QUESTION POSED ON: 15 September 2003 Much has been made of the "battle" between W3C and OASIS over key Web services standards. Do you think there really is a competition between the two, and if so, how do you see it playing out?
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Microsoft is a member of W3C and OASIS. Both organizations were designed to work together in order to develop standards for Web services.
OASIS drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. A standard is a technical specification that is intended for widespread industry adoption, or that already has achieved that status. A second defining characteristic of a standard is its ability to facilitate interoperability among different products or services. Open standards exist to enable this interoperability in a marketplace of multiple competing implementations while ensuring certain minimum requirements are met. From Web services security to business transactions technical committees, Microsoft actively participates in key Web services specification efforts.
The W3C develops common protocols to promote evolution and interoperability of the World Wide Web. Protocols are the set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. Protocols exist at several levels in a telecommunication connection. All of the base standards for Web services - XML, HTTP, WSDL, SOAP - were ratified by W3C prior to Microsoft adoption as core tenets of our .NET tools and application platform.
Standards and protocols need to exist in synchronicity to work and that is why it's important that the W3C and OASIS work towards common goals in Web services.
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