Related link: http://2005.xmlconference.org/

Last year I was able to take some time off from work and make my way to Washington, DC to present my .NET & XML tutorial at XML 2004.

I had a good time, met some people, saw some talks, but I was not able to spend enough time there to really make the most of it.

This year, I have two things going for me:

1. An employer who is willing to send me to conferences
2. A conference right here in Atlanta

So I’ll be attending the whole week’s activities at XML 2005. It’s at the Atlanta Hilton, November 14-18. I’ll be commuting daily from my home in the Northwestern suburbs.

The schedule is not final yet, but the tutorial will be either Monday, November 14, or Friday, November 18.

If you’re interested in using XML in .NET, you should consider signing up for the tutorial. I’m planning to revise and update the content, but it’ll remain a basic introduction for developers new to .NET.

Let me know if you’re thinking of coming, and if there are specific topics you’d like covered.

Or if you’re coming to the conference but not signing up for the tutorial, let me know why so I can make sure I’m presenting the right material for my audience.

This year there are at least 4 sessions that are JBI related (two of which I’m presenting) –

TS-5238 Java™ Business Integration (JSR 208): Enabling Standards-Based Integration

Speaker:
• Dave Chappell

BOF-9291 Web Services Management in a J2EE™ World Core Enterprise

Speakers:
• Nazrul Islam, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Satish Viswanatham, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Christopher Kampmeier, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

TS-3533 Loosely Coupled: Implementing Service-Oriented Architectures with Java™ Business Integration (JSR 208)

Speakers:
• John Crupi, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Michael Hulton, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Michael Wright, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Panel Discussion: TS-5238 Java™ Business Integration (JSR 208): Enabling Standards-Based Integration Core Enterprise

Speakers:
• Scott Clinton, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Mark Hapner, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• David Chappell, Sonic Software

TS-7765 Java™ Business Integration: A Foundation for SOA Core Enterprise

Speaker:
• Peter Walker, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Mark Hapner, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Ron Ten-Hove, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

To learn more about each session view the session catalog

Dave

Related link: http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/interoperability.jsp

On Wednesday, 06/29/2005, JavaOne will be holding an all-day Java and .NET Interoperability Track at JavaOne 2005.

Click here for a link to a special home page for this track at JavaOne this year.

The session range from low level web services interface and protocol discussions to higher level ESB and Security issues. Esteemed speakers from Sun, Sonic, Oracle, Microsoft, and The Burton Group include yours truly, Doug Purdy, Marina Fisher, Anne Thomas Manes, Mark Hapner, Andrew Layman, “Rags” Srinivas, and many more. Most or all of these are being held in Yuerba Buena, so come on over and enjoy a session or two (or three).

Here is a list of the sessions in the track –

9:45am TS-3552 Java. Technology and .NET Interoperability Using WS-* Web Services Architecture (Yerba Buena)

11:00am TS-3550 Achieving Real Interoperability Between J2EE. and .NET: Web Services Practical Advice for Developers (Yerba Buena)

12:15pm TS-3554 Mind the Gap: Using an ESB for Interoperability Between Java. Technology, .NET and .Other. in an SOA (Yerba Buena)

1:30pm TS-3556 Multiple Platforms, Single Identity: Interoperable identity (Yerba Buena)

2:45pm TS-9866 Advanced Web Services Interoperability (Yerba Buena)

4:00pm TS-3553 Java. and .NET: Interoperability Challenges and Rewards (Yerba Buena)

7:30pm BOF-9095 On the Couch With Sun and Microsoft (Hall E #134)

8:30pm BOF-9911 Practical Interoperability Between J2EE. and .NET with Document-Driven Web Services (Hall E #134)

To learn more about each session view the Session Catalog

Dave

Related link: a href= http://www.sonicsoftware.com/cgi-bin/stars.cgi/SEActTracker.w?campcode=e…

a.k.a. SonicESB and Systinet Business Registry

Jon Bachman of Sonic and and Sean Kline of Systinet recently did a joint webinar on the subject of ESB, Web Services, and UDDI.
click here for replay

The webinar was specifically about the synergies between SonicESB and the Systinet UDDI Registry, and how they work together in a real world scenario that has to do with financial services, funds management, and dynamic process alterations through the introduction of a compliance engine as a service.

This was extremely well done of both their parts, and I encourage folks to have a look at it. Using diagrams such as this one –

The webinar clearly outlines the roles of an ESB to connect, mediate, and control the interactions between trading applications as services, and the complementary roles of an ESB repository for bus configurations vs a UDDI registry for external service definitions.

I encourage you all to have a look and a listen. Its very enlightening.
Dave

Related link: http://www.java.sun.com/javaone

This year Sonic Software is presenting 4 sessions at JavaOne, and is also participating in 3 interoperability demos –

BOF-9237—Inside Apache Axis 2: a Next-Generation Web Services Toolkit
Speaker: Glen Daniels, Sonic Software
Monday 06/27/05 at 9:30PM - Location - Moscone Center, Hall E, #133

Sonic Standards Strategist Glen Daniels will lead a Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) session on the topic of Apache Axis 2. Apache Axis 2 represents the next generation architecture for Web Services and SOAP processing for the ever-popular Apach Axis open source project. Glen has been one of the lead architects of Axis since its inception, and would love to share his insight and get your feedback. So come on down and join in the discussion.

TS-1428 Enterprise Service Bus and Java™ Business Integration: Infrastructure for Enterprise SOA
Tuesday 06/28/05 11:00 AM 60 minutes Hall E 134 Seating capacity - 950

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) represents the opportunity to achieve broad-scale interoperability, while providing the flexibility required to continually adapt technology to business requirements.

ESBs provide organizations developing their SOA strategy with a common platform to answer these requirements and enable best practices through the use of a common toolset. What the application server did for web application development, ESBs are doing for SOAs.

This session looks at how enterprise service buses are enabling the shift to SOA and examines the various Java and web services technologies at the heart of ESBs. It also takes a look at emerging standards efforts within the Java Community Process℠ program, such as the Java Business Integration specification, JSR 208, aimed at creating a loosely coupled integration model for distributed services.

TS- 3554 - Mind the Gap: Using an ESB for Interoperability Between Java™ Technology, .NET and “Other” in an SOA
Wednesday 06/29/05 12:15 PM Duration - 60 Location - Yerba Buena Seating Capacity - 750
In this session, I’ll be showing a live demonstration of applications based on Java technology and .NET communicating through an ESB using technologies such as Java Message Service (JMS), Native C# runtime interfaces, and Web Services.
The live demo which will include the use of an ESB to provide fault tolerance and failover of services written in both Java and .NET! The hot failover will include not only the services themselves, but the underlying ESB messaging layer as well. Come see the benefits of an ESB in action as we change a service configuration and modify a running business process definition while its up and running on the big screen, without taking anything down or experiencing any disruption in service. I’ll then pull the plug on the machine that’s hosting some of the services and part of the distributed fault tolerant ESB infrastructure and it will fail over to the other machine in a matter of seconds without losing a single service invocation or a single bit of transactional integrity. You won’t believe your eyes! :)

JBI Panel Discussion –
Panel Discussion: TS-5238 Java™ Business Integration (JSR 208): Enabling Standards-Based Integration Core Enterprise

Thursday 06/30/2005 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
JSR-208 (Java™ Business Integration or JBI) will be finalized in time for the JavaOneSM conference. We expect a great deal of activity around the JSR, its implementation by Sun and other vendors and the way in which this technology is positioned centrally to the SOA picture for Java technology.
This panel helps evangelize and position JBI by clarifying value to different audiences such as, component developers, system integrators, and ISVs.
The panel brings Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE™ platform) Application Server and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) vendors, customers, and SIs together to talk about their vision for JBI.
In this panel discussion I’ll be teaming up with Mark Hapner of Sun, Sanjay Patil from SAP, and others to discuss the merits of JBI and what it will provide to the Java community to enable an ecosystem of pluggable vendor interoperability for building SOAs to enable integration.

JBI Interoperability Demos -

Java Business Integration (JBI) – Sun Pavilion
Sonic will participate in a JBI technology demonstration during JavaOne. Sun will host a multi-vendor JBI interoperability demo in the Sun pavilion on the show floor. Sonic will provide a credit check service based on the JBI Service Engine API.

JBI-ESB Interoperability demo – within Sonic booth #1600
Sonic will demonstrate JBI interoperability with the Sonic enterprise service bus in the Sonic booth #1600. The demonstration will show how the credit check service component can be deployed within an ESB across a distributed enterprise.

Come on over to the Moscone and check out these informative sessions.

Dave

Related link: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-urlni.html

One of my current areas of focus is making the Linux desktop a viable option for enterprises. The question I’m trying to answer is “how do we help corporations adopt Linux as a desktop operating system?”

I could make the question “how do we make it easy for corporations …”, but I don’t think that’s the right way to approach the problem. It’ll never be easy to move a Fortune 500 company’s thousands of desktop users to a new operating system, whether that means upgrading to a newer release of Windows XP or migrating to Linux. What we need to do is make moving to Linux a reachable goal.

In researching the question, I’ve found a few desktop Linux resources on the web, groups that are trying to approach the same goal, and sites that are tracking the efforts of those groups.

OSDL has a Desktop Linux Working Group, whose charter is “[to work] with the open source community to identify a broad set of Linux desktop models, develop specifications and deliver reference implementations to accelerate their growth.”

There’s also FreeDesktop.org,, which hosts “open source / open discussion software projects working on interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.”

The Desktop Linux Consortium, founded in 2003, seems to be mostly a non-starter. There’s been no activity in the last year or so.

For news sources, besides filtering through the usual aggregators, there’s DesktopLinux.com, dedicated to “using Linux on enterprise and end user desktops”. I’ve found DesktopLinux.com to be a good source of news and information on the players in the desktop Linux arena.

Finally, there’s the Desktop Developers’ Conference, in association with the Linux Symposium next month in Ottawa.

Anything I’m missing?

Where do you go for desktop Linux information? What do you see as the major barriers to desktop Linux adoption?

Related link: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2005/

My Mono: A Developer’s Notebook co-author Edd Dumbill and I are presenting the Mono Boot Camp tutorial at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference on August 2. Loosely based on the book but incorporating all the latest changes in Mono 1.2, this will be an intensive introduction to developing with Mono on three platforms: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP.

In order to make this the best tutorial for the audience, I’d like to solicit any requests for specific material to cover. If you’re thinking of attending the tutorial, what do you think you’d like to learn?

What would you like to learn about Mono?

Related link: http://bpmfocus.com

If you’re like me or most people I’ve talked to, you’ve heard things–maybe even good things!–about Business Process Management (BPM). You’ve probably also run into a thicket of overlapping acronyms, standards, and products. A new online publication called BPM Focus digs in to bring you straight information, news, and blog coverage of technology that can make a difference in your business.

Initially the publication is in beta mode, so check back often to find new material.

Writers wanted: Do you have experience with this technology? Have you been involved in a roll-out of BPM software? Or have you gotten along fine so far without using anything you’d call BPM? We are seeking writers of articles and editorials. The “Contact us” link on the site has full details.

Putting this together has been a great experience, and I’m learning all kinds of new things myself. Have a look and see what you can learn as well. -m

Do you have any suggestions for BPM Focus?

Just when you thought RELAX NG was moribund, summarily lanced by the Sith lords of schema, it shows up in the most interesting places. This time it has appeared in the latest W3C working draft for XHTML 2.0 as a normative schema definition for the markup language. I am guessing that thanks must go to ISHIKAWA, Masayasu for this. It has also worked its way into the IETF RFC for Atom 0.8, thanks to Norm Walsh. Long live RELAX NG.