[jdom-interest] Helper methods [eg]

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 9:05 AM -0500 4/19/01, philip.nelson at omniresources.com wrote:


>I am also very interested in finding out if there is anything in JDOM that
>would be incompatible or inconvienient with digital signatures.  It seems to
>me that Web Services will bring xml into the mainstream programming world,
>hitting that HUGE number of microsoft oriented programmers.  This won't
>happen overnight, but it appears that this could be a killer use of JDOM, a
>more data oriented api on xml.  Web services will almost certainly use
>digital signatures at some point.  A proof of concept project for this seems
>to be a really good idea.


Funny you should ask. I'm writing a chapter on XML Digital signatures 
right now.

XML signatures are based on canonical XML which is in turn based on 
the XPath data model. If we can fully support the XPath data model, 
then I think we can fully support digital signatures. The only place 
where I think we might have a problem with this is in namespace 
declarations when we build a document from a parser. If we aren't 
preserving the locations of namespace declarations we might not be 
able to produce canonical XML.

One helpful thing would be to write a CanonicalXMLOutputter and see 
if we run into a wall anywhere. I'll take a look at it and let you 
know what I find out.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo at metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|                  The XML Bible (IDG Books, 1999)                   |
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