WWW10 in Asia Or One of Several Plug-In Viewers.) Road Thus Far Were Not Always Optimal
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Marketplace Improving Web Search 14 New challenges and new techniques Product Briefs 15 XML • SVG • Smart cards • PDA security Semantic Resources 15 Test suites • Validators • Tools • Resources browser, http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ thing — that perhaps choices along the WWW10 in Asia or one of several plug-in viewers.) road thus far were not always optimal. The foundations of XML are in place W3C’s ability to solve these issues is With broadband access available to 95 now that namespaces and schemas are limited by resources (their annual percent of households and all busi- ready, but XML remains incomplete. operating budget is about US$7 mil- nesses, Hong Kong seemed an appro- Query functions are still needed, says lion), but some very real questions priate choice for the first Asian host to Berners-Lee, and things like XPointer, remain for the technical community as the International World Wide Web XInclude, and XLink are still under a whole. W3C specs should address conference series. WWW 10 started off development to fill in missing ele- such concerns, he said, but they can’t with a roar as two lion dancers wel- ments. XML also needs mechanisms for solve the digital divide. Those issues comed the 1,200 guests to the rhythm privacy, security, quality of service, and are also discussed within the IETF and of drums and traditional instruments handling binary attachments. More- Internet Society (ISOC). off stage. Over the days that followed, over, he said, the current spec is com- Berners-Lee closed his talk by con- attendees had access to more than 300 plex, and elements in it could be inter- gratulating W3C members for great presentations and papers. preted in conflicting ways. He thus progress toward establishing a solid The World Wide Web Consortium suggested revisiting the architecture foundation for the semantic Web — “the (W3C) has made much progress toward and processing model to remove clut- stuff of creating harmony and integra- fleshing out the “semantic Web” since ter so that XML can be implemented on tion.” But he finished with a warning last May’s Amsterdam meeting. In Hong PDAs, phones, and so on. about the dangers of “frivolous patents” Kong, working group members got to A lot was accomplished over the past that threaten open standards. show off phase-next specs and tools and year: XHTML is stable; SVG is making To help limit patent-related troubles, continue the ongoing dialogue. inroads in usage; and cascading style W3C asks its corporate members to sheets (CSS) and extensible stylesheet waive royalties before they are allowed The Road Ahead language transformations (XSLT) are in into working groups. By supporting To kick off his opening keynote, W3C place for presentation. Some conver- open standards, Berners-Lee counseled, director Tim Berners-Lee officially gence questions remain, however, everyone will benefit far more from the released the XML Schema recommen- regarding things like methodologies for expanded user base than from propri- dation. With that done, he turned to mixing languages such as XHTML and etary claims on technologies that are the crowd and asked, “Are we done MathML, or CSS and XSLT. tied to specifications. yet?” as he followed a hyperlink in his Infrastructure questions are also presentation to a component diagram gaining importance as “always on” con- Semantic Overview showing the W3C technology road nectivity increases because of broad- Many working group members were map for reaching the full-fledged band and wireless access. What’s more, clearly excited about all the ongoing semantic Web (see opposite page). W3C’s concern with universal access work surrounding the semantic Web Many ellipses represented current, pro- issues pushes up against the so-called activities, which were frequently totyped, or finished work, but just as digital divide. Berners-Lee suggested described as being in the “fun stage” of many represented missing pieces. that if the Internet were created again development. As W3C metadata activ- Clearly, the work is not yet through. without the installed telecommunica- ity leader Ralph Swick said, “We want (Try viewing the “road map” scalable tions infrastructure found in the West, to actually build some stuff, like in the vector graphic using W3C’s Amaya the network might be a very different early days of the Web.” 12 JULY • AUGUST 2001 http://computer.org/internet/ 1089-7801/01/$10.00 ©2001 IEEE IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING Marketplace Not surprisingly, most sessions at Device Independence user needs. A CC/PP profile uses the WWW10 focused on technologies like Web technologies are diverging in RDF model and syntax to define device RDF and the aspects of the XML puz- non-PC arenas with things like digital capabilities. RDF triples describe com- zle that fill in the pieces of Berners- TV, the wireless application protocol ponents and properties for hardware, Lee’s road map. W3C initiatives can be (WAP), and NTT DoCoMo’s iMode ser- software, and user preferences, and can broadly divided into three areas: vice, but W3C is trying to coordinate describe proxy behavior as well. and cooperate with external standards The CC/PP WG created a working I information management (sharing organizations to minimize fragmenta- draft in March 2001 to define the struc- information in small units, in- tion of the Web. ture and recommend vocabulary, but the cluding descriptions for privacy The W3C device independence (DI) working group is leaving full vocabu- and so on), activity wants to develop general lary definitions to groups like the WAP I process and workflow (semantics frameworks for network access regard- Forum, which adopted CC/PP in its user and issues like who can do what less of the devices in use. The activity profiles in 1999, and the 3GPP, which within a process), and is only a few months old now, but it incorporated the framework in 2000. I trust and proof (ensuring data includes a number of development Hidetaka Ohto, chair of the DI WG, said integrity with digital signatures efforts including composite capabili- the current proposals aim to define a and other technologies). ty/preference profiles (CC/PP) and framework rather than a protocol, and voice browsers. the final details might actually be See the sidebar, “Semantic Resources,” worked out by the IETF if it comes to a for pointers to some of the tools and Profiles and Preferences protocol-level answer. A birds-of-a- utilities for incorporating W3C specifi- CC/PP will provide information to help feather meeting at the 48th IETF meet- cations into development processes. adapt content to different devices and ing included mention of CC/PP. Full potential of the Web Inter- Document Creative Agents business processing space Service directory Trust Annotea Jigsaw service Query Proof Amaya service Universality Intranet XMLprococol Socially Logic and accessibility app2app enhanced appropriate © 2001 Tim Berners-Lee. Used with permission. Tim Berners-Lee. © 2001 Device Model actual XML Binary Reliable Services Digital rights Rule/query I18n WAI Service desc. vocab QoS Routing Security Independence business processes Protocol attachments messaging privacy management language Separate form Flow XML Web Cool XML many... many... UDDI ebXML SOAP SMTP HTTP 1.1 WSDL P3P and content (paper trail) signature classification U.I. enhanced Formatting e.g. Pi XSL T CC/PP DNS MIME TCP XML cannonicalization DAML+OI L MathML XHTML XForms PNG Multimodal SVG XML schema XML query objects calculus? SMIL RDF XHTML 2D CSS IP XSV xlink DOM schem a validator integration CSS XML RDF Voice infoset xpointer validator encryption XML + namespaces XML URI Processing Unicode model W3C technology road map. In the end, all W3C activities are current Goal this prototypes X spec X in service to the top-level goal of reaching the semantic Web’s full prototyped LEAD subgoal software potential. Arrows indicate “how” things are implemented; following planned external them in reverse indicates “why” they exist (or should).View the full- v1 done size figure at http://w3.org/2001/04/roadmap/all.svg. X depends on this X influenced by this Legend IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING http://computer.org/internet/ JULY • AUGUST 2001 13 Department Improving Web Search Speech interfaces audience suggested adding online The information retrieval community The voice browser WG (http://w3. voting forms. has been wrestling with search issues for org/voice/) was founded in May 1999 In general, the ad hoc per-project the past 25 years or so, but the Web and is due for rechartering later this approach no longer seems sufficient for adds a new aspect over the relatively year with a clarified IP policy. Current managing the array of activities the controlled corpus of information in a efforts focus on designing a speech W3C has going. HTML WG chair Steven typical enterprise setting. On the Web, interface framework that could be used Pemberton said he is preparing to pro- data is primarily unstructured, remote, by people with disabilities as well as by pose a charter for a “horizontal” work- hyperlinked, and often dynamic. motorists and others who need hands- ing group, like the Web accessibility ini- free network access. The working group tiative (WAI), to protect users’ interests New Challenges has published requirements drafts for and help with interactivity coordination. The “Beyond Keyword Search” panel dis- LexiconML, which aims at pronuncia- He said NIST, IBM, and Sun have cussion at the 10th World Wide Web tion extensibility, and Natural Lan- already expressed support for the idea. Conference started with such existential guageML, which aims to go beyond When asked about conformance test- questions as,“What is the value of Web keywords to a richer natural language ing for XHTML and other specifications search?” and turned to some technical comprehension that can include sophis- to ensure interoperable implementations fundamentals like,“Is search a computa- ticated linguistic analysis techniques.