The LC (Last Call) versions of the SML specifications were published at the W3C website today. This is an important milestone in the journey towards getting the specifications approved as a W3C Recommendation , but a lot of work still remains to be done...

The first face-to-face meeting of the SML WG in W3C was held at Redmond last week. I found the meeting to be very useful and productive – the SML and SML IF specifications were thoroughly reviewed and several important issues were raised for consideration...

" SML promises common language for systems management " by Christina Torode discusses the SML standardization effort and the use of SML for IT services management. Technical leaders at Microsoft, IBM, and W3C were interviewed by Christina, and the article...

W3C has announced the formation of the Service Modeling Language WG. John Arwe (IBM) and I will be the co-chairs of this WG, and the charter of the WG is available here . This WG will be responsible for producing the W3C Recommendations for SML. The first...

Building models that capture the desired state of modeled systems is an important use case for SML. In addition to using the schema-based constraints supported by XML Schema, SML models can also use SML’s schema-based constraints on inter-document references...

The member submission of SML to W3C has been noticed by the press. Here are some links for your reading pleasure. An important caveat before you click on these links: t hese articles focus on the current and future use of SML for IT services/systems management...

I frequently encounter the following questions (or their variants) · How is SML related to CIM? · How is SML related to DCML? These questions stem from the misconception that SML is limited to the domain of IT services management. I do realize...

I am delighted to announce that W3C has acknowledged the member submission of the SML specifications and the SML and SML IF specifications are now publicly available at W3C’s web site. Note that this does not mean that these specifications have become...

I am delighted to announce that the SML WG has completed its work and published the final drafts (version 1.0) of the SML and SML-IF specifications. Congratulations to all member organizations and their representatives for doing a remarkable job in finalizing...

COSMOS – an open-source project for an SML-based systems management framework has been created at Eclipse. I am very excited about this project (yes that is correct, and I still work at Microsoft). This project will enable the open-source community to...

In this post, I am going to use a very simple example to illustrate how SML can be used to capture desired configuration in an IT environment. Suppose that Alice - an IT administrator - wants to secure the deployment of payroll application in her datacenter...

This post is devoted to summarizing the two key changes (aka “what’s new”) in the second draft of the SML specification . Schema-less identification of references : Reference elements are now normatively identified by setting the sml:ref global attribute...

Lewis Curtis explains the benefits of using SML for modeling the structure and policies for data centers in his recent blog post . This excellent post has two errors: · It uses the term “ System Modeling Language” instead of “ Service Modeling Language...

You'll notice that the SML WG has published a new specification together with a new version of the SML specification. This specification - called SML Interchange Format (SML IF) - defines a single XML document that can be used to exchange SML models across...

The SML WG continues to make good progress and has announced that the SML Interop Workshop will be held on Jan 16-17 at Austin, Texas. The primary goal of the workshop is to conduct interop testing between different implementations of SML validators....

I will be conducting a whiteboard session on Service Modeling Language (SML) and Microsoft's emerging SML platform at the TechEd Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The session will be held on 7th November 2006 from 17:45-19:00 hours. This is a...

The SML Feedback Worshop took place in Mountain View, California on 12th Septemeber. The workshop was attended by several community members who asked thought-provoking questions and shared their insights and feedback with the SML WG. Thanks to all of...

In his recent blog entry, Charles Metz muses about the practical utility of the SML specification since it does not define any common models for IT entities such as Server and Application. He correctly points out that the SML will be of little use if...

William Vambenepe - who is a co-author of the SML specification - has written an article on how SML can be used to increase the level of automation in the management of IT services and systems. Check it out at http://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2006...

Praerit Garg, who runs the DSF team at Microsoft, and Sam Ramji have published an interesting podcast on SML and its impact on the IT industry. Recommended for your drive time listening :-)

I have spent some time reading several articles and blogs on SML, and I think that some clarification about the definition and scope of SML is required. Here's a short and simple definition of SML: It is a modeling language based on XML Schema 1.0 and...

The SML debate with Piyush continues. He has responded to my earlier post. Piyush agrees that SML is a robust specification but wonders why one should care about it. He points out that deployment-related problems should be solved through platform simplification...

The first draft of the SML Specification was published to get feedback from the community. If you are interested in influencing the SML specification, please download the SML Feedback Agreement , review it, sign it, and return it as per the instruction...

SML is being noticed in the XML community. Rick Jelliffe, the father of Schematron commented on SML in his blog and expressed interest in taking SML's extensions for inter-document reference to ISO “SML is quite interesting too in that they...

Mark Lawrence, my colleague in the Dynamic Systems Foundation team, has started a new blog on SML in which he shares his thoughts and insights about SML .