Subject: ebXML/SOAP COVERAGE: the451.com
ebXML Marketing Awareness Project Team, Here's an update of recent press coverage of the ebXML SOAP announcement. Carol "IBM, Microsoft Settle E-Commerce Standards Dispute" http://www.reuters.com/news.jhtml;$sessionid$55S3I3YAAXZSOCRBADLSFEYKEEA NMIV2?type=internet Reuters, Feb 23, 2001 and http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4928132.html?tag=mn_hd CNET, Feb 23, 2001 http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/02/23/010223hnsoap.xml Infoworld, Feb 23, 2001 "UN and Microsoft agree on e-trade standard" http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2001/7/ns-21154.html ZDnet UK News, Feb 22, 2001 "Peace comes to XML messaging world" the451.com, Feb 22, 2001 not available online; story follows: New York - The two backers of the ebXML electronic business infrastructure specification have agreed to add support for the Simple Object Access Protocol. The Geneva-based United Nations CEFACT agency and OASIS, the electronic business consortium pushing XML standardization efforts, say that efforts are now underway to integrate SOAP into ebXML, in time for its original May 2001 release deadline. The move should end the rivalry between ebXML and similar standardization efforts going on at the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. Advocates of ebXML, who are working on a successor to the old electronic data interchange standards used by large enterprise companies, had originally dismissed SOAP as too lightweight for their purposes. But widespread industry support of the protocol has forced them to reconsider. The agreement, hailed by supporters of both ebXML and SOAP as a breakthrough, paves the way for the adoption of a single, open, widely adopted global standard for reliably transporting electronic business messages over the Internet. Bob Sutor, who is IBM's director of e-business standards strategy and also serves as the chairman of OASIS, said the agreement, "shows the progress we are all after in terms of interoperability at the business level for the Internet." He said that having the messaging infrastructure of ebXML built on SOAP represented a strong signal that standards convergence is both achievable and desired by the industry. Sutor said the agreement recognized that there was "some overlap" between ebXML and SOAP and that combining the two would make it easier for developers and reduce the cost of product implementation for all companies, regardless of their size. He said the key element of SOAP that would now be included in the ebXML spec is the message envelope, or that part of the standard that defines "how you wrap things up." Bill Smith of Sun Microsystems, who is president of OASIS, added that much common work had already been done by the consortium members and emphasized, "this is not a wholesale replacement for ebXML – it is just a small part." Both men said discussions about integrating the two standards had been going on for months, and the move was finally agreed to at a meeting in Vancouver last week attended by between 300 and 400 developers. Nevertheless, the agreement does appear to signal an end to the bickering between rival factions on the relative merits of ebXML and SOAP – disagreements which, as recently as two weeks ago, spilled over into a public argument between Microsoft and Sun over which standards body was the most appropriate to drive the move toward Web services. At that stage, Microsoft issued a stinging attack on the ebXML initiative and questioned why Sun appeared to favor ebXML against the W3C, Microsoft's preferred standard-setting body for establishing lower-level Web services infrastructure. The software giant, which like Sun has recently been a member of both groups, also expressed continued doubt over Sun's commitment to SOAP along with XML and the related Web Services Description Language and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration directory (UDDI). Meanwhile, Sun described the original SOAP specification drawn up by Microsoft as "mediocre" and accused Microsoft of trying to manipulate the standards process for its own ends. Now however, it seems such differences have been set aside. "By adopting SOAP in their messaging layer, ebXML puts to rest any worries about interoperability between SOAP and ebXML," said Andrew Layman, XML architect at Microsoft, in prepared comments. "This takes advantage of SOAP's role as a key component of XML-based messaging." OASIS executives added that incorporating SOAP into ebXML would not delay the project, and said that work was still on track to roll out the specification at the start of May. ____________________________________________ Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org Tel: +1.941.926.2322 Fax: +1.941.328.0121 x3791 OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org XML.ORG http://xml.org XML Cover Pages http://xml.coverpages.org ebXML http://www.ebXML.org CGM Open http://www.cgmopen.org
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