Both vendors detailed strategies they say will further drive the development of the technology. Jon Bosak, distinguished engineer at Sun, and David Turner, Microsoft product manager and technical evangelist for XML technologies, presented their companies' XML visions at a panel discussion here. We are going to work to make sure they evolve into true standards outside the industrial consortium where they are now.
SOAP seeks to create a common language for linking applications and services on the Internet.
Primarily authored by Microsoft, SOAP has the support of several other companies, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Ariba, Compaq Computer, Commerce One, and IBM's Lotus Development subsidiary. UDDI, an initiative to link electronic commerce Web sites via a unified protocol for identifying products and services, is supported by Microsoft, Ariba, IBM, HP, Intel, and others. Bosak said Sun envisions four categories of XML-enabled Web services, each with its own demands. Sun is concerned, however, that early implementation of SOAP might turn the technology into a standard by default. Although Sun considers SOAP a good technology because it addresses a specific layer of services, by nature it has nothing that addresses business semantics, Bosak said.