The New Nation - Internet Edition

Azizur Rahman

Now in the world you have not do anything without a web address. If you want to communicate to the people you must need a web address. You have not find any organization its Government or non government, news, media, game, movie, cultural, or any thing that's need an individual wed address. So its huge emergency for us to communicate to vast people or communicate world wide.

The ability for a program on one computer to exchange information with a program on a remote computer is a typical requirement for today's businesses. The most common means of accessing remote resources is to use HTTP to transfer HTML files from a server to a client; in other words, a Web site. This way of transferring information works because it is uses simple, commonly available technology and standards. The primary limitation of web sites is that they are only understandable to humans and not machines.

Web Services are one way of accessing remote resources on a machine-to-machine basis. Let's take a look at some basic Web Service standards such as SOAP, as well as more advanced extensions known as the WS-* series of standards. Web Services differ from other methods in that they use simple XML messages to transfer information, can use HTTP as a transport, and do not require two-way (synchronous) communications. Because Web Services use simple, commonly available technology and standards, they are rapidly becoming the tool of choice for machine-to-machine interactions. The exact definition of a Web Service, according to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Services Architecture, is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.

This definition highlights the core technologies of Web Services. SOAP is a standardized way of passing messages between machines, Web Services Interface Language (WSDL) defines how to interface with a Web Service and Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the basis for both of these technologies. Every Web Service standard builds upon these basic building blocks in some form. In addition to SOAP and WSDL, Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) is often considered one of the core Web Service standards. UDDI is a registry that contains information regarding Web Services.

XML

XML is the foundation of all Web Services standards. It is a flexible language for describing any type of data. It uses simple text tags to describe each element of data. The use of text tags, as opposed to a binary encoding, allows humans to read XML. The extensible aspect of XML allows developers to add new data elements as necessary without adversely affecting existing data definitions.

Because of the flexibility inherent in XML and a variety of tools to process it, XML has become the popular choice for defining new data formats. As a testament to the utility of XML, there exist XML schemas to describe geographic features (Geographic Markup Language), mathematics (Math Markup Language), graphics (Scalable Vector Graphics) and numerous other types of data. Additionally, Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice office suites both use XML formats to store their data. For all of its advantages, XML is not without its flaws. In contrast to binary formats, XML is very verbose. In general, this means XML requires more processing power, storage space and bandwidth as compared to the same information encoded in a binary format. Efficient representations of XML are in development to address many of these concerns.

SOAP

SOAP is the XML-based language that defines the format of Web Services messages. SOAP, formerly known as the Simple Object Access Protocol, is now not an acronym. SOAP can use both asynchronous and synchronous messaging patterns. This means that SOAP can use either a one-way messaging pattern or a request-response pattern. This allows SOAP a great deal of flexibility in its implementation.

A SOAP message contains three basic elements, a header, body and fault. These elements can include any type of XML data and is therefore very flexible. The SOAP header generally incorporates information regarding the handling of the SOAP message. Many of the WS-* specifications (WS-Security, WS-Addressing, WS-ReliableMessaging …) implement additional features as SOAP headers. The body contains application data, parameters of functions and the return values from completed functions. The fault element conveys error conditions in processing SOAP messages.

SOAP's major shortcomings are performance and bandwidth. Because SOAP uses XML, there is significant overhead associated in the representation of data as compared to binary protocols. According to a paper comparing SOAP and CORBA, SOAP can take 30-60 times longer to process and consume 50 to 100 times the bandwidth as compared to binary protocols. It is for this reason that Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), a binary-based remote procedure protocol, is very popular for connecting components within embedded systems.

(To be continued)

bdnews24.com, Dhaka

Nokia will start shipping mobile phones bundled with free music from the second half of 2008 under a deal with Universal.

"Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we are making available," Nokia's vice president Anssi Vanjoki said at the company's annual event in Amsterdam last week.

The world's largest handset maker offering free music in partnership with the world's largest music company is a clear attack on Apple's digital music business through iTune.

Nokia will offer all the music of Universal free for 12 months to the buyers of its new music phones starting from the second half of 2008. Once the offer expires, consumers can keep all the music they have downloaded.

Nokia said it was in talks over similar deals with all major music companies.

"It seems the record labels have decided to bet on Nokia as a means to add competition to Apple's dominant position in digital music," Paolo Pescatore, analyst at research firm CCS Insight, told Reuters.

"With Nokia poised to sell well in excess of 120 million phones in this quarter, it's a partner that record labels can't ignore."

The company also unveiled its environment-friendly Nokia 3110 mobile phone in Amsterdam.

It is made of more than 50 percent recycled materials and comes in a small box that is made of 60 percent reused contents.

Its charger consumes 94 percent less energy and the phone also alerts once the battery is fully charged, prompting the user to unplug.

IBM says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip.

In research published on Thursday in the journal Optics Express, IBM said it had produced electro-optic modulators 100 to 1,000 times smaller than comparable silicon photonics modulators and small enough to fit on a processor chip.

By connecting processing cores on a chip by light instead of with wires, the problems of high energy consumption and heat generated by multi-core chips could be bypassed, enabling leaps in computing power.

IBM said it had reached a "milestone" in the quest to connect hundreds or thousands of processing cores on a tiny chip. By comparison there are nine cores on the sophisticated chips that power the Sony PlayStation 3 games console.

"Just like fibre optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM's technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip," said Will Green, IBM's lead scientist on the project. He said using light instead of wires to send information between the cores could be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.

Green told Reuters IBM had used standard industry processes and tools to make the tiny silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulators.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

That gave the research team confidence the process could be replicated commercially, although it would likely take at least a decade for that stage to be reached.

"We're looking at much more real-world applications in the timeframe of 10 to 15 years or something like that. There's a lot of pieces to come together. There are many challenges ahead," Green said in an interview.

He said in future tiny supercomputers on a chip could expend as little energy as a lightbulb, paving the way for enormous reductions in cost, energy, heat and space required while increasing communications bandwidth.

Technology services company IBM is also the world leader in supercomputers, which are used for problems requiring intensive calculations, for example in quantum physics, weather forecasting and molecular modeling.

Drastically shrinking the size and energy requirements of supercomputing could open up possibilities of powerful data analysis in remote locations or high-resolution three-dimensional image rendering in real time, Green said. "You immediately can envision the mobile applications that that would allow you to do," he said. "Remote laboratory instruments for medical applications, screening for diseases or even complicated DNA analysis."

IBM's research team has been working on the project, partly funded by a U.S. government defence research agency, for about five years. Green declined to comment on the project's budget.

He also said it was impossible to predict what a supercomputer on a chip might eventually cost. "We're really at the beginning of the process," he said.

Oracle has announced that an exceptional number of organisations have selected Oracle's leading Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) software to help gain better insight, make better decisions, and drive better results. As components of Oracle(r) Fusion Middleware -- the industry's fastest growing, most standards-compliant, and best-of-breed technology foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture -- Oracle Business Intelligence is a portfolio of technology and applications that provides the industry's first integrated, end-to-end Enterprise Performance Management System. With the recent acquisition of Hyperion, Oracle is number one in Enterprise Performance Management -- unifying Business Intelligence, Financial Management and Operational Analytics.

Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence software is hot-pluggable and works with Oracle, non-Oracle, and mixed technology environments. Leading organizations worldwide across varied industries have recently purchased components of Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence including: ADMB, Anadarko, AngloGold Ashanti, City Building (Glasgow) LLP, City Council of The Hague, Dalhoff Larsen & Hornemann, Emperia Holding, Energinet.dk, Fagor Industrial, Fiat, Getin Bank, Giant Eagle, GLOBUS SB-Warenhaus Holding, Headquarters Land Command, Goodyear, International Labour Organization, Jawwal, Mediaset, Lottomatica, MobilKom, National City Bank, Oman Insurance Company (P.S.C.), Pirelli, Polish Police, Reader's Digest, Skvader, Standard Parking, Sallie Mae, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Stonesoft, Telef?nica O2 Czech Republic, T-Systems (formerly Gedas), University at Buffalo, SUNY, U.S. Army Human Resources Command, U.S. Army Program Executive - Soldier and VistaCare.

"We selected Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management and Planning -- System 9 and Essbase to help streamline our financial planning processes, gain better insight, drive predictable results and achieve our business objectives," said Steve Rosen, director, Finance Operations and Controls, Biogen Idec. "The Hyperion software will complement our use of the Oracle E-Business Suite, by enabling us to more closely integrate our systems and more rapidly and accurately close our books across our worldwide operations."

"Oracle Business Intelligence Applications will help reduce our deployment time and cost, while providing us the foundation to more efficiently accomplish key business drivers such as analyze processes and drive deeper business insight, ultimately leveraging our data across the organization," said Larry Rencken, CIO, Welch's. "After an extensive evaluation, we selected Oracle over the competition due to the company's advancements in Business Intelligence and the applications' best-in-class functionality."

"Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence software is rapidly evolving to deliver customers more value throughout their entire organization," said John Kopcke, senior vice president of the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Global Business Unit. "Organizations today are benefiting from the breadth and integration of our EPM and BI offerings that deliver intuitive, role-based intelligence and enable individuals across the enterprise, including front line employees to senior management, to gain better insight, make better decisions and drive better results that are delivered more quickly."

With the seamless integration of Hyperion, Oracle Business Intelligence continues to be recognized with industry honors. According to Datamonitor's report "Decision Matrix: Selecting a Business Intelligence Vendor," Oracle ranks as a business intelligence leader. One of 12 vendors profiled in the report, Oracle was named a segment co-leader as a result of combining excellent technology with a strong position on both user sentiment and market impact assessments. The report states that "Oracle has successfully integrated its recently acquired BI expertise and, as a result, it has managed to exert itself within the BI market. If one considers its considerable user-base, commanding presence in the global applications market, and a comprehensive yet flexible BI solution, its position can not be considered as a surprise."