Date: Thursday January 12, 2006 18:30-21:30

Meeting Topic: The Network approach to creating documentation with XML

There are several different approaches to creating documentation with XML, each of which is useful for addressing different business problems in a documentation organization. One useful way to catagorize the different methods is into three broad catagories as follows:

1. Monolithic: The traditional approach. Create a big DTD specific to your document set and use it for everything. Build your tool set from scratch.

2. Extensible: Start with a basic DTD, create a tool set for that base, then extend the DTD and toolset as required. DocBook and DITA are both examples of the extensible approach.

3. Network: Create small task-specific DTDs for each subject and each phase of the project. Write small transformations to move content from one phase to the next. Reuse common components and add new nodes as required.

This presentation will contrast the network approach with the monolithic and extensible approaches and discuss its applications, advantages, and disadvantages using a specific real world project as an example.

Presenter: Mark Baker

Mark Baker has been researching and studying methods for improving the efficiency of content creation for 15 years. His former positions include Manager, Information Engineering Methods at Nortel and Director, Communications, for SGML pioneer, OmniMark Technologies. He has spoken frequently and written many articles on content development, markup, single sourcing, and content management. He was named one of 20 leaders to watch in the content management industry for 2004 by CMS watch. He is currently president of Analecta Communications, a writing and consulting company in Ottawa. He is also an associate of the Center for Information Development Management.

Date: Thursday December 1, 2005 18:30-21:30
Location: (Map) Stilo 1900 City Park Drive

Content in the Wild - Using DITA to Integrate Complex Data Sets and Requirements

This presentation will provide an overview of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and will take a closer look at how its intrinsic 'extensibility framework' is being used to integrate very complex data sets that must sustain multiple application requirements. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate how effective a simple, but extensible, schema architecture can be used to control the impact of complexity and change on production systems. This is one part of a more general question of how best to deal with the 'ugly truth about content.'

Presenter: Joe Gollner

Joe Gollner is the VP of Enterprise Solutions, North America for Stilo Corporation. Starting as a graduate student trying to put Italian Poetry online in 1987, Mr. Gollner has been an advocate of SGML and its various descendants, including XML, for over fifteen years. Accused in 1995 of being the only person making money in the SGML community, he remains unrepentant and continues to champion the necessity of deriving tangible business benefits from the judicious deployment of open standards. Mr. Gollner has managed a vast number of XML and SGML implementations during his career and done so in every conceivable market sector. His work in the military and aerospace communities in the 1990s remains a benchmark against which large scale deployments of multi-enterprise interchange protocols can be measured. He is currently overseeing projects in such fields as education, health, government, aerospace, military, legal, and scientific publishing, where the benefits of full-spectrum publishing and high fidelity information management are being extracted from large-scale, XML-enabled portal applications. A former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, Mr. Gollner was educated in a wide range of esoteric subjects while taking degrees at Queen's University and the University of Oxford (Master's of Philosophy).

Date: Thursday October 6, 2005 18:30-21:30
Location: (Map) Stilo 1900 City Park Drive (with many thanks!!)

Converting content into XML

A discussion of XML conversion methodologies, including a Case Law demo that will illustrate the advantages of Exegenix conversion technology over rules-based mapping tools

Almost all methodologies that convert unstructured documents or content into XML rely on "mapping" - the manual designation of combinations of formatting codes as specific XML constructs. But these rules-based conversion maps can change from document to document, depending on the formatting discipline of each document's author, and this approach is time- and resource-intensive both in map development, and in QA and cleanup of the resultant XML.

Exegenix takes a radically different approach. Exegenix's unique intelligent conversion technology uses visual cues to uncover each document's structure automatically, much the same way that humans do. People rarely have problems determining the hierarchical structure of any document they encounter, because they look at a document as a whole, taking into consideration each graphical object's format, position, and context. Exegenix technology does the same thing - it interprets a document's logical structure based on the appearance and position of its components, with no dependency on consistently formatted input. This rules-free XML construction process requires no mapping, no scripting, and no programming, yet produces the most consistently structured and highest quality XML available.

We will demonstrate by converting PDF-based Case Law into XML.

Presenter: Ryan Germann, Product Manager, Exegenix

Ryan is Product Manager and a founding employee of Exegenix, an innovator in content conversion solutions. He has been involved in SGML and XML projects for over ten years, and is currently focused on the strategic aspects of developing practical applications of Exegenix technology. His ongoing professional interest is on facilitating broad adoption of XML content and XML-enabled applications across organizations of all sizes.

Date: Thursday May 19, 2005 18:30-21:30
Location: (Map) Stilo 1900 City Park Drive (with many thanks!!)

Gus Tavares

A short demonstration of the embedding of MathML in HTML documents.

Norbert Winklareth

Introduction to 2nd Generation Content Processing

All Information Architectures need to be translated into a working system. This involves content processing. The first generation of content processing used a collection of different tools to solve content processing problems in the first order problem space (acquire, enrich and deliver), but lacked a formal methodology or framework. The latest generation of content processing tools uses the power and discipline of factory production line automation, design patterns, and pipeline processing to solve both the first and second order content processing problems. This presentation introduces the principles of 2nd generation content processing, contrasts it to parallel developments in other fields, gives an example of its use, and finishes with a brief survey of this new generation of content processing tools.

Date: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 18:30-21:30
Location: (Map) Stilo 1900 City Park Drive (with many thanks!!)

Birket Foster

This is a presentation about the use of XML in UDACentral a commercial software product that has been evolving for the past 3-4 years, based on technology which has been part of the products built at MBFoster since 1989.

A decision was made to make XML an intermediate format for exchanging data for between different databases on different operating systems. This presentation will discuss some of the learning MBFoster went through as we moved to expand the functionality and the kinds of data and databases involved in transformations.

For some background information http://www.mbfoster.com/corporate/index.cfm and http://www.mbfoster.com/products/udacentral.cfm

Birket Foster is the founder of MBFoster Associates Limited a 27 year old software company headquartered in Chesterville, Ontario just south of Ottawa. For the past 3 years MBFoster has been investing in building a migration practice with assessment, planning, and execution services using tools to migrate code and data between platforms. MBFoster's customers include Fortune 500 corporations through small organizations in manufacturing, retail, local government, education, aerospace, financial services etc. MBFoster is the lab for Hewlett Packard's ODBC data access products for the HP3000 and 9000 markets.

Date: Tuesday, March 22,2005 18:30-21:30
Location: Stilo 1900 City Park Drive (with many thanks!!)

Natalie Prowse

Presentation and demo of StiloCF2 (a next-generation content processing framework)

G. Ken Holman

Presentation of the ResultXSLT(tm) environment for the synthesis of importable XSLT stylesheet fragments from annotated prototypical result instances.

Date: Wednesday January 26, 2005 18:30-21:30
Location: Kontentsu downtown offices 215 Cooper St. (with many thanks!!)

Mark Baker

xfy technology is an architecture for authoring and editing compound XML documents where multiple XML vocabularies are integrated into a single space. A demonstration will be provided, including several examples to illustrate the unique value that a compound document centric approach to application development can offer, as well as how xfy supports it.

The xfy technology preview can be downloaded from http://www.xfytec.com

Daqian Zhang (Daxisoft Corporation, http://www.daxisoft.com) Flow based XML IDE

In "Flow-Based Programming" (FBP), applications are defined as networks of "black box" processes, which exchange data across predefined connections. These black box processes can be reconnected endlessly to form different applications without having to be changed internally. It is thus naturally component-oriented. When using FBP, the application developer works with flows of data, being processed asynchronously, rather than the conventional single hierarchy of sequential, procedural code. With FBP, user can solve various problems from simple ones such as document transformation and web page design to complex ones such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOP) and XML based enterprise application integration (EDI) .

Daxisoft XML IDE (DaxiXML) is an integrated XML IDE. It provides a visual flow based programming tool vxflow where XML data can be extracted, split, merged, transformed and stored or fed into other applications. It supports hierarchical construction so a large work can be split into small pieces.

Other tools and applications can be implemented or plugged as components so they can be used as data sources or tools of the vxflow. One such tool is xml transformation design tool, with which an xml document(s) or fragment(s) can be easily transformed into another document or fragment. Coupled with the transformation tool, vxflow is flexible and easy to use for XML application construction. Other xml tools such as xml editor and xml schema designer are also developed.

Date: Thursday March 11, 2004 18:30-21:30
Location: Algonguin College, Building B (School of Business), Room B132
Map: http://www.algonquincollege.com/highband/swf/middle/woodroffe_tour.htm
Parking: http://elearning.algonquincollege.com/parttime/parking.htm

XML as self-descriptive data - Kirill Lisovsky

Although DTD, XML Schema and other prescriptive schema definition languages are commonly used for validation of XML documents, self-describing capabilities of XML data are rarely utilized.

XML by itself has very limited capabilities for being self-descriptive, but these capabilities may be nevertheless utilized for practical purposes.

Descriptive schema may be used to facilitate processing of non-validated XML documents without any metadata, but even if a prescriptive schema is available descriptive schema may be beneficial for certain applications.

A descriptive schema may be especially useful for XML transformation and querying, because popular techniques usually assume some knowledge about the structure of processed documents.

In this presentation we will discuss the role of schema for XML data with the focus on processing XML data without any a priory knowledge of the schema and consider several tools and techniques for schema extraction, their capabilities, limitations and practical applicability.

Date: Thursday January 15, 2004 18:30-21:30
Location: University of Ottawa, Lamoureux Hall rm 405, 145 Jean-Jacques Lussier
Parking: map

A RESTful role for XML - Mark Baker

The presentation will begin with an introduction to REST, the software architectural style crafted by Roy Fielding to describe his view of the best behaved parts of the Web. It will then delve into the nitty gritty of arguably REST's most important architectural constraint, self-descriptive messaging, where the role of XML on the Web will be examined.

Slacker's Docbook - Alan Ezust

Slacker's Docbook is basically a preprocessor, some scripts, and style sheets which extend Docbook XSL. Designed for slacker coders like me who hate to do repetative tasks, and want to achieve the maximum reuse possible with every piece of text or data, and don't mind using command line tools.

Date: Thursday November 27, 2003 18:30-21:30
Location: Radisson Hotel, Diefenbaker Room, 402 Queen Street, Ottawa, ON
Venue courtesy of XIA Systems Corporation

(1) Sam Hunting has graciously offered to travel to Ottawa to present another Topic Map presentation ... this time a case study of a successful real-world deployment of topic maps:

The latest on Topic Maps: Hard thinking, actual clients, new and better tools

The talk is a tour d'horizon of current topic map technologies:

• Theory as mathematical model
• Practice at the USGS
• New free tools

Theory of topic maps will present--for the first time--a set-theoretic mathematical formalism for topic maps, developed by Neill Kipp with Steve Newcomb and Sam Hunting. This work is important from a technical perspective, since such a formalism can ensure that developers of topic map standards and implementations are "all on the same page" with respect the meaning of the text of ISO 13250. From a marketing perspective, the work means that, for the first time, topic mappers can claim formal rigor with the same force that proponents of the relational model can.

Practice of topic maps will present--again, for the first time--the prototype of the topic map system developed for the United States Geological Survey by eTopicality, Inc. The USGS has requirements that can be met only by an implementation of the topic map paradigm: A federated system that permits free navigation between multiple, overlapping taxonomies. The implementation to be presented is the first step toward this goal: It is a topic map that implements a "subject catalog" for USGS holdings on coastal and marine geology data that allows entries into the catalog to be edited, all using open source software and an ordinary browser.

New tools for topic maps will showcase--again, for the first time--the newest release from the GooseWorks project, tmtk-0.8. This open source toolkit permits people to create Topic Map Applications (TMAs) using a simple XML DTD. The Standard Application Model developed by TopicMaps.Org ("XTM") is one such application, but others may be necessary to serve client needs. XTM, for example, permits addressing only by URI, but other forms of addressing may be required: Library of Congress subject headings, astronomical coordinates, latitude and longitude, etc.

(2) Ken Holman will be presenting on the writing of formatting specifications for XML documents (a preview of the XML'2003 presentation):

This will overview how the Forms Presentation Subcommittee (FPSC) created technology-agnostic formatting specifications to address the visualization of the content of Universal Business Language (UBL) XML instances.

Date: Thursday October 30, 2003 18:30-21:30
Location: Lord Elgin 100 Elgin Street Ottawa, ON - The MacDonald Room - on the main level (just behind the lobby bar) Many thanks to XIA Systems Corporation for funding this location for our meeting this month!

XMLgpAPI: Stream-oriented XML generic parser API, toolkit, and examples
Ian Gorman

Java XML parsers fall into two categories, parsers like SAXParser that produce a sequence of events, and parsers like DocumentBuilder that produce a static data structure.

Both kinds of parser are popular because each kind has features that the other lacks. The sequential type passes through the data once, and the job is done. But many applications require data to be brought together from different points in the input document, which is easier to do from a static data structure.

The "object model" of both kinds of parser differs from the XML object model. DocumentBuilder maps XML objects to classes, like Element and Attr. However, an XML element, unlike a Java class, does not control access to its members, and the Element class is used primarily as a list of references to its children. Consequently, applications based on the Document Object Model require developers to think in terms of access to objects in a tree. SAXParser imposes similar constraints on a developer's thinking, because the parser presents events that the application must assemble into a representation of XML objects.

There is a natural way to extend the SAX model, based on the idea that XML is a protocol for representing a structured object as a serial stream of data. All parsers begin by recognizing the boundaries of objects within the serial data, continue by aggregating these objects into larger objects and into structures, and end by recognizing and processing semantic content. SAXParser recognizes the boundaries of XML objects, reporting the entire objects in many cases, but reporting only the boundaries of four objects: the document, the dtd, the element, and the entity. Although there are sound technical reasons for this design, many application developers would find it more convenient to have elements and entities reported as some kind of "object".

Since the SAX model is essentially a flow, state, or activity model, the appropriate Java "object" to represent an element (or entity) is a method rather than a class. The element determines the processing to be applied to its content, and the corresponding state of the stream processor is represented by data that exists during the invocation of the method. Furthermore, the nesting of elements in a hierarchy under the document element is now represented by nested invocation of methods, and does not have to be explicitly managed by application code.

There are some tools to further reduce the cost of using the SAX model for XML processing:

1. Maintenance of commonly required data, such as element parentage.
2. Maintenance of a "stack" of output destinations that can be pushed and popped while reading the serial input stream.
3. A "backpatch" Writer that gives pseudo-random access to the output so that it is not necessary to switch to a Document Object Model when the output sequence does not match the input sequence. For example, a document with IDs and IDREFs can be handled in a process that is coded as a single logical pass, and the required second pass will be handled "under the hood".

The API includes a toolkit for interfacing to event-based parsers, such as SAXParser and SP.

What programming language designers should do to help markup processing
Sam Wilmott, Stilo Corporation

Bio: Sam Wilmott is the lead programming language researcher at Stilo Corporation, and architect of the OmniMark programming language. He has worked on document markup standards since the late '70s, has served as Canadian representative on the ISO SGML committee, has implemented an SGML parser, and has built the interface between an XML parser and the OmniMark language.

Programming Languages can either directly implement application-specific functionality or provide tools for implementing such functionality. Typical languages do both. There is a particular tool -- coroutines -- is missing from mainstream programming languages. The availability of coroutines in these languages would help significantly in a wide range of applications, including markup language processing and the text processing operations usually associated with it. This presentatation describes what coroutines are, what their role is, various attempts at implementing them, and what it will take to make them available.

Date: Thursday September 25, 2003 18:30-21:30
Location: The Bostonian at 341 MacLaren St.
Venue courtesy of XIA Systems Corporation

Presentation 1 (60 min): Optimizing Application Server Performance for Web Services and other XML-based Web Applications

As XML usage proliferates in today's enterprise architectures, from thin-client online applications to Web services, many companies facing XML-specific performance issues are realizing order of magnitude financial and architectural benefits by decoupling XML processing such as XSLT, and XML/Web services security from the application infrastructure onto network-based purpose-built XML appliances. This discussion examines the technical and economic considerations in the context of both historic perspectives and case studies.

Presenter: Steve Shepard, Director, Systems Engineering, Sarvega

Mr. Shepard joined Sarvega from Blue Coat Systems (formerly CacheFlow, Inc.), a company focused on developing caching appliances to improve Internet performance and end-user response time for enterprises. Mr. Shepard has over 20 years experience in the field of technology and networking. Prior to CacheFlow, Mr. Shepard was a Director of Systems Engineering for FORE Systems, ATM switching pioneer acquired by Marconi plc. He has also held various posts with other technology-oriented companies such a Crescendo Communications acquired by high profile networking company Cisco Systems in September 1993.

Presentation 2 (60 min): Open Augment Consortium

Augment is one of the most important artefacts of the software industry as a whole and the XML and Internet communities in particular. The Open Augment Consortium (OA) is a non-profit open source organization dedicated to the preservation of Augment. OA works in cooperation with Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap Alliance to ensure that future generations will have access to the Augment legacy. In this talk we discuss the pioneering ideas of Augment and our efforts to faithfully render them in XML in the Open Augment project (OA). Augment - The Pyramids Of Knowledge Management

During the earliest development of the Internet, Dr. Douglas Engelbart's group at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was the second node on the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet; this group provided application support to all the nodes on the Arpanet as they were set up. From this and other prior experience, Dr. Engelbart devised new methods for augmenting human capability and collaboration. For a full biography on Dr. Engelbart and his many achievements please see Dr. Engelbart's website: www.bootstrap.org

Among the many artefacts credited to Dr. Engelbart was the framework know as Augment. Augment was funded by DARPA and has existed since the 1970's. At its peak, approximately a thousand (1000) users in the federal government and the aviation and military industries used the Augment framework. The original system is still in use today by Dr. Engelbart and the Bootstrap Alliance.

Augment provides an extensible environment [1] for high performance knowledge workers [2]. The Augment framework enabled users to collaborate with colleagues in a trusted environment and served as a repository for work, which could be linked to and accessed by other community members based on user profile, level of knowledge, span of action, and/or level of skill. Using Augment, skilled knowledge workers could collaboratively navigate, subset, correlate, assemble, and publish complex briefing documents as well as share knowledge, useful data and files across organizations and agencies.

Augment Is Unique And Fragile

Unfortunately, while many of the artefacts first implemented in the Augment framework are available in one form or another in modern software implementations, there is no single, unified, modern framework capable of delivering a rich Augment-like framework for collaboration, correlation, semantic linking and complex analytic functionality.

Augment itself is inaccessible since it is written in a low level language designed specifically for the DEC 20 computer and operating system that are no longer operational. It is kept alive today using a DEC 20 emulator which runs TOPs-20 and a custom client which emulates the DEC terminals of that area.

Even if Augment were accessible via modern-day operating systems, today's modern rich media environment of tables, graphs, media objects, spreadsheets (to mention but a few), would be inaccessible to Augment, which provides only text file linking and manipulation.

The Open Augment Framework

Augment provided an extensible environment for high performance knowledge workers. Using Augment, skilled knowledge workers could collaboratively navigate, subset, correlate, assemble, and publish complex briefing documents or share knowledge across different organizations. The OA framework is an effort to re-engineer Augment functionality in a phased approach using modern software standards.

We leverage and exploit years of pioneering research by Dr. Engelbart by using the existing Augment system as the use cases and test cases for a modern-day, open standards-based framework to support teams of high performance knowledge workers. Augment concepts are migrated to modern technology and standards so they can be readily understood, implemented and further exploited by knowledge workers and researchers.

To ensure the long-term accessibility of OA, we use XML wherever possible in both definition and implementation. We will provide the code under the Common Public License (CPL), approved by the Open Source Initiative. To ensure both commercial and research availability we use industry standards and rely on open interfaces and exploit open source components.

We look forward to the participation and feedback of the XML community in and hope with their support to make Open Augment an XML exemplar as well as a fitting tribute to the visions of by Bush [3], Engelbart [4, 5], and Nelson [6].

[1] Authorship Provisions in AUGMENT, Douglas C. Engelbart Tymshare, Inc. 9-Dec-83
[2] Toward High-Performance Knowledge Workers, Douglas C. Engelbart 29-Sep-82, Published in Office Automation Conference 1982 Digest AFIPS Office Automation Conference April 5 - 7, 1982, San Francisco, CA
[3] Vannevar Bush, As we may think, Atlantic Monthly 176, July 1945, S.101-108.
[4] Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Stanford Research Institute, October 1962
[5] Douglas C. Engelbart, Live Demonstration of Augment/NLS, Fall Joint Computer Conference, December 9, 1968. http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
[6] Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974, Updated Microsoft edition, 1987.

Presenter: Dave Thomas, CEO, Open Augment Consortium
Bedarra Research Labs, Canada and Anguilla BWI
Carleton University and University Of Queensland

Dave Thomas has a wide spectrum of experience in the software industry as an engineer, professor, consultant, architect, executive and investor. Dave is founder and CEO of Bedarra Corporation; which provides virtual CTO and CEO, business mentoring and seed investment to emerging companies. Recently formed Bedarra Research Labs undertakes speculative research on applications of emerging software technologies.

Dave has many years of experience in structured documents including the design of laser printer controllers, early commercial applications of Tex. He has advised on the IBM B2B strategy, and is on the MS Customer Advisory Council and with OLL contributed to the SCORM elearning standard, and authoring tools. He is Chairman of Xia Systems, Online-Learning.com (OLL), and a director of Stilo/Omnimark, Bitflash, Amikanow and Synop and several other software companies.

Dave is best known as the founder and past CEO and president of Object Technology International Inc. (formerly OTI, now IBM OTI Labs) and led the commercial introduction of object and component technology. The company is often cited as the ideal model of a software technology company.

Dave was the principal visionary and architect for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk and Java tools and virtual machines including the initial work on popular multi-language Eclipse.org IDE. OTI pioneered the use of virtual machines in embedded systems with Tektronix shipping the first commercial products in 1988. He was instrumental in the establishment of IBM's Pervasive computing efforts and in particular the Java tooling.

Dave is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University, and the University Of Queensland and is widely published in the software engineering literature. He is a popular humorous albeit opinionated keynote speaker. Dave remains active in various roles within the technical community including ECOOP, AOSD, Evolve, and Agile Development Conference, Agile/XP Universe and OOPSLA Onward. He is a founding director of the Agile Alliance and most recently a founder of Open Augment Consortium. Dave writes expert columns in Otland Online in Germany, and the Journal Of Object Technology in Switzerland where he also serves on the editorial board.

Date: Thursday May 29, 2003 18:30-21:30
Location: Nepean Sportsplex - Spectators' Meeting Room
(Park in the back parking lot, go through entrance #4 and down the stairs. This room is located beside the spectators' bar and directly across the hall from the female washroom.)

Presentation: An Introduction to Topic Maps

Presenter: G. Ken Holman

This presentation introduces the concepts of Topic Maps and compares this method of managing information to RDF.

Date: Thursday, April 24, 2003 18:30-21:00
Location: Loblaws community room (upstairs, north entrance to store) at Woodroffe and Baseline.
Presentations/presenters:

BIO: Dr. Kirill Lisovskiy is IT Consultant and researcher specializing in XML and semi-structured data management.

His Ph.D. degree in 1998 was dedicated to the design and implementation of a converged language for object-deductive DBMS.

Since 1993 he has been working for IBM Russia and its primary partners and customers in Moscow with a focus on object-relational DBMS and XML-relational mapping.

Since 1998 he has taught advanced courses on semi-structured data management in Moscow universities, including Moscow State University.

He is an active contributor to open source implementation of XML-processing techniques considered in the presentation and the author of research papers on the subject.

Abstract: Towards Native Language for XML Data Processing, Kirill Lisovskiy, lisovsky@acm.org

Functional paradigm is very suitable for tree-like data processing in general and XML processing in particular. Most popular XML-processing languages (such as XSLT and XQuery) are functional languages.

However, neither XSLT nor XQuery is a general purpose programming language. In implementation of a complex XML-processing application they are often used together with programming languages like Java or PHP. However, these programming languages usually rely on completely different programming paradigm (OO or procedural) and their data models have nothing in common with XML, which leads to the infamous problem of impedance mismatch.

The Scheme programming language is essentially based on S-expressions (nested lists) which may be used for very simple and natural representation of XML Information Set using S-expressions, its primary data structure. Even more: as the syntax of the language itself is S-expressions-based also, XML represented this way may be considered as a Scheme program, not data!

SXML - a representation of XML Information Set in the form of Scheme S-expressions provides a very straightforward correspondence between nested tags and nested lists. This makes it possible to represent any well-formed XML document as a nested list in Scheme.

Thus, Scheme is a functional programming language and SXML representation of XML data is essentially Scheme's primary data structure, so impedance mismatch is minimal here. Scheme is a high-level general purpose programming language also, which makes it possible to develop the entire application in Scheme while integrating XML-processing smoothly.

This approach may be used for XML transformation. XSLT is a functional language, and XSLT templates are side-effect free functions in their essence. It is possible to translate XSLT templates to Scheme functions, or directly implement these templates as Scheme functions (which allows much greater flexibility). The resulting set of transformational functions may be considered as an analog of XSLT stylesheet, but it provides all the power of Scheme language.

The same approach may be used for XML querying as well. While XPath is defined by W3C as a language for locating structural parts of XML document, it's Scheme implementation, SXPath may be considered as a query language. SXPath considers location path as a sequence of arbitrary Scheme functions, and provide XML-querying capabilities comparable to XQuery.

SXML-based software is Open Source, and used in a number of commercial projects for a few years. XML programming with Scheme provides easy start and unlimited capabilities of high-level functional language with native representation of XML data.

Date: Thursday, March 27, 2003 18:30-21:00
Location: Loblaws community room (upstairs, north entrance to store) at Woodroffe and Baseline.

Managing XML Content - Ray Luoma, Luoma & Associates

In spite of the turmoil in the Content Management System (CMS) marketplace, the last few years have seen a tremendous improvement in how CMS products support XML content. But have the CMS vendors done enough? Ray Luoma, President of Luoma & Associates Inc., will offer observations on the history of how XML support has grown in the CMS market, and will present an evaluation framework that helps you to determine whether a CMS has provided enough XML support to get your particular job done.

Date: Thursday, February 27, 2003 18:30-21:00
Location: Loblaws community room (upstairs, north entrance to store) at Woodroffe and Baseline.

(1) "Universal Business Language Stylesheet Library" - G. Ken Holman, Crane Softwrights Ltd.

This short presentation overviews the OASIS Universal Business Langauge (UBL) and the newly-developed XSLT and XSL-FO stylesheet library for use with UBL documents. This library produces HTML and PDF formatted results of UBL document instances.

(2) The Current Content Management Vendor Landscape - Ray Luoma, Luoma & Associates

There have been a number of changes in the vendor space of late. The presentation doesn't focus in depth on XML issues, but this marketplace is being significantly influenced by XML trends and directions

Date: Thursday, January 30, 2003 18:30-21:00
Location: Loblaws community room (upstairs, north entrance to store) at Woodroffe and Baseline.
"Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)" - Rick Mutzke, Corel Corporation

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based vector graphics standard. The first part of today's presentation will provide an introduction to this technology and its place in the graphics landscape, and will include some simple examples to demonstrate its basic capabilities. The second half of the presentation will discuss the concept of smart graphics, with several demonstrations of real-world examples and tools which provide a glimpse into SVG's power and potential.

Date: Thursday, November 28, 2002 19:30-22:00
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall E
"Making Money with XML - and other Unnatural Acts" - Joe Gollner

While it is easy to lose sight of the fact when we are wrestling with the microscopic details, XML can in fact be used to construct highly effective applications that deliver massive benefits and for which clients are quite willing to pay handsomely. This talk will walk through a series of recent examples where the simplicity of XML was leveraged to produce significant benefits for paying customers operating under substantial pressures. A number of examples will be covered including an XML-based application design and code generation system (XSLT/DOM), a taxonomy management environment for an "Uber-Portal" (XSLT/Topic Maps), a schema development matrix (OmniMark/XSLT), and an Adaptive Data Conversion Environment (OmniMark). In each case, the business requirement will be foregrounded and the discussion will focus on how XML, and its companions, were used in the service of delivering value and, therefore, making money.

Speaker Bio

Joe Gollner is the founder and president of XIA Systems Corporation, an Ottawa-based content solution provider specialising in XML-based systems. Starting as a graduate student trying to put Italian Poetry online in 1987, Joe has been a "user" of SGML and its various descendants. Although he has become increasingly entangled in the technical details, he remains an advocate of those who must leverage standards and technologies to achieve real objectives. Accused in 1995 of being the only person making money in the SGML community, he continues to maintain that this is not a sin. Joe is currently overseeing projects in a variety of sectors, including education, health, government, aerospace, military, and legal, and has made the design of large scale portal domains, and the integration of XML features into them, a specific area of focus. A former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, Joe was educated in a wide range of esoteric subjects at Queen's University and the University of Oxford.

Date: Thursday, October 24, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: ExitCertified Head Office, 85 Albert Street, Suite 1200, Ottawa, Ontario K1P-6A4 (613)232-Exit (3948)
Presentations/presenters: XML and eBusiness Standards, Suhayl Masud

Date: Thursday, September 26, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: ExitCertified Head Office, 85 Albert Street, Suite 1200, Ottawa, Ontario K1P-6A4 (613)232-Exit (3948)
Doughnuts/cakes/coffee/etc.: Thanks to Doug Hewko for the Timbits!
Presentations/presenters: Dany Bouchard, DBx Geomatics, SVG Applied to Web Mapping Applications

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification is set to revolutionize the way {cartographic} maps are looking on the Web. Quite simply, SVG is an open-standard vector graphics language based on XML that lets you design mapping applications with high-resolution graphics that can contain sophisticated elements, such as gradients, animations, and filter effects, using plain text commands. SVG is bringing precision and quality to Web graphics and design, delivering the layout capabilities, choice of fonts, interactivity, and colors required to make great looking XML-based mapping applications.

CONTENT :

1) AN INTRODUCTION TO SVG

• SVG COMPARED TO EXISTING WEB GRAPHICS
• THE ADVANTAGES OF AN XML-BASED VECTOR GRAPHICS LANGUAGE
• THE BENEFITS OF A TEXT-BASED VECTOR FORMAT FOR THE WEB
• DEMO: SVG BASIC ELEMENTS AND ADVANCED FEATURES (ANIMATIONS)
• DEMO: SVG AND CARTOGRAPHY

2) CREATING DYNAMIC APPLICATIONS WITH SVG

• SVGMapMaker Demo: CREATING SVG MAPS WITH INTERACTION AND STYLING
• svgX Demo: SERVER-SIDE SVG COMPONENTS FOR DYNAMIC DISPLAY OF MAPS
• svgX Demo: ON-LINE GEOGRAPHIC DATA EDITING AND ANIMATIONS USING SVG AND ECMASCRIPT

Date: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall E
Presentation: A reprise of the 90-minute "Introduction to XML Information Modeling" by Crane Softwrights

Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall F
Presentation: Hugh Chatfield - CyberSpace Industries 2000 - Quantum Infodynamics

At the end of the talk, you may wonder what this has to do with XML. To save you the trouble - the answer is "nothing". A better question is - what does XML have to do with anything? XML is part of information science. The speaker, Hugh Chatfield, will give a "light" hearted look at the convergence of information science and physics. You will be taken on a quick voyage through physics, quantum mechanics, out to the edge of the universe and perhaps gain some clue as why we are all here. Now that just has to be more interesting than talking about angle brackets - but be prepared to leave your notion of "common sense" behind."

Presentation: Ed Simon - XMLsec Inc. - Quick Introduction to Web Services

Based on a fictitious, ad hoc, virtual makeover of CCRA's Payroll Deduction Web site. (Note that CCRA has no formal connection with this presentation.) Technologically, the presentation will provide a simple demonstration of a Java-based Web services server interacting with C#-based, Microsoft .NET client. Of course, this magic is made possible by XML (specifically WSDL and SOAP).

Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall F

Presentation: Topic Maps http://www.etopicality.com/presentations/XUG_2002-05-10

Presenter: Sam Hunting http://www.etopicality.com

Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 18:30-21:30
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall F

Presentation: "Future of Web Services: Overview"

Presenter: Paul Cotton, Microsoft

Date: February 13, 2002 18:00-21:00
Location: Nepean Sportsplex Hall C

Presentation: "Introduction to XML Information Modeling"

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/schedule.htm#i2xim

Presenter: G. Ken Holman, Crane Softwrights Ltd.

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/bio/gkholman.htm

Date: January 10, 2002 (second Thursday of the month) 18:00-21:00
Cancelled due to lack of presentations or venue

Date: December 13, 2001 (second Thursday of the month) 18:00-21:00
Cancelled due to lack of presentations or venue

Date: November 8, 2001 (second Thursday of the month) 18:00-21:00
Location: Army Officers' Mess, 149 Somerset Street West (many thanks to Sierra Systems http://www.SierraSystems.com for supplying the venue for this meeting)

Presentation: "Toward Single-Source Publishing Using DocBook XML"
http://www.lodestar2.com/people/dyork/talks/2001/xugo/docbook/index.html

The dream of many people involved with documentation is for "single-source" publishing where a single source file can be transformed in multiple output formats. From one file of content, you can have print output (in PDF or PostScript), HTML output, and other file formats (such as HTML Help or Microsoft's Rich Text Format for use in Word).

In this presentation, you will learn about the rich vocabulary for technical documentation provided by DocBook XML as well as some of the tools available for processing DocBook. Examples will be shown of many of the more common elements and structures as well as examples of popular open source processing tools. Discussion will include both strengths and weaknesses of currently available tools and will explore methods of automating production and maintaining version control. Brief mention will also be made of other uses of DocBook XML such as for presentation slides and web site creation.

Come with your questions and be prepared to learn about how you can move toward an effective single-source publishing environment (and on a minimal budget).

Presenter: Dan York, Mitel

Dan York is the Director of Training for the Network Server Solutions Group of Mitel Networks Corporation and is also responsible for the NSSG's documentation which is all based on DocBook XML/SGML (See http://www.e-smith.org/docs/ for more info). He has been working with and teaching about documentation systems for over 11 years with a focus on FrameMaker and SGML/XML. Dan is also the author and current maintainer of the XSLT customization layer for DocBook used by the Linux Documentation Project and is a current board member of Linux International.

Date: October 11, 2001 (second Thursday of the month) 18:00-21:00
Location: 3rd Floor, World Exchange Plaza, 45 O'Connor
(many thanks to Microsoft Canada for supplying the venue for this meeting; we had room for about 80 attendees). Also, many thanks to Coast http://www.coast.com for the reproduction of the handouts.

Presentation: "XML and Stylesheets and Transformations"

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/schedule.htm#xmlstyle

Presenter: G. Ken Holman, Crane Softwrights Ltd.

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/bio/gkholman.htm

October 11 attendees please note: the issues of the International SGML/XML User Group that I handed out at the beginning of the meeting were my only copies. They were meant to have been returned at the end of the meeting. If you have kept a copy, would you please bring it to the next meeting so that I can have it returned? Thank you! Ken

* Please consider the following questions to prepare for discussion:

• meeting schedule and timing (considering second Thursday of each month, 18:00-21:00)
• we should probably have a group name and snazzy acronym
• we should consider affiliation with other groups (e.g. International SGML/XML User Group)
• we need someone responsible for the group web site
• we need sponsorship at future meetings (e.g. handouts, snacks, etc.)
• we need technology presentations for future meetings
• we need experts to attend to answer others' questions during "Ask the experts"

Last changed: $Date: 2005/09/15 01:59:23 $(UTC)