge management.
  
• Don’t sweat the definitions.
  
• Don’t offer carrots.
  
• Don’t wave sticks.
  
• Don’t bother unless there’s trust.
  

Adobe adds bar codes to PDF forms

David Becker wrote on CNET News.com on Tues.9th March 2004, Adobe adds bar codes to PDF:

"Adobe Systems is set to expand its electronic forms with new capabilities for adding bar codes to forms based on the company's portable document format.

Recipients of a PDF form fill it out on their PC using the free Adobe Reader, which will also get a bar code plug-in, with the space allotted for the bar code automatically filled in as data is entered. A single bar code can represent up to 2,000 characters of data.

When finished, the form is printed out. The recipient uses a scanning device or fax machine to read the bar code, sending the results to a server running decoding software being developed by Adobe, Baum said. The server then feeds data into a corporate database or other backend systems.

The Acrobat and Adobe Reader plug-ins, as well as the decoding server, all are planned for delivery in the second half of 2004."

A Transforming Experience for Content Management?

On CMSWatch, Steve Heckler, President of Accelebrate, wrote on 2004-03-04 , A Transforming Experience for Content Management? -- Featured Product:

During the past five years, XSLT (Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformation) has emerged as the “Babelfish” of the XML world, translating XML documents into other XML and text formats. XSLT combines a versatile, tag-based scripting language with XPath, a powerful language for selecting specific sections or data within XML documents. The advent of XSLT 2.0 could mean even more power and capability for XML-based content management systems.

Another not-so-permanent archive

(Australian-IT: crossroads | Stuart Fist, MARCH 02, 2004:- Another not-so-permanent archive:

So what is the likely life of your CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-RW disks today ?

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a Data Preservation Laboratory looking at these problems, and it has come to the conclusion that the scientific answer to all these questions is: 'not very long'."

These are only preliminary results at present. It says:-

• true gold coating is better than any of the silver-coated (aluminium, etc) disks


• CD-R is clearly the most reliable disk recording system.


• the NIST hasn't damned DVD-R as much as I expected, which suggests that DVD's advanced error-correction systems really work.


• disks should be stored upright.


• Disks need to be kept away from circulating air to reduce corrosion and evaporation of the plasticisers.


• Plastic sleeves are probably better than jewel cases.


• Storage should be cool, but not freezing, and dark.


• Humidity of about 40 per cent and a clean atmosphere.


• The NIST condemns the practice of using adhesive labels on the disk surface.

Test Web pages in multiple browser versions

Test Web pages in multiple browser versions - Builder - CNETAsia: "By Michael Meadhra, Builder.com | Thursday, February 26 2004 "

One of the challenges that Web builders face is testing their Web pages in various browsers. It's not enough to know how your page will appear in the current version of your favorite browser—you also need to test all of the other browsers that your site visitors might use. If you're working on a Web site that's open to the public, you also need to test multiple versions of each browser.

Finding older browser software - If you don't have what you need archived on a CD somewhere, you can turn to several online resources......

The problem with IE - Now the Solution - running concurrent copies of IE of differing versions....

Six "must-haves" for productive software teams

Six "must-haves" for productive software teams - Builder - CNETAsia: "By Bruce Hadley, Builder.com | Friday, February 27 2004 "

CEO Tim Bigelow of Performance Software says, "When your entire bet is riding on custom development, you have to be good at development—that's obvious. But the part that many custom developers leave out is delivery."

Bigelow focused on the six items that he says are required "must-haves" for any software company looking to create highly-productive software teams.

1. Hire high-performance people


2. Define and develop a high performance culture


3. Insure proper training and adequate mentoring


4. Build innovative tools that make your job easier


5. Optimize project methods and processes


6. Focus on accurate weekly metrics and standardize project planning