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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
--- 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.
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.
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
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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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
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:
Except that it falls under a Microsoft patent. Stylesheets, both XSL and CSS, were patented by Microsoft.
--Be human.
- 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
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.
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.
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!
--
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."
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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>
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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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.
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".
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?
http://www.sdtimes.com/news/015/story1.htm
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
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,
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
- 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.
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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
Could it be, like the Japanese business model valued the Samuri spirit, that Microsoft values blitzkreig, subversion and control?
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
*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.
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,
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.
. . .then we are all well and truly fucked.
Perhaps I'll go build a little wooden shack in Nebraska or Montana or wherever the fuck the Unibomber was living.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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*.
I've looked over C# and it looks pretty good...an obvious Java ripoff with some additional syntactical candy and the ability to cast explicit pointers...whether it will attract a wide array of developers is another matter. Microsoft may not have learned their lesson from J++.
One thing MS definitely *does not have* is a wide marketshare on the client side. This is because they've focused too much on PCs and not enough on PDAs (I'm sorry, WinCE doesn't have anywhere near the same market share as Palm) and cell phones (where Microsoft doesn't even compete). In fact, unless Microsoft opens up their standards the way Sun did, and makes C# available on platforms besides Windows, C# is pretty much going to stay in the Windows environment. That's going to hurt adoption of the C# language, especially on applications that require lots of iron.
My guess? .NET and C# are going to define the way Windows is used in the next half-decade, but it won't take the same market share as Java.
If anything, Microsoft is frightening the other companies into adopting open and standardized rule-sets. After all, if the rest of us won't do it, Microsoft will. Not that adopting open and standardized rule-sets hasn't stopped Microsoft from "embracing and extending" ... far from it ....
The Free ODMG Project needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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!
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.