Overview of Open XML

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Overview of Open XML

• A case study in open XML document standards Rick
  Jelliffe

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Overview

• Why Open XML?
• Controversy!
• Current status of Ecma 376 at ISO
• Why are standards important?
• What are the different standards bodies for?
• Introduction to Ecma 376
• Adoption issues

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Why Open XML?

• (Based on slides by courtesy of Microsoft)

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Importance of Interoperability

• Achieve industry alignment using standardized
  technologies.
• Enable data interoperability between documents,
  applications and systems.
• Capture and reuse information to and from many
  data sources.
• Build intelligent applications that improve data
  context and quality.

Shared service oriented architecture (fx http,
XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI)
Documents
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Interoperability for DocumentsThe role of
XML-based document formats in the Microsoft
Office system
Business Process Efficiency
Improved Data Access
Business requirements Company standards
Customer details, Costs

• Web service
• formatting
• intelligent receipt

• Efficient capture
• Validated information

• Query extract
• Text
• Document
• Fragment
• Image

Document Assembly
Searching Repurposing Content
Auto-creating a polished document
data

• XML structure
• Data and presentation

Finding Previous RFP Content
formatting
Document Archival
Archived consumed long into the future without
vendor-specific clients or applications
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XML documents are the future
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XML-based formats enable you to do things you
couldnt before

• Better value from existing infrastructure
• Information security
• Regulatory and process compliance
• Information integration
• Retention, discovery and content management
• Documents as digital assets what are you worth?
• Legacy documents archives
• Lifecycle cost vs. Implementation cost

Documents that manage themselves
Managing documents with systems
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Example Solutions
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Enabling the future without sacrificing the past

• Understanding IT impact of XML-based formats
• Application compatibility
• Layout and rendering fidelity
• Deployment migration
• Existing solutions / integrations
• Storage bandwidth

Enabling the future
Preserving Legacy
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Different scenarios of XML-based formats

• Past
• preservation and archiving
• Present
• fidelity versus interchange
• Future
• document engineering and systems integration

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Controversy!

• Briefly, the sensational part

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Claims

• Open XML developed (too fast, too recently) to
  stop ODF adoption
• Ecma is a second-rate rent-a-standard
  organization
• Not open standard
• Three month review too little time
• Open XML contradicts other ISO standards
• ISO officials bribed or pressured

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Quick Responses
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Why I support Open XML

• Document processing systems need published,
  stable standards
• Plurality spectrum of interoperability
• Technical excellence
• Engaging Microsoft
• Pro-Open XML does not anti-ODF!
• Cross-breeding

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Current Status

• Ecma 376 at ISO

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Four Phases of Standards

• Development
• Drafting
• Ratification
• Maintenance

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Typical ISO Schematron

• Development
• By individual
• 5 years
• Drafting
• By editor appointed by ISO/IEC SC34 WG1committee
• 2 year
• Ratification
• 1year
• Maintenance
• New version in preparation
• 5 year ISO review

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Fast Track ISO Open XML

• Development
• By Microsoft
• 3 years
• Drafting
• By editor appointed by Ecma TC45 committee
• 1 year
• Ratification
• 1 year ?
• Maintenance
• Through Ecma ?
• 5 year ISO review

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Status at ISO

• Administrative review 1 month v
• Ecma response 1 month v
• ISO response 1 month v
• Draft review 5 months
• Draft ballot 2 months
• Collection and review
• Ballot resolution 2 months
• Final Draft review ballot 1 month

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Technical Standards

• Why are they important?

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The basis of the internet economy

• Standards for
• Character sets
• Data and connection protocols
• Web locations and resource metadata
• Media HTML, XML, JPEG, etc
• Web services
• Vocabularies

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What is a technical standard?

• An agreement
• Between participating stakeholders and experts
• With a market requirement
• In a particular form
• Developed with a fair process
• With appropriate licensing and IP status
• Suitable for public adoption
• Periodically reviewed for maintenance or
  withdrawal

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What are they for?

• Library of technologies
• Niche and major markets
• Corporate and regulatory adoption

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Win-Win

• ISO processes
• Secretariat tasked to keep process in order, not
  to do the work of committees or usurp the votes
  of NBs

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Are standards laws?

• Contrast with technical standards for health and
  safety
• Legislators may adopt voluntary standards
• Governments may be under treaty obligations, to
  promote standards, but need economic proof
• With overlapping standards, no obligation to
  allow all of them
• Standard as barrier to trade ?

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Can standards overlap?

• ISO 8879 example?
• Morphs into HTML at IETF the W3C
• ISO Book 12083?
• Replaced by OASIS Docbook
• ISO DSSSL
• Morphed into XSL at W3C
• ISO PDF
• From Adobe
• ISO HTML
• From W3C
• ISO ODF
• From OASIS
• ISO Office Open XML
• From Ecma

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Technical Standards Bodies

• What are they do?

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Bodies

• NB national
• ISO international
• IEC electrical
• IEEE electronic
• IETF internet
• Unicode characters
• W3C web
• OASIS information
• Ecma industry

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Co-operation and Competition

• Example of SGML and XML
• ISO -gt W3C -gt ISO
• Example of DSDL Character Repertoire
• W3C -gt ISO
• Example of Schematron assertions
• ISO -gt W3C

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Organization

• Secretariat
• JTC1
• SC34
• WG1

• National bodies
• Liasons

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Ecma 376

• The Office Open XML standard

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Ecma Office Open XML

• Specifications published by Ecma International
  TC-45.
• Freely available for download and implementation
• TC-45 is comprised of many companies, chaired by
  Microsoft Apple, Toshiba, Novell, Statoil, and
  others
• Microsoft offers the Open Specification Promise
  to alleviate IP-related concerns for the Open XML
  formats

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Five Parts Schemas

• Introduction
• Open Packaging Conventions
• Primer
• Reference
• WordprocessingML
• SpreadsheetML
• DrawingML
• Presentation ML
• VML (legacy)
• SharedML
• Extensibility
• Schemas

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Very large!

• ODF 1.0 (2006)
• 760 normative pages
• ODF 1.1 (2007)
• ODF 1.2 (2008)
• ODF 1.3 (2009)?
• 0 informative pages
• Plus non-standard
• SVG 720p
• MathML 660
• SMIL 530
• Open Formula 370
• XForms 150
• XLink 35
• ZIP

• Ecma 376 (2006)
• 4000 normative pages
• Detailed 50 pages of border illustrations
• Repetitive type definitions
• 2000 informativepages
• More tutorial than normal ISO style

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Ecma Office Open XML Formats
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Open XML Formats Architecture Modular format
improves developer capabilities with minimal user
impact
Office file Operates identically to any other
Windows desktop file. User sees and interacts
with the desktop file exactly as they do with
today.
Internal operation Different types of data within
each file stored as discreet, ZIP-compressed XML
components Users would not see these components
unless they un-ZIP the file to view the document
parts Applications and systems could modify and
extract individual parts without using Office
applications The corruption or absence of any
part would not prohibit the file from being opened
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Adoption Issues
(Slides by courtesy of Microsoft)
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Adoption in major Office suites

• 2007 Microsoft Office system - Default Save
  Format is Open XML ( free updates for Office
  2000, XP, 2003) Dec 2006/Jan 2007
• Open Office Novell announcement of support of
  Open XML in Open Office Novell edition
• Corel announcement of support of Open XML -
  Availability mid 2007

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File Format CompatibilityEnsuring Free Document
Exchange With Prior Office Releases

• Office XP, 2003 will open, edit and save new
  Office formats
• Will recognize new Word, Excel and PowerPoint
  file format extensions
• Enables users to Open XML Formats across multiple
  versions
• Windows 2000 SP4 and later can convert between
  binary and Open XML Formats
• Office 2007 users can change the default file
  format if desired
• Current .doc, .xls, .ppt file formats will be
  supported in 2007 Office system
• Default file format can be set by users during
  deployment or after
• Advanced policy controls for enabling and
  disabling the use of specific formats

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For more information

• www.microsoft.com/office/preview
• www.OpenXMLDeveloper.org
• www.ecma-international.org
• msdn.microsoft.com/office/xml
• www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office

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