The New and Emerging Atom ( Week 6)

For this week’s topic I choose to write about Atom Syndication Format. I chose this topic because while doing research for past week’s topics I have seen the subject of “Atom” come up but I had no idea what is was. So I thought this would be the best way to learn.
The name Atom is actually referring to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds. So in short, it’s a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating Web resources. A web feed is basically a data format used for allowing users to see frequently updated content. A web feed can be syndicated thus allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation. A perfect example where I users would want updated information is the website Dig. If you use a web feed this allows you to only get updated with the information that you want to need instead of all the other articles.

Before the creation of the Atom the primary method of web content syndication was the RSS family of formats. The Atom has not been around for very long; it first drew interest in June of 2003 by Sam Ruby. Sam set up a set up a wiki to discuss what makes "a well-formed log entry". This initial posting acted as a rallying point as people quickly started using the wiki to discuss a new syndication format to address the shortcomings of RSS. The main problem with RSS is that there are multiple incompatibilities with the different widely adopted versions of RSS. The intention of the Atom was to ease the difficulty of developing applications with web syndication feeds. In December 2003 Atom 0.3 was released and soon adopted by Google. Google uses Atom for such technologies as Blogger, Gmail and Google News.
The technology behind Atom 1.0 is in an XML namespace and may contain elements or attributes from other XML namespaces. There are specific guidelines on how to interpret extension elements. Additionally, there will be an IANA managed directory of values. Finally, Atom 1.0 provides recommended extension points and guidance on how to interpret simple extensions.


The Atom specifies use of the XML's built-in xml:base attribute for allowing the use of relative references. Atom feeds can also be accessed via standard HTTP client libraries. Standard caching techniques work well and are encouraged to be used with Atom. In continuation with the patterns we have been talking about template-driven creation of both formats (RSS and Atom) is quite practical. Rules for applying standard XML Encryption and XML Digital Signature on entries are included in Atom 1.0. Alternatively, the feed can be encrypted or signed, like RSS 2.0, as a bag of bits. Atom 1.0 provides and elements at both the feed and entry level. These elements must contain a name, and also have optional email and URI sub-elements. Atom categories have three, with the addition of optional human-readable title. Atom includes a (non-normative) ISO-Standard RelaxNG schema, to support those who want to check the validity of data advertised as Atom 1.0. Other schema formats can be generated from the RelaxNG schema.
I feel that Atom will become a very large part of web delivery in the near future. Before this class I had not heard of Atom but I did hear about RSS. So currently the Atom syndication format has not had strong penetration into the mainstream syndication community, but that could all change in the very near future. With the RSS 2.0 Standard locked (due to copyrights), with any new development to be done under a different name, Atom could very well take RSS place as the leading web syndication format. I believe that Atom could be a major part of the future of messaging. It's that big. As we all know, spam has ruined email, and it doesn't appear that anything will fix the problem and the government is not doing anything about it. Instant messaging is doing fairly well for both social and business on-line messaging, and Internet telephony (better known by the cute-sounding name of VoIP) is rapidly maturing. However, neither works as a sensible off-line messaging mechanism like email.
Enter Atom and syndication. Atom is a format for entries that contain a chunk of content which is usually HTML, and some information about the content such as when it was written, who the author is, and so on. A "feed" is a file that contains a bunch of RSS entries. There are already dozens of RSS readers available.