Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
OASIS Ramps Up SDO Efforts for SOAs
11/19/2007
The nonprofit OASIS standards group has created a technical committee in support of the Service Data Objects (SDO) specification at OASIS. The SDO spec, which is a subset of the Service Component Architecture (SCA) spec, aims at simplifying data handling in service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
The advantage of implementing the SDO spec is that developers aren't tied down to specific data types or frameworks in an SOA, according to advocates for the standard.
"By offering a common facility for representing collections of data--regardless of data source type--SDO gives application developers a more simple, unified programming model and enables tools to work across heterogeneous data sources consistently," stated IBM's Shawn Moe, convener of the OASIS SDO Technical Committee, in a prepared statement.
According to a white paper (PDF) by the Open SOA group, the core SDO spec permits the use of any query language (SQL, XPath or XQuery). It works with object-oriented databases, relational databases or XML data sources.
OASIS initially began working with the Open SOA group in March of this year to develop the SDO spec. Currently, 11 Open SOA partners are behind the SDO spec. Those Open SOA partners include major SOA solution providers, such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle and Software AG.
Microsoft is not a part of this effort. Sun Microsystems initially wasn't part of the effort either, but the company later joined the Open SOA SDO effort as a partner. Some analysts early on suggested that SCA might be an attempt to get around Sun's Java Business Integration (JBI) effort.
In the battle over promoting SOA software, two standards typically get mentioned: SCA and JBI.
SCA provides a description of service components and how those components work together, according to a white paper (large PDF file) by David Chappell of David Chappell & Associates. SCA components can be built with Java or other languages or they can be built using Business Process Execution Language or the Spring Framework. Chappell adds that SCA is a new way to create Java business logic in an SOA and that it is an alternative to older methods, such as EJB and JAX-WS.
JBI, on the other hand, is a standard supported by Java Community Process JSR 208. JBI provides a Java runtime environment.
The Open SOA group sees SCA as generally complementary to JBI, according to a note posted by Mike Edwards of IBM. However, SCA supports types that don't run on a Java Virtual Machine, such as C++, he added.
Recommended Reading
- Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
- The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates.
- Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features.
- Automation Chimera: Education Is Not Management
The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning.
- Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
- Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
