Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

IPAWS announced its CAP 1.2 Interface last Friday (30 September 2011).

The CAP 1.2 schema from OASIS imposes a pattern on date formats that forces the pattern to be exactly YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss-hh:mm as specified in the CAP 1.2 schema. The last six could also be +hh:mm and represents the offset of the local time in the time string from GMT.

WSDL generated code from the IPAWS-OPEN WSDL may use a standard utility for converting a Java Calendar (or its equivalent in .Net) to a String for its XML writer that is in the form YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.nnn-hh:mm where the “.nnn” is in milliseconds. This will break the schema. In fact, it resulted in runtime errors in some code I generated from the CAP 1.2 WSDL for IPAWS-OPEN using Java axis2. My solution (credit to Prafash Kumar from Alerting Solutions who gave me his example) was to edit the stub code wherever there was a Calendar to string conversion to substring out the milliseconds from the conversion. There may be a better way, but my solution was successful. Here is a snippet I used in one of those conversion situations:

Original: xmlWriter.writeCharacters(org.apache.axis2.databinding.utils.ConverterUtil.convertToString(localEffective_type0));
Replacement: xmlWriter.writeCharacters(org.apache.axis2.databinding.utils.ConverterUtil.convertToString(localEffective_type0).replaceFirst(“.000”, “”));

I can get away with the “.000” string match because an incoming message to IPAWS-OPEN is also validated for a structure that contains no milliseconds, so the outgoing conversion will be a .000 if it is there at all.

• It is New Years Eve! At least for all Federal budget and acquisition interested folks. – Former Comptroller, MCAS Iwakuni #

• Power out. Doing #IPAWS 3.0 UAT in my little motor home in the front yard. It has a generator. #

The real blessing of standards is that they can make interoperability between lots of different systems possible. IPAWS-OPEN uses EDXL-CAP, and EDXL-DE in a standard SOAP Web Services environment with WS-Security. So far we have developers who have proven their interoperability using .NET, Java (Axis2 with Rampart), Java (Spring Framework), Ruby On Rails, and, as of yesterday, PHP. So, they will all be able to share vital alerting information with each other, and with the public via EAS, CMAS, and NOAA Radio. It is not easy, but it is coming together.

Still looking for the C, C++, and/or Objective C client application. 🙂

• I believe in #NIEM but it can be misused by "carpenters with only a hammer."

There have been at least two situations that I have heard of recently that claim NIEM Compliance and External Standards Conformance in the same breath. While it can be done, neither actually did so. In one case, NIEM elements were mixed into non-NIEM schemas, but the NIEM attributes were removed. This is clearly not the correct approach (although at least NIEM concept re-use was achieved). In another approach, external standard concepts were “NEIMified” in a tool and mixed with NIEM elements in a combined IEPD without the use of adapters. This approach is NIEM conforming, but NOT standards conforming. This approach can claim to use input from existing standards but cannot claim to actually use those standards. Especially, this approach cannot claim to conform to them. I firmly believe in NEIM as a methodology and as an excellent model for concept re-use, but building a NIEM conforming schema is not the same as building a standard. A standard involves acceptance of the exchange schema by a formal standards body or by a wide body of users as a reusable exchange. When you build a NIEM complient IEPD you have 3 options:

1. Build it as a NIEM IEPD and ignore other standards.
2. Build an IEPD and use pieces of external standards but ignore validation or conformance to the the standards that are reused.
3. Build an IEPD with standards conforming components in adapters and add any other needed data using NIEM want list methods or current NIEM elements .

In all three cases, the result is not a standard until it is recognized as one, either de facto or through a recognized standards body. So, the IEPD is just the beginning. Before it becomes a standard, it must be recognized, either by a formal standards body, or through industry dominant re-use.

Bottom line: If you choose path 2, you should not advertise it as standards conforming. While you can claim NIEM Conformance, you cannot honestly claim conformance to the external standards used as input in any way whatsoever.

• A comic for standards folks of all stripes: http://t.co/w85h9vr #NIEM #ISO #NIST #OASIS #OGC #

If you work with the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) as well as with other standards, you often run into issues related to how your overall work should incorporate (or not incorporate) NIEM. The rules for NIEM allow you to use recognized external standards independently. FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) does this with it implementation of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). You can also use components from an external Standard within a NIEM conforming schema, but only if you use the formally defined NIEM “Adapter” approach. You can also use NIEM inside an externally defined standard wrapper as shown in the graphic below.

My talk at the NIEM National Training Event (NTE) in Philadelphia this August will discuss using an OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language – Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) as a wrapper as shown, but it will go beyond that. It will show how NIEM conforming data structures can be used within the EDXL-DE wrapper itself as DE conforming metadata to describe the content and desired distribution of the Information Exchange Package (IEP). The goal is to show an innovative use of NIEM that is actually made possible by the (also) innovative structure designed into the EDXL-DE standard. The actual content of the IEP will be an IPAW Profile conforming CAP message. The wrapping DE will use NIEM conforming metadata to define IPAWS distribution and content identification needs.

• @OverlordQ not hard. Go to the IPAWS website. Fill out the MOA request form. #
• XKCD's "reference implementation of the self referential Joke" – "I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym" – http://t.co/3aJ4Rng #

• FEMA TDL still not back from upgrade. IPAWS-OPEN 2.0 still not available. Hoping for tomorrow. #