Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Interop, Standards

Roadmap Announced for Outlook Personal Folders Documentation

Peter Galli — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:20:00 GMT

Great news on the data portability front: today, Microsoft announced that it will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format - the format in which data is stored in Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders.

Even better is the fact that the documentation will be released under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise when complete. This lets anyone implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.

But it is important for me to point out that this documentation is still in its early stages and the work is ongoing. However, Microsoft is also engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the .pst technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful.

As an increasing amount of information is stored and shared in digital formats, it is vital for people to be able to reuse their data across various applications and platforms. Giving access to the documentation will facilitate interoperability and let customers and vendors to access their data in .pst files across a variety of platforms.

This is also just another example of how Microsoft is listening to its customers and responding to their requests for greater interoperability, in this case around data portability.

Also, enabling customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms allows developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice.

"We're excited about the possibilities created for our customers and partners by this kind of effort, and we look forward to continued collaboration with the industry in our pursuit of improved interoperability with Microsoft Office," said Paul Lorimer, the Group Manager for Office Interoperability at Microsoft, in a blog post.

New Bridge Broadens Java and .NET Interoperability

Peter Galli — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:31:00 GMT

Microsoft continues to deliver on its ongoing promise to build bridges between different technologies, and this week jointly announced with Noelios Technologies a new interoperability bridge between Java and .NET through REST.

The Microsoft Interoperability Technical Strategy team has been working with Noelios to build an extension to the Restlet Framework. As such, Noelios has released a new bridge for Java and .NET. It is shipping a new version of the Restlet open source project, a lightweight REST framework for Java.

This includes the Restlet Extension for ADO.NET Data Services, which makes it easier for Java developers to take advantage of ADO.NET Data Services, a set of recently added .NET Framework features that provides a simple way to expose a wide range of data sources, such as relational databases, XML files, and so on, through a RESTful service interface.

This announcement is yet another example of Microsoft's continued commitment to openness and interoperability, and demonstrates the ever increasing use of web standards in our technologies.

Formerly known as Project Astoria, the ADO.NET Data Services defines a flexible addressing and query interface using a URL convention, and supports the usual resource manipulation methods for data sources, including the full range of Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 fully support ADO.NET Data Services, including the capability to create and consume data services directly from the development environment.

You can find all the technical details of this announcement on the Interoperability team blog here, as well as on the Noelis blog. You can also find a tutorial on this here.

Zend Launches Open Source Initiative to Drive Cloud Application Development

Peter Galli — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Today, Zend Technologies announced the Simple API for Cloud Application Services project, which is a new open source initiative that allows developers to use common application services in the cloud, while enabling them to unlock value-added features available from individual providers.

This new project is designed to encourage widespread participation and contributions from the open source community, resulting in the availability of Simple Cloud API adapters for virtually all major cloud providers.

Zend, Microsoft, IBM, Nirvanix, Rackspace and GoGrid are all co-founding contributors to this community project, which aims to facilitate the development of cloud applications that can access services on all major cloud platforms and whose initial goal is to provide a set of programming interfaces for PHP developers to facilitate the development of applications that have basic cloud storage needs.

The first deliverables will include interfaces for file storage, document database, and simple queue services from platforms like Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network and Rackspace Cloud Files, allowing developers to deploy software applications to access services in these environments without making time consuming and expensive changes to their source code.

As Andi Gutmans, the CEO at Zend Technologies, notes in the press release announcing the project, "cloud computing offers irresistible value to enterprises of all sizes, but the lack of portability across cloud application services for even the most basic operations has been an impediment to broader adoption of cloud services."

An initial Simple Cloud API proposal and reference implementation is already available now for community review and participation, while a technology preview of the PHP client libraries for Windows Azure can be found here.

Microsoft is also contributing Simple Cloud API adapters, along with the official PHP client libraries for Windows Azure storage, to future versions of Zend Framework. These adapters will allow applications to take advantage of many Windows Azure features through the Simple Cloud API interface, while Microsoft's client libraries will put Windows Azure innovations, such as transaction and partial upload support, at the fingertips of cloud application developers.

"The Simple Cloud API is an example of Microsoft's continued investment in the openness and interoperability of its platform. We're excited to see how this project will foster adoption of cloud computing platforms by PHP developers and hope that many of these developers are encouraged to use Windows Azure," Doug Hauger, the General Manager for Windows Azure, notes in the press release.

Microsoft's involvement started a few months ago, through our work with Real Dolmen on a Windows Azure SDK for PHP developers. This SDK has been submitted to the Zend Framework, and it now forms the basis of Microsoft's contribution to the Simple Cloud API project.

As Vijay Rajagopalan, a Principal Architect at Microsoft, notes in his blog, the Zend Adapter for Windows Azure will leverage Microsoft's contribution. PHP developers will now be able to program against Windows Azure - in a way that is consistent with other cloud platforms - by tapping into the main features of Window Azure Storage.

Those PHP developers who need to use specific Windows Azure features not included in the scope of the Simple Cloup API (like transaction), will be able to combine the Zend Cloud Adapter with the dedicated Windows Azure SDK for PHP.

"This will allow developers to use common application services in the cloud, while enabling them to unlock value-added features available from individual providers. Simple API for Cloud also gives PHP developers more choices, and this is a great opportunity for them to think about using Windows Azure," he says.

Tuxera Signs File System IP Agreement with Microsoft

Peter Galli — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:21:00 GMT

Tuxera, a Finnish company that develops NTFS drivers, has entered into a file system IP agreement with Microsoft in the area of data portability for devices

The agreement gives Tuxera access to the exFAT specifications and source code, as well as testing and verification tools, and the company will develop exFAT drivers for host device manufacturers. The company will also join the Interoperability Vendor Alliance.

While this is also the first-ever file system IP agreement that Microsoft has signed with an independent software vendor, Tuxera joins a growing number of companies entering into the exFAT Program.

The Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) is a new file system that is better adapted to the growing needs of mobile personal storage. It allows a common file system to be used across all platform and devices that implement exFAT, which allows for data portability.

It also handles not only large files, such as those used for media storage, but also enables seamless interoperability between desktop PCs and devices like portable media devices, cameras or even kitchen devices so that files can easily be copied between desktop and device.

"Adding exFAT into our product portfolio is the logical step to help our customers to solve their interoperable file systems needs. Microsoft supports exFAT as the first-choice for many Windows interoperability needs including flash memories in consumer devices. exFAT is for example an integral part of SDXC formats, and the driver is good for flash drives, including devices that use SDXC cards," says Tuxera CTO Szabolcs Szakacsits

For his part, Mikko Välimäki, the company's CEO, believes that his company's ongoing collaboration with Microsoft ensures seamless file system interoperability into the future.

"We were the first to offer exFAT drivers based on our first-hand access to specifications and source code.We are also licensing exFAT drivers to device manufacturers, we are joining Microsoft's partner program, and have also announced a new product: Tuxera exFAT for Embedded Systems, which will be first available for Linux, but we can also port the product to proprietary platforms," he says.

The IP agreement the company has signed with Microsoft is consistent with Tuxera's business model, which is to integrate and license commercial, high-performance versions of its file system drivers to customers, as well as to provide support, maintenance, and product updates, Välimäki says.

The PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services

Peter Galli — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Today, the DPE Interop team at Microsoft released a new open source project that bridges PHP and .NET using REST.

Specifically, the PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services was made available, which makes it easier for PHP developers to take advantage of the ADO.NET Data Services, a set of features recently added to the .NET Framework.

The PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services is an open source project funded by Microsoft and developed by Persistent Systems. It is available on CodePlex today.

These services, which were previously referred to by the codename Project Astoria, expose a wide range of data sources through a RESTful service interface.

There is full support for ADO.NET Data Services in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 as well as in the upcoming Visual Studio 2010, which includes direct support for both creating and consuming data services directly from the development environment.

Read more about all this on the Interoperability blog, and watch the Channel 9 video interview with Claudio Caldato, Senior Program Manager in the Interoperability Technical Strategy team, and Pablo Castro, software architect of ADO.NET Data Services.

This is yet another example of Microsoft's continued commitment to openness and interoperability as well as of its embrace of Web standards in its technologies.

Helping Facilitate Open Government

Peter Galli — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:03:00 GMT

Microsoft will announce on May 7 an initiative to help government agencies and developers publish and interact with their data in Windows Azure, the company's cloud computing platform.

One of these is the Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI), a cloud-based approach to housing public government data in Windows Azure, making it accessible in a programmatic manner via open standard protocols and application programming interfaces.

The source code for OGDI is being made publicly available through CodePlex, Microsoft's open source hosting site, so that developers may reuse it and provide feedback. Sample code is also being provided for technologies widely used on the Web, including PHP, Python, Flash, JavaScript, and Silverlight.

This initiative helps to provide government with tools focused on increasing responsiveness and access to critical services, streamlined processes and services.

For their part, Microsoft and its partners have developed a robust enterprise architecture approach that enables agencies to meet the technology requirements of government mandates with a familiar set of tools - built on an enterprise-ready, scalable, and easily-managed software-powered architecture.

So, in short, the goal of ODGI is to reduce the cost of publishing government data, and simplifying data access by leveraging cloud computing and open standards.

More information on Microsoft's Open Government Data Initiative can be found here.

To see an implementation of a data service in Windows Azure, using a sample of publicly available government data, visit this reference beta site.

These moves are part of Microsoft's ongoing open government efforts aimed at helping government organizations meet goals of transparency, participation and collaboration, particularly as an ever increasing amount of data becomes necessary and available.

As such, new methods need to be opened up to allow interaction with that data, and Microsoft's OGDI is designed to help public sector entities meet these goals.

This software, which underscores the importance of programmatic access to government data rather than having to download it, will give developers the ability to write programs that access data via Web-friendly programming methods without having to download or host the data; and let them write applications using any technology via open standards.

It also provides easier access to a broad array of government datasets, enabling the building of new and unique applications, while governments will be able to automatically refresh data without having to buy and maintain servers.

Cloud computing is the ideal platform for government data, and the technology is finally available to make it happen, says John Miri, Senior Fellow at the Center for Digital Government.

"The qualities that government looks for in an information management platform - things like flexibility, scalability, security, performance, and cost efficiency - are all better in a cloud model. As we see demands for government to become more transparent, collaborative, and interactive, a shift like this in technology architecture just has to happen, " he says.

For governments to become truly open, citizen access to public data in standards-based and interoperable ways is essential at all levels of government.

Given that most federal, state, local and education entities implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), they can meet open government goals of oversight, transparency and accountability through cloud and on-premises solutions such as Microsoft Stimulus360, which helps public sector agencies track, measure, and share information about federal stimulus programs through graphical dashboards and maps.

ECMAScript Candidate Specification Published

Peter Galli — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:50:00 GMT

The candidate specification of the ECMAScript language standard - known as ECMA-262, was published on April 9.

ECMAScript is the scripting language used to create web pages with dynamic behavior, and is more commonly known as JavaScript. It is a component of every web browser and is an essential aspect of interoperability.

The ECMAScript standard is "one of the core standards that enable the existence of interoperable web applications on the World Wide Web," Ecma International, which develops standards for Information and Communication Technology, said in a media release.

This candidate specification, the PDF of which is available here, will now undergo interoperability and web compatibility testing, and will likely be submitted to the Ecma General Assembly for ratification as an Ecma standard before the end of 2009.

ECMA is inviting technical experts to review this candidate specification and submit feedback here by July 15, 2009.

This latest revision of ECMA-262 will now be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition and not under the previous working name ECMAScript 3.1.

The Fifth Edition codifies de facto interpretations of the language specification that have become common among browser implementations and adds support for new features, ECMA said.

The ECMAScript, Fifth Edition candidate specification has been developed by Ecma TC39, whose membership includes all major browser vendors.

These members will now create and test implementations of the candidate specification to verify its correctness and the feasibility of creating interoperable implementations and for web compatibility testing to ensure that the revised specification remains compatible with existing web applications.

TC39 members Opera, Mozilla, and Microsoft have each committed to participating in this testing process, which should be finished by the middle of July, and that a final draft of the specification can be agreed upon in September for submission to the Ecma General Assembly for final approval in December 2009.

ECMA also expects this to result in a fast-track submission to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for revision of ISO/IEC 16262.

"We expect the Fifth Edition to benefit all web developers by helping improve browser interoperability and making enhanced scripting features broadly available," said Allen Wirfs-Brock, Microsoft's ECMAScript architect. Read more about all this on Microsoft's JScript team blog.

The last major revision of the ECMAScript standard was the Third Edition, published in 1999 and work on future ECMAScript editions continues as part of the ECMAScript Harmony project.

Integrate Your IT Environment

Peter Galli — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Microsoft is embarking on a 15-city road show to help customers learn more about available solutions that may address their unique interoperability needs.

This is just another of the many ways Microsoft continues to respond to customers working in heterogeneous environments, a mission that was enhanced by the announcement of our Interoperability Principles last year.

The road show is being organized by Microsoft TechNet, and will stop in cities from Mountain View on the West coast to Denver, Atlanta and Chicago as well as Philadelphia, Boston and New York on the East Coast.

The rationale behind these events is simple: many customers work in heterogeneous environments that include Microsoft technologies as well as those from MySQL, Apple and Linux. As such, integration becomes vital in order for their core business applications to maintain business flow and efficiency.

Each event will last four hours, during which three sessions will be offered: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Interop with Linux and OS X; running Open Source Software on Window Server 2008; and SQL Server 2008 and PHP Web Application Infrastructure.

This program aims to increase understanding of the heterogeneous IT landscape and discuss practical interoperability solutions.

It also complements Microsoft's existing engagement in interoperability at many levels - through its ongoing participation in industry and internal development projects and standards bodies, as well as its publication of technologies under open licenses and strong collaboration with customers, governments and partners.

We hope you'll join us at one of these events!

Brazilian Students Set Their Own Course

Mark Stone — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:05:00 GMT

I’m going to tell a story that starts in Indiana, but really it’s about Brazil.

Once upon a time “scientific computing” was nearly synonymous with “Fortran”. Today, though, just about any high level language can be used to write High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. These days that language choice also includes C#.

At Indiana University, the Open Systems Lab has pioneered work to implement Message Passing Interface (MPI) support for .Net, so that MPI applications can be written in C#. The project is MPI.Net, and you can find it on Codeplex. It is open source, about three years old, has reached a 1.0 release, and is compatible with two other important open source projects, OpenMPI and Mono. The principle developers behind the project are Andrew Lumsdaine at Indiana University and his former student, Douglas Gregor, who is now on the faculty of Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

This is the kind of open source work that’s really exciting to see because of the way it expands choices for the developer and the end user. A C# developer should not be closed off from writing HPC applications if that’s what they want to do. And a research scientist should not have to think about whether their lab is running Linux or Windows Server. Both of these individuals are working enough layers above the operating system that somebody else’s operating system choice should not be a constraint.

So I was very excited to learn that students in Brazil at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul were doing work on MPI, and excited to talk with them about their work. One of their projects is MPI#, also open source and also hosted on Codeplex.

MPI# builds on top of the work of MPI.Net, adding some functionality not yet present in MPI.Net. Specifically, quoting from the project description:

The goals of this project would be to build upon MPI.NET in order to complement it with the features that are missing, mainly regarding collective communication. Either they could benefit from C# native support for such communication, either they could be programmed on top of the provided MPISend/MPIRecv encapsulations. C# and .NET features such as fault tolerance or dynamicity support would be studied, in other to turn the MPI# implementation robust in large, dynamic and heterogeneous platforms.

Two of the students working on MPI# are Ismael Stangherlini and Fernando Afonso. They are graduate students in computer science, working on projects affiliated with the Brazilian Interoperability and Open Source Software Development Nucleous. When I talked to them about their work on MPI# I was curious what their communication with Indiana University had been like. Their response: they had never been in contact with Indiana University; they simply downloaded the code for MPI.Net and started working on their own.

That’s the magic of open source: that they can, in fact, just download the code on their own and start coding against it. They may make an important contribution to MPI.Net. Or their code may be entirely disregarded. Or they may move on to other projects and somebody else may or may not pick up where they left off. At this stage it’s too early to tell. But the fact that all of these scenarios are possible demonstrates why, as a methodology, open source is so nimble and adaptive. A top-down product development process, or a top-down standards development process can only execute on the innovations envisioned by the few at the top, and at the speed of the slowest decision-makers in the process. But a bottom-up open source process enables every innovation that anyone at the grass roots level can see.

Web Sandbox Source Now Available Under Apache License 2.0

Peter Galli — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:48:00 GMT

Microsoft has released more source code under an OSI-approved license: this time it has made the source code for the Web Sandbox runtime available under the Apache 2.0 open source license.

The Web Sandbox project explores how to advance the web platform to improve security, isolation, quality of service and extensibility capabilities for web developers and website users.

More information on the licensing details, as well as comprehensive documentation for experimenting and integrating with the Web Sandbox, can be found here.

But, while developers are being encouraged to help define and refine the Web Sandbox, it is not recommended for those developers creating production sites as it is still under development.

The Web Sandbox was created in response to limitations found in the current web platform, and is designed to explore potential solutions. Having a more secure and robust architecture as a foundational building block will help drive the next wave of Web innovation.

The Sandbox is a framework that works on most modern browsers that support the"ECMA-262, 3^rd Edition" (JavaScript) standard, and provides the same features in all modern web browsers. No browser add-ons or changes are required to leverage this technology. Beyond security, the Web Sandbox normalizes the different browsers and provides consistent W3C DOM support.

Since the initial release of Web Sandbox at PDC 2008, the team has received a lot of useful feedback from the web security community, and has also been collaborating with a number of customers, partners and the standards communities, all of whom want to adopt the technology when it is ready.

The goal? An open and interoperable standard that will help foster interoperability with complementary technologies like script frameworks and drive widespread adoption of the Web Sandbox.

This move is good news for Microsoft and the open source communities. But, it is important to note that while an Apache license is being used, the Web Sandbox project is not an Apache Software Foundation project and is not sponsored or endorsed by the ASF.

Microsoft does, however, already have an active relationship with the ASF. In fact, last year the company announced it had become a sponsor of the ASF so as to help enable the Foundation pay administrators and other support staff so that its developers can focus on writing great software.

Sam Ramji, the senior Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, also delivered a keynote address at ApacheCon in New Orleans last November.

Microsoft's Interoperability Technical Strategy Team already participates as a code contributor to the Apache Stonehenge incubator project; the company has also contributed a patch to ADOdb, a popular data access layer for PHP used by many applications and which is licensed under the LGPL and BSD; while Microsoft's Powerset team contributes to HBase, an open-source, column-oriented, distributed database written in Java.

Update: Stonehenge Incubation Project

Peter Galli — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As Microsoft continues the drive for interoperability between different implementations on various platforms, the Interoperability Technical Strategy Team is, for the first time, participating as a code contributor to an Apache project: the Stonehenge incubator project.

Microsoft first talked about Stonehenge at ApacheCon 2008, which was held in New Orleans last November. Since then, it has been approved as an incubator project within Apache Software Foundation, and WSO2 and Microsoft have already contributed code for a web-services based sample application, known as StockTrader, to this effort.

That code can be found here, along with the contributions from WSO2.

Stonehenge has attracted some very prominent committers so far, Kamajit Bath, a Principal Program Manager in the Interoperability Technical Strategy Team and the lead for Microsoft's participation in Stonehenge, says in a recent blog post.

"I hope that the momentum will be sustained, and I am looking forward to seeing code contributions from other folks and seeing the StockTrader sample application enhanced with new features. I also hope that new sample applications will be developed to cover other areas of the WS-* standards that are not best represented by the StockTrader application. I look forward to participating in this discussion with the Stonehenge community," he says.

There are three Microsoft committers on the Stonehenge incubator project: Greg Leake, who wrote the original StockTrader application; Drew Baird, who worked to get it ready for contribution to Stonehenge; and Mike Champion, who will play an active role in this effort.

In a recent blog post, Champion says Microsoft have heard from customers that they want sample applications based on real-world scenarios and challenges, as these will help them realize the potential of these technologies that have been developed and standardized for the last 8 years or so.

The initial response from the Apache community has also been quite favorable, and "I have a personal commitment to invest in helping make Stonehenge a success, and look forward to digging in," he says.

Champion also notes that Stonehenge is being championed by Paul Fremantle, co-founder and CTO of WSO2, "which has been a great partner in helping to improve and demonstrate the interoperability of the WS-* standards across platforms."

He cites, as an example of this, TechEd 2008, where Jonathan Marsh of WSO2 and Greg Leake of Microsoft demonstrated how separate WSO2 and Microsoft components implementing a mutlti-tier stock trading application can interoperate and be substituted for one another, he says in the blog.

StockTrader is also just the starting point for the broader goals of Stonehenge, which aims to develop a set of sample applications to demonstrate seamless interoperability across multiple underlying platform technologies by using currently defined W3C and OASIS standard protocols.

Stonehenge can also help wire up the ‘last mile' between the standardized web services infrastructure that is now implemented across key platforms, and a new generation of service oriented applications that will span them, he says.

Existing WS-* interoperability work such of the sort done by WS-I and in our "plugfests" will continue to solidify the platform-level interoperability. The new work, exemplified by Apache Stonehenge, should attract a wider community of users who can exploit the hard standardization and platform interoperability work without having to wallow in as many nasty details as in the past.

For Bath, projects like Stonehenge are important in enhancing interoperability between different software implementations. While standards organizations do a great job and the roll out of various WS-* standards is a testimonial to the fact that they can work efficiently, interoperability work doesn't stop at the end of the standardization process but, rather, that is where it really starts, he says.

Microsoft Details Support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2

Peter Galli — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:29:00 GMT

Microsoft has released documentation that details the implementation of the Open Document Format in Office 2007 Service Pack 2, which is available at no cost on the Document Interoperability Initiative (DII) Web site.

This, along with the soon-to-be-released Open XML notes, gives developers insight into how Microsoft is implementing file formats in Office.

The release of these notes is significant as they explain the reasons behind some of the decisions made in the implementation, thereby being open and transparent so that developers can make informed choices in their own implementations.

We know that our customers care deeply about interoperability and the ability that brings to share and exchange documents across different applications. But that requires participation, transparency and collaboration among vendors, which is already happening.

These notes help promote interoperability by providing details that others can use as reference points for their own applications, and include information about which attributes and elements are supported, as well as details about how Office functionality maps to specific constructs in the ODF specification.

With regard to what is in the implementation notes, Doug Mahugh, a Microsoft senior program manager who specializes in Office interoperability, points out in a PressPass article that bold text is one good example, since the ODF specification supports a wider variety of "font weight," or boldness, than other formats supported by Word.

"Therefore, we sometimes adjust the font weight in a document to match the specific values that Word supports. The implementation note on this topic will help other implementers understand the coding behind that adjustment," he says.

Microsoft will also be publishing, over the next few months, implementation notes for ECMA-376 (Open XML) in Office 2007.

If you want to read more on this subject, a number of articles have appeared in the press, including at eWeek and InformationWeek, both of which are based on interviews with Doug Mahugh.

New Document Format Interop Solutions

Peter Galli — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:05:00 GMT

The work to promote interoperability between different document format implementations is yielding some concrete results.

A number of new technology solutions were announced in Brussels on December 3 by the Document Interoperability Initiative (DII), which was launched in March of this year, and where industry leaders and representatives from vendors around the world gather for technical discussions and labs to identify, test and develop solutions to overcome document interoperability barriers.

The solutions - which will improve the installation, performance and stability of translated documents - include the Open XML Document Viewer, which translates Open XML documents to an HTML Web page and allows readability on Web friendly browsers like Firefox. You can watch this video demonstration of the Open XML Document Viewer, while the CTP is available here.

Other new solutions include the Open XML/ODF Translators Version 2.5, a document translator that improves translations between different formats through optimized templates, and which will be made available as an add-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and XP. You can watch the video demonstration here.

The Apache POI Java SDK for Open XML gives customers and independent software developers greater choice as they create and use business applications that manipulate business documents and which are built on Java.

As transparency and co-operation are vital for initiatives like this to succeed, it's important to note that the DII's goals are to increase interoperability between document format implementations across a range of formats, applications, platforms and devices, and that the initiative is open to any vendor who wants to collaborate with the community to identify and address interoperability issues between different implementations of document formats.

We believe that the industry has a responsibility to come together to address the interoperability interests of users as well as effective data exchange between widely-deployed document format implementations, and so the development of these technical tools, which is due to the open and constructive industry dialogue at DII, is gratifying. This work also underscores the progress being made as the global IT community continues to work together on developing real-world interoperability solutions.

ApacheCon and the Stonehenge Proposal

Kamaljit Bath — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:24:00 GMT

This is Kamaljit Bath, and I am in the Big Easy to experience my first Apache Conference! I am a Principal Program Manager in the Interoperability Technical Strategy Team at Microsoft. We have been doing a lot of great interoperability work and have done quite a few Open Source projects to build bridging solutions etc., but this is the first time I am attending ApacheCon. This is a learning experience for me.

Microsoft is certainly interested in expanding interoperability between Open Source solutions and Microsoft technologies, and is working with individuals and communities for that purpose. I think this is great because it will enable choice of solutions and create strong partnerships to promote growth for everyone in the industry.

ApacheCon has been quite an experience for me so far. I have seen the energy and high quality decision making. It is amazing how people from many different backgrounds can come together and accomplish so much in so little time.

I have also met some very interesting people and some that I have wanted to meet for a long time. Meeting motivated and driven people is what I like the most about conferences. I have learnt a lot from this experience and I will take back great memories from this trip.

In his keynote today Sam Ramji, the Senior Director for Platform Strategy at Microsoft, gave an update on the many interoperability and Open Source projects that Microsoft is engaged in. I am sure that some of this was news to many of the attendees, but hopefully it gave them an idea of the breadth of work that Microsoft is doing in this area.

Sam covered a lot of things, including our participation in Apache QPID project; the release of the 'Oslo-M' language under the Open Source Promise; participation in the Apache HBase project; and support for the new Stonehenge proposal by WSO2.

Sam also covered many other open source projects that Microsoft has used to build bridging technologies, while my manager, Jean Paoli, has covered these in detail in his blog.

Sam is a well known figure in these avenues and needs no introduction - he has been representing Microsoft at many of these conferences.

But it is also important to have a more grass-root level developer and architecture presence from Microsoft, and we are now moving in that direction. Hopefully, we will see an increased Microsoft presence at such events.

Microsoft is also supportive of the new Apache incubation proposal - Stonehenge - that was proposed by WSO2. It will focus on building a set of sample applications based on approved W3C and OASIS standard protocols with goal of proving interoperability between different implementations on various platforms.

I think these sample applications will provide developers a great starting place for their tasks by providing best practice guidelines and reference implementations on various platforms. They will also help find potential interoperability problems and hopefully develop into a great community to discuss the architecture of multi-tier SOA apps. We look forward to working with WS02 on the scope of this project, and having discussions with the community.

These are exciting times for the software industry and we are seeing the co-existence of commercial and open source software and coming together of various forces to create solutions for the new heterogeneous IT environment.

Onwards, with great faith and hope!

Open Source Interoperability Projects

Jean Paoli — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:21:00 GMT

Interoperability has always been a focus area at Microsoft. Being a platform company, Microsoft has engaged in interoperability at many levels - product features, participation in standardization bodies, publishing many technologies under open licenses and working closely with customers, governments and partners to understand the heterogeneous IT landscape and discuss practical interoperability solutions.

Earlier this year, these activities were formalized under the Interoperability Principles for all of our high-volume products.

I am the General Manager of Interoperability Strategy at Microsoft, and I have worked across the company on many interop initiatives. I am happy to see many interop projects now coming out of Microsoft and, personally, having many of them based on XML makes me doubly happy.

My team has built several bridging technologies and solutions for many of our products to enable interoperability. These are being run as open source projects and released under a broad BSD license so that our customers and partners can use them in many open and broad scenarios.

Interoperability has been getting enhanced attention at a lot of conferences lately and Microsoft has also upped its participation at many open source conferences such as OSCON, the Eclipse Conference and ApacheCon.

At Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference last month, the interoperability story was part of almost every announcement and keynote address. As Sam Ramji writes in his latest blog, Microsoft is also participating at ApacheCon and highlighting the interoperability work we are doing. These are indeed exciting times!

On the interoperability front, my team has been working with the WSO2 since the TechEd 2007 Conference to demonstrate interoperability using our StockTrader reference application.

This week, the WSO2 proposed a new Apache incubation project, known as Stonehenge, to further this work. The aim of this project is to set up sample applications to demonstrate interoperability with multiple underlying platform technologies by using currently defined W3C and OASIS standard protocols. We look forward to working with WS02 on the scope of this project, and having discussions with the community.

I also want to highlight some open source interoperability projects that my team has been working on with third parties, companies and members of the community at large, which may be very relevant to the readers of this blog.

Eclipse Tools for Silverlight

Eclipse4sl allows Java developers to develop code for the Silverlight platform within the Eclipse development environment, and contains both an advanced project system for creating Silverlight applications and media experiences as well as a compiler for packaging Silverlight applications for deployment.

Interoperability with the Azure Services platform

Announced at PDC recently, the Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. It provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. Microsoft .NET Services is a key component of the Azure Services Platform that offers a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide the key building blocks, like, Access Control, Service Bus, and Workflow service.

The Azure Services Platform, built from the ground up to be consistent with Microsoft's commitment to openness and interoperability and in that spirit, we have built two cross-platform SDKs for .NET services - for Java and Ruby.

Information Cards Interoperability

Windows CardSpace is Microsoft implementation of Information Cards on the Windows platform. Information cards are a core part of Identity Metasystem and help both site owners and visitors to manage, control, and exchange digital identities more safely and consistently.

We have also built four open source projects that help Web developers support information cards on diverse platforms:

OpenXML-ODF translators

The goal of this project is to provide translators to allow for interoperability between applications based on ODF (OpenDocument) standard and Office Open XML standard. The translator is based on XSLT transformations between two XML formats, along with some pre- and post-processing, and is available on Sourceforge under a BSD-like license.

OpenXML-UOF translators

The goal of this project is to provide translators to allow for interoperability between applications based on UOF (Uniform Office Format) standard and Office Open XML standard.

UOF is an emerging standard, which is being developed by the Chinese Office Software Work Group (COSWG), led by the China Electronics Standard Institute (CESI), the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), major suppliers of Chinese office software suites, and other academic institutions.The translator is based on XSLT transformations between two XML formats, along with some pre- and post-processing. It is available at SourceForge under a BSD-like license

I would like to hear your comments and feedback on these projects and also welcome open engagement on what Microsoft should be doing for interoperability. Tell us what other interoperability scenarios we should be looking to address.

I also want to thank the multiple third party companies and the community members we cooperate with, as well as the members of my team: Vijay Rajagopalan, Sumit Chawla, Kamaljit Bath, Claudio Caldato, Jean-Christophe Cimetiere and many others for working on these projects and building technical solutions for interoperability with key Microsoft products and technologies.