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Jakarta is the project. Tomcat is one of the products of the project. In particular Tomcat is the servlet engine. I think the name of the JSP implementation is Jasper, but don't quote me on that.

Aditionally there are a lot of other things happening in the project, like application frame works, the Jakarta ORO Matcher regular expression library, and a number of other things. Take a look at the site.

Mark

Personally I picked up this book a while ago. I needed to get up to speed on JSP. It is a good read. I didn't find I needed the JSP or the Servlet specification handy to get through it, and I had only a passing familiarity with JSP when I started.

Mark and Duane deal with the subject well. The chapter on "Architecting JSP applications" is very helpful for someone coming new to the Java way. The coverage of java beans is decent, although I'm not personally a big user of them.

I would recommend the book as a good starting point for using Java as a web development platform, but as a starting point. Take a look at some of the alternatives to JSP. Personally I've moved away from JSP, and haven't used them in a single large project to date, except in a purely cursorial manner. We've since moved to using Enhydra as our framework for using Java on the web. I highly recommend it, but also check out some of the stuff over at the Jakarta Project for some other alternatives to JSP.

Mark

Last month I spent two days printing out and binding the freely avaliable mod_perl guide. In the end I ended up with four bound sections that take up a lot of space. This took a lot of my time, and was a very frustrating experience (Dammit Jim, I'm a coder, not a reprographics clerk.)

I'd chip in 20usd to have this published, and know at least four other people who'd do the same. I simply am that lazy - and I think it would be great advocacy too. We rely a lot on this kind of information, and it'd be great to have it in meetings, take it home to read in the bath, on the desk not taking up screen space, etc, etc, etc.

What I'm basically trying to say is that there's a lot of online only material that I'd love to have in dead tree form as well. And I (and my firm) would be quite willing to pay to see it happen.

First of all perl is much older then php and is by far better tested and supported. The minimum php has to do is to port/support most of the CPAN (http://www.cpan.org) modules, which really help to provide fast and easy application development.

Secondly, why should one learn two different languages to do two different things? ;) Take for a example, standalone (data/system-maintainence scripts) and a web application. Why should I do web part in php and, say, db-to-files-dumping-from-cron in perl? Why should not I use perl for both? You may say that one can use php for those "standalone" scripts, but how convinient that is?

Thirdly, I have not seen any particular advantage of php that is not present in perl. Niether did I see anything which is easier in php. But that is subjective imho ;)

Perl is also easily run in both CGI mode and HTML embedded (http://perl.apache.org). Perl is installed on lot's of systems and it comes with the distributions of most UNIXes. There is even a popular perl interpreter for Windows (http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/).

Anyway, php has no chances to make perl obsolete, since perl has million of other appliences except the web. And even to make perl obsolete for web development, php has a long road to go, though I am following the development a bit, and I like just having another alternative in the future ;)

This is a bit of an untruth. It is true that as you gain experience in one aspect of IT, you will be considered more and more of an expert over time, but the main problem comes in when you try to think that your 10 years of DB2 experience + a course in Java makes you worth as much as an expert Java programmer. You aren't an expert, and will have to take a pay cut if you want to switch your aspect. As I said elsewhere, you will gain your old status quickly.

One place where this is true is poor interns who get a QA job as their first job. If they stay in QA for too long, then people will begin to think they can't program. One way to counteract this is by doing open source work. Of course, open source work also helps you change your aspect. If you have 10 years DB2 + a course in Java + are a contributer to any of the Java apache projects, then you'll look rather apealling.

XML is a rotten format for programming languages. Anyone who's worked with XSLT knows what I mean. XSLT (related to XSL) is, essentially, a programming language that converts XML documents into other XML documents and XSLT itself is (drum roll please) an XML document. Why? 'Cause XML documents are sooooo late 90's

XSLT is a great boon to Web developers and designers because it gives you a layer between what designers can touch and what developers can touch that acts as a sort of neutral zone. It also allows you to port your site between content management systems with fairly little pain.

For info on where this goes in the real world, check out XSP from Cocoon. This is a Java-based system, but there are XSP-based equivalents for other languages, namely Perl's AxKit.

Both of these technologies are Apache-specific, and in their early stages. I think for AxKit, the database interaction is the weakest link, but there's enough good mod_perl/DBI code out there that I don't see that as a big deal.

HTML::Template might be a place to look, while it doesn't give you embedded code in a page it forces you to separate content from presentation, which is often a bigger advantage down the road.

There have been some unofficial benchmarks of the various technologies (here is one, but it is biased) but most I've seen are nearly irrelevant because the best thing they test is the looping ability and startup time of the various technologies. And none of these covered the very thing you ask, the page embedded solutions for Perl.

From my point of view, most of these technologies are on par with each other, there aren't going to be orders of magnitude differences by switching.

The mod_perl performance pages offer quite a bit of information on tuning your application, I wouldn't be surprised to find that your biggest performance obstacles are in the code itself. You mention 'we', how about breaking up the different embedded solutions and picking a subset of your capabilities to implement and benchmark. Then you can tell us "Which one is fastest?" Better yet, you can give us a clue as to which one is better to develop with, any hidden obstacles to a good design and so on.

Tomcat is a reference implementation that is moving toward being a viable product for small self maintained sites. I use it for testing because I find that its instability and open development strategy are plusses.

There are real commercial Servlet Containers that are much faster and more stable. Resin is blazing fast, includes lost of fun gadgets (but start with plain servlets, please) and is OPEN SOURCE. It's free for small installations, but costs US$500 for commercial licenses. I use it.

What I really like about Resin is that it is rock solid. And nicely supported.

Servlets are at their best with complicated, large, or frequently updated sites. Consider a framework like Turbine or a templating engine like WebMacro or both to build a good quality maintainable site.

JSP is designed to emulate ASP. It's a great transition path. Now some taglibs exist to make it a viable platform for development, too. But a real framework is better, so consider one.

-B. Earl

Here it goes...

What is the equivilent of add/remove programs?

On redhat or probably any other RPM based system (Mandrake, SuSE, etc) the package manager is 'rpm'. There is a GUI frontend called gnorpm that probably does what add/remove would do. On Debian based systems there's apt (apt-get, apt-cache) and gnome-apt for a frontend.

What is the equivilent of autoexec.bat/startup folder?

rc0.d
rc0.d/K90sysklogd
rc0.d/K30setserial
rc0.d/K25hwclock.sh
rc0.d/K20makedev
rc0.d/S30urandom
rc0.d/S20sendsigs
rc0.d/S31umountnfs.sh
rc0.d/S40umountfs
rc0.d/S90halt
rc0.d/K20logoutd
rc0.d/S35networking
rc0.d/S10portmap
rc0.d/K20inetd
rc0.d/K14ppp
rc0.d/K12kerneld
rc0.d/K89pcmcia
rc0.d/K01gdm
rc0.d/K20ssh
rc0.d/K10rplay
rc0.d/K20apache
rc0.d/K20postgresql

ie all services are to be killed because we're shutting down. (Blast <PRE> filtering!)

Where is dialup networking?

Dunno. Use your package manager and search for things like 'dial' and 'ppp' etc.

Where is device manager/what the heck do I do with this linux driver on disk?

There is no "cute" device manager. You can look in /proc for a lot of info about the running system and what peripherals are attached. Installing drivers for devices is a bit more complex. Basically what they (usually) are are kernel modules. These are usually specific to a kernel version and kernel versions aren't standardised across distributions which means that you usually have to recompile a driver (assuming source is available) for your kernel if you're running anything but a really mainstream linux distribution. This used to be RedHat 6.2 but I don't know anymore. In short, installing drivers not provided by your distro is at least a pain in the ass and at most impossibly difficult.

How do you do this 'webserver' thing that linux is supposed to be so good at?

It's the best in its price range. (And bests some outside of its price range) :d I'll point you to the docs because this is a very vague question: apache.org docs

--
while($s ne "just another perl hacker"){ $s.=["a".."z"," "]->[rand 25] }

Consider using some form of XML or template system instead. For Java, you can get several servlet-based template systems, as well as a number of XML implementations (check xml.apache.org).

I agree that this is a terrific book on JSP. What makes WDJSP book different is its attention to design and architecture issues, and for pointing out that while JSP will let you "put everything in one file", why one shouldn't do it and how not to do it. IMO servlets + JSP are good technologies for creating large and complex web-based applications. By designing carefully, it is easy to integrate it with non-web corporate apps (theoretically, since there are not, I suppose, many corporate apps in Java). Consider the Struts project on Apache-Jakarta. This is about implementing the MVC design pattern using servlets and JSP.

OK, so what do we need from them? Open Source software is built on open standards, depends on open standards. We've seen software vendors 'embrace and extend' standards to the point that they've ceased to be open (can anyone say 'Kerberos'?)

The biggest christmas present any of the big comupting companies could give the Open Source community is a cast-iron, board-level committment to support and comply with open standards wherever appropriate, and most significantly of all, never to 'extend' an open standard without making those extensions freely available under the same terms as thr original standard.

Also, I should have noted that IBM gave its SOAP implementation to Apache. It's now at the Apache site.

"We see that SOAP [the Simple Object Access Protocol] provides part of the answer to meet the requirements of certain categories of service, such as those for subscription-based models. This explains our commitment and participation in the Working Group at the W3C [World Wide Web Consortium] to develop the recommendation for XP, which builds on the initial SOAP work," said Simon Nicholson, Sun's XML standards strategist.

There was a lot of talk about SOAP at JavaOne last year. This was before Microsoft put the SOAP stake in the ground of .NET. There have been quite a few indications from Sun that they feel XML-RPC is going to be a large part of the furture of distrubuted computing and have given more credibility to SOAP than the OMG standard (even the OMG is making CORBA XML-connectable).

As an aside, the XML-Apache group has some SOAP stuff, too. People aren't thinking of it as a Microsoft thing. Just a distributed thing.

JMeter has preliminary support for testing database drivers. I added it myself. It isn't TPC-C, but it's free and is actively being developed (in theory). (Of course it is written in java so this post won't get moded up, why are the slashdot moderators so anti-java--you'd think microsoft created it)

JMeter was so invaluable to me when I started programming high traffic websites, that I joined the project and started making contributions to it. JMeter is a tool that allows you to stress test a website by simulating multiple users accessing a website simultaneously. It really helps you find those bugs that only show up when a large number of users access a site.

• http://xml.apache.org

So you really don't need to buy into someone's proprietary platform, use the source luke.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

Thus see my other comment in this discussion, That's why it's important to choose GPL and I think that it's particularly important that every function of any significance that's used on linux should ultimately get written by someone under a GPL license

It's really not enough to just use open-source software if the license allows the source to be closed, if your aim is World Domination. Many of those who participate in Open Source, as distinct from Free Software, do so for their mutual benefit as closed-source commercial proprietary developers.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

Thus see my other comment in this discussion, That's why it's important to choose GPL and I think that it's particularly important that every function of any significance that's used on linux should ultimately get written by someone under a GPL license

It's really not enough to just use open-source software if the license allows the source to be closed, if your aim is World Domination. Many of those who participate in Open Source, as distinct from Free Software, do so for their mutual benefit as closed-source commercial proprietary developers.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

You should only choose another license if you specifically intend to allow anyone to make closed-source, commercial use of your code.

That's why it's pointed out in an earlier comment that Microsoft wouldn't base an offerring on Linux, but on BSD - as Apple is doing, with Mac OS X.

The Free Software Foundation recommends against the general use of the LGPL - formerly called the GNU Library Public License but now called the lesser public license.

Generally, you'd only want to use the LGPL if there is already an existing high-quality library that is available in closed-source form and you want yours to be adopted by people who want to keep the source to their applications closed. This was done, for example, with glibc, to make a replacement for the proprietary libc popular.

But if you're writing a totally new library, or if you feel that your library is a significant improvement on an existing closed-source library, using the GPL rather than the LGPL will draw new free software into the world, and although it won't prevent people from selling your work, it will prevent them from holding the source closed.

Licenses that would be inappropriate for competing with Microsoft would be the BSD License or the MIT License, the Apache License or the Mozilla Public License.

That's why, despite Mozilla, we still need a good browser that is GPL'ed.

For lists of a lot of licenses, see the opensource.org approved licenses and GPL Compatible Licenses - these last basically can be combined in software with GPL'ed code. Also note License that are incompatible with the GPL.

Upon further examination, I see that if you are not going to use the GPL, you should at least use a license that would allow your code to be used in the same project with GPL'ed code. This is the case with the revised BSD license (without the advertising class) and the MIT license but not the Mozilla license, or, significantly, the Python license - in some cases the incompatibility is not caused by restrictions by what you can do with the code but in the case of Python it's because the licensed is governed by the laws of the state of Virginia in the U.S.A.

Sometimes people do specifically choose to use things like the MIT License because they intend for it to be used for commercial use. My friend Andy Green who wrote the ZooLib cross-platform application framework is an independent consultant, and he had it in mind to make things easier for other consultants and small commercial developers, as well as free software developers. It was a complex decision but they people with an interest in the code ultimately agreed on the MIT license.

On the one hand, this allows people like Microsoft to write cross-platform closed-source products that would compete with free software - so MS could port their products to ZooLib and have source compatibility with Linux, Windows and Mac (and BeOS too), and this source would be closed, which could be a problem.

On the other hand, the ready availability of an open source but commercially-compatible crossplatform library gives power to the third-party developer at the expense of all OS vendors whether closed or open source, which I feel is arguably a good thing.

So it is a complex decision, really. But I think that, when in doubt, use the GPL. If you hold the copyright yourself, you can always supply a separately licensed version to people who pay you for it. For example, while the CygWin library (a POSIX API for Windows, part of a GNU programming environment that is largely source-code compatible with Linux) is under the GPL, you can purchase a proprietary license for it from Redhat which is actually pretty expensive from the terms they used to have on their page.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

You mean like using XSL:FO to generate PDF?

Are people trying to replace HTML with XML? I don't know. My gf is currently using Cocoon & XML to generate HTML & WML pages dynamically, from the same data which surely is much of the point - how the data (read: content) is rendered doesn't need to be known by those who generate it. If you read good books on OO you would see much the same practice being promoted for developing s/ware too (think Model-View-Controller).

The Apache XML project has FOP, which translates XSL:FO to PDF.

XML can be effectively used to separate content and presentation, which makes several output formats possible, for instance HTML, WML, PDF. Since modern web publishing relies on this there is quite certainly no interest in using LaTeX.

(check out the XML Apache Project if you want to simplify the management of your web site in this way)

That, in itself, is both an interesting feature and a major, major nightmare for build and configuration management (something I'm paid to do.)

Compared to what, resolving dependancies on header files?

In Java this is easy. Has this file been touched since the class file was written. No? Then leave it alone. Does this file have a dependancy? Yes? Is it compiled? No? Compile that first. javac works this way, and it rocks.

Now, there is a big problem with some optimizations, though, like final static variables of primative types, which are always inlined in the object code. But there is no reason that it can't be recognized by the compiler, they just don't because it requires a reverse-dependancy check, which isn't exactly fast unless the dependancies are pre-computed, or requires every file to be parsed, regarless of its timestamp, which defeats the whole purpose.

Of course, none of this works if you use makefiles and treat javac like a C compiler, but that's why you should be using something like Ant.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom

The TomCat README I have, of 2000/04/18, provides very nice pointers to installation, configuration, and development documentation. I certainly don't see "use the source, Luke" written anywhere in there. Even if I'd lost the README and the docs that come with the binary somehow, it's three rational clicks away from jakarta.apache.org to get to Tomcat - A Minimalistic User's Guide.

I admit I would like more documentation with TomCat but I'd like more documentation with everything. I think Jakarta's doing a reasonbly good job getting documentation out there.

I originally wasn't going to write a response to this, thinking that the whole premise was ludicrous. There doesn't have to be linux support for Java, you just write java and it runs on any platform. There is a large amount of Open Source support for Java, from the Giant Java Tree, to the Java, Jakarta, and XML Apache projects. There is even an Open Source application server called Enhyra that supports pretty much everything you would expect from an enterprise class J2EE server. And if you don't like open source, then BEA's WebLogic server runs fine on Linux.

So why is there an impression that the Linux community doesn't support Java? One thing I will say is that if you are a Java supporter, you probably aren't a strong Linux supporter. That is because Java is platform independent. A Java developer doesn't care what platform they are on. Before people respond to this with the typical FUD that Java isn't cross, platform, bear in mind that all of the open source projects above run on all the platforms I've ever used them on, without any recompilation. Xerces worked on Win2K and linux. Tomcat worked on Win2K, linux, and Solaris. I don't know about weblogic, since I haven't tries moving the binaries over (I just used the rpm on linux, install on Win2K). Development in Java is development in Java. If you do it right (meaning don't setLayout(null)), it'll work. If you're server side, you have no worries.

That being said, Blackdown supports JDK1.3, the latest release of the JDK on any other platform. It seems that the majority of the OS developers I know from the projects I listed use linux as their development machine. And let's face it, Java is giving linux a lot of credibility in the server side market because it's sinking in that spending 20,000 on a single Sparc if better spent on a cluster of linux machines running (insert appserver du jour here).

Finally, you can go ahead and say that it isn't making any headway on the desktop. Well, that's true, but it isn't making headway on any platform's desktop. Linux is no exception.

You can try to say that it isn't making headway in the embedded market, but with the KVM for larger embedded devices (>40K RAM), and real-time specification fromt the community development, you'd be wrong.

I'm surprised that JDJ would print such tripe. I'm not surprised that Slashdot twisted it even farther and threw in a bunch of FUD.

I originally wasn't going to write a response to this, thinking that the whole premise was ludicrous. There doesn't have to be linux support for Java, you just write java and it runs on any platform. There is a large amount of Open Source support for Java, from the Giant Java Tree, to the Java, Jakarta, and XML Apache projects. There is even an Open Source application server called Enhyra that supports pretty much everything you would expect from an enterprise class J2EE server. And if you don't like open source, then BEA's WebLogic server runs fine on Linux.

So why is there an impression that the Linux community doesn't support Java? One thing I will say is that if you are a Java supporter, you probably aren't a strong Linux supporter. That is because Java is platform independent. A Java developer doesn't care what platform they are on. Before people respond to this with the typical FUD that Java isn't cross, platform, bear in mind that all of the open source projects above run on all the platforms I've ever used them on, without any recompilation. Xerces worked on Win2K and linux. Tomcat worked on Win2K, linux, and Solaris. I don't know about weblogic, since I haven't tries moving the binaries over (I just used the rpm on linux, install on Win2K). Development in Java is development in Java. If you do it right (meaning don't setLayout(null)), it'll work. If you're server side, you have no worries.

That being said, Blackdown supports JDK1.3, the latest release of the JDK on any other platform. It seems that the majority of the OS developers I know from the projects I listed use linux as their development machine. And let's face it, Java is giving linux a lot of credibility in the server side market because it's sinking in that spending 20,000 on a single Sparc if better spent on a cluster of linux machines running (insert appserver du jour here).

Finally, you can go ahead and say that it isn't making any headway on the desktop. Well, that's true, but it isn't making headway on any platform's desktop. Linux is no exception.

You can try to say that it isn't making headway in the embedded market, but with the KVM for larger embedded devices (>40K RAM), and real-time specification fromt the community development, you'd be wrong.

I'm surprised that JDJ would print such tripe. I'm not surprised that Slashdot twisted it even farther and threw in a bunch of FUD.

I originally wasn't going to write a response to this, thinking that the whole premise was ludicrous. There doesn't have to be linux support for Java, you just write java and it runs on any platform. There is a large amount of Open Source support for Java, from the Giant Java Tree, to the Java, Jakarta, and XML Apache projects. There is even an Open Source application server called Enhyra that supports pretty much everything you would expect from an enterprise class J2EE server. And if you don't like open source, then BEA's WebLogic server runs fine on Linux.

So why is there an impression that the Linux community doesn't support Java? One thing I will say is that if you are a Java supporter, you probably aren't a strong Linux supporter. That is because Java is platform independent. A Java developer doesn't care what platform they are on. Before people respond to this with the typical FUD that Java isn't cross, platform, bear in mind that all of the open source projects above run on all the platforms I've ever used them on, without any recompilation. Xerces worked on Win2K and linux. Tomcat worked on Win2K, linux, and Solaris. I don't know about weblogic, since I haven't tries moving the binaries over (I just used the rpm on linux, install on Win2K). Development in Java is development in Java. If you do it right (meaning don't setLayout(null)), it'll work. If you're server side, you have no worries.

That being said, Blackdown supports JDK1.3, the latest release of the JDK on any other platform. It seems that the majority of the OS developers I know from the projects I listed use linux as their development machine. And let's face it, Java is giving linux a lot of credibility in the server side market because it's sinking in that spending 20,000 on a single Sparc if better spent on a cluster of linux machines running (insert appserver du jour here).

Finally, you can go ahead and say that it isn't making any headway on the desktop. Well, that's true, but it isn't making headway on any platform's desktop. Linux is no exception.

You can try to say that it isn't making headway in the embedded market, but with the KVM for larger embedded devices (>40K RAM), and real-time specification fromt the community development, you'd be wrong.

I'm surprised that JDJ would print such tripe. I'm not surprised that Slashdot twisted it even farther and threw in a bunch of FUD.

Slashcode uses mod_perl. If it actually uses the power of it, rather than merely the Apache::Registry speed hack, then you will need a service that supports mod_perl.

You'll also need an isp that supports mysql, or, if slashcode is written to use DBI in a portable manner then at least a service that supports DBI access to some database.

• Free Software Foundation
• OpenBSD
• Apache
• NetBSD
• PostgreSQL
• SAMBA
• FreeBSD
• LinuxFund.org
• KPFK radio

Obviously it depends on your personal preferences, but you could try:

the FSF: donate here
KDE: contacts here

other projects as you use them; e.g., netbsd, openbsd, Apache, XFree86.

Or just donate computers to Africa or somewhere.

http://xml/linux/newbie

transferProtocol://contentType/highLevelCategory/l owerLevelCategory

Hm, no. For one thing, a document could, and often should, exist in many different content types, and servers should use content negotation to serve them.

More importantly, you impose a hierarchal structure on the web, but the web was invented to solve the many problems hierarchal systems represent.

Now, the DNS does represent a problem for the web, TimBL discuss this in his book, but you're going in the wrong direction, IMHO.

Hava a look at xalan Open source implemented in Java. Easy JSP, servlet integration. I use extensively the redirect package. XML source -> Generate Japanese HTML version and -> Generate English HTML version ME

I'm working on a cocoon-based production project right now. It's fast, it's flexible, it promotes high-level reuse. Get some!

Neutron

I'm working on a cocoon-based production project right now. It's fast, it's flexible, it promotes high-level reuse. Get some!

Neutron

I have tried Cocoon, but AxKit was much easier for me to set up. It requires mod_perl and Sablotron.

I would think that Cocoon would pretty much totally fit the bill here. It is a very strongly XSL-based content delivery engine that is being used by several major sites. I think Apache's projects are way beyond what anyone else is doing in all these areas. The XML project and the Jakarta project are both even more exciting to me than the HTTPD itself. Both are pushing technologies that have applications both with Apache HTTPD and with other servers on the market (IIS included). Before you get excited about anything else, do yourself a favor and check out what they have to offer. I think you will find powerful, real-world ready environments.

I would think that Cocoon would pretty much totally fit the bill here. It is a very strongly XSL-based content delivery engine that is being used by several major sites. I think Apache's projects are way beyond what anyone else is doing in all these areas. The XML project and the Jakarta project are both even more exciting to me than the HTTPD itself. Both are pushing technologies that have applications both with Apache HTTPD and with other servers on the market (IIS included). Before you get excited about anything else, do yourself a favor and check out what they have to offer. I think you will find powerful, real-world ready environments.

I would think that Cocoon would pretty much totally fit the bill here. It is a very strongly XSL-based content delivery engine that is being used by several major sites. I think Apache's projects are way beyond what anyone else is doing in all these areas. The XML project and the Jakarta project are both even more exciting to me than the HTTPD itself. Both are pushing technologies that have applications both with Apache HTTPD and with other servers on the market (IIS included). Before you get excited about anything else, do yourself a favor and check out what they have to offer. I think you will find powerful, real-world ready environments.

Java isn't static it can compile and long new class on the fly: Just look at tomcat. The problem with using Objects over a system like freenet is that it's a security nightmare, Java defends against many security problems but not against deny of services attacks, just build an object preporting to be an popular mp but actually being a recusive thread spawner DSA, and take down whole a huge number of freenet clients.

But if you want build an object database over freenet it would be quite possible: Freenet is just a distrubtion system and says nothing about what a freenet client does with the information it downloads.

http://perl.apache.org/embperl

besides that we have the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Software in the Public Interest, Apache Software Foundation, and i am sure a few more...

greetings, eMBee.
--

As many others have already pointed out, try to make yourself known that you are the ones who got this standard out.

However, you have to be careful that the standard you are pushing is a very good one. Once you're sure, go out and make yourselves heard. Coz if it turns out not-as-good-as-you-thought, get ready for some shit big time.

I've had a very similar experience last year in my old job. My project was to export an in-house VHDL compiler's internal data structures onto XML and then visualise them in HTML (as an application for the format).

What we did (after we'd finished it) was sit down and write a paper on it, submitted it to a conference, it got accepted and there we were getting ourselves some +ve publicity. So, that's definitely something to keep in mind.

Now, having gone through this research, here are a few hints for later down the road:

• Last time I checked XSL (I studied the entire recommendation), it sucked big time and I believe it's very far far away from standardisation. And as long as it's not a standard, expect the quality of the tools to be crap. (hint) (alternatively...)
  
  
• Don't bother with a formal specification (DTD) until you have got a final-ish format ready. It'll make your development a lot easier.
  
  
• I wouldn't recommend charging for the use of your format, a la copyright (or even patenting it, just in case it's crossed your minds). The only thing it's gonna get you is bad PR.

Trian

(off to get some rest and a beer coz I've spent a few hours too many in front of this machine)

We simply managed to explain product management that it makes more business sense to evolve towards W3C standards NOW rather than later because they're all driving the global web applications market. That it makes more sense to spend some extra time making our code compliant to standards now so we can build on it later on rather than doing it later.

Chances are your boss'es are uneducated on the subject and chances are you could use some more education on the subject of XML-derived standards and their benefits.

Go to xml.apache.org and look at the various projects they have going there. Look at Coccoon. You'll see that standards are your friends, not your enemies.

spread the joy.

Redesigning and implementing a new module takes time; nevertheless, David Reid and Ryan Bloom have fixed some issues in the current module. Those changes will be in Apache 2.0a8.

Please remember that this is an alpha-level distribution. We'd appreciate it, if you would spend some of your time to help improve Apache and submit bugs to the Apache bugs database.

Thank you.

As many already has said here, there are a lot of reasons why this information is no more usable than what is done today.
I could mention one too, large companies where branches in different countries go through the company WAN to the HQ for internet access.

If you are lucky you can go down to country level, and that information can evnen Apache get out from fx. MSIE(you know, the LanguagePriority directive), assuming that people have set it right, but at least itdescribes their preference.

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• Apache SOAP project. http://xml.apache.org/soap/index.html
• jUDDI project. http://sourceforge.net/projects/uddi

I haven't had a lot of time to study the UDDI spec, but I have been pondering the topic of Open Services for quite some time and my feeling is they will. I like the term Open Services, as Tim O'Reilly calls them, over Web services because this concept is applicable beyond HTML and just the Web.

I think the biggest hurdle at the moment for this concept, is the perception that Microsoft invented this concept (therefore there must be something sinister and evil behind it!) and its tied to just their technology which is just plain off.

The idea of open services where around before SOAP. I haven't done an in-depth genealogy of the concept, but I can tell you Dave Winer at Userland has been evangelizing it for a couple of year now. There is also Allaire's WDDX and in a looser sense RSS and ICE.

Microsoft did initiate the SOAP spec, but have put they have opened it up and submitted to the W3C. They incorporated IBM's feedback which garnered IBM whole-hearted support. IBM released their Java implementation on AlphaWorks and then donated the code to Apache. Even Sun conceded it was a good idea and gave as much of an endorsement as they could stomach for something Microsoft had initiated.

I would even argue that IBM is excelling beyond Microsoft. Well... at least in the developer community. They've yet to release anything commercially or articulated a product strategy that utilizes it. (Typical them.) Microsoft does seem to be betting quite a bit on SOAP/Open Services and going from there.

What I love about this concept (and why I think it will succeed) is that its fairly easy and straight forward to work with. It also is a more concrete way to get all of these different platforms that are deployed to talk to each other. It will just makes developing easier, better and smarter.

The way I read it, UDDI is just a progression in making solutions built on this concept more robust.

For all of those interested in this topic, here are some good background links on the topic that aren't so Microsoft-rah-rah.

• The Network Really Is The Computer
• XML: A Disruptive Technology
• AGENCY.CO M's Flexitecture Methodology
• Meerkat: An Open Wire Service
• XMethods: Web Service Listing
• SOAP::Lite (A lightweight SOAP server written in Perl)
• xml-rpc.com
• soap.weblogs.com
• Apache SOAP

Here's a link