XML@Boeing 2007 - Adoption of XML Standards

XML, eXtensible Markup Language, is the "Brand X" of data formats. Theoretically, this application-agnostic common exchange format simplifies the management of structured and semi-structured data from divergent sources. It reduces the cost of application-to-application integrations, and enables an agile Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). As this technology matures, international and industry standards proliferate. This proliferation creates dilemmas over which standards to use, how to keep up with developing standards, how to integrate multiple standards, and where to start. XML@Boeing 2007 brings together industry leaders, innovators, implementers, and learners for the purpose of sharing knowledge on XML adoption and implementation.

Conference Program

Conference Description

This event offers an opportunity for attendees to learn about the current state of XML and related standards from the people who are working on developing them. In addition, implementers will share lessons learned, helpful resources and best practices. Topics to be covered include an introduction of the XML family of standards that have been identified as Boeing standards, a discussion of XML Schema 1.1 and versioning considerations, implementing XML Query in semi-structured information and data management, and an overview of XML standards and how to use them from the implementers' perspective. Attendees will learn about Open XML formats, and using Office XML on the desktop. Boeing implementers will discuss the use of S1000D and XML in the 787 program, XML and SOA within Boeing, and a panel session will cover success stories, lessons learned, and how to get started with XML.

Presentation Abstract

Introduction: Boeing XML Family of Standards
Kathryn Breininger (CENTRAL Project Manager, Boeing Library Services)
Along with technology advances, standards must be developed to ensure that the new technologies work together and interoperate. A visitor to any of the international standards organization websites will quickly discover that there has been a beehive of activity over the past eight years in the standards arena, especially when it comes to XML related standards. What standards are being adopted at Boeing and in the Industry? Who is working on projects or applications that are using the standards? How does a writing come to be a standard anyway? This presentation will provide an overview of the processes used to define IT related standards, an overview of the XML related standards that have been adopted in Boeing, and Boeing participation in external IT standards activities.

XML Schema 1.1, and the Versioning of XML Vocabularies
Michael Sperberg-McQueen (Member of the Technical Staff, World Wide Web Consortium)
XML offers several advantages over competing formats for data interchange. XML vocabularies can be defined formally, using schema languages (DTDs, XSDL, Relax NG, ...), which in turn makes it possible to find large classes of errors by purely mechanical means. Software to consume valid XML data can be simpler and cheaper to write and maintain, because defensive programming is less necessary.

And XML's explicit start- and end-tags make it much easier to detect and ignore material not needed by a particular process. As new processes are added, new information can be added to an XML message format without disturbing existing software.

At least, that's the theory. In practice, combining validation and easy versioning of your XML vocabularies has proven hard.

This talk outlines some basic problems involved in versioning XML vocabularies and talks about ways to address them. Particular attention will be paid to several features of XML Schema 1.1 which make it easier to define XML vocabularies which can in fact be revised while preserving backwards and forwards compatibility: weakened wildcards, open content, not-in-schema wildcards, multiple substitution-group heads, extension of all-groups, default attribute groups, and conditional inclusion of elements in schema documents.

Management of Semi-Structured Data using XQuery, XSLT, and SQL/XML
Jim Melton (Oracle, Standards Maven)
For decades, data was created, stored in files, and used -- if and when it could be found undamaged. Eventually, databases were invented, first hierarchical in structure, then using a generalized network model. Data could be reliably stored in and retrieved from those databases, but writing queries against them was complex, error-prone, and brittle. The relational model arrived and SQL database systems resolved many of the problems found with other data management models: physical storage structure was completely divorced from the application view of the data, resulting in the ability to easily write powerful and flexible queries.

But not all data fits well into the relational paradigm -- in fact, (arguably) most information is locked up in "non-traditional" data structures, such as textual documents, graphical images, sound, video, and others. Textual data often has structure, whether recognized or not. More valuable textual data was often marked up with "instructions" to indicate that structure. The value of hierarchies -- trees -- was rediscovered. The data found in such documents became known as "semi-structured" in part because, although documents do have structure in principal, there is little regularity in the structure of instance documents -- not every document has three paragraphs in the first chapter, nor an italicized word in the first line of the eighth paragraph of the tenth chapter.

SGML was created to provide a very powerful, flexible standardized (and complex) language for marking up documents to capture structure and even some primitive semantic information. XML, derived from SGML, was invented to simplify the problem by removing the most complex and least used features of SGML. Languages such as XPath, XSLT, and XQuery -- designed explicitly to manage trees -- were developed to help manage that data.

It is not, in general, possible to reject the relational model in favor of semi-structured data, because there remain immense amounts of valuable data that is best managed in a relational environment. SQL/XML provides mechanisms for incorporating XML data into the relational world, permitting the use of XQuery from within SQL statements to manage the XML data while retaining ordinary SQL to manage the relational data.

An Implementer's Guide to XML Standards
Joe Gollner (Stilo)
XML projects must effectively evaluate, select, integrate, implement and manage the standards that will be adopted and leveraged. The growing body of XML standards has made this task progressively more challenging. This presentation will offer a framework for evaluating and selecting standards so as to meet project objectives. The evaluation criteria introduced include such considerations as maturity, formality, independence, adoption, stability, appropriateness, quality and implementability. A survey will be included of the key standards associations and the XML standards that have been either persistently important or are gaining more recent traction in the marketplace.

The Advantages of a Native XML Database
Michiel Veen (Director of Products XML Solutions, EMC Corporation)
In this presentation we will show the advantages of a native XML database during the content lifecycle. The advantages are shown using a number of XQueries. These XQueries will generate dynamic content based on an existing data set. The use of a number of different indexes will show performance benefits. The use of the XQuery update statements will show how to enrich existing content.

DataPower: The XML Appliance to Accelerate the Journey to SOA
Brian Bell (IBM DataPower Specialist)
Introducing the DataPower XML appliance from IBM. With a broad spectrum of functionality to increase your XML throughput, security and application integration, DataPower is real innovation in transporting XML.

XML for Agile Content Delivery
Rhonda Wainwright (Sales Manager, S1000D and IETP, XyEnterprise)
This presentation and demonstration will show how AJAX and PDOM facilitate the use of an XML database as a mobile delivery platform, enabling agile and personalized content delivery to the information consumer. Because content remains unformatted until the instant it is viewed, data can be filtered at runtime based on language, skill level, applicability, viewing device, and user role/privileges. This enables a single "published" XML database to serve an entire organization, program, ship, or base, with personalized content for each user or group.

Boeing 787 S1000D XML Implementation - Support Data Delivery
Mark Eaton (Senior Manager, 787 CAS Information Technology)
Boeing is implementing S1000D V3.0 coincident with the 787 entry into service. The journey began with the ATA Civil Aviation Working Group industry committee working to define the Civil Aviation specific requirements and changes to the S1000D specification. It continued with our strategic objectives for our Customer's experience, to our technical solutions.

• 787 Support Data and Information Strategy
• Airline Engagement in the Strategy
• Information Technology Response to the Strategy
• Schedule of S1000D V3.0
• Schedule of 787 Development
• Targeted S1000D 787 Information types
• Implementation Opportunities & Challenges

Ananth Coorg has worked for The Boeing Company for over 28 years. He supported the US/NATO AWACS program, Numerical Control Application Systems for building airplane parts and models, and is currently in the Manufacturing and Quality Assurance NC Simulation Composites organization. Ananth is a founding member of XML@Large and a member of the W3C MathML Working Group. On the lighter side, he is an avid lunch-time walker, weekend long-distance jogger, Yoga-ist, and an excellent cook!

Kathryn Breininger is a corporate librarian at Boeing, and is the project manager for Boeing's CENTRAL Registry. Kathryn's areas of expertise include content management, indexing, metadata and taxonomy development. Her interests include working with emerging technologies to increase efficiency in information discovery and retrieval. She is Boeing's voting representative to OASIS, and chairs the ebXML Joint Committee as well as the ebXML Registry Technical Committee. Kathryn received her MLIS from the University of Washington.

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen is a member of the technical staff of the World Wide Web Consortium. He has served as co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification, the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative, and the XML Schema Definition Language (XSDL) 1.1 specification. He holds a doctorate in comparative literature; his Erdos number is 6.

Jim Melton has been the editor for all parts of the SQL standard for SQL-92, SQL:1999, SQL:2003, and SQL:2008, and has published five books covering various aspects of the SQL standard. He has represented his employer in the ANSI standards community and the United States in the international standards community for more than two decades. Jim was closely involved with creation of a new part of the SQL standard, called SQL/XML, that specifies technology for effectively using SQL and XML together. In addition, Jim is co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Query Working Group and an editor of several of the documents being developed by the Query WG: Functions & Operators, XQueryX, Full-Text, and the Update Facility. Jim recently published a book, co-authored with Stephen Buxton, that deals with querying XML data in various ways.

Joe Gollner, Vice President e-Publishing Solutions for Stilo International, where he oversees the design, development and deployment of enterprise content processing solutions. Starting in the late 1980s, he has designed and implemented over 100 large-scale XML and SGML solutions in a variety of industries although he has specialized in aerospace and defense systems. Mr. Gollner came to Stilo through the acquisition, in 2004, of XIA Systems Corporation, a specialist XML solution integrator that he had founded in 1998.

Brian Bell, IBM DataPower Specialist.

Michiel Veen is the Director of Products XML Solutions for EMC's Content Management and Archiving division. Michiel co-founded X-Hive Corporation acquired by EMC Corporation in July 2007. X-Hive Corporation specializes in advanced, high performance, shrink-wrap XML solutions. Michiel Veen holds a Master's degree in Management & Computer Science from Erasmus University (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). From 1994 until 1995, Veen worked at Uniface Technology as Quality Engineer and Software Production Coordinator. In January 1996, Veen co-founded X-Hive Corporation with former Erasmus classmates, Jeroen van Rotterdam and Irsan Widarto. In the second quarter of 1999, Veen, van Rotterdam, and Widarto began the development of X-Hive/DB, a native database for XML documents.

Rhonda Wainwright is responsible for sales and marketing of XyEnterprise's ContentaView interactive electronic technical publication software and Contenta S1000D common support data base and accompanying solution set. With more than 20 years experience in the information systems and electronic publishing fields, she has expertise with XML/SGML content management, composition, search and retrieval technology, electronic delivery and revision management. Her career has included technical, management, and sales roles at organizations focused on structured content management and publishing for commercial aviation and defense.

Mark A. Eaton  In March of 2005 Mark was named 787 CAS IT Senior Manager and Support & Services 787 Domain co-Leader. He is also a member of the ATA Civil Aviation Working Group. Mark has been in Aerospace for 27 years. Six years with the US Navy and an assignment as a Technical Launch Team Lead with Mission Control for the Space Shuttle Program. Mark joined Boeing in 1987 and has held several positions including Boeing Electronics Company, Customer Training, Airplane Maintenance Engineering and Information Technology.

Gene Owen is an Enterprise Architect with Enterprise Technology Architecture, Boeing IT, in Bellevue, Washington. With over 25 years of experience in the computing field, Gene has worked information technology issues at Boeing, IBM, Webforia, and InfoSpace, with a current focus on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). A third-generation Husky, Gene holds a BA in Management Information Systems from UW and an MBA from UCLA.

Doug Mahugh is a technical evangelist at Microsoft who specializes in teaching software developers how to build custom solutions around the Open XML file formats. In 2007 he has led Open XML developer workshops in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, and he is also a member of the US technical committee that is evaluating Open XML for ISO (INCITS V1), the moderator of the OpenXMLDeveloper.org web site, and an active blogger and writer on Open XML and related topics. Doug started his technology career as a Fortran programmer at Boeing (777 noise staff, 1978).

Ann Bassetti (Boeing IT, Computing and Network Operations) is responsible for promoting better understanding and implementation of Web and e-Collaboration technologies within Boeing. Ann represents Boeing to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is also currently serving her 4th elected term on the 9-person W3C Advisory Board. An ATF, Ann has been at Boeing for 22 years, starting off as the desktop graphics product manager. She has a BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Washington. She was also certified as a K-12 teacher, having taught grades 3-4 in Seattle and 10,000 visiting kids per year at the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium in Connecticut.

David A. Porter is a System Design & Integration Analyst for Boeing IT, Computing & Network Operations, Distributed Server Line-of-Service with 22 years of Boeing service in IT and business-management work. David has broad experience in systems deployment and software component lifecycle including code development in C, PERL, VB and recently XML and XSLT. David holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Western Washington University.

John Bremer is an Advanced Computing Technologist at Boeing, and is the application architect for the Boeing Collaborative Document Reviewer web. John’s core expertise is in Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX) Web Application Development and Natural Language Processing and Text Mining. He has worked extensively supporting automation of Boeing publishing workflows for the past 18 years and has helped to develop software applications including SGML Autotaggers, the Boeing Simplified English Checker, IndexerTM, and the NATO AWACS Data Module Explorer. John has a bachelor’s degree in Applied Linguistics from Western Washington University.

Terry Lammers is the Technical Lead for SOSCOE Knowledge Services. SOSCOE is a large-scale middleware implementation which supports Future Combat System (FCS). Knowledge is one of the Service Families in the SOSCOE Service-Oriented Architecture. The current focus for Knowledge is to provide an Agent Framework based on the Cognitive Agent Architecture (Cougaar) open source product. In 2004-2005 Terry was the Boeing representative to the W3C XML Binary Characterization Working Group. Terry has 22 years of service with Boeing across a number of technical positions. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Montana Statue University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Montana.

Mark Dahl is the chief architect for the PSDD project which is consolidating all Boeing Product Standard repositories into a single XML-based content management system. Mark has leveraged XML technologies to enable data in PSDD to be authoritative, single-sourced, multi-purposed, and structured to be integrated into data systems used across the lifecycle of Boeing's aerospace products. Mark has been at Boeing for 28 years. Over the past 20 years, Mark has led the development of suites of applications which have paved the way for PSDD, such as ESDS, iPSM, and process spec wizards. Mark's expertise includes XML technologies, knowledge-based systems, ontologies, and service-oriented architecture.

Richard McLean is a software developer and product manager for Boeing IT Internal Systems. Richard’s responsibilities include Technical Architect for BOSS (Enterprise Help Desk’s Knowledge Base), development and sustaining of enterprise self service applications such as online ticketing, ticket status, PC Self Help and integrations with technologies like Google GSA, BARS and BERS. He holds a certification in XML Standards & Technologies from the University of Washington, and a Master’s of Science in Information Technology.

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