W3C|Submissions

Submission request to W3C (W3C Team Comment)


We, W3C members Sun Microsystems, Inc., Alis Technologies, Inc., Arbortext, Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Fujitsu Limited, Markup Technology, Ltd., Oracle Corporation, Propylon, SAP AG, and Software AG, hereby submit to the Consortium the following specification, comprising the following documents attached hereto:

which are referred to as "the submission". We request that the submission be known as the Pipeline submission.

Abstract

The XML Pipeline Definition Language is an XML vocabulary for describing the processing relationships between XML resources. A pipeline document allows you to specify the inputs and outputs to XML processes that you define, and a pipeline controller uses this document to figure out the chain of processing that must be executed in order to get a particular result. For example, you can use a pipeline document to specify that the XML messages coming into a business transaction hub must be validated and augmented with datatype information using XML Schema, then transformed with XSLT to bring them into a hub language, then queried for various purposes.

Intellectual Property Rights

Declaration of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Sun necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to Sun and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Sun expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ .

Declaration of Alis Technologies, Inc.

Alis Technologies, Inc. ("Alis") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Alis necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to Alis and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Alis expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ .

Declaration of Arbortext, Inc.

Arbortext, Inc. (Arbortext) will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Arbortext necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to Arbortext and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Arbortext expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ .

Declaration of Cisco Systems Inc.

Cisco Systems Inc. ("Cisco") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Cisco necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to Cisco and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Cisco expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

Declaration of Fujitsu Limited

Fujitsu Limited ("Fujitsu") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Fujitsu necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Definition Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification. This license shall be conditioned on a grant of a reciprocal royalty-free licenses to all Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee and its affiliates necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification. Fujitsu expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

Declaration of Markup Technology, Ltd.

Markup Technology will offer Royalty-Free Licences to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Markup Technology necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note. Markup Technology will offer Royalty-Free Licences to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Markup Technology necessary to implement any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline, but only to the extent that would be necessary to implement Pipeline as described in this Note. Markup Technology expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/.

Declaration of Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation ("Oracle") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Oracle necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to Oracle and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Oracle expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ .

Declaration of Propylon

Propylon will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by Propylon necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. Propylon expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

The definitions of "Essential Claims," "Member," "Affiliate," "RAND License," and "Royalty-Free License" in effect for the above statement are those found in the W3C Patent Policy Framework dated 16 August 2001, located at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/ .

Declaration of SAP AG

SAP AG ("SAP") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by SAP necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Essential Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to SAP and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. SAP expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

Declaration of Software AG

Software AG ("SAG") will offer Royalty-Free Licenses to any Patent Claims owned or controlled by SAG necessary to implement the XML Pipeline Control Language ("Pipeline") Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. One precondition of any such license granted to a party that is not a W3C member ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal royalty-free licenses to any Patent Claims owned or controlled by the licensee to SAG and other companies necessary to implement the Pipeline Note or any W3C Recommendation-track or Recommendation-level specification based on Pipeline. SAG expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

Definitions:

Patent Claims

Patent Claims shall mean all claims in any patent or patent application with an effective filing date within one year and one day after the publication of the first Public Working Draft, in any jurisdiction in the world, that a member of the W3C or a licensor or licensee, with reference to entities other than a member of the W3C owns, or under which a member of the W3C or a licensor or licensee has the right to grant licenses without obligation of payment or other consideration to an unrelated third party, that would necessarily be infringed by implementation of the Recommendation. A claim is necessarily infringed hereunder only when it is not possible to avoid infringing it because there is no non-infringing alternative for implementing the required portions of the Recommendation. Existence of a non-infringing alternative shall be judged based on the state-of-the-art at the time the specification becomes a Recommendation.

The following are expressly excluded from and shall not be deemed to constitute Patent Claims:

  1. any claims other than as set forth above even if contained in the same patent as Patent Claims; and
  2. claims which would be infringed only by
    • portions of an implementation that are not required by the Recommendation, or
    • enabling technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion thereof that complies with the Recommendation but are not themselves expressly set forth in the Recommendation (e.g., semiconductor manufacturing technology, compiler technology, object-oriented technology, basic operating system technology, and the like); or
    • the implementation of technology developed elsewhere and merely incorporated by reference in the body of the Recommendation.

For purposes of this definition, the Recommendation shall be deemed to include only architectural and interoperability requirements and shall not include any implementation examples or any other material that merely illustrates the requirements of the Recommendation.

Royalty-Free License

A Royalty-Free License shall mean a license that:

  1. shall be available to all implementers worldwide, whether or not they are a member of the W3C;
  2. may require that all licensees make any Patent Claims they control available to all on a no-royalty basis;
  3. shall extend to all Patent Claims owned or controlled by the licensor and its Affiliates;
  4. may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and to what is required by the Recommendation;
  5. may be conditioned on a grant of a reciprocal license to all Patent Claims owned or controlled by the licensee and its Affiliates. For example, a reciprocal license may be required to be available to all, and a reciprocal license may itself be conditioned on a further reciprocal license from all (including, in the case of a license to a Contribution, the original licensee);
  6. may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on the use of any technology, intellectual property rights, or other restrictions on behavior of the licensee, but may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: audit (when relevant to fees), choice of law, and dispute resolution;
  7. shall not be considered accepted by an implementer who manifests an intent not to accept the terms of the Royalty-Free License as offered by the licensor.
Affiliate

An "Affiliate" of a first entity is a second entity that is controlled (greater than 50%) by, in control of, or under common control with the first entity.

Names

The following are registered marks referred to in this request or the submission:

Specification

The submission may be distributed within the membership of the W3C free of any fee. The submission may be distributed publicly free of any fee under the redistribution terms expressed in the W3C copyright statement.

Implementations

The following points should be noted as regards licensable technology involved in any third-party implementations of the technology specified in the submission:

The undersigned Advisory Committee representatives do not have personal knowledge of any patent claims held by their respective organizations that are essential to implement the XML Pipeline Definition Language.

Suggested Action

This submission provides functionality that many participants of the W3C XML Processing Model Workshop identified as important for interoperability of applications. Currently, "scripting" of multi-process applications that operate on XML documents is done in an ad hoc fashion, and there is no way to exchange or document requirements on processing order. The Pipeline submission offers a concrete starting point for an open solution that can help to avoid vendor lock-in.

The applications of the Pipeline language are as broad as XML applications themselves. For example, a pipeline document could be used to control the behavior of a SOAP actor; a complex publishing application; or an upgrade to new versions of XML vocabularies. For this reason, and because the Core group is tasked (Member-only link) with providing "essential supplementary materials" for XML, we suggest that the Consortium refer this submission to the XML Core Working Group for consideration and further development. The Core group has both the expertise and the resources to take on this work.

Resources

To help with this work, we expect to be able to provide the following resources to the Consortium:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Active participation and specification editing in relevant W3C technical activities.
Alis Technologies, Inc.
Will continue its participation in the XML Activity to support the development of this specification.
Arbortext, Inc.
Active participation in relevant W3C technical activities.
Cisco Systems Inc.
One technical person to participate in the Working Committee.
Fujitsu Limited
May possibly offer resources to W3C for further development of the specification.
Markup Technology, Ltd.
WG member.
Oracle Corporation
Active participation and specification editing in all relevant technical activities.
SAP AG
Willing to work on the further development of the specification.

Change Control

Should any changes be required to the specification, and should W3C take on the submission as part of an Activity, we expect future versions to be produced by W3C process. Otherwise, we may make changes and may re-submit the specification for acknowledgement.

Please note that because W3C's publication rules require Notes to follow the W3C namespace naming policy, the specification assigns a provisional W3C namespace URI to the Pipeline language. If this URI needs to be modified before publication, we are available to coordinate with the W3C webmaster on this matter.

Contact

Inquiries from the public or press about this submission should be directed to the following:

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (lead submitter/author)
Corina Ulescu, corina.ulescu@sun.com, +1 408 343 1770
Alis Technologies, Inc.
François Yergeau, fyergeau@alis.com, +1 514- 747-2547
Arbortext, Inc.
Beth Ambaruch, bea@arbortext.com, +1 734 327 6014
Cisco Systems Inc.
David Seda, dseda@cisco.com, +1 408 527 9154
Fujitsu Limited
Hirotaka Hara, hara.hirotaka@jp.fujitsu.com , +81-44-754-2675
Markup Technology, Ltd.
Henry S. Thompson ht@markuptechnology.com , +44 131 650-4440
Oracle Corporation
Kiersten Hollars, Kiersten.hollars@oracle.com , +1 650-506-2562
Propylon
Paul McKeon, paul.mckeon@propylon.com , +353 1 4927444
SAP AG
Gerald Hoppe, gerald.hoppe@sap.com , +49 6227 7-45206
Software AG
Frank Mihm, Frank.Mihm@softwareag.com , +49-6151-92-1939

Submitted

this 26th day of October, 2001,

Eduardo Gutentag, Sun Microsystems, Inc., eduardo.gutentag@sun.com
Dr. François Yergeau, Alis Technologies, Inc., fyergeau@alis.com
Paul Grosso, Arbortext, Inc., pgrosso@arbortext.com
Krishna Sankar, Cisco Systems Inc., ksankar@cisco.com
Masahito Toriumi, Fujitsu Limited, toriumi@sysrap.cs.fujitsu.co.jp
Henry S. Thompson, Markup Technology, Ltd., ht@markuptechnology.com
Donald Deutsch, Oracle Corporation, donald.deutsch@oracle.com
Sean McGrath, Propylon, sean.mcgrath@propylon.com
Franz Fritz, SAP AG, franz-josef.fritz@sap.com
Nigel Hutchison, Software AG, Nigel.Hutchison@softwareag.com