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Sun & Microsoft Square Off With XML Standards
Chris Gardner writes "ZDNet has an interesting and informative article on the upcoming battle between XML standards proposed by Sun and Microsoft. Microsoft's standards lie at the heart of their .NET initiative."
I thought XML already had a standard definition. There are a few rules, and you include a DTD to interpret any particular implementation of XML.
The company I'm presently working at has been using a specific implementation of XML for communication between servers, and they owe nothing to MSFT or Sun because of it. What exactly have these two companies done? I find the article vague at best. Have they provided XML interpreters? I doubt it, because there are too many ways that XML can be used for one interpreter to do it all.
If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Really, XML technology is so new I don't believe either or any XML standard or framework is established yet. In my experience with manufacturing and warehousing operations I've found that a surprisingly large number of them are still stuck on some expensive, proprietary VAX or IBM mainframe application that talks to nothing else, or even stick to pure paper systems. I've seen office assistants print off reports from the VAX and HAND TYPE the results into Excel to do sorts, calculations, graphs and so on--ridiculous!
What some people seem to lose sight of is that the whole concept of XML is extremely new if you can manage to see it from the perspective of everyone except geeks. The market for ebXML or BizTalk is almost completely untapped and too immature to make pronouncements on what will be in the future. Even Microsoft and IBM know that--while they are the prime backers of BizTalk, take a look under "I" and "M" in the ebXML List of Participants. That's right, there are contingents from both of them. How's that for hedging your bets?
This 'battle' between computer giants Sun and Microsoft is a classic example of why people do business. There is nothing inherently wrong with competing standard (PCS vs. GSM, Dollard vs. Euro, etc.), only when the competition erodes intellectual growth does it become bad. People are in business typically to do two things:
.NET initiative as a way of unifying content, connectivity, and collaboration (3 C's!) and Sun feeling it has a viable alternative, competition is then fostered. From this, in theory at least, better opportunities and lower costs await the end-user/consumer.
1)Provide a product, service, etc.
2)Do this in order to make a profit (or break-even in cases on non-profits and the like).
With Microsoft releasing things like C# and its
Why the media seeks to villify either side or bring the avergage Joe fear of big brother is somewhat irresponsible. Anywho, if you guys want to poke my little case full of hole's I'd be delighted, seriosuly, let me see where I think I know more than I do. Peace.
XML is useless if people can't agree on context. By actively working to break standards MS is seeking to destroy any value XML may have. If I have to write a different parser for evey vendor who want's to communicate with me why not just use delimited files or something less bloated and complicated.
War is necrophilia.
--- begin rant mode ---
Personally, the only reason that I give Oracle any more slack than Microsoft is that their software basically does what it's supposed to, reliably and consistently. Now, if you try to run any medium to large-scale Oracle database on an OS other than Solaris, you're probably in for some major headaches, but it can be done. As a business entity, though, Oracle is just as bitchy, proprietary, and overpriced as Microsoft, and they are just as happy to run over anything that stands in the way of their total market domination. Just a bunch of good capitalists, I suppose, but not great at instilling warm fuzzies in me.
--- end rant mode ---
There's nothing that ties an XML schema to a particular database or OS, except the laziness of programmers and managers; if you need to implement that B2B communications tool today, you're probably going to go with the tool that (at least in theory) allows you to do it without reinventing the wheel. From a business point of view, if Microsoft offers tools that let you do that without risking a screwup by one of your programmers, then their solution seems very attractive.
In all reality, both of these companies are highly involved in the creation of XML standards largely because that's how the W3C and the rest of the Internet business community want it; the whole idea of the period between Candidate Recommendation and Recomendation status at the W3C is a sort of trial period for software companies (read: big, influental software companies) to attempt implementation of a new 'standard', and give the group feedback on what areas worked, what areas gave them major headaches, etc. Think of it as popular approval from the business world, where market share means everything.
Why do you think XML has taken off for business messaging and rapid application development, while the really cool XML applications like SVG and RDF, though they've been bouncing around for years, have yet to get the kind of major industry support they need to reach success? There's no incentive for the big players (Sun, MS, IBM, et. al.) to spend their time working on things that would primarily benefit consumers, academics, and the Internet community as a whole when they could be making the "next big thing" for businesses.
The actual 'standard' doesn't require SQL Server 2000; BizTalk Server requires SQL Server 2000.
karma is for the weak >)
Hmm... A few examples from the XML world come to mind. XSL (MS has the patent, but has agreed to allow anyone to use it for free, and turned it over to W3C). XML Schemas (another MS invention that is now in the hands of W3C). SOAP (again...).
Look, MS has a long history of being the bad guys in a lot of areas. But XML is not one of those areas.
XML has some real deficiencies dealing with large binary data (I do a lot of work in the oil industry with seismic data, where a single data set can be hundreds of gigabytes). MS is trying to address this area, too, along with IBM (SOAP). Yeah, they're going to push the envelope with XML. If they didn't, we wouldn't have XSL and XML Schemas today. And if we were talking about any issue other than XML, I'd say this is probably a bad thing. But they have a real commitment in the XML world towards open standards bodies (W3C). Take it for face value. It's a good thing, for once...
--Be human.
Actually, you are incorrect. HTML can be expressed as XML with the correct DTD. If HTML is based on SGML and XML is a subset of SGML, then it's entirely possible that HTML can be expressed in either SGML or XML, assuming HTML only uses features common to both. Since HTML can be expressed with XML, I guess this is the case. Good try, though.
Not excatly true.
One of the really neat parts of XML is the opportunity to split up the data and the presentation. An obvious way to do this is couple an XML document with a style sheet (CSS or XSL).
Ideally HTML should slowly go away!
Please MS is notorious for inserting undocumented "features" into just about everything. I wonder how much disk space that damn excel flight simulator takes up on your hard disk.
About 65536 bytes - why?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
It's still binary in nature, even if it is encoded. In fact all data are binary. But text and structured text, such as XML, can be interpreted at a higher level with more meaning.
Lets see... what would I like to know? Hmm... how about whatever they DIDN'T document in that documentation of theirs?
Did they bloat the software with a flight sim like they did Excel?
Does it invite all the people in your address book to download the latest version like MSN Explorer?
Please MS is notorious for inserting undocumented "features" into just about everything. I wonder how much disk space that damn excel flight simulator takes up on your hard disk.
If you think that your MSXML SDK docs cover everything that MS has done to "extend" their XML standard beyond it's original specifications, then I feel for you buddy.
Well, the article made it appear that BizTalk Server is supposedly up for review as a "standard" solution in it's field. I guess they could have been a little clearer, but I just don't think the words "standard" and Microsoft should be used in the same stenence unless it is explicitly stated that this is considered the "Microsoft Standard", in which case you will ignore all other standards.
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You might as well post M$ internal memos!
Dammit, rent a brain! only $45,999USD from Redmond...(single processor only)
--mandi
Baaah Humbug! Sheep!
I still fail to see why this article is interesting. It only spends 50% talking about how Microsoft announced a year ago BizTalk and how it will be a year late and then mentions ebXML in half a proposition.
Why are these two different and what is different and how complicated a bridge between them will be to implement?
IBM backs SOAP and 50 unnamed companies are already installing it (perhaps like the dummies in a company I know that install service packs beta on the production database and mail servers).
Who else besides SUN wants ebXML and how many companies are testing it?
Taco: can we please have a ZDnet checkbox in preferences, please?
Did anyone else notice that the proposed "standard" by Microsoft will require SQL server 2000? At the bottom of the article it is explained that SQL server is required to implement Microsoft's proposed "standard".
I'm sorry, but at what point did we decide that all standards should be dependent on Microsoft being able to sell more copies of its software? Something about that just makes me feel dirty. Surely there would be a way to implement it without using SQL server from Microsoft. And if not, will any "standards" group actually accept it?
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(No, I don't use Office to produce web documents. But it's occasionally useful as a shortcut when you're STARTING with material originally produced with Office to save it as html and then do a couple of search-and-destroys and search-and-replaces.)
But seriously, they may come up with something useful.
I just do not know if I can wait for version 5 of the product for it to be any good. (This based on the old saw of never buy version 1.0 of any product)
Also, regardless of the marketing spin, software rentals over the net are NOT my idea of a desirable product. I can imagine the tech support lines now:
"Sorry, but there is a problem with your account."
Fill in the blank as to what happened.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Yeah, they're going to push the envelope with XML. If they didn't, we wouldn't have XSL ...
We certainly would have XSL. It was created by an American academic working at a Scottish university. When XML first appeared on the horizon back in 1997, I attended an SGML Users Group talk on XML, XSL and the proposed mathematical markup language. If I remember correctly, the academic guy's research was part funded by MS, but the ideas were his.
The funny thing about that user group meeting was that it descended into a slanging match between the XML proponents and the SGML `elitists'. The latter argued that XML and XSL were pointless when we already have SGML and DSSSL. The fact that DSSSL is poorly documented and poorly supported seems to have escaped them... They also had the same gripe about Cascading Style Sheets, which further proved that they clearly opposed anything that threatened their consultancy fees. If markup languages were made easy for the unwashed masses, it spelled doom for them.
Chris
I don't care HOW they do it. But they had BETTER agree on one damn standard! Hire an arbitrator, i don't care but I am SO freakin tired of having multiple versions of the same "language" out there.
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I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
Thanks for the numbers. I was curious, and appreciate the answer.
Netscape 6 PR3 (Windows) and Opera 5 (Windows)
have no problem with http://www.krezip.com which I recently changed to xHTML 1.0 specification.
Mainly that involved making tags lowercase and ending tags with
or )
This because xHTML is based on an XML DTD which is more strict than the older non-XML (but nevertheless SGML) HTML DTDs.
Check http://www.w3c.org
I was there, and it wasn't pretty. IIOP was a good thing but it came far too late.
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
At least, that's the way I'm reading the article...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Perhaps someone more clueful than I can suggest how I can parse this (in Perl) without having to translate the HTML entities back to Unicode first?
--
Paul Gillingwater
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Let's see... M$ Win2K Server box (x4 for redundnacy), M$ SQL Server 2000 with Clustering License, M$ BizTalk Server with Clustering, all on 4-processor boxes for decent performance, and you're now talking high six figures for the software alone. Add that to the hardware cost, and support, and you have a 7-figure implementation cost. Yipes!
Except that it falls under a Microsoft patent. Stylesheets, both XSL and CSS, were patented by Microsoft.
--Be human.
They may have a server out now that supports XML that may become very popular, it doesn't mean that they are going to take the market on XML. As usually happens, their software is late to market. As far as anyone knows, it is not mature may be still full of bugs. Other companies (including, but not limited to Sun) have had products and APIs out on the market for quite awhile and have had a chance to mature.
Also, take a look at the price. $5,000 for the standard version and $25,000 for the enterprise version. A few small companies may pay those prices. But large companies won't want to get burned on slow unreliable MS products and will go with a a different solution.
Anyway... just my $.02 rant.
yeah, agreed - sorry, I meant the 4* series. although I still think the new Netscape (6*) sucks balls due to its inability to truly follow the DHTML spec even though they claim it does- ------
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Thanks - it was a genuine question.- --------
now, out of curiousity, why the hesitation to tell me? I know I'm not 100% up to date on all databses - I do seem to recall this one being made free within the past 6 months now that you mention it....
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Microsoft gave us an embraced and extended XSLT processor and was in no way alone in forwarding a schema proposal, which is after all merely a port of DTDs to XML syntax. Microsoft doesn't have anyone sitting on the XSL WG. MS has played, sometimes well, sometimes badly.
illegitimii non ingravare
- http://xml.apache.org
I've used the Xerces-C library (it's actually C++) in a consumer GUI product whose user documents were XML files, and I think it's just great - it builds on many platforms. A wrapper allows Xerces-C to be used from Perl. Xerces-J has a similar API (DOM and SAX) but is written in Java. They have stuff for XSLT, Scalable Vector Graphics, Soap and so on.So you really don't need to buy into someone's proprietary platform, use the source luke.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Hello-o-o-o, ZDNet is one of the most Microsoft bias sources around. Just read thier headlines, they're always bashing the Sun defense. I don't have any respect for news sources of this type. There's absolutely nothing in this article that even remotely represents Sun. Even if it's a quote, it's still in PRINT! Don't try to say that the editor is not trying to say something here just becuase it's a quote.
Ummm... Mary Jo Foley is one of the more 'critical of Microsoft' journalists out there. Check out her Smart Reseller articles.
Or, particularly, this one.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
USA: ANSI X12
Europe/world: EDIFACT
Watch Europe/world not embrace Microsoft's standard. Then it will be, for developers, "Thanks Microsoft, thanks a lot, you stupid *&&#^$!!"
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Dark horse. Open Source and IBM.
Too important for any one company to dominate, particularly either of Microsoft or Sun.
Nope, YOU are incorrect because HTML contains stand alone tags such as , etc. that are not legal in XML, except if you write them as or . This is what XHTML does, more or less.
Okay everyone!
Let's sing "Embrace and Extinguish" one more time!
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Specifically, what is missing (or hidden).
;-)
But Microsoft won't tell you that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't ZDNet partially owned by Microsoft?
It's the fight of the century! The winner gets ALL the XML standards! Taking bets on both sides, give your own odds, come on people...
I am !amused.
Okay, I trust M$ about as much as a mouse trusts a snake, but the next round belongs to collaboration not to dog-eat-dog, its mine and you can't look at it or I'll sue your [expletive deleted] off.
XML, XSL and Schema are languages to communicate and they are consensual standards that NOT adhering to will cost too much to comtemplate. Not even M$ can take on their own client base and hope to win.
Failing in promotion and adoption of these standards will leave any perpetrator of lone systems looking like the schizophrenic guy sitting alone in his malodorous squalor on the subway, having fascinating and animated discussions, with nobody.
The world is changing with consortial and industry associations coming together to craft DTDs for their particular domains and building on the work others for the betterment of the whole instead of trying to lock anyone in.
DTDs are what its about If my DTDs can't work with your DTDs and my objects can't work with your objects then we both lose. If they do communiocvate and can translate between my proprietary format and you, then we both win.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's what XHTML, the successor to HTML 4.01, is for. Brings HTML 4.01 in compliance with the slightly stricter XML syntax, i.e. no hanging tags (which are sorta like hanging chads, only they look like ) which are now represented as . Other than that it's remarkably similar, but it's parsable by a standard XML parser according to the XHTML DTD. Most standard XML parsers can't read HTML (earlier versions of it, that is) unless they have been kludged for HTML support.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
please explain what client browser standards have to do with server side xml document standards? i'm confused.
Just look at what Sun did to Java. Do we really want them to have control over the promising XML standard as well. I think XML would really start to take off (as opposed to the half-asses browser support we currently have) if Microsoft could gain control of the XML standard, and integrate it into the next version of IE.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Seriously, who cares what MSFT or Sun thinks? Let's ignore them, just like we did with Linux, and build something that works ourselves.
And then start to use it.
They will have to comply with our standards.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Ah, schema repositories. I'm not convinced I see a great deal of difference between this aspect of the XML initiative, and the STEP initiative (which hasn't finalised on a truly useful and useable solution in 30 years). And I have a great deal of difficulty not believing both to be seriously misguided. At some point it all appears to break down and you end up with everyone with their own private schema which isn't appropriate for anyone else, so you either only talk to your friends, or you're expected to understand the semantics of far too many other schemas. Which is exactly what both camps claim to be trying to avoid.
AFAIAC they can fight over who gets to keep the central database as much as they like - it's just not going to be relevant to the vast majority. The useful bits are XML itself (giving generalised tree manipulation and data interchange, as long as you already agree on the semantics) and XML Schemas which used sensibly is a fairly neutral way of describing type information. Forget the rest of BizTalk.
This is my World Wide Web of Whatever
This is why we need Open Source. Flame wars about GNU/BSD etc. licensing, software, etc. are minor irritants at worst.
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it.
Ummmm... welcome to the real world MS's "standards" are ALWAYS proprietary and never open.
Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets
Dude! MS is THE reason we have conflicting incompatible rulesets.
You are either about the most ignorant person who ever lived or a lame troll
---CONFLICT!!---
Surprised? When did you wake up, Mr. Van Winkle?
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I thought that you could also use CSS1 or CSS2 with XML?
In a way it's good that at this time, the birth of the Net, there is a behemoth who can dictate common standards. Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets.
I don't know what you are snorting, but you simply don't make any sense. Microsoft has and will always continue to fight any standard that doesn't inherent give them an advantage.
The Internet worked before Microsoft arrived. If Microsoft were to go out of business tomorrow the internet would continue to work.
Microsoft is a divisive force in the marketplace, and will remain so until swift and dramatic action is taken to show them the error of their ways.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Sheesh, for that you could build your own version of xml.
sulli
RTFJ.
Everything has pretty much been accepted except for XML Schemas. The time for comments for the "final recommendation" will be closed on Dec. 15. Thus, the standard should be out early next year. That said, XML Schemas have been pretty static since April.
XSL and XML Schemas, as implemented by IE, are not quite standard. Of course, both technologies were generously gifted to us from Microsoft, and their implementation was out >2 years before Sun stopped bickering enough to agree that MS' proposals were pretty damned good.
--Be human.
Anyone notice that while there are detailed entries on Microsoft, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates, there's only limited information on Sun Microsystems (pretty much just describing them as the big, bad corporation that groundlessly sued M$ over embracing and extending Java) and NOTHING on Linus Torvalds OR Linux?
El riesgo vive siempre!
Admittedly, a close friend of mine is a "suit". You know, one of those guys who flies a desk for a living and writes text documents instead of code on his computer? ;-)
Seriously speaking, he told me a few days ago, and I quote, "[Businesses] value what they pay for." This came out of a discussion of why businesses prefer spending money on inferior products instead of using superior open source products (e.g., using Weblogic as a Servlet/JSP container instead of Tomcat).
Also, there's the matter of accountability. You can't sue someone as easily if you didn't pay them for the product.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Please, get it right. Sun is the company that has been an ass over this issue, not Microsoft. Microsoft has given us XSL and XML Schemas, both of which are very nice. Sun has fought MS all the way. Sun has acted as bad as MS before the DoJ investigation....
--Be human.
Hmm, yeah, and what would the composition of the force be? I'd say that, judging from ESR's Geeks with Guns events, enough of us dot-communist free software crazies to fill a couple of surplus APCs could raise a ruckus or two. :-) Round that out with some Finnish and Swedish people lead by Linus and we're talking some real fun...
Ballmer: "Uhh, sir, there are several white armored vehicles coming in through the front gate, flying flags with penguins and demons on them."
Gates: "What?!"
Dotcommunista: "We come to bring freedom to the oppressed masses!"
Gates: "What?!"
Dotcommunista: "OK, we've come to free the oppressed temps and laugh at your source code. Good, bad, we're the guys with the tank."
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
By contrast, the credits screen for Quake II took somewhere around 140K. (iD fixed this for Quake III Arena, using just text on a 3D background)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
<?xml version="5.00.2195" encoding="Office0.9"?>
4
h
w
r
<!DOCTYPE biz-talk PUBLIC '-//Microsoft//DTD BizTalk//EN' 'http://microsoft.com/biztalk.dtd'>
<BiztalkMessage>
DCOM:rtgedf-k87fh7364h384753oj5-387j4io53j453ooko
87979654-s4-dfs4453534676567-34535fds45t54hhhghhg
987958cs-gbf5t0-er345-fgdfg5-5jhjfhj-ew4-4sdsf4-w
89d8f7-98lkj3j-3234-sefs-435534aflk9rtew-wtgdsrgf
</BiztalkMessage>
I must say you're getting better - I made it all the way to the third paragraph before detecting the troll and checking to see if it was you. Now if only today's moderators would pay similar attention...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
But is it Insightful?
sulli
RTFJ.
>Sun (Nasdaq: SUNW) and its partners announced a new milestone in the development of the ebXML infrastructure championed by the standards group OASIS and The United Nations.
Granted, it was a technology group, but really. What has the UN done for the world in terms of computational standards? Clever little end route that you tried there, Sun. Too bad it fell flat on its face. Not yet; give it a while. You simply don't have the market share to pull the same kind of garbage that Netscape did with ISOing Java(excuse me... ECMA)Script and get away with it.
I'm not exactly sure what Sun can complain about. There's nothing proprietary about flat text files. The vehicle for transmitting XML? Come on. You can transmit it from an Apple II, a C64, a VAX cluster, any damned computer you want: as long as it can send text, it can send XML. Define a new vocabulary, so what? If people like it, it's easy enough to implement yourself; there's absolutely nothing closed about it.
It would've been nice if there had been a real standards organization behind the drafting of XML itself; using it I often wonder why the left hand didn't know what the right hand was fucking up when they were drafting this tripe.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
You can have it in any color you want as long as it's black.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Um, you do realize that it was a quote, not the actual article, right? How could we have a ZDNet tech article without quoting a MS shill who's aiming at the lowest common denominator?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
AFAIK, it follows the W3C DOM that other apps use, and the SDK actually documents which properties and methods are extensions of the DOM. I've been working in XML for a couple months, and of the extensions to the standard DOM, the only one MS appears not to have is the ability to rename an element, because nodeName property of elements is write once/read only.
Exactly what kind of extension do you expect to find in an API? Embedding a small Easter Egg into a multimegabyte application is one thing, but bloating an API is another. Am I supposed to believe that xmlElement.generateHype() is supposed to return "Linux sucks!" or what?
--
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Probably "Microsoft XML#".
Completely portable, viewable from any IE browser on any Windows OS running on any 32-bit Intel processor that has mute, pigmented spokesperson with big eyes and a high pain threshold, decked out with an Intellimouse Explorer w/Intellieye and MS Natural Internet-Ready Keyboard.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The Microsoft XSL included in IE 5.5 is not quite standard. However, I've heard that the latest versions (which you can download) are very close to standards compliant. (XML Schema is not quite a standard yet, of course.)
So where is the insight? Modded wrong methinks... Orchestration = process sequencing = putting things in the right order (across business boundaries); supported by hydration/dehyradation (persisting & restoring state)
How is this different than MS saying "We intend to use 8-bit bytes as a container for proprietary data formats"? Is *anyone* surprised?
I thought BizTalk was a DTD, when did it become a server? I think MS is dual-branding again, by a Biz-Talk server they're talking about a product that provides some kind of GUI for the DOM and some easy way of linking transformations and application calls based on ... presumably based on logic we provide. So I'm not sure this is about XML at all, it's about a server which is (implicitly?) implementing a DTD at the expense of another DTD. How much you want to bet the thing will easily transform other DTDs to biztalk? It'll have to. And you know BizTalk wouldn't have had a ghost of a chance if the existing standards bodies had managed to get the XML spec completed in under 3 years - you know it's like 2 years late? This particular democracy just broke down into territorial pissing.
This isn't meant to be a troll, honestly it seems like this is just another MS technology to be used or ignored, I don't see how it threatens standards creation unless it's so widely implemented it will create defacto standards. At 25k/processor I wonder if that will happen.
closed minded is as closed minded does
Oh crap, right right... I stand corrected. :)
Perhaps, but even if not, a majority of their advertising budget comes from MS or companies strongly aligned with them. This of course is the Fine Journalistic Tradition of Integrity that many in the media use, which has one commandment: Thall Shalt Not Piss Off Thine Advertisers, But Their Competitors Are Fair Game.
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
No, that is not the way to make progress. Consider the analogy of natural languages, for example. There was no standards body defining the English language before it came into existence. The language evolved from actually being used. It was later that standards bodies came together to formalize it. And yes, this is the cause for all the incompatibilities.
The danger with doing it the other way around is stagnation. You can spend years waiting for a standards body to come to agreement. And the agreement they come to is not necessarily the best one either. Look at CORBA, for example. A bunch of companies tried to ensure that their latest, greatest coolest features were in the standard and the end result was an ugly, unweildy and complicated standard.
As much as I hate to accept it, in the practical world the best way to evolve is a Darwinian approach where the best standard survives through the test of market approval.
Mmmm.. Donuts
My favorite quote on this subject goes something like, "HTML is not a subset of XML any more than a car is a subset of steel." XML is a meta-markup langauge--a language for describing markup languages. HTML is a markup language. HTML can be expressed as XML, but is not a subset of XML.
--Be human.
In recent mails they are trying to layering the application using the XP standard.
By the way, Biztalk works? Yes, but after much effort. It didn't depend exclusively on the platform, that it's only a envelope.
We here have much experience in Biztalk, and I CAN TALK MUCH, MUCH MORE than M$. They have just Max Spencer that is just an internal integration of theirs POS. We make 3 pilot versions applied to 3 big business integrating Biztalk Jumpstart Kit, Biztalk Preview and Biztalk Beta. We TOO needed to use OUR criptography library to integrate the packages and our expertise to integrate the various ambients wich were mixed UNIX/Windows NT4/Windows 2000.
I can again reiterate that Biztalk is only an envelope with no type of messages include, that means that YOU need to create a standard message to exchange with your partners. You can use BASDA to exchange Orders and Invoices but and the other messages? If think that this is the end it's not, you need yet to integrate to your legacy system and it's not easy, IT'S A PROJECT !!!!
If this is not enough think about the cost of 3 machines and the software you need from M$ to run then to merely run Biztalk. These recommendations are that their papers I'm not kidding !!!
ebXML in the other way is derived of an effort of OASIS United Nations and I think they are doing the correct aproach.
They are not only describing the envelope but other needed things like how to describe the Order, Invoic, Remadv, Invrpt etc. They are describing then as business models not as messages. Describing business models are more effective then describe just messages. They are more flexible and compatible.
Others things are the Repository of these objects, Security and Transactions.
The simplicity of implementation of this aproach is been addressed to as you can see from that quotation of ebxml list discussion from Stefano Pogliani:
"And, still, we are talking about things that:
We can have modular piece of software, each devoted to a specific need. The idea here is that the generated piece of software will function as an "adapter" for the legacy application implementing the business functionality required by the b2b exchange.
I do not see any need to "modify" the legacy, but only to "wrap" it (anyway the wrapping is logically required for plugging the Messaging layer...)
Granting interoperability at runtime grants that every vendor can jump onto the boat and propose a minimum set of common functionalities that are granted "regardless"...
I have been focussing in many discussions on different lists on the need to define the behaviour of the "collaboration model" agent (the BSI in [2]) as well as to define a clear XML vocabulary for expressing choreography information."
See more at ebXML site.
Recently there seems to be the promise of standardization within the net/*ML communities, and yet, things fal apart.
I'm not sure if it is just the intrinsic differences in ideologies between S*N/M$/*NIX/misc communities, but it doesn't seem like everybody can agree on a complete adherance to a spec.
I'm not being a doomsayer, but I think that we're going to see the continuation of pain and suffering and idiocy. Define the standard, and if you want a solaris version of it, then build it. If you want the M$ implementation, then build it. I think it's been mentioned here in a previous article, but some of these standards body have to go beyond documenting and designing the standard, and perhaps implement core engines.
Then and only then can we all reap the benefits of the technology no matter what implementation you use.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
XHTML is arguably HTML-based as well. The only things on the web that aren't HTML-based are embedded documents (like JPEG images) or stand-alone documents (like text files). I think I get what you mean, though, that generally, in a broad, vague hand-waving sort of way, the web is HTML-based.
You mean like HTML or XML? I use w3m and with the exception of Am I Hot Or Not?, I can get what I need from most sites absolutely fabulously. The reason is because we have this cute little standard called HTML which displays properly on all browsers.
More information on the HTML standard and how it applies to universal access can be found at Any Browser.
And you think dragging your heels on the XML standard is going to rectify this? HTML is already a standard; do you want to hyper-standardise it or something? I doubt very much that people dragging their heels on XML so that they can focus their energy on standardising already-existing standards is going to accomplish much. The problem is with stupid people, not standards.
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it.
Too bad, then, that MS has declared that they intend to use XML as a container for proprietary (read 'closed') data formats. We suspected this for some time, but in a recent interview Ballmer came right out and said so.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
A standard that is tied to a particular implementation is not a standard. It is a product, not a standard. At least when Sun puts out a spec, like JDK or J2EE, or JSP, they put out a reference implementation for others to start from, to create their own products.
Microsoft is just documenting part of their product, calling it a statndard, and expecting people to use their products. Even if someone created a new implementation based on MS specs, MS would change their next version of the product to break compatibility.
Just think about the "open" Win32 api. It is constantly changing, and full of bugs. That's why WINE has to emulate bugs and shit, not just the spec. Does that sound like a standard?
What does HTML and the web have to do with XML? XML is used on the server for data markup. It is then processed and stored in databases, sent to other servers, or transformed into something displayable, like HTML. XML is not something you will have on a web page like a Java applet or a MIDI tune. To do the data crunching and processing, you use an XML parser with DOM or XSL transformations. It's needed because SGML was too loose of a specification to be practical. XML defines a set of easy to implement rules about how documents are built, how DTD's for the document types are described etc.
Now here's something for you to disagree with: XHTML should replace HTML as soon as possible so that we can get rid of the horrible beast! Hopefully IE5.5 and Mozilla and WAP 2.0 will make the transition faster.
By the way, "Biztalk Server 2000" is the worst name since the "Shouptronic".
Hey, folks,
Mod this article up! It's both
interesting and informative!
Sheesh.
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it. In a way it's good that at this time, the birth of the Net, there is a behemoth who can dictate common standards. Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets.
Man, replace MS with Novell/DEC/Apple, and I'd think that this was written 20 years ago when networking was just starting. But where is IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, DECNet, etc. now?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Biztalk is based on SOAP. Sun is backing the Apache projects xerces and xalan packages. Apache also makes a SOAP module. Seems like there is some common ground here.
Someone you trust is one of us.
http://www.sdtimes.com/news/015/story1.htm
well, technically the XSL is the CSS for XML- -----
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
although IE will accept XML written as HTML - with br's with the end slashes and such - but netscape won't.- -------
netscape sucks hogs balls... sweaty ones.
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Lots of buzzwords, and lots of hype. Could someone please try to explain what are the problems this BizTalk &co. are trying to solve ???
In Murphy We Turst
Just curious - and I'm serious - what database can do all the same stuff as SQL but is free? mySQL can't do transactions (I know they are in the next verison... but that isn't here yet) - so what can you use to replace it? you mention how it sucks that it costs so much, which would be a valid arguement if there were a cheaper and or free alternative - and I'm aware of many other databases, but as far as I know the free ones are feature limited and the other ones with the features are even more expensive...- ------
I'm not trying to pick a fight - I want questions answered, that is all.
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There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Secondly, the word 'lame' is a perfectly valid word in the context it was used, ie. not a very good effort. The word 'lame' had been around a long time before it was co-opted into ElYTe Sp33k, and Slashdot-types who recognize 'lame' as the opposite of 'elite' (and therefore a very simple label applied by very simple minded people) are a vast minority of the world's population. If the guy quoted had said "M1cr0S0ftZ ElYT3!!! Sun B s0 L4ym3!!!" then I'd agree with you. But he didn't.
Microsoft isn't embracing the standard that Sun wants to use at all. As the guy from Meta Group put it, "The only real alternative to BizTalk is, ebXML and it's lame. It's just Sun and a bunch of bureaucrats backing it." You might as well bitch that Microsoft is "embracing and extinguishing" CORBA by their decision to use COM, or that the group behind KDE is "embracing and extinguishing" Gnome's Bonobo technology by supporting their own different object technology. It's called different approaches to a problem, so please get a clue before you spew your mantras next time.
Cheers,
Binary data in XML is stored uu-encoded... ( I've been told that's the standard way of doing things with that... me, I prefer putting text data in --easier to debug, so what do I know?)
I know this is slightly ot but everytime I try to find info about it or ask someone who supposedly knows all I get is a load of marketing buzzwords. What exactly is it?
Pick Sun, because as we all know, Microsoft is the Devil .
You seem like nice folks. You don't want to be associated with the Devil, do you?
-cibrPLUR
This is looking like ava Battle part2. Last open standard that MS adopted got changed so much that SUN sued them over it. I don't know why MS even pretends to be sensetive to industry standard. They know they have enough clout to change any standard that exists anyway!
WURD!!
Get an account. This is essential. People will always pay more attention to you if you are willing to take credit for your comments. I always read AC posts with a grain of salt.
so cleaverly crafted
I see you know this trick. Your master has taught you well. Seemingly innocent misspellings and grammar mistakes will always elicit a few responses.
Read other successful trolls, and apply the same concepts to yours. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but be prepared to apologize if someone takes offense. You can string out the apology thread for a while as well.
Always post your trolls early. The closer they are to the top, the more attention and responses they will get. If you cannot get an early troll, a good alternative is responding to an early post.
The benefits of karma whoring are well documented. A subtle troll posted with a +1 bonus can expect more attention than an AC posting at zero. I shall return to trolling when I again hit karma cap.
The call goes out to all other trolls who have suggestions to this AC. Lend him your trade secrets.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
The fact that standards exist are wonderful; debate over them is proper to make sure that all aspects are considered. Even if Microsoft wants only what's best for Microsoft, by causing BizTalk to be better off, the XML spec is not about to become more restricted. (Just their DTD [XML buddies: am I getting the terminology right?], which they could do anyway)
-bugg
And to clarify, what I said was "as we did with Linux", not "as we did to Linux".
So the point is that, just as MSFT and Sun and all that jazz wants to make proprietary XML deliverables, we should just make an Open Source XML deliverable and cut the rug out from under them.
But, it's not like I haven't seen trolls before - I do live in Fremont, Center of the Universe, the coolest neighborhood in Seattle, where we have a giant troll under the Aurora Bridge and just recently had Father Troll and his Troll helpers (nimble little minxes) celebrate the lighting of the Fremont Winter Solstice Tree in the plaza next to Adobe.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Didn't the last time these two fought the consumer end up with Java? I remember the HELL from IE and Netscapes 3 and up, how no Java and/or Javascript seemed to want to run on both. As much as I generally like Sun and generally dislike Microsoft, maybe NEITHER should define this spec. Maybe someone else *cough*ANSI*cough* could potentially do a better job. Look at the various older languages, like C and C++... the ANSI variants compile with little to no porting on dozens of platforms, with behaviour being different only through the rest of the platform, not through the compiler. Obviously the natures of these languages are very different, but the idea can be applied similarly. If ANSI can't/won't do it, maybe some consortium (like, oh, the w3 or something) should, and if a company fails to adhere to the standards then that company loses its voice in the consortium. Regardless of how this gets mediated, something needs to be done, 'cause I don't want tohave to worry about "Microsoft XML" and "Sun XML"...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
- 1) Dictators are good in some instances.
Hrm. I might go along with #1 -- a benevolent dictator is the optimum form of government. And even a not-completely-benevolent dictator is possibly better than a democratic process in some cases. But I take strong exception to suggesting that MS should be put in such a position.2) It's okay if Microsoft is that dictator.
--
The logic is supposed to be that open standards are created, then software and 'initiatives' are built upon that standard, not the other way around.
If a standard is worth its salt, it can be extended by a vendor to accomodate the vendor's needs. That's why XML is an eXtensible Markup Language.
Next thing you know Microsoft is going to try to restandardize English grammar so it'll work better with MS Word's grammar checker.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I never saw this one coming...
.NET initiative .net TLD..
Microsoft's standards lie at the heart of their
Let me be the first to say DUH!!
Besides, this is just a giant move for M$ to try to take ownership of the
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
nevermind. i shouldn't post replies to trolls.
Could it be, like the Japanese business model valued the Samuri spirit, that Microsoft values blitzkreig, subversion and control?
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
to hell with the ms and sun "standards". the only *REAL* standard comes from the w3c.
Actually, this is very much about XML. The underlying code has never fully been agreed on, and these marketing servers will inevitably shape it.
*sigh* Why couldn't you just read the story? This is not about MS XML and Sun XML. XML is and remains defined and agreed upon like before. This is about an XML based language used to transfer "ecommerce messages" (simplified explanation). Just like there is SOAP and XML RPC for remote procedure calling over HTTP, there are various languages for "ecommerce messages". BizTalk, supported by Microsoft, is just one of the many. The battle is about which of these will become the most popular. It's not about someone trying to embrace and extend XML.
What does a 'XML orchestration server' do?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What part about XML is not "agreed on"? You can go to www.w3c.org and read exactly what is agreed on and when. I use and have used XML in my daily work for a couple of years now and I have never had ANY problems with any products not understanding XML produced by other vendor's parsers.
what database can do all the same stuff as SQL but is free?
I know I probably shouldn't reply to this, but I'm gonna anyway....How bout this one?
Well, you asked....
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
Glad to oblige. From "Microsoft's Ballmer: Sun has no clue.":
Microsoft will continue to protect any intellectual property that it embeds as objects in XML wrappers. "We will have proprietary formats to protect our intellectual property," he said.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The simple fact is that MS have the marketshare, on the client browser side at least. They can pretty much dictate the standard without having to worry about fleas like Sun.
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it. In a way it's good that at this time, the birth of the Net, there is a behemoth who can dictate common standards. Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
This yet another example of some upstart company, like Sun, daring to trample on Microsoft's benevolent attempts at creating appropriate industry standards. I remember a similar fight when Sun dared to challenge Microsoft's Java standard.
Won't these people ever realize that extending the standards and then not documenting most of the APIs is GOOD for EVERYONE?
Please forgive my sarcasm.
I wish someone would post more of Microsoft's internal memos. I find them very interesting and revealing of Microsoft's culture.
But I agree with you about ZDNet.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I would propose one revision to your description:
:-)
Completely portable*, viewable from any IE browser on any Windows OS running on any 32-bit Intel processor that has mute, pigmented spokesperson with big eyes and a high pain threshold, decked out with an Intellimouse Explorer w/Intellieye and MS Natural Internet-Ready Keyboard.
*as long as it's Microsoft Windows
There. That sounds better. Now I have a headache from thinking like Microsoft.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
... Jean Paoli, Microsoft ...
As I understand it, Microsoft is just paying Paoli's way to get their name attached to XML. He was a respected researcher long before he was ever associated with MS, and when he was hired he insisted on liberal terms that gave him freedom from oversight or the need to follow marketing directives. I believe he is even critical of Microsoft sometimes.
I think this is all true; please correct me if I'm wrong.
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is where M$FT wants to take XML.
Stop complaining about BEA. It is certainly not the best App Server out there and it is not the cheapest, but it is a lot better than the extremely crappy and expensive one I am forced to use. I would switch my Qwerty keyboard against an Azerty one and agree to use a left-hand mouse for the rest of my life if I could use BEA right now. And Orion, of course. Or JBoss. Or OpenEJB. Or JavaCCM. Or (daydreaming) Inprise IAS. *Sight*.
Back in say 95/96 one of zd mags did a review of Netscape(3.x) vs IE (2.0?)
The Pro and con chart looked showed how supperior netscape was (email, animated gifs, javascript, java, frames, fonts, etc) However, they give IE the upper hand and suggested that be the browser everyone uses.
Install windows 95 OSR1/NT 4.0 and try surfing the web.
Thats the day I cancled all my subscriptions to zd mags, MS bias, I think so.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Or is it the other way around? I keep forgetting.
--
Other way around. C sharp == D flat.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
the upcoming battle between XML standards proposed by Sun and Microsoft.
Golly. To think, all this time I was under the impression that XML was the standard created by the W3C. But hey, if Microsoft says we need an XML standard, I guess we do.
I wonder what they're going to call it... "Microsoft XML: The standard standard."
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
*gulp* per CPU?!? Wwhuahahahahahahohohohou....
Huh. Back to work again.
Uh, no. HTML is an SGML based language ("an application of SGML). XML is a subset of SGML. XML and SGML are not languages. They are a set of rules on how to make markup languages.
Pigs are animals. Monkeys are animals. This does not make pigs monkeys. "Animal" is also not anything physical. It's a type of a living being.
Actually, C sharp == D flat, I believe. ;)
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
The web is still - and perhaps will always be - HTML based.
We've already got extensions to it - html 3.1, html 4.0, shockwave, php3, css, javascript, the list goes on and on.
Why are we arguing over XML when we already have all these existing "standards" to stumble over? The netscape and microsoft web browsers add their own unique tags and extensions as well. (Remember when MIDI was the most amazing thing on web pages?) I'm much more interested in getting a common set of standards that lets any browser (perhaps even lynx?) view the page with the content intact. I just love comeing across a site that REQUIRES a certain plugin, because they didn't want to spend their time making sure that their HTML would work with every browser. *sigh*
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think that pretty much blows. You have to spend at least $4,999 to be able to use this on a server, and that is just for the SQL. How much is the actual product going to cost?
All XML really is, is just a way to convey the name-to-value relationships in a hierarchy of data. But it's also overkill for this purpose. Simpler formats like HDF have existed for a longer time, but it seems XML is being adopted because it gets to ride the coattails of HTML.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Comment removed based on user account deletion
prices for the BizTalk software. It seems that the more something costs today the more trust will be put into it by largest companies. Damn, I used Gemstone/J Application Server, BEA (WebLogic) App Server, Resin and the Orion App Server. I tell you, the more expensive this shit is, the more pain in the ass it is. Orion is the cheapest (free for developers) and WebLogic is the most expensive per processor (around 15,000USD,) the difference is that BEA has a bunch of GUIs and Orion works better. But go figure, Amazon uses BEA, Alltel uses BEA etc. etc. who uses Orion? Developer while building and testing their EJB solutions. Anyway, I don't think that MS did something exceptional with their XML server. Have any of you guys looked into JDO from SUN? Do you know how much the JavaBlend tool is? They should make it even more expensive, then it'll defenetely grab more market.
You can't handle the truth.
He makes a good point about ANSI defining the standard, however...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Why do my legitimate questions and (sometimes anti-/.-clique) opinions get called trolls?
/. has the answer too is also a good way to troll. Wax on. Wax off. Appreciate Dilbert humour. Spell things the Canadian way. Misinterpret insults (this is more for fun, actually). My one true attempt at trolling was a pitiful failure. I think it was too over the top.
If you want to be half the troll I am, slice off your legs so that you are 3'2". Then lose weight until you are 90lbs. Poke out one eye. Have a rudimentary knowledge of most topics on slashdot. Don't always conform to the Yay Linux hype. Apparently, asking questions that you want the answer to, and someone on
Use it wisely, my son. Always remember the power of the dark side of the force.
Addendum: I am reformed. This is a legit question, and I rarely troll.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Lame is a horse you put to sleep.
Let's not forget that posting a quote from someone does not excuse you from your endorsing it as being relative to your story and helping depict the disposition therein.
Of course this is about XML! Specifically, it's about whose DTDs/XML Schemas will be used by the rest of the world.
XML is just text until it is put into a context by a DTD/Schema. "The medium is the message", neh?
As always, it's in Microsoft's best interest to depart from the standard because it will force customers to use ~100% Microsoft solutions. Only Microsoft products will speak the Microsoft DTD -- at first, anyway. Again, as always, integration products will follow on later to fill in the niches.
Actually no. With something like XML I cannot see how there ever will be standards. It's a markup language based entirely on user-defined tags, which makes that you can never have standards. Furthermore, these standards will probably defeat the purpose of it to begin with.
Think about it: Extensible Markup Language. By definition there are no standards for it.
sorry, I was overcome with raw intense hatred. Just wanna kill now.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is not about XML! It's about BizTalk vs. Sun's e-business XML language. Nobody has any problems agreeing upon what XML is and how it works. The whole point of XML is to create new languages - hence eXtensible.
Besides, to those who bash Microsoft for embracing and extending others standards, it's worth nothing who wrote the original XML spec:
Editors:
Tim Bray, Textuality and Netscape
Jean Paoli, Microsoft
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, University of Illinois at Chicago and Text Encoding Initiative
Eve Maler, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Second Edition
It's just as much Microsoft's standard as it is Sun's and Netscape's and if anyone is going all out for XML, it's Microsoft. Which is not to say that Sun wouldn't be going all out for it; just take a look at java.sun.com today!
Toph
The article states:
When did the United Nations start taking sides in these sorts of things? Can we expect a peace keeping force to be sent to Redmond?
I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
It's this sort of quote that really makes me lose respect for the articles. Calling something 'lame' in a tech article does not suffice, except when herding lower IQ types into opposing a technology and chuckling at the misfortunes of another.
I'm just curious -- is this the second edition of Sun Microsystems, or the second edition of Eve Maler?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
What standards? Can you realy tell me that they are realy going to Os there products and get ISO's on there ways and means? Yea right!!!!