{"id":71,"date":"2006-09-18T10:35:22","date_gmt":"2006-09-18T18:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=71"},"modified":"2006-09-18T10:35:22","modified_gmt":"2006-09-18T18:35:22","slug":"world-wide-webfeeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/world-wide-webfeeds\/","title":{"rendered":"World Wide Webfeeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

A webfeed<\/a> is a low-bandwidth XML stream available on the network\u00a0that can be\u00a0easily consumed by custom or special webfeed reader applications.\u00a0 In a previous blog I discussed how webfeeds often form the raw data to support mashup applications<\/a>\u00a0and have the potential to support business communication within process workflows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Examples of publicly available webfeeds can be found at Amazon’s A9.com search<\/a>\u00a0and Yahoo! Feeds<\/a>.\u00a0 Webfeeds have many of the advantages of Web Services<\/a>, but compared to Web Services, webfeeds are far easier to create and consume.\u00a0 Actually, if your definition of a Web Service is simply a URL-based data source, webfeeds could be considered as a special type of Web Service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are multiple formats for Webfeeds, but\u00a0RSS 2.0<\/a> (Really Simple Syndication)\u00a0has emerged as the most popular and best-supported format.\u00a0 Tools are becoming available that make data syndication via RSS\u00a0even simpler.\u00a0 One example is freely downloadable product called RSSBus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RSSBus is a framework of tools and services for easily creating and consuming RSS feed data.\u00a0 It is middleware that is billed as the “The Service Bus for the REST<\/a> of us”.\u00a0 It includes an XML-based scripting language called RSBScript.<\/p>\n

\"RSSBus\"<\/p>\n

With RSSBus you can easily publish relational database queries, tables\u00a0and view information, or information contained in spreadsheets and email.\u00a0 It’s a very effective way to publish raw data.\u00a0 One caveat is that RSSBus is only available in a Windows .NET 2.0 framework.\u00a0 Also note that Microsoft plans<\/a> RSS integration capabilities as part of the upcoming Vista release.<\/p>\n

Document publishing<\/em> via RSS is an interesting application.\u00a0 Within a document management context, being able to publish a webfeed channel of a specific type of release document, or to receive notifications\u00a0about document changes or deletions are useful applications of webfeeds.<\/p>\n

But how secure are webfeeds?\u00a0 If you’re behind a firewall and the data is hosted inside, there may not be much to worry about.\u00a0 But\u00a0for feeds exposed on the open Internet, more thought is needed. \u00a0Very simple access control is achieved by restricting the webfeed URL to only those people who need access, a technique used by Flickr.\u00a0 But that kind of security policy is bound to keep you up nights if you are exposing any even remotely sensitive data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HTTP Authentication<\/a> can also be used to secure the webfeed publishing.\u00a0 But\u00a0one problem is that while there are some webfeed readers that support HTTP Authentication, like NewsGator, there are a lot more, like the Google Reader<\/a>,\u00a0that don’t yet support it.\u00a0\u00a0Although if the consuming application is under your control, that may not be an issue.\u00a0 Another security option is to encrypt the data stream using SSL encryption.<\/p>\n

Webfeeds, especially those using RSS 2.0 technology, are important tools for giving consumer and corporate users a way to better be able to control the consumption and presentation of data, but security is one area that\u00a0needs to\u00a0be thought through carefully before deploying this technology.<\/p>\n

\"Digg<\/a><\/div>
\"Reddit<\/a><\/div>
\"Stumble<\/a><\/div>
\"Buzz<\/a><\/div>
\"Vote<\/a><\/div>
\"Share<\/a><\/div>
\"Bookmark<\/a><\/div>
\"Kick<\/a><\/div>
\"Shout<\/a><\/div>
\"Share<\/a><\/div>
\"Bookmark<\/a><\/div>
\"Post<\/a><\/div>
\"Google<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A webfeed is a low-bandwidth XML stream available on the network\u00a0that can be\u00a0easily consumed by custom or special webfeed reader applications.\u00a0 In a previous blog I discussed how webfeeds often form the raw data to support mashup applications\u00a0and have the…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,13,31,37,38,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-management","category-document-mangement","category-enterprise-content-management","category-security","category-web-20","category-web-services","category-workflow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}