XML: It was not televised after all...

Eduardo Gutentag - Sun - Paper

Not a history lesson but really it will be a history lesson.

I like his presentation slides...basically he is putting his note reminders on screen like "[Insert daughter's story here]"...cute.

He also keeps changing his title and the conference title on the bottom of the screen...I hope he posts the slides....but perhaps you have to be here to get the joke.

Paul Trevithick, in 1997, called XML "the revenge of the 40-somethings".

Eduardo is providing a story of the beginnings of XML in the late 90's by way of quotes from people at the time.

"It is basically about the owner of the content. The content belongs to the creator not the makers of the document creator tools." Jon Bosak 1998,Paris.

Heard in the hall - Any priest who hears that will say 'oy veh'. - Eduardo Gutentag

XML Agenda:

• Free as in beer
• Free as in Spartacus
• Open interface
• Interchangeable = interoperable
• You own the content you produce

The use of XML in OpenOffice enabled the Linux open source explosion because they could use it within the Linux environment without having to reboot into to Windows to read.

"I have a beard and every so often I like to use it." - Eduardo (The Prophet)

The very concept of a static document may simply vanish...You start it, anybody can contribute to it, modify it, contribute to it, own it.

Questions/Comments
"if my project falls on its feet, I've got another one" - Murray Altheim

Digital library application for meta-sharing between mesh enabled (1-laptop-per-child) should they use a CC-licensed idea or nothing...Eduardo advocats nothing..




Wendell Piez -
We have these property rights because we don't want people to take what we've created and profit from it to the exclusion of us. It seems like Wendell is channeling Cory Doctrow by way of the Illiad.
Response: The issue of the defence mechanism is an important one. There are many ways of defending yourself...non-assertion covenants?

Someone else:
A big problem in the digital space is that digital items are non-fungible. I have a book and I can sell it, give it away and then not have it. But with a digitial item I can give it away and still have it in pristine format.

Jon Bosak -
A lot of the reason for saying those things in 1998 Paris is just to cause trouble.

He states that he has actually come around to stating that PDFs should be used instead of XML (at least that is what I think he said). He has a paper on it. Read it here.

Informal Ontology Design: A Wiki-Based Assertation Framework

Murray Altheim - Innocation Centre, National Digital Library, National Library of New Zealand - Paper

There is middle ground between formal knowledge representation and 'what humans do'.

"Wikis are really about sharing information with other people and collaboratively working on a document set."

He threw up a slide of a a cat holding it's ears and did a LOL Cat joke...and then launched into a discussion of Epistimology.

Robert Brandum-big fan of this guy...inferentialism...wow,I am so confused.

Dealing with the problem of organization of information...libraries are really good at classification.

Faceted classification is dynamically creating a system based on its different properties.

"if anyone is familiar with Z39.19" - seriously who is familiar with this?

He is doing a project that is merging two separate sets of data about the genealogy of native New Zealanders. Lots of flowcharts about the system that leads to the wiki engine.

He is giving a presentation of the live page at the Library.

Of course the live presentation died...so he jumps around and says "imagine a map that is spinning and jumping around"...good way to handle a presentation difficulty.

Talk about something that needs context:
"If you were trying to assert your fanau with your hapu, you might be interested in assertions."

What I got out of this is that wikis are useful and cool...and can do cool stuff.

Questions:
Liam Quinn-
Is the translation feature bi-directional? Yes.

Wendell Piez -
"I am so envious,I wish I could do your work."
Problem of complexity...a good game has balance between rules and simplicity. Problem of sufficeint and useful complexity...how do you balance?

Response: It would be best showed by having it up and running for a year and see how people use it. Also there is a set of 'roles' that can be added to make the information more complex but that isn't necessary.

Steven Newcomb -
"I am in awe of what you are doing" (That's pretty cool praise) Has something that uses a wiki to create topic maps.
Technical question - Why use JSP wiki?

Response: Because I started with it because the program I began with is a java based program. He used what he knew and it grew mostly organically from there.

RESTful Services: How XQuery and AtomPub Are About To Change Your world

Kurt Cagle - O'Reily Networks - Paper

The Rise of Restful Services
"The web is not about process". It is a giant database predicated on the idea that every address is a multifaceted thing, that never gives it true shape but only hints to those who are patient.

"How do we handle talking about everything?" Good question...I hope he answers it.

Defines resource:

• unique
• at least one representation
• more attributes beyond ID
• potential schema - maybe not a real schema but at least definable
  
• provides context (defined later)
  
• reachable within addressable universe
  

Not a resource; Mailing Address, $32.76, A Gallon of Gasoline, June 25,1963, love

Resource; web site, resume, aircraft, song, transaction, employee

In the right context they might be resources but it would be a stretch.

Representations: "The resource is the elephant, representation is what the blind men tell you about the elephant."

REST - Representional State Transfer- reflection of the state of of a given resource in a given form.

• resource centric
• publishing oriented verbs; Get, Put,Post,Delete

What you are dealing with is a database...you are getting things, putting things, deleting things from the web.

Groves? Doesn't define...I'll link back later when I find something online.

The importance of collections is that it is a set of related resources and a resource in and of itself. A data set is a collection.

RESTful Services:

• URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) to differentiate between representations
• only a few basic things you can do with it...Get, Put, Delete, etc

Treat the web as a database

Exploring XQuery
Data Abstraction 2010: XQuery may augement or even replace traditional server languages.

Basics of XQuery: shell around XPath 2.0 with SET manipulation, custom defined functions, modularization, schema aware...(at least in 1.1)

Basic FLOWR comparison to SQL....

XQuery Modularization: makes libraries possible, namespaced, promotes OOP-like programming (I'd like to know more about that)

<He's FLYING through the presentation...looks like he needed another 30 minutes....>

Talks about extension modules for eXist...points out that SQL can be integrated into XQuery thus making it possible to work on a SQL database from and XML database.

XQuery server language - this is coming...avoids the plumbling....consolidate multiple data streams...

The Prescription of XRX (Xquery/REST/XForms)
collapse multi-tiered data architecture

XQuery, REST,and ATOM to be a data interchange mechanism. (AtomPub) Provides a "bus" of resources for a set of links that are 'out there'. Provides a method for 'paging' blocks of content.

Closing

Slide link from the presentation.

BTW, due to the time constraints he mostly spoke the slides...so you can get a lot of the presentation from the slides.

Questions
SOA vs RESTful - there is lots of SOA that is RESTful...there isn't a fundemental difference between SOA and ROA.
Response: SOA was hijacked by the XML-RPC people. The fundamental difference is that REST treats the thing you are dealing with as a resource not a service.

Sam Hunting - Production sites to point to?
Response: See the slides

Liam Quinn - W3C
Points out list of XQuery list at W3C that shows ~50 implementations of

Alex Bolusky
eXist has an AtomPub module ("I know cause I wrote it") - eXist runs their wiki off an AtomPub so they are using it.
Response: eXist is becoming impressive for what it does. Doesn't seem as scalable as MarkLogic.

Cool vs. Useful

Why the Balisage: The Markup Conference?

"Because it is expensive" -

Tommie says we are not limiting our scope to XML. So why not a Knowledge conference? Because knowledge is too broad and markup is very directed. It is a way to focus our attention.

That makes sense.

There are many badges at this conference; Speaker, Committee, Staff, but there is also Listener. Tommie wants us all to know that Listener is pretty important too.

She tells of publishers (unnamed) that are converting their new fangled XML to SGML and then running it through their production system....and they don't want anyone to know. Cause it isn't cool.

"Did you know that Schemas are cool and DTDs aren't?" But publishers are telling her that they'll be using the Schemas, "soon". They are afraid that people will find out they aren't "cool".

"Let's pretend there is a mainstream XML community." An average XML-er:

1. Works with fairly structured data
2. Wants to get things done quickly and effieintly
3. Dubious about mixed-content
4. Doesn't want to hear about things you can't do in XMl (like overlaping structures)

"So imagine my surprise that overlapping markup is...cool."

"Only an idiot would do ". "These people aren't experts, they are fasionistas." "That's the sort of thing that we really don't want to do here."

"This is not an environment for sales but tell us what's interesting about your topic."

Tommie tells about two techies from major XML companies who said: "We'll get it worked out to interchange data and then it is just a small step to international standard." Drew a big laugh from the crowd.

"Topic maps are cool but it doesn't have any edges." "Semantic web is a HUGE number of cool ideas, some of them mutually exclusive."

Tomie takes us on a review of the new search engine Cuil and it's use of photos that seem pretty darn random.

And the reason for this digresion..."keep your eye out for nonsense like this at Balisage".

"There is a big difference between 'true' and 'useful'." "Keep a close eye out for Useful."

Comments:

Sid Bauman - "The laws of cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information" by Alan Lui