Presents your 
XML E-NEWSLETTER for July 24, 2002

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A QUARTET OF APACHE XML TOOLS

The Apache Software Foundation is among my favorite open source
communities. I've been using its software since the early days of the HTTP
Server. Apache has grown into a large R&D effort that focuses on cutting-edge
Internet technologies. Apache's XML efforts have grown by leaps and bounds
in the last couple of years. Most recently, there are four new projects
on Apache's XML roster, which I examine below.

APACHE AXKIT

One of the most exciting new projects is AxKit. Designed to be an XML
application server, AxKit is essentially a bolt-on to the Apache HTTP
Server that provides a segmented architecture for application development. In
other words, using AxKit, you can separate the presentation and data
layers of your Web-based application.

AxKit uses a built-in Perl engine to provide fast and robust XSLT
transformations for presenting content to multiple types of media. AxKit's
architecture is component-based and uses a published API, allowing developers
to create their own plug-in modules. AxKit provides database access
using the Perl DBI SQL taglib within eXtensible Server Pages (XSP).

For more information about AxKit, visit the AxKit Web site.
http://axkit.org/

FORREST

The Forrest project aims to provide an infrastructure for the
development of open source software. Essentially, Forrest will help 
manage the many software projects that fall under the Apache Software Foundation
umbrella. The main components of Forrest include project documentation, 
source
code repository, mailing list, and project roster.

Using a combination of components such as Cocoon, Ant, and XML, Forrest
provides Web access to information about the projects it manages. One 
of the main goals of Forrest is to help the Apache Web site be more
competitive with other open source sites such as SourceForge.

For more information about Forrest, visit the Forrest Web site.
http://xml.apache.org/forrest/index.html

XANG

In a nutshell, Xang is a Web-based front end for accessing data. Xang
essentially provides an abstraction layer for disparate data sources 
using URLs. Each URL references a set or multiple sets of data from various
sources. Data is aggregated and referenced as XML content and delivered 
to end users.

In addition to just providing XML access to data sources, Xang supports
JavaScript to programmatically control access, aggregation, and
transformation of data. Xang is implemented as a Java servlet and 
therefore needs to run in a servlet container such as Apache's Tomcat server.

For more information about Xang, visit the Apache Web site.
http://xml.apache.org/xang/index.html

XINDICE

Pronounced zeen-dee-chay (not zin-dis or zin-dice), Xindice is an XML
database. It provides direct storage and retrieval of XML documents 
without having to map them to relational database tables and fields. Documents
are stored in Xindice using XUpdate. Documents are retrieved using 
XPath.

Xindice isn't designed to be an all-purpose warehouse for XML documents
or for generic DOM persistence; it's designed to be a functional and
efficient method for storing XML data. It's also designed to manage 200 
small
XML documents (like 10 KB) rather than 20 large documents (10 MB).

Built on Java, Xindice allows you to index documents on both XML
elements and attributes--increasing the performance of your XPath 
queries. The
XML:DB API is also implemented to provide standard access to XML data.
Applications can access the database either using XML:DB directly from 
Java or using Xindice's CORBA API.

For more information about Xindice, visit the Apache Web site.
http://xml.apache.org/xindice/

Brian Schaffner is a senior consultant for Fujitsu Consulting. He
provides architecture, design, and development support for Fujitsu's 
Telcom360 group.

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