Web Services Standards

As I am getting ready to try to describe the State of Web Services Standards for a presentation at an Info World Web Services conference next month in Santa Clara, I keep thinking, there can’t be one more thing to try to keep track of.  But I’m always wrong; this news category is really jumping.

At this point, I’m beginning to think the proliferation of alliances and standards is as much about vendor politics as it is about interoperability, but I’ll say more about that after my speech – in fact I’ll write about it at length.

In the meantime, this week the Web Services standards activity of note was the formation by OASIS of a Technology Advisory Board.  This new board, which includes both elected and appointed members, seems to include all of the industry’s most important players (OASIS is where they get to play together) and the board is designed to provide guidance on strategy, process, interoperability and scope of its technical work.

The board will be the steward for the membership-driven Technical Committee process, where the standards work gets done.  The board will also help coordinate OASIS work with that of other standards-setting bodies.

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