W3CLA/M2.3Issue 1

UK Demonstrator Dissemination Event, RSA, 8 December, 1998

Bob Hopgood (RAL)

This document has not been approved for general publication.Information contained herein should not be used or quoted

without permission from the W3C-LA Project Manager.

Name Signature Date

Author Bob Hopgood (RAL)

01.03.99

Approved for Issue (W3C-LA) Quality Manager

Stuart Robinson (RAL)

Release Approved by (W3C-LA) Project Manager

J-F Abramatic

AMENDMENT RECORD

ISSUE

DATE DESCRIPTION

1 20/01/99 First Draft

2 04/02/99 Second Draft

3 01/03/99 Final Version

Index

1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................12. PROGRAMME......................................................................................23. INDUSTRIAL SPEAKERS.....................................................................2

3.1 Jon Bosak....................................................................................................................23.2 Tony Stewart...............................................................................................................33.3 Nic Fulton...................................................................................................................43.4 Stu Weibel...................................................................................................................53.5 Michael Wilson...........................................................................................................73.6 David Bradshaw..........................................................................................................83.7 Conclusions.................................................................................................................10

4. ATTENDEES.........................................................................................105. DEMONSTRATIONS............................................................................10

5.1 SMIL............................................................................................................................105.2 Graphics......................................................................................................................105.3 Workflow Management..............................................................................................105.4 PICS............................................................................................................................105.5 Hyperglossaries..........................................................................................................105.6 Amaya..........................................................................................................................105.7 RivCom........................................................................................................................10

6. CONCLUSION......................................................................................11Annex A: List of Attendees......................................................................12

1. INTRODUCTIONW3C-LA required the first Demonstrator Dissemination Event to be held in month 16 of the project (December 1998). The event took place in London onThe requirement was for demonstrator users to share their experience with others and feedback problems and suggestions to W3C-LA. Individual Demonstrators will be presented to a wider audience with feedback from the early users of each Demonstrator. These Workshops will have a much higher user participation (over 50 people). Due to the changes in the work programmes of some Work Packages and the major changes in the Web over the period of the project, the emphasis was placed on the user experience of XML, RDF and Synchronised Multimedia. As well as the Presentations, a set of demonstrations were organised in conjunction with the event that covered the other parts of the W3C-LA programme.

2. PROGRAMMEThe title for the event was The World-Wide Web: Recent Developments, The Future, & European Industrial Experience. The Final Programme was:

09.30 Overview Josef Dietl (W3C)

09.45 XML Update Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems)

10.30 XML and Industrial Data Tony Stewart (RivCom)

11.00 XML in News and Financial Information

Nic Fulton (Reuters)

11.30 RDF: the Resource Description Framework

Janne Saarela (W3C)

12.00 Demonstrations

13.10 RDF in Digital Libraries Stu Weibel (OCLC)

13.40 CSS and XSL Håkon Lie (W3C)

14.10 CSS for WAI Daniel Dardailler (W3C)

14.40 Demonstrations

15.10 Vector Graphics on the Web Chris Lilley (W3C)

15.40 SMIL: Multimedia on the Web Michael Wilson (RAL)

16.10 TV on the Web David Bradshaw (BBC)

16.40 The Future Jean-François Abramatic (W3C)

17.00 Close

The Symposium was intended for developers and managers who have an interest in using the Web. The aim was to give attendees an overview of the new standards already becoming part of the Web and of the changes expected in the course of the next year or so. This was coupled with accounts of commercial experience of these

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developments. The presentations were supported by a set of Demonstrations (during the refreshment breaks).The set of talks are available at: http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/talks/1205/The RSA again provided a good venue in Central London for running the event with good audio-visual support and some impressive decor to the main auditorium.

Chris Lilley speaking in the Great Room at RSA

3. INDUSTRIAL SPEAKERSThe main industrial speakers and a summary of their main points is given below. The number of industrial speakers was constrained by the length of time available. We had other potential speakers particularly in the use of XML area.

3.1 Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems)Jon organised and chaired the W3C Working Group that developed the XML standard, and he helped start the W3C XSL Working Group. He currently chairs the W3C XML Coordination Group and the W3C XML Plenary Group. In his presentation he showed how a small company, NetPost, was marking up news material in XML and then producing different styles to the news depending on which of several newspapers were taking the content. Strategically, Sun had to have XML in order to keep Web data open and portable. Sun needed XML to do for data what Java does for programs.

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Jon Bosak at RSAHe illustrated his talk by indicating that XML allowed you to specify the content and structure of a document in a way that lets you generate diferent presentations from the same content.

XML defines content to be formatted by XSL

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3.2 Tony Stewart (RivCom)RivCom is a new Member of W3C that joined during W3C-LA on the basis of the work in XML and RDF within W3C-LA. Tony is Director of Consulting at RivCom. He has been working in the area of harmonising XML and STEP, (ISO product data exchange standard). RivCom have been working with Shell, BNFL and Unilever on improving information management in industrial settings. Tony is the W3C Advisory Committee representative for RivCom and is a member of the XML-Schema Working Group. Tony Stuart gave an entertaining talk on how RivCom are using XML to specify industrial data on a range of projects. Lynn Labieniec (below) from RivCom was one of the demonstrators along with staff from RAL, INRIA and VHL. Tony pointed out that RivCom was a publishing services company specialising in structured information. It was a small multinational with major industrial clients. It had been working for some time in harmonising ISO STEP with SGML. It had started using XML for web and print publishing by the winter of 1997. He saw XML as being at the centre (see Figure below).The industry sectors that RivCom were involved with included:(1) Processing (oil, nuclear, household detergents etc)(2) Engineering (building the process plants, for example)(3) Aerospace (complex products with long lifecycles)The involvement was in all phases from design through manufacture to lifecycle management to enterprise operations. RivCom had projects to link research reports to the design process, maintain engineering guidelines, rethinking and rebuilding failed SGML projects, XML representation of STEP/EXPRESS schemas, using XML to web-enable a data wharehouse, using XML to transmit and navigate information models etc. They were working on XML/EDI and the use of XML as an information interchange format with SAP, BAAN and ORACLE.

WebPresentation

(HTML)

DocumentProcessing

(SGML)

InformationExchange

(STEP,CGM, etc.)

DistributedComputing

(CORBA,COM/DCOM)

XMLXML

XML enables communicationThe industry sectors that RivCom were involved with included:(1) Processing (oil, nuclear, household detergents etc)

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(2) Engineering (building the process plants, for example)(3) Aerospace (complex products with long lifecycles)The involvement was in all phases from design through manufacture to lifecycle management to enterprise operations. RivCom had projects to link research reports to the design process, maintain engineering guidelines, rethinking and rebuilding failed SGML projects, XML representation of STEP/EXPRESS schemas, using XML to web-enable a data wharehouse, using XML to transmit and navigate information models etc. They were working on XML/EDI and the use of XML as an information interchange format with SAP, BAAN and ORACLE.They saw the main impact of XML so far as being in the areas of data transmission and transformation but anticipated seeing documents developing into navigable maps, database interfaces and even documents as applications.

3.3 Nic Fulton (Reuters)Reuters was an existing member of W3C. Nic works in Reuters core technology research and standards group and is based in Switzerland. Reuters is using XML and XML-based standards for structuring its Financial Data and News for the Financial Markets, Healthcare, and the Internet.. He pointed that financial information was structured data and that XML was just what the industry needed.

Financial data from ReutersThis would be marked up in XML as:<?xml version="1.0"?><Record xmlns="http://www.reuters.com" instrument="IBM.N" currency="USD" type="fullimage"> <Last wholePart="169" numerator="12" denominator="16"/> <Bid wholePart="169" numerator="12" denominator="16"/>

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<Ask wholePart="170" numerator="1" denominator="16"/> <PERatio value="23.42"> <Earnings value="24.00"> <ExDividendDate xmlns:dt="http://www.w3.org" dt:value="1998-11-06"/> <Volume value="10634050"/> ...</Record>

Reuters had a strong interest in the future work of w3C including XML Fragments, DOM events, HTTP-NG, XSL and XQL.

3.4 Stu Weibel (OCLCStu has worked at OCLC since 1985 managing projects in automated cataloguing, document capture and structure analysis, and electronic publishing. He currently coordinates the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and related applications of Web technology and Internet protocol standardisation efforts.Stu made the point that a resource description community is characterized by common semantic, structural, and syntactic conventions for exchange of resource description information. He saw the need for interoperability at the syntactic level (XML markup), the structural level (RDF) and the semantic level (content des cription standards suchas DC, AACR2, TEI and FGDC). To improve resource discovery on the web there was a need to agree resource description semantics. The Dublin Core with its 15 basic elements and extensibility was seen as the way forward for the digital library community. He saw RDF as providing the data model and structural conventions that provide the architecture for a web metadadat into which stakeholders would embed their own semantics. The Dublin Core was an application of RDF.

rdf:Valuedc:Element

R

dcq:Type dcq:Scheme

Dublin Core Data ModelA Dublin Core date would be represented in RDF as:

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“Created”

dcq:DateType

“1998-11-10”

rdf:Valuedc:Date

Resource

“ISO 8601”

dcq:Scheme

Dublin Core Definition of Date

Multilingual substructures could be implemented. OCLC has the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) Project to explore the cooperative resource selection, and the creation and sharing of metadata by libraries.

“your_favorite-controlled-vocabulary”

R

dc:Subject

alt

“dog”

“en”

“fr”

“chien”

“de”

“Hund”dcq:Scheme

rdf:Value

Multi-lingual substructure

3.5 Michael Wilson (GRiNS)Michael was a member of the W3C Working Group which developed the Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL). He worked on the EU Chameleon Project that developed the GRiNS player which is freely available and the GRiNS editor which is being commercialised in the Netherlands.

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GRiNS Player

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3.6 David Bradshaw(BBC)BBC joined W3C as a result of the W3C-LA initiative. David is Head of the Multimedia and Networking Group at the BBC that researches into multimedia applications and digital networks. He is also the W3C Advisory Committee representative for the BBC. He pointed out that the content provider had multiple paths to providing content to the home.

hom e

contentprovider

d ig ita l broadcast (video)

d ig ita l broadcas t (aud io)

Internet

VoD

C D-RO M , DVD

Multipl Paths to Content in the HomeThe Web is different from conventional TV in that content, once published, remains around for some time. Content has to be requested by the viewer and the viewer is self-scheduling in terms of when and where they access a site. Linkages between pages allows viewers to get different experiences from the same content. On the other hand connection is not guaranteed, service is variable, and the capability of the browsers have wide variations.Opportunities exist for duplicating the normal TV programme material on the Web, providing longer coverage of events, making stored programmes available and provide material of interest to only a minority. The integration with conventional broadcasting can either be through web content delivered through the TV, TV content delivered over the Internet or TV and Internet-content combined on the display. For example the Web could be used to deliver programme guides, links to future programmes, enhanced information for the viewer as it is being broadcast, and even a trading facility for purchasing objects. The Web could be used for accessing historical context, cast and location details etc.The BBC saw the way forward as a mixture of Web and TV channels with several options to choose from in terms of intermediate connections (see figures below).Getting TV access from HTML requires a method for identifying and locating a television programme stream and the items within it. TV content could be driven through HTML via MHEG5 or a parallel application could download HTML from the internet and video via broadcast and synchronise the two. In both cases the work on resouce identifiers within W3C is crucial. It must be possible to define Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) to point to a service, an event or just a single component Work was still needed to allow precise synchronisation between the TV and Web output.

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Internet

Publisher

Broadcaster

Internet delivery

Broadcast delivery

PC-TVTuner

A Way of Providing Web and TV Content to the Home

PC TV Tuner

Set-top Box

Storage

Internet connection

Home NetworkAn Alternative Scenario

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3.7 ConclusionsThe meeting demonstrated that there was already commercial applications of XML, XSL, CSS, RDF, and SMIL within Europe. Results from Workpackages 4 (CSS Validator), 5 (RDF), 7 (Document Collections) and 8 (SMIL and Web/TV) were all in use within the European industry.

4. ATTENDEESThe Meeting was very well attended and we had no spare places by the time the meeting took place. Annex A lists the people that attended. They were a good mixture of academia, government and industry.

5. DEMONSTRATIONSThe set of Demonstrations presented at RSA were:

5.1 Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) SMIL integrates independent media objects into a synchronised multimedia presentation. The demonstration showed the features of the GRiNS SMIL Editor via a number of SMIL (pronounced ‘smile’) presentations.

5.2 GraphicsThe Graphics demonstration concentrated on three W3C areas of work:(1) PNG: the W3C Portable Network Graphics Recommendation which is an image

format that has a number of features that make it superior to GIF.(2) CGM Web Profile: the soon to be agreed profile of CGM for use on the Web(3) Scaleable Vector Graphics: a number of submissions had been made to W3C

in this area (PGML, Web Schematics (part of W3C-LA), VML and DrawML)

5.3 Workflow ManagementWorkflow management issues are addressable by Web server / browser technologies, by building on the W3C developments in HTML, DOM, XML and RDF (Metadata) in particular, together with the portability features offered by Java and the servlet API. The W3C Workflow demonstrator focused on the delivery of activity information to the appropriate actors as required by the process, in a timely, secure and useful manner while minimising the load on the network and the server.

5.4 PICSThis demonstration showed some of the tools needed to provide a PICS filtering service. In particular, it showed a PICS rating tool and a PICSRules editor for defining a PICS filtering policy

5.5 HyperglossariesVHG (Virtual Hyperglossary) has developed support for distributed terminology using XML-based tools and is a collaborator in the Esprit W3C-LA Project. The demonstration used the XML Jumbo browser/editor to show how hyperglossaries could be used in a number of different domains including chemical mark-up.

5.6 AmayaAmaya, W3C's test-bed editor/browser demonstrated many specialised features including multiple views, where the internal structural model of the document can be displayed alongside the browser's view of how it should be presented on the screen. Some of Amaya’s features demonstrated included the support for style sheets, mathematics, XML, and schematic graphics.

5.7 RivCom

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RivCom demonstrated the use of the Web and XML in the engineering environment.

RivCom Demonstration

6. CONCLUSIONThe event was a major success with very good responses from the audience with regard to the high technical content and appropriateness of the material. It illustrated that Europe is now much more aware of the involvement of W3C in defining standards for the Web. There is also good uptake in the opportunities afforded by using these standards. The major advances were being made by W3C Members indicating that the right way to ensure progress is to ensure a good level of involvement in W3C through membership.

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ANNEX ALIST OF ATTENDEES IN COMPANY ORDER

David Pugh Abbey National plcDr Stephen Miller Archives - King’s College LondonStuart Pembery Associated MediabaseElisabeth Butolo Associated MediabaseDavid Bradshaw BBC (Speaker)Ian Jenkins BBC Deputy Director of TechnologySteve Pile BLCMP Library Services LtdMick Mott Brittany FerriesFred Stentiford BT LaboratoriesMike Revitt BT LabsOmer Rana Cardiff UniversityJacques Garderet CEN XML/EDINicholas Brown CEN/TC251/WGIVRobin Livesey Cheltenham & Gloucester, College of Higher EducationJohn Singleton Chrystal SoftwareJonathan Roper City UniversityPaul Duncan City UniversityRobert Dyer CLA LtdDr Brian Davies CLRC Rutherford Appleton LaboratoryAndrew Hinchley Communications PlanningEdward Barrow Copyright Licensing Agency LtdJohn Horton DANTEMike Ferguson Database AssociatesPeter Shepherd De Monfort UniversityBert Logan De Monfort UniversityMike Callaghan De Monfort UniversityPatrick Haverty De Montfort UniversityMark Cawte Dela RueMargaret Forster Dela RueProf Peter Gibbins Digital VCEDavid Penfold Edgerton Publishing ServicesTim Benson Electronic Point of Care LimitedKaren Lee Electronic Publisher Engineering CouncilRichard Clark Elysium LtdGreg Colyer Elysium LtdBob Parsons Equinus ConsultancyRobert Stockwell Equinus ConsultancyMartin Bryan European Commission DGXIII/EKevin Riley Fretwell-DowningJohn Spurr Galileo UKHeather McDonald Glasgow City CouncilLord Wodehouse Glaxowellcome R&DRoger May Glaxowellcome R&DAdrian Briggs GTL ImminusJenny Raggett Hewlett PackardPaul Vickers Hewlett PackardDavid Raggett Hewlett Packard/W3CShelagh Power IEEMilton Grimleigh IEEDr Virginia Knight ILRT, University of BristolDr Henry S Rzepa Imperial CollegeAlan Turner Imperial CollegeRichella King ITRDU-The London InstituteZhengmaz Zhao Kingston UniversityAndrew Cox LITC South Bank UniversityStan Barett Lloyds TSBBob Gautier Llwyber Technical Support Centre, University of Wales

AberystwythTomos Llewelyn

Llwyber Technical Support Centre, University of WalesAberystwyth

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Dr David R Evans Merlin Open SystemsHoshi Sepai Middlesex universityPhilip Harrison Morgan Stanley Dean WitterMartin Chudley Morgan Stanley Dean WitterLawrence Griffiths Nestle UKJohn Kwok NHS Information Management CentreJoan Dawson NHS Information Management CentreAnnette Lafford NISSStu Weibel OCLC (Speaker)Andrew Day Offworld IndustriesDouglas Falby Offworld IndustriesMs Marjorie Neequaye Offworld IndustriesMrs S Wood Open UniversityMr C Burgess Open UniversityMalcolm Austen Oxford University Computing ServicesJenny Sykes Oxford University Computing ServicesCharles Tomalin Parcelforce WorldwideMike Bromwich PDMS Advanced SystemsTony Humphreys Post Office Research GroupBob Hopgood RALLilian Valentine RALTony Conway RALDavid Duce RALDamian MacRandal RALBrian Matthews RALMartin Prime RALToria Marshall RALKevin O’Neil RALAli Akkas RALMichael Wilson RAL (Speaker)Eamonn Neylon RCP ConsultantsSudathshu Ubayasiri Reuter LtdJeremy Osborne ReutersNic Fulton Reuters (Speaker)Heilo Baumann Reuters AG, GermanyMisha Wolf Reuters LimitedMiles Whitehead Reuters LimitedJohn Anslow Reuters LtdBob Bailey Reuters LtdRichard Willis Reuters LtdMike Stacey Ringwood Software LimitedLynn Labieniec RivCom (Demonstrator)Louise Putnam RivCom (Demonstrator)Tony Stewart RivCom (Speaker)G Wilson SCETH Pollock SCETFelicity Ussher Senior Reporter, NMTVNick Baron SGML/XML Systems and Application Development

ManagerAndy Harrison SilverPlatter InformationNick Roberts SilverPlatter InformationMr R Curry solentGareth Noyce Solvera Information Services LtdJohathan Reid Southampton InstituteSimon Daniell Stena LineJon Bosak Sun Microsystems (Speaker)Per Fossum Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology

- SITIMats Ahlsén Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology

- SITIPatrick Aelsson Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology

(SITI)Thomas Alexandre Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology

(SITI)Bernd Stadler Swedish Research Institute for Information Technology

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(SITI)Peter Kirby TFPL Ltd (ETHOS Co-ordinating partner)Richard Masters The British LibrarySimon Musgrave The Data ArchiveTitto Assini The Data ArchiveRoger Trobridge The Internet GopherFiona French The London Institute ITRDUUna O’Sullivan The Open UniversityTony Durham The Times Higher Education SupplementTim Greenhalgh The Times Higher Education SupplementJohn Wilson The Wilson PartnershipPaul Doherty Trinity CollegeTony Williams TTISheila Thomas TWIRachel Heery UKOLNBill Boffin University of BradfordSafia Barikzai University of BrightonDavid Spencer University of BristolPhil Radden University of CambridgeDr Peter Douglas University of EdinburghKeith Brooke University of EssexDr James Currall University of GlasgowMr Pete Johnston University of GlasgowDon Cowell University of GreenwichGill Windall University of GreenwichDr Miltos Petridis University of GreenwichTony Ackroyd University of GreenwichDavid Bateman University of GreenwichSimon Fitzpatrick University of LeicesterAnn Apps University of ManchesterRoss MacIntyre University of ManchesterMatthias Kraner University of SheffieldJose Serrano University of St AndrewsMartin Bramley University of St AndrewsJon Maslin University of SurreyS H Ahmed University of SwanseaMike Jackson University of WolverhamptonMiss Charlotte

Jenkins University of Wolverhampton

Peter Murray-Rust

VHL (Demonstrator)

Josef Dietl W3C (Speaker)Janne Saarela W3C (Speaker)Håkon Lie W3C (Speaker)Daniel Dardailler W3C (Speaker)Chris Lilley W3C (Speaker)Jean-François

Abramatic W3C (Speaker)

Paul Kentish Wye College, University of London

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