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Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

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Page 1: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1

Office Automation & Intranets

BUSS 909

Lecture 13Reinventing Inter/Intranets:

Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Page 2: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 2

Agenda (1)

there are several short to medium term developments which are currently emerging in the industry

fundamental changes to browsers- a movement from fat to thin clientsstandardising and improved Common

Gateway Interface, described in Lecture 13, to create CGI 1.2

Page 3: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 3

Agenda (2)promote collaboration on the WWW:

reengineering Usenet- news servicedevelopment of WebDAV- Web-based

Distributed Authoring and Versioning

reengineering the static WWW pagesXML: Re-emergence of SGMLXLink Specification

servers everywhere: the rise of the internet appliance

Page 4: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 4

Browser Developments

Page 5: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 5

Browser Developments

Browser technology is becoming more diverse as the Internet is becoming more ubiquitousextremely sophisticated,‘open’ source

code browsers which are extensible- Netscape’s Mozilla

smaller and faster web browsers to be used in Internet Appliances eg. smart cell-phones, and organisers- Netscape’s Gecko

Page 6: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 6

Browser Developments Netscape’s Mozilla

On January 23rd, 1998, Netscape announced that:the Netscape Communicator product

would be available free of charge; that the source code for Communicator

would also be free.

Page 7: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 7

Browser Developments Netscape’s Mozilla

the name comes from Netscape’s dinosaur-like mascotwas the internal name for the next

browser from Netscapenow used as a generic term referring to

web browsers derived from the source code of Netscape Navigator

Netscape set up mozilla.org to act as a clearing-house for the source

Page 8: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 8

Browser Developments Netscape’s Mozilla

an attempt at standardising the incompatible feature sets of major browsers, also Microsoft was bundling its browser with its

OSs- it could afford to give it away in order to get additional market share

by relinquishing the role of primary coders and moving to an Open Source model- they can compete against Microsoft!

Page 9: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 9

Browser Developments Netscape’s Mozilla

act as code integrators- help to achieve a consensus, provide developer direction and coordination

collect changes, synchronise development work, periodically release new source

operate discussion forums- mail lists, newsgroups etc

coordinate bug lists, publicise works in progress, provide code roadmaps

Page 10: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 10

Browser Developments Netscape’s Gecko

Netscape developed Gecko as an extremely small and efficient web browser to be included in Internet Appliancesthis is possible because Gecko provides

has a very efficient Layout Engineas we will see this kind of technology is

relevant to Intranets and Extranets

Page 11: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 11

Netscape’s Gecko Page Layout or Reflow

layout of a page or reflow involves:iterating over the content model of a

document to flow the words and images into lines or frames

frames are sequentially stacked on top of each other to fill each page

process is repeated until each page in the document has been laid out

Page 12: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 12

Netscape’s Gecko Layout Engines

inside each browser is a layout engine, which:reads a document fileidentifies and separates the constituent

elements, for example

layout engines are complex

Page 13: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 13

Layout Engine- GeckoBack End

Netlib Cache

Parser

GrammarProcessor

TagHandlers

Layout

GeometrySystem

Reflow

Rendering

Views Graphics

DOM

JavaScript Events

Style

StyleResolution

Frame Creation

*.?*.html*.xml*.css

ParseTree

ContentModel

Flow Objects

Views

Style Sheet(s)

Style Context(s)

Page 14: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 14

Relevance to IntranetsNetscape’s Gecko (1)

this technology may play a very important part in future intranetsrelates to developments done in the USA

during the early 1980s at the MIT Media Lab- the ‘smart’ wireless office

intelligent name tags (smart badges) worn by workers enable them to use computing services regardless of physical location in the office

Page 15: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 15

Relevance to IntranetsNetscape’s Gecko (2)

with the inclusion of browser technology like Gecko, smart badges become in effect Internet Appliances

intranets and extranets need not be limited to desktop machines running fully generalised browsers

don’t necessarily need general browsers for Intranets

Page 16: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 16

Improved CGI

Page 17: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 17

CGI 1.0

Common Gateway Interface (CGI), described last lecture, is now six years oldsurprisingly, it is not a standard but a set

of rules and programming conventionsis highly portable, but while very

convenient CGI 1.0 has serious limitations including statelessness

Page 18: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 18

CGI 1.0Influence and Importance

enabled static web pages to become dynamic documents

transformed an obscure UNIX systems administer’s langauge (Perl) into a famous one

Stein (1999, 12) claims CGI is responsible for the majority of web pages (search engines, database interfaces, news gateways etc)

Page 19: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 19

CGI 1.0Problems and Difficulties

outdated technology- tied to assumptions about UNIXinefficient requires spawning a new process

each time a page is serveddoes not allow CGI scripts to handle some

aspects of transactions, for example URL-to-filename translation, or user authentication

slow, and does not scale up to hit-intensive requirements

Page 20: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 20

Alternatives to CGI

technical alternatives are available to CGI 1.0web server APIs- require specific

languagestemplate systems (PHP)- not so flexible

or customisableJava Servlets- not so easy to write or

install

Page 21: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 21

Fixes to CGI

several fixes are available for CGI 1.0:FastCGI- scripts continuously run until

neededmod_perl for Apache servers- embedded

Perl interpreters

but ultimately the best situation will be to actually standardise CGI, which is currently occurring in an effort called CGI/1.2

Page 22: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 22

Improved Groupware 1: Usenet

Page 23: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 23

Improved Groupware 1: Usenet

Usenet is the ‘news’ service which supports virtual communities on the Internet (about 25,000) and which is viewable from your Web browser20 years old next year- the first two news

hosts exchanged messages in 1980 (Udell 1999, 55)

it is a viable collaborative technology but suffers from some major limitations

Page 24: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 24

Improved Groupware 1: Usenet is ‘Expensive’

considering the number of users on the web, there are actually very few news postings mademost of the traffic is in images (guess

what they are about)providing news feeds is expensive for

ISPs currently a full news feed about 20GB/day or about 1/3rd of T-1 lines (Udell 1999, 55)

Page 25: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 25

Improved Groupware 1: Basic Issues concerning Usenet

One difficulty is that virtual communities are not really interested in ‘news’

Usenet users are interested in on-going collaborations concerning specific topics:pooled knowledgeadding value to ‘news’ documents

Page 26: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 26

Improved Groupware 1: Basic Problems with Usenet

due to the ‘expensive’ nature of Usenet messages generally held for about 4 days

NetNews Transfer Protocol (NNTP) messages have URLseg.news://udell.roninhouse.com/

3200C8A8.2316%40dev5.byte.combut who will bother to refer to a message with

such a short message retention period

Page 27: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 27

Improved Groupware 1: ‘Stop-gap’ Solutions for Usenet

Several WWW based services provide fixes to Usenet- DejaNews and RemarkQsearch engines for Usenet messagesalso provide a ‘memory’ much lengthier than

the retention period for News Messages on News Servers- typically in the order of months or years

users of these services can aggregate messages- act like editors who value-add

Page 28: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 28

Improved Groupware 1: ‘Stop-gap’ Solutions for Usenet

a user can reconstruct the thread added by an ‘editor’ using one of these services

can even reply to an old Usenet message, but once you refer back to Usenet messages the context is lost

there is nothing in NNTP that prevents solutions to the problems found in NNTP

Page 29: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 29

Improved Groupware 1: Replication Scheme used on Usenet

the major problem is with the way messages are stored at Usenet nodes- so-called replication schemeUsenet was developed during the days when

the Internet was very unreliable- messages are replicated on each Usenet server

a simple fix would be to let each Usenet server store a couple of virtual communities

Page 30: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 30

Improved Groupware 1: Replication Scheme used on Usenet

even allowing for redundant ‘mirror sites’ for Usenet feeds- removing the existing replication scheme would:reduce the duplication of news

messages by an two-orders of magnitude

increase the retention of Usenet messages by three orders of magnitude

Page 31: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 31

Improved Groupware 2:Distributed Authoring and Versioning

Page 32: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 32

Improved Groupware 2: Effects of Creating a Commercial WWW

rather than being considered as a distributed hypermedia system, WWW was modeled on a medium which was better understood by business- broadcast television

it was used as a one-way communication tool- HTTP PUT method was rarely implemented on servers

web browsers became a software remote control for selecting channels

Page 33: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 33

Improved Groupware 2: Distributed Authoring and Versioning

the WWW was initially developed at CERN as a groupware tool

in fact prototype systems were available soon after the WWW was developed

a new standard called WebDAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) may correct the inappropriate commercial model into which the web has devolved

Page 34: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 34

Improved Groupware 2:Distributed Authoring and Versioning

recently approved by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

will enable web users collaboratively write, edit and save shared documents

independent of the software program or Internet service used

voluntary standard supported by Microsoft, Netscape, Novell, IBM, Xerox, FileNet and PC DOCS and Apache

Page 35: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 35

Improved Groupware 2:WebDAV Features (1)

Overwrite prevention- prevents more than one person from working on a document at the same time

prevents the ‘lost update problem’ that currently often occurs as modifications to a document are lost when multiple authors access and attempt to edit a file simultaneously

Page 36: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 36

Improved Groupware 2:WebDAV Features (2)

Properties- meta-data is used to encoded information about a web document

meta-data includes: author's name, copyright, publication date, and keywords- used by Internet search engines to find and retrieve relevant documents

Page 37: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 37

Improved Groupware 2:WebDAV Features (3)

Name-space management- enables users to conveniently manage Internet files and directories,

includes the ability to move and copy files, similar to the way word-processing files and directories are managed on a regular computer

Page 38: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 38

Reweaving the Web 1:XML: Re-emergence of SGML

Page 39: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 39

XMLNeed to Replace HTML

HTML is intractable when trying to deploy a large website- as complex as traditional systems development

most of this difficulty is the result of limitations in HTML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) answer to the limitations of HTML

Page 40: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 40

XMLRelationship to SGML (1)

XMLs specification was released at the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference in April of 1997Several software vendors, including

Microsoft and Netscape Communications, have already endorsed it.

XML is a simplified version of SGML

Page 41: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 41

XMLRelationship to SGML (2)

the complexity of fully implementing SGML outweighs its benefits for direct use on the web

XML was designed as a compromise between the simplicity of HTML and the flexibility of SGML.

Fortunately, only minor changes are needed to make an HTML document compatible with XML.

Page 42: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 42

XMLRelationship to SGML (3)

if HTML doesn’t have the features needed for a given set of documents, authors could create extensions to HTML and attach a DTD to their documents.

XML is a metalanguage, but it's easier to use and creates simpler DTDs than using SGML.

Page 43: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 43

XMLRelationship to SGML (4)

XML authors can create new tags at will, even very complex ones

can use XML DTDs to validate the structure of large numbers of documents, allowing the importation of the data from those documents into other applications.

Page 44: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 44

XMLRelationship to SGML (5)

XML is also fully SGML-compatible:XML documents are readable by SGML

software, so organisations with an investment in SGML can use XML immediately

since XML is a subset of SGML, it can't read all SGML documents. Ironically, one important SGML language that is not XML-compatible is HTML

Page 45: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 45

XMLSmart Clients & Intelligent Agents

XML allows developers to create smart clients for example, an XML client could sort

the part manufacturer's data by make, model or year or otherwise filter the data

XML will also make intelligent agents easier to design and deploy.

Page 46: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 46

Reweaving the Web 2:XLink Specification

Page 47: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 47

XLink SpecificationMotivation

with the simple hyperlinking available in HTML, users can only traverse uni-directional links in a forward direction

links which are always embedded or inline

destination.htmsource.htm

Page 48: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 48

XLink Specification

XML includes hypertext features that are currently missing from the Web including:bidirectional links location-independent linkstransclusion- where a linked document

appears as part of the current page

these aspects are part of the XLink spcification

Page 49: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 49

XLink Specification

XLink stands for Extended Link facilityenables readers to annotate documentsshare annotations with others without

altering the documentthe annotations can appear as if they

were written into the documentannotations accumulate over time, as

they exist in separate documents they are not lost

Page 50: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 50

XLink SpecificationLinks

XLinks are bidirectionalusers can click on any of the link

anchors and traverse to any other anchor regardless of where the link happens to be

extended links can appear in a separate document and provide traversal between corresponding parts of two other documents

Page 51: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 51

XLink SpecificationStrong Link Typing

extended links can have icons associated with them that tell the user about the nature of the other anchor- referred to a strong link typing

for example, technical publishing consisting of a Manual, a Note and a Log...

Page 52: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 52

XLink SpecificationExample: Linked Manual, Log & Note (1)

Reader of the Manual:will see a Note about the task recorded in

the Manual (indicated by !)will be shown the serial number of the part

that was installed according to the procedure recorded in Log (indicated by #)

Reader of the Log:that an installation procedure exists for this

part (indicated by the I)

Page 53: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 53

XLink SpecificationExample: Linked Manual, Log & Note (2)

manual.xml

note.xml

log.xml

# Installation Task 1: ! Task 2:

I

I

XLink

#

I

XLink

I

!

Page 54: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 54

XLink SpecificationMotivation for Strong Link Typing

in HTML:the browser knows where the user can go, but

not why the author of the document being browsed thought the user might like to go there

the user is forced to ‘guess’ the context that will be shown if the hyperlink is traversed but the browser is unable to help the user decide whether to click or not

clicking on a link is an act of faith!

Page 55: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 55

XLink SpecificationStrong Link Typing

Draft W3C XLink Recommendation provides strong link typing for all link types both simple and extended:no limit to the number of links that can be

traversed from a single point in a single document (1:M)

many different documents can contain links to the very same anchor (M:1)- unlimited traversals are possible in principle from a single starting point

Page 56: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 56

XLink SpecificationStrong Link Typing & Anchor Role

strong link typing includes the concept of an anchor role (using the previous example):XLink signifies that Part [XPointer -->

Part in Note] that was installed in the Unit [XPointer --> Unit in Log] that was installed according to the instruction [XPointer --> Instruction in Manual]

Page 57: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 57

XLink SpecificationXPointers

links are also equipped with XPointersXPointers can link to anything in any

XML Documentthis kind of idea comes from HyTime-

an SGML based hypermedia system that has been underdevelopment for over a decade

Page 58: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 58

XLink SpecificationUses of XLinks and XPointers (1)

XLinks & XPointers can be used collectively to: create a marketplace of ideas

(Newcomb in Goldfarb and Prescod 1998, 183)

guidance documents- collections of annotations making suggestions about where to find recent materials

Page 59: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 59

XLink SpecificationUses of XLinks and XPointers (2)

computer-augmented memory- almost anything you do can be seen as annotation of one or more pieces of work

intellectual property management- metadata regarding licensing policies of owners of Web resources could be associated with those resources by means of extended links

Page 60: Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 1 Office Automation & Intranets BUSS 909 Lecture 13 Reinventing Inter/Intranets: Hytime, XML and Emerging Technologies

Clarke, R. J (2000) L909-13: 60

Internet Appliances

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Internet AppliancesConnecting everything to the web

the web is an important manifestation of digital convergence- the integration of all types of media (see Lecture 2)

but a second revolution is taking place- the creation of internet appliances that mean that the most conventional technologies will become internet aware

one technology that is making this possible by the creation of miniature web servers...

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Internet AppliancesScenix SX-Stack: Web Server

SX52BD communications controller running at 50MIPS MHz, and 32K EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory)

connected directly to a microcomputer via a serial port and can monitor analogue and digital inputs

can be configured to be a web server or an email appliance

Dimensions: 85 x 45mmScenix SX-Stackhttp://www.scenix.com

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Internet AppliancesMatchbox Web Server

single-board AMD 486-SX computer at 66 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, and 16 MB flash ROM

communicates via 2 serial ports, a printer port, and a floppy drive connector

runs most of RedHat 5.2 Linux including the web server

Dimensions: Size: 2.8” x 1.8” Area: 5 square inches Volume: 16 cc Weigh: 20 grams

Stanford University Computing Science Department, Wearables Labhttp://wearables.stanford.edu

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Internet AppliancesiPic: Match Head Sized Web Server

PIC 12C509A microcontroller at 4 MHz, and a 24LC256 i2c EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory)

connected directly to a router running SLIP at 115,200 bps can take 7200 hits per hour (one every 0.5 s)

combination of a TCP/IP stack and a HTTP 1.0 web server, and a simple telnet server for editing on-chip files

H.Shrikumar, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts (iPic Server)http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/~shri/iPic.html

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Internet AppliancesWorkplace Applications

from the significant…most office equipment uses microcomputers-

all could use an iPic and could in principal be controlled and managed remotely

office environments could also be controlled- lighting, power, climate control and management

to the mundane- intelligent light globes that tell you when they need replacing

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Concluding Remarks

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Concluding Remarks

we started this course by talking about Office Automation:much of the work was motivated by the

search for the ‘paperless office’- a search which has not been really successful

what emerged from this search was the realisation of the importance of ‘private networks’ for organisations

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Concluding Remarks

also what became important was the development of mechanisms for information retrieval and ‘re-purposing’ using the most common information unit in organisations- the text or document

along with the recognition that much of what is in organisational texts needs to be reused, came the need for interchanging textual data both within the organisation and between strategically aligned companies

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Concluding Remarks

data and document interchange spawned Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)- an indirect effect of work in OA

unfortunately most of the systems that provided these capabilities were proprietary and very expensive- medium and small businesses could not adopt these technologies

the decade of development in OA (mid 1970s- mid 1980s) was becoming a memory…

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Concluding Remarks

...until the development of the Web!

Source: Computer Networks Research Group Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts http://www-net.cs.umass.edu/

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Concluding Remarks

using SGML, Berners-Lee created HTML and the WWW was born on an Internet superstructure which was really developed as an ‘open’ network for the exchange of data between universities

the exponential growth of the WWW both in terms for corporate presence and the general public has been its downfall

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Concluding Remarks

now, the Internet must be rebuilt- the easiest way to do this is by changing from IPv4 to IPv6 (see Lecture Supplement 2)

although not perfect, this change will go on largely unnoticed by the public as the infrastructure is gradually changed

but also, the Web must also be rewoven as well- the way to do this is by adopting XML

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Concluding Remarks

rebuilding the Internet will finally bring about open technologies that were absent when OA was being developed

but, the adoption of XML will bring to life the goals of those who worked so hard in the OA community a quarter of a century ago

we will soon have come full-circle!- thats why this course is called Office Automation & Intranets!

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Concluding RemarksRole of IS

what next?- where does the IS discipline fit into this rebuilding and reweaving?

what we need to do as a discipline is to change the metaphor used for theorising work in organisations

in order to best use these new technologies we must recognise a fundamental truth- that documents can be more important than databases- we must create methods that model work in organisations as texts

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Concluding Remarkshere we can look towards the work conducted

not in the US, but in Scandinavia and Europeresearchers there have been working on this

very problem since the late 1960swhen the IS discipline has made this leap,

then we can get on with our business which is the creation of methodologies to construct systems that support organisations conducting their business!

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References

Gessner, R. (1999) “Netscape’s Gecko- The Next-Generation Layout Engine” Web Techniques 4 (3) March 1999, 63-70

Udell, J. (1999) “Uses for Newsgroups: NNTP Technologies Pack More of a Groupware Punch Than You May Think” Web Techniques 4 (3) April 1999, 55-58

Stein, L. D. (1999) “Is CGI Dead?” Web Techniques 4 (3) April 1999, 12-15

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Web Techniques www.webtechniques.co

designshops.com wwwdesignshops.com

CGI/1.1 Draft Specification ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-coar-cgi-v11-01.txt

The CGI RFC Project Home Page www.golux.com/coar/cgi/

The Unofficial FastCGI Home Page www.fastcgi.com

Velocigen (Binary Evolution) www.velocigen.com

mod_perl: The Apache/Perl Integration Project perl.apache.org

Apache::Session www.perl.com/CPA/module/by-module/Apache/

DejaNews www.dejanews.com

RemarQ www.remarq.com

WebDAV News Release www.communications.uci.edu/~inform/98releases/145ad98.html

WebDAV Standard http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/ protocol/draft-ietf-webdav-protocol-10.txt

Links

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Dern, D. P. & S. Mace (1998) “The Internet Reinvented” Byte February 23 (2) 89-96

World Wide Web Consortium- W3C (1998) www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/SGML/Activity

World Wide Web Consortium- W3C (1998) http://www.w3.org/XML/

Sullivan, E. (1997) “XML will take the Web to the next level” PCWeek http://www.zdnet.com.au/pcweek/reviews/0428/28xml.html

DiNucci, D. (1997) “XML: A return to traditional standards might save the day” MacWEEK http://www.zdnet.com.au/zdwebcat/content/articles/199707/html.xml/1.html

Berst, J. (1997) “The Excitement Over XML” ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_1098.html

Cisco Systems Documentation (1989-98)

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ita/index.htm

Goldfarb, C. F. and P. Prescod (1998) The XML Handbook Prentice Hall

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Adobe Systems Incorporated (1998) FrameMaker+SGML- Editing and Composition http://www.adobe.com

ArborText Inc. (1998) ADEPT.Editor- Content Management Editor http://www.arbortext.com

SoftQuad Inc. (1998) XMetaL- XML Editor http://www.sq.com

Inso Corporation (1998) DynaTag- Visual Conversion Environment http://www.inso.com

ArborText Inc. (1998) XML Styler- Graphical XSL Stylesheet Editor http://www.arbortext.com

Chrystal Software (1998) Astoria- Content Management http://www.chrystal.com

POET Software (1998) POET- Content Management Suite http://www.poet.com

IETF http://www.ietf.org/

Internet Society http://info.isoc.org/index.html

Internet Architecture Board (IAB) http://www.iab.org/iab/overview.htmlInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF) http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/home.html

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Stanford University Computing Science Department, Wearables Lab http://wearables.stanford.edu

iPic Server http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/~shri/iPic.html

WebACE http://www.std.com/~fwhite/ace/

Iready Server http://www.mycal.net/wsweb/

Scenix SX-Stack http://www.scenix.com