[Ietf-caldav] iCal to XML Schema mapping proposal

["Zbarcea, Hadrian" <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

I would like to propose an XML Schema Mapping for the iCalendar format
(RFC2445).

Calendars and scheduling information are an extremely important aspect
of any business process.  The need for business process automation is
increasing.  SOA based architectures are increasingly popular and
already provide measurable benefits to many companies around the world.
There is a wide range of use cases involving automated decision making
that would benefit from calendaring information of resources or people
participating to a business process being available.

While RFC2445 is the de facto standard for calendaring data interchange
it is not well suited for use in SOA and Web Services (WS) which are
based on XML technologies.  Previous attempts were made to provide such
mappings (such as xCal -
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-royer-calsch-xcal-03.txt) but
they are not sufficient for use in WS (which depend on WSDL and XML
Schema).  The CalDAV effort is also approaching calendaring data
interchange from a different perspective from what I could gather.

A standard mapping of iCalandar to XML is needed and long overdue.
Based on my research there is nothing to fill the gap.  Please find
attached an (incomplete) draft of an XML Schema.  

There are 2 types that need to be mapped: VTimeZoneType and VAlarmType.
I will finish them in the coming days.  There are probably other details
to be sorted out and I am looking forward to any feedback you might
have.

Please let me know if your group has an interest in incorporating this
schema or if you have any suggestion about how it could be used.

Thank you,

Hadrian Zbarcea
Senior Engineer
IONA Technologies
200 West St, #400
Waltham, MA 02451
[phone]