Mashed Articles

An important part of every ESB is transformation. Most ESB’s use an XML representation internally. Non-XML messages are first converted to an XML representation and vice-versa. The conversion between non-XML and XML representations can become a challenge (and transformation) in itself.

The main transformation logic in (most) ESB’s thus becomes XML-2-XML. Most ESB’s use XLST for transformation (BizTalk, IBM ESB, Tibco BW, Oracle SOA, …). And most commercial integration tools still use XSLT 1.0.

But there is another XML standard technology that can be used for transformations: XQuery. The only ‘big’ player in the integration world supporting XQuery is BEA AquaLogic. Obviously, the ESB’s such as Mule or WSO2 ESB provide XQuery support as wll.

Regardless of the big discussions on XSLT vs. XQuery, I think XQuery would be a very welcome addition in the toolset of integration developers. Adding an XQuery transformation component in the palette of building blocks can’t be that hard.

The IDE support for XQuery is obviously more complex. Development of XML assets such as XML Schema’s and XSLT transformation is better supported in 3rd party XML tools anyway.

PS: haven’t used it yet, but the XQuery support in StylusStudio looks as good as their XSLT support

Brenda Zulu

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) 2006 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS IV) results in Zambia indicate that the most owned assets were the radio at 55.6 percent, Cell phones at 24.2 percent and Television at 24 .1 percent while the least owned asset was the internet connection with 0.1 percent.

The CSO June monthly publications shows that the 2006 LCMS IV collected information on information communication and technology (ICTs) facilities which included radios, televisions, video player, land phone, cellular phone, satellite dish and decoder, computer and internet connection.

Analysis by rural and urban shows that, ownership of a radio, cell phone and television was more in urban areas that in rural areas. The proportion of households that owned a radio in urban areas was 65.8 percent compared to 50.1 percent in rural areas while that of those who owned a cell phone was 53 and 8.8 percent in urban and rural areas respectively. The proportion of households that owned a television was 54.6 percent in urban areas compared to 7.8 percent in rural areas.

The survey also revealed that there has been an increase in the proportion of households that own cell phone while those that owned land telephone lines declined. The proportion of household that own a cell phone increased from 10.8 percent in 2004 to 24.2 percent in 2006. The proportion of household that own land telephone line declined from 5.2 percent to 1.2 percent during the same period.

Analysis of ICT assets by sex of household head shows that male headed household own more ICT facilities that female headed households. About 62 percent of male headed households and 35.5 percent of female headed households own a radio. The results also indicate that 26% male headed household owned a cell phone than 18.4 percent female headed households.