I'm on the Program Committee for WS-FM again this year. Here's the CFP.
======================================================================
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Abstract submission deadline
May 9, 2006: Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Co-Chairs
Mario Bravetti University of Bologna, Italy
Gianluigi Zavattaro University of Bologna, Italy
Board of "The Process Modelling Group"
Wil van der Aalst Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Rob van Glabbeek NICTA, Sydney, Australia
Keith Harrison-Broninski Role Modellers Ltd.
Robin Milner Cambridge University, UK
Roger Whitehead Office Futures
Other PC members
Marco Aiello University of Trento, Italy
Farhad Arbab CWI, The Netherlands
Matteo Baldoni University of Torino, Italy
Jean-Pierre Banatre University of Rennes1 and INRIA, France
Boualem Benatallah University of New South Wales, Australia
Karthik Bhargavan Microsoft research Cambridge, UK
Roberto Bruni University of Pisa, Italy
Michael Butler University of Southampton, UK
Fabio Casati HP Labs, USA
Rocco De Nicola University of Florence, Italy
Marlon Dumas Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Schahram Dustdar Wien University of Technology, Austria
Gianluigi Ferrari University of Pisa, Italy
Jose Luiz Fiadeiro University of Leicester, UK
Stefania Gnesi CNR Pisa, Italy
Reiko Heckel University of Leicester, UK
Kohei Honda Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Nickolas Kavantzas Oracle Co., USA
Leila Kloul Université de Versailles, France
Cosimo Laneve University of Bologna, Italy
Mark Little JBoss Inc
Natalia López University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Roberto Lucchi University of Bologna, Italy
Jeff Magee Imperial College London, UK
Fabio Martinelli CNR Pisa, Italy
Manuel Mazzara University of Bolzano, Italy
Ugo Montanari University of Pisa, Italy
Shin Nakajima National Institute of Informatics and JST, Japan
Manuel Nunez University Complutense of Madrid, Spain
Fernando Pelayo University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain
Marco Pistore University of Trento, Italy
Wolfgang Reisig Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Vladimiro Sassone University of Southampton, UK
Marjan Sirjani Tehran University, Iran
Friedrich Vogt Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
Martin Wirsing Ludwig-Maximilians University Munchen, Germany
Friday, April 28, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
JBossWorld 2006
Come to JBoss World and hear me speak. Or, more likely, just have a good time. (Not that listening to me doesn't constitute a good time, but you know what I mean!) I'm trying to arrange some SCUBA diving while I'm there (would never have thought it possible in a desert!) Same for JavaOne, though it looks like I'll have to go to Monterey to get something in. If anyone wants to buddy up at either of these SCUBA attempts, let me know!
Friday, April 14, 2006
Flying a kite?
People who have known me a long time will know I came to be a Windows user with some reluctance. Ignoring my early computing days which included forays into the bygone worlds of punch card and tape, the Commodore PET, the BBC Model B and the Atari 520 STFM, my academic career spanned such varied systems as MTS (I think everyone should be made to use batch systems, with printouts of runs collected 6 floors below where you submit them - makes you try very hard to ensure your programs are bug free before you run them!), Whitechapel computers, PDP-11's, the Blit (fantastic machine and it looked hand-made inside!) and ultimately various Sun 3 series and Sparc machines running SunOS or Solaris variants. In there somewhere was a brief association with the Macintosh, but the lack of multithreading was a pain. As Stuart is often at pointing out (or not letting me forget!), I spent some time using OS/2; I still think it was far superior to Windows at the time.
So it's true to say that I managed to stay clear of Microsoft for a few years. That is until the arrival of Linux (Redhat ironically was most popular amongst us) and reliable PCs where is quickly became apparent that it was cheaper to "build your own" than keep paying lots of money to Sun. Obviously when you got the computers (we bought Viglen), they came with a version of Windows pre-installed and as Word became the standard for writing papers within the Department, (we used to use Interleaf or Tex/Latex), we all started to use dual operating systems, and my slide to the Dark Side had begun!
For a few years I managed to spend the majority of my time on Unix systems, but as the time went on it got less and less. Eventually, about 4 years or so ago, I was completely on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I managed to rebel a bit by using cygwin and emacs, but it wasn't the same as the "good old days". Looking back I suppose the transition had a lot to do with changes in my career, but some of it was also probably down to "look-and-feel": although I liked X windows, I found the convenience of Windows so much better. It's true to say that Linux systems these days are much better (and who knows, with the recent announcement I may try again), but I've felt reluctant to go back. This time I think it's entirely down to the things I'd lose, such as Office and Visio. I've tried alternatives such as OpenOffice, but they're just not quite there yet. But I missed Unix. So a couple of years ago I started to use Mac OS X at home and I've never looked back! It's great. I love the interface. I love the fact that it is Unix under the covers, and it runs all of the utilities I need.
However, my work machine still runs Windows XP and I'm getting tired of the interface. Compared to OS X it feels dated and clunky. And the number of times I keep going to the bottom of the screen to locate the dock is beginning to annoy me. So it was some surprise that I came across Flyakite OSX: it's an OS X look-and-feel for your PC! I just finished installing it and it's wonderful. I have to admit to not trying it on my work machine just yet, but it runs fine (maybe a little slower than Windows XP) on an old P3). So, if you're tired of the same old look-and-feel and can't wait for Vista (or perhaps don't want to take that risk), give it a go!
So it's true to say that I managed to stay clear of Microsoft for a few years. That is until the arrival of Linux (Redhat ironically was most popular amongst us) and reliable PCs where is quickly became apparent that it was cheaper to "build your own" than keep paying lots of money to Sun. Obviously when you got the computers (we bought Viglen), they came with a version of Windows pre-installed and as Word became the standard for writing papers within the Department, (we used to use Interleaf or Tex/Latex), we all started to use dual operating systems, and my slide to the Dark Side had begun!
For a few years I managed to spend the majority of my time on Unix systems, but as the time went on it got less and less. Eventually, about 4 years or so ago, I was completely on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I managed to rebel a bit by using cygwin and emacs, but it wasn't the same as the "good old days". Looking back I suppose the transition had a lot to do with changes in my career, but some of it was also probably down to "look-and-feel": although I liked X windows, I found the convenience of Windows so much better. It's true to say that Linux systems these days are much better (and who knows, with the recent announcement I may try again), but I've felt reluctant to go back. This time I think it's entirely down to the things I'd lose, such as Office and Visio. I've tried alternatives such as OpenOffice, but they're just not quite there yet. But I missed Unix. So a couple of years ago I started to use Mac OS X at home and I've never looked back! It's great. I love the interface. I love the fact that it is Unix under the covers, and it runs all of the utilities I need.
However, my work machine still runs Windows XP and I'm getting tired of the interface. Compared to OS X it feels dated and clunky. And the number of times I keep going to the bottom of the screen to locate the dock is beginning to annoy me. So it was some surprise that I came across Flyakite OSX: it's an OS X look-and-feel for your PC! I just finished installing it and it's wonderful. I have to admit to not trying it on my work machine just yet, but it runs fine (maybe a little slower than Windows XP) on an old P3). So, if you're tired of the same old look-and-feel and can't wait for Vista (or perhaps don't want to take that risk), give it a go!
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
WS-FM 2006 CFP
In my role as a member of the PC:
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
3rd International Workshop on
Web Services and Formal Methods
(WS-FM 2006)
8-9 September 2006, Vienna, Austria
http://cs.unibo.it/ws-fm06
Official event of "The Process Modelling Group"
http://www.process-modelling-group.org
Co-located with BPM 2006
4th International Conference on Business Process Management
http://bpm2006.tuwien.ac.at
======================================================================
SCOPE
Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well
as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are mainly devoted to the definition of
standards that support the specification of complex services out of
simpler ones (the so called Web Service orchestration and choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and
BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, etc...
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and
analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
are playing a fundamental role in the development of such
innovations. First of all they are exploited to understand the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different
orchestration and choreography languages and to focus on the essence
of new features that are needed. Secondly they provide a formal
basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and
equivalence): e.g. for realizing registry services where retrieval
is based on the meaning and behaviour of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly, the studies on formal coordination paradigms
can be exploited for developing mechanisms for complex run-time Web
Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application
areas for Web Services like E-commerce, the development of the Web Service
technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of
security properties and performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web
Services and Formal Methods in order to facilitate fruitful collaboration
in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great
impact on the current standardization phase of Web Service technologies.
LIST OF TOPICS
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and description methodologies for
Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow
(BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL, YAWL, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS
(transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services
(based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
SUBMISSIONS
Submissions must be original and should not have been published
previously or be under consideration for publication while being
evaluated for this workshop.
We encourage also the submission of tool papers, describing tools
based on formal methods, to be exploited in the context of Web Services
applications.
Papers are to be prepared in LNCS format and must not exceed
15 pages. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings
as a volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
As done for previous editions of the workshop, we intend to publish a
journal special issue inviting full versions of papers selected among
those presented at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
May 2, 2006: Submission deadline (EXTENDED DEADLINE)
June 6, 2006: Notification of acceptance
June 20, 2006: Camera ready
September 8-9, 2006: Workshop dates
Monday, April 10, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Threads and transactions
There's an interesting discussion on TSS about threads and transactions. Maybe what I should have also added was that there's also a really good book that covers the subject too! Hmmm, now that JBoss Transactions is out, we should think about a second edition ;-)!
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
We've done it again!
I always get a kick out of a product release, and we've done it again with the release of JBoss Transactions. It's a little strange that it's not the Arjuna Transaction Service anymore, and I've got to stop saying Arjuna so much when I talk about it!
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
WS-Addressing makes further progress
Cut-and-paste from the formal W3C announcement:
"W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core" and "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - SOAP Binding"
to Proposed Recommendations:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-core-20060321/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-soap-20060321/
Please review these specifications and indicate whether you endorse them as W3C Recommendations or object to their advancement by completing the following questionnaire:
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/wsaddr-cs-pr/
There were no new Formal Objections since the transition to Candidate
Recommendation. Additional details about the transition are available in the questionnaire.
The deadline for responses is 23:59, Boston time on 2006-04-18.
For more information about the Web Services Addressing Working Group:
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/addr/"
Good news!
"W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core" and "Web Services Addressing 1.0 - SOAP Binding"
to Proposed Recommendations:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-core-20060321/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-ws-addr-soap-20060321/
Please review these specifications and indicate whether you endorse them as W3C Recommendations or object to their advancement by completing the following questionnaire:
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/wsaddr-cs-pr/
There were no new Formal Objections since the transition to Candidate
Recommendation. Additional details about the transition are available in the questionnaire.
The deadline for responses is 23:59, Boston time on 2006-04-18.
For more information about the Web Services Addressing Working Group:
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/addr/"
Good news!
Laugh? I nearly cried!
Ever wondered what if some of our luminaries had tried to publish today? Well I encourage you to go and see!
Thursday, March 16, 2006
WS-Eventing, WS-Transfer and WS-Enumeration to W3C
Whilst it is good to see WS-Eventing, WS-Transfer and WS-Enumeration finally go to a standards body, it not necessarily a good thing. As Paul points out on Savas' blog, these specifications have been used in yet another political game of chess, in the same way as WS-ReliableMessaging/WS-ReliableExchange or WS-CAF/WS-TX. One good thing is that this time IBM are on the receiving end, despite what they may say.
Ignoring the technical merits (or lack thereof) of these specifications, one thing that simply cannot be ignored is the fact that this will now cause more fractures within the WS-* architecture, and not less. Two competing specifications, within two different (and often competing) standards bodies, will mean yet more FUD and delay as far as vendors and customers are concerned. At least when these current specifications were purely vendor specific, customers who wanted a standard approach to events (for example), had only one choice. Now they don't have any: they've got to wait until something is sorted out.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing that these things shouldn't be in a standards body. Quite the contrary: I believe strongly that they should be. I just wish that the likes of IBM and Microsoft could have gotten together 2 years ago and sorted this out, so we had a single standard now! I think that the world of Web Services can learn a lot from the OMG in terms of how to work collaboratively. It's not perfect by any means, but it's inclusive, which the world of Web Services standards simply is not. There's a lot of rubberstamping going on.
Ignoring the technical merits (or lack thereof) of these specifications, one thing that simply cannot be ignored is the fact that this will now cause more fractures within the WS-* architecture, and not less. Two competing specifications, within two different (and often competing) standards bodies, will mean yet more FUD and delay as far as vendors and customers are concerned. At least when these current specifications were purely vendor specific, customers who wanted a standard approach to events (for example), had only one choice. Now they don't have any: they've got to wait until something is sorted out.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing that these things shouldn't be in a standards body. Quite the contrary: I believe strongly that they should be. I just wish that the likes of IBM and Microsoft could have gotten together 2 years ago and sorted this out, so we had a single standard now! I think that the world of Web Services can learn a lot from the OMG in terms of how to work collaboratively. It's not perfect by any means, but it's inclusive, which the world of Web Services standards simply is not. There's a lot of rubberstamping going on.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
RFID and security
We used to collaborate with Andy Tanenbaum and his group a lot back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, so it's nice to get an update on what they're doing these days. Very interesting.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Somethings just don't make sense
There are many things in life that just don't make sense. For example, how can you have South Park without Chef? Whatever happened to Cold Fusion? Or the entire "plot" of Highlander II! But probably the one that gets to me at the moment (because it's related to my job) is how on earth can there be such a thing as a legacy ESB?!
Since it sprang to life, the ESB term has been used to mean different things to different people. For example, to some it's JMS with a few extra bells and whistles, to others it's Web Services, and to yet others it's the saviour of EAI. However, over the past couple of years, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that it should be an infrastructure for SOA applications. Now we all know that one of the things SOA is good for is leveraging existing infrastructural investments: letting you use your old stuff in new and interesting ways.
So it always seemed to me that a product that helps you implement SOA applications (quick note, SOA is not something you can get out of a shrink-wrapped box), shouldn't be part of the legacy problem! And yet when I was with Arjuna, I came across a number of large and small companies that were already being forced to work with legacy ESBs! These were products (names removed to protect the guilty parties) that, once integrated into the user's infrastructure, couldn't cope with changes in user requirements a matter of mere months or years later; plus they were so intertwined with that infrastructure that they simply couldn't be removed (or it wasn't worth the effort). So these companies then had to rely on yet more ESB implementations to talk to their legacy ESBs! And the vicious circle went on. Not exactly a good return on your investment!!
Now I'm not saying that we're going to reverse that trend, but I'd like to think we'll try not to fall into the same holes that others have. However, it's still an interesting contradiction, sort of like military intelligence.
Since it sprang to life, the ESB term has been used to mean different things to different people. For example, to some it's JMS with a few extra bells and whistles, to others it's Web Services, and to yet others it's the saviour of EAI. However, over the past couple of years, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that it should be an infrastructure for SOA applications. Now we all know that one of the things SOA is good for is leveraging existing infrastructural investments: letting you use your old stuff in new and interesting ways.
So it always seemed to me that a product that helps you implement SOA applications (quick note, SOA is not something you can get out of a shrink-wrapped box), shouldn't be part of the legacy problem! And yet when I was with Arjuna, I came across a number of large and small companies that were already being forced to work with legacy ESBs! These were products (names removed to protect the guilty parties) that, once integrated into the user's infrastructure, couldn't cope with changes in user requirements a matter of mere months or years later; plus they were so intertwined with that infrastructure that they simply couldn't be removed (or it wasn't worth the effort). So these companies then had to rely on yet more ESB implementations to talk to their legacy ESBs! And the vicious circle went on. Not exactly a good return on your investment!!
Now I'm not saying that we're going to reverse that trend, but I'd like to think we'll try not to fall into the same holes that others have. However, it's still an interesting contradiction, sort of like military intelligence.
Friday, March 10, 2006
WS-Policy re-release
The next (and simplified) version of WS-Policy is out. My spider-sense tells me a push for standardisation may come next.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Spotlight and Google Desktop
I've been using a Mac OS X machine at home for over a year and one of the features I really love about Tiger is spotlight. It's really easy to use and before I knew it, I'd become dependant upon it: any search for text, images etc, would drag me first and foremost to spotlight. No more using the clunky Thunderbird email search, or grep (yes, I also use emacs). It's great.
That's great for my Mac, but my main work machine is a Windows box. So I've been putting off installing Google Desktop for ages because I'd heard some bad things about it. But after checking with a few people who have actually been using it, I decided to give it a whirl. It's not as good as spotlight (indexing seems to take an age!), but it's good nonetheless. I think I'll stick with it for a while.
That's great for my Mac, but my main work machine is a Windows box. So I've been putting off installing Google Desktop for ages because I'd heard some bad things about it. But after checking with a few people who have actually been using it, I decided to give it a whirl. It's not as good as spotlight (indexing seems to take an age!), but it's good nonetheless. I think I'll stick with it for a while.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
WS-Addressing interoperability fest
We've been taking part in the WS-Addressing interoperability work during the W3C Plenary in Cannes. (We did it remotely, so no nice trips to the South of France for us.)
I produced our first WS-Addressing implementation as part of the Web Services transactions implementation, which we then tested as part of the WS-TX interoperability workshop. But that was the August 2004 version of the specification and things have moved on since then, both with WS-Addressing and our product. So this interoperability event was around the latest Candidate Recommendation from the working group, which required us to change our addressing implementation. Unlike with the Raleigh event, where we shared the effort, this time Kevin had the lion's share of the work to do. It was touch-and-go at times, but it eventually paid off and we demonstrated interoperability with IBM, Microsoft, Sun and WSO2/Apache. There's still a bit more work to do over the next week or so, but it looks like we'll have a pretty good story on the interoperability of the specification, as well as our implementation.
Thanks to everyone who participated from the various companies (within the working group and in testing), and particularly to Kevin!
I produced our first WS-Addressing implementation as part of the Web Services transactions implementation, which we then tested as part of the WS-TX interoperability workshop. But that was the August 2004 version of the specification and things have moved on since then, both with WS-Addressing and our product. So this interoperability event was around the latest Candidate Recommendation from the working group, which required us to change our addressing implementation. Unlike with the Raleigh event, where we shared the effort, this time Kevin had the lion's share of the work to do. It was touch-and-go at times, but it eventually paid off and we demonstrated interoperability with IBM, Microsoft, Sun and WSO2/Apache. There's still a bit more work to do over the next week or so, but it looks like we'll have a pretty good story on the interoperability of the specification, as well as our implementation.
Thanks to everyone who participated from the various companies (within the working group and in testing), and particularly to Kevin!
Monday, February 20, 2006
Busy week
I'm sitting in an airport on the way to the States for a number of meetings. First up is a stop-over in Seattle, where I'll take timeout to catch up with Savas; I haven't seen him since our trip to HPTS last year, so it'll be good to grab a coffee (something we used to do fairly regularly). Then it's dinner with Jim, before the real work begins. When I'm finished in Seattle, it's a flight to San Jose, and the JCP Executive Committee meeting. It's my first such meeting for JBoss, so I'm looking forward to that. After another business meeting in San Francisco, it's a redeye to Atlanta. I arrive there at 7am Friday morning, with the intention of giving a series of talks about transactions (caffeine permitting!) Then it's home on Saturday. Like I said: busy!
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
An automotive interlude
A couple of years ago I traded in the then family car for a 1993 Honda Prelude VTEC SI. I'm sure psychologists could make something of the fact this move happened about a year after the birth of my youngest son! It's a lovely car: 0-60mph in just over 6 seconds, with excellent handling, a great dashboard and the perfect colour: black. Since I bought it, I've had the best driving experiences of my life and I've been driving since 1984; I definitely don't regret getting the car at all.
Now the downsides: although the boot space isn't great you can still get a family-sized shop in there (just) and there's plenty of legroom for the driver and front passenger; however, the "occasional" seats in the back aren't too bad if you're only going 10 minutes down the road or you don't want to use your legs for a few hours afterward!
Now the size of the rear passenger seats hasn't really been a problem until recently, when the kids started to grow (and unfortunately kids do complain if they can't use their legs after a ride in the car!) It's starting to get to the point where it is adversely affecting my driving experience. I've tried a lot of things, including ear plugs, loud music ("sorry, can't hear what you're saying!"), not having kids in the back seats, but none of these solutions are long term enough for them! So it's getting to the point where I'm either going to have to trade in the Honda or buy a second car. I object to the latter option because I really don't think we'd use two cars sufficiently, plus I want to do my bit for the environment. OK, I admit that the Prelude probably isn't that good for the environment as it stands, but let's not get too carried away.
Anybody have any good suggestions? One that springs to mind is that I buy bikes for the kids: it lets me keep my car, helps the environment and it's good for their health! I've toyed with the idea of a Land Rover of one sort or another, and I have several friends who rave about them (like Greg), but none of them give me the buzz I get from my 'Lude.
Now the downsides: although the boot space isn't great you can still get a family-sized shop in there (just) and there's plenty of legroom for the driver and front passenger; however, the "occasional" seats in the back aren't too bad if you're only going 10 minutes down the road or you don't want to use your legs for a few hours afterward!
Now the size of the rear passenger seats hasn't really been a problem until recently, when the kids started to grow (and unfortunately kids do complain if they can't use their legs after a ride in the car!) It's starting to get to the point where it is adversely affecting my driving experience. I've tried a lot of things, including ear plugs, loud music ("sorry, can't hear what you're saying!"), not having kids in the back seats, but none of these solutions are long term enough for them! So it's getting to the point where I'm either going to have to trade in the Honda or buy a second car. I object to the latter option because I really don't think we'd use two cars sufficiently, plus I want to do my bit for the environment. OK, I admit that the Prelude probably isn't that good for the environment as it stands, but let's not get too carried away.
Anybody have any good suggestions? One that springs to mind is that I buy bikes for the kids: it lets me keep my car, helps the environment and it's good for their health! I've toyed with the idea of a Land Rover of one sort or another, and I have several friends who rave about them (like Greg), but none of them give me the buzz I get from my 'Lude.
WWW2006 Call for Posters
WWW2006 FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
POSTER DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL FEB 21st 2006
The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) invite
you to participate in the Fifteenth International World Wide Web
Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd-26th 2006.
You are invited to participate in the conference by submitting
* Posters (deadline extended to Feb 21st)
* Developer Track Proposals (deadline March 5th)
* Workshop Papers
POSTERS - DEADLINE EXTENDED - February 21st 2006
Posters provide a forum for late-breaking research, and facilitate
feedback in an informal setting. Posters are peer-reviewed. The poster
sessions provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to
present and demonstrate their recent web-related research, and to
obtain feedback from their peers in an informal setting. It gives
conference attendees a way to learn about innovative works in progress
in a timely and informal manner. Formatting and submission
requirements are available at http://www2006.org/posters/.
Conference topics include but are not limited to:
# Browsers and User Interfaces
# Data Mining
# Hypermedia and Multimedia
# Performance, Reliability and Scalability
# Pervasive Web and Mobility
# Search
# Security, Privacy, and Ethics
# Semantic Web
# Web Engineering
# XML and Web Services
# Industrial Practice and Experience
# Developing Regions
# Applications: E-Communities, E-Learning, E-Commerce, E- Science, E-Government and E-Humanities
DEVELOPERS TRACK PROPOSALS - Deadline - March 5th 2006
The developers' community is an integral part of the WWW conference
series. It includes all those who write the code that makes the Web
work. WWW developers work at startups, IT departments, software vendors
and government, but also include researchers who have a commitment to
developing usable tools and products. The aim of the track is to showcase
the practical experimentation that accompanies both cutting-edge research
and a dedication to standards setting and adoption.
Proposals are invited for technical demonstrations, presentations and
discussions to take place within the Developers' Track throughout
the conference, in keeping with the various conference topics (above).
The proposals should concern work with significant new functionality,
capability or 'wow' factor. Submission instructions are available
at http://www2006.org/developers/.
WORKSHOPS - Deadline - Various
A wide variety of workshops address the current research issues and
future development of the World Wide Web. Papers are invited for the
following workshops. For individual deadline and submission details see
http://www2006.org/workshops/.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)