Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Proposes "Open" Replacement for CORBA
Alex T-B writes "Looks like Microsoft is taking the threat from CORBA and Java seriously. They've
launched a network protocol suite [C-Net story] to embrace
and extend the distributed business software market. SOAP, as
it's called, is based on XML, and is supposed to move audiences
away from UNIX and towards adopting Win2k and fully MS-ized
software solutions. Interestingly, no MS software is needed to
use SOAP, and it levels the playing field as 'proprietary'
solutions can be replaced with a universal standard that
enabled apps written in different languages to communicate with
each other easily over the internet. Is MS actually doing the
market a favour by removing vendors' 'lock-in' strategies to
properietary solutions?"
With regard to the last sentence... I think you are saying that every firewall lets HTTP through. But that means firewalls add no value to these sorts of things.
It's a shame that everything in the world is getting tunneled through HTTP for this reason.
I was just recently at Internet World 1999 and my impression is that Microsoft is indeed threatened by Java/Corba. Most successful e-business/e-commerce solutions run on *nix using Java servlets, Corba and XML. Any vendor that is out to make money for himself (and most are) choose non-MS solutions. They are more reliable, extendible, and don't lock you into waiting for MS to provide you "additional" features or standards.
The interesting thing about MS is that they adopt standards or features quickly in order to capture market share, not to provide the developer with the best tools quickly. They want to get their solution to you before you have a chance to realize their are better ones out there. How is that brilliant? It's just business.
And MS is about to take a pounding. They're missing the next wave just like they missed the entire concept of the Internet.
Anyone can choose to not use Microsoft for any reason they see fit. Not using "Microsoft logic" to base IT decisions is NOT a criteria for being a Linux zealot. It's just business.
On a side note, it was really cool to see how popular Linux and other *nix solutions are remaining.
I'm here to tell you guys, *nix isn't dead and won't be for a long time. And a lot of *nix will still run the Internet for a long time.
From talking to many vendors, it obvious that any large scale web sites such as Excite have moved away from NT boxes to Unix (Solaris in this case for ChiliASP). The NT solution are just not as scalable as *nix solutions at the same cost.
How's this for a business justification: Excite moved from 100+ NT boxes to 4 4-CPU Solaris boxes running ChiliASP. No more reboots, no more lock ups.
I don't call what O2K saves as "XML". Show me the DTD and the style sheets so I can edit it elsewhere. Show me the specifications so other software can read it. Then I'll call it XML.
I see two major technical advantages to SOAP.
- It spec's a set of HTTP headers to make it more firewall friendly.
- It easily supports multi-reference data/cyclic data.
The latter is important for supporting serialized Java object graphs (I leverage the hell out of it right now).DB
http://www.develop.com/soap/soapfaq.xml
Sun's Lee said while SOAP supports XML and HTTP, the protocol, as it stands, does have some proprietary software code because it was developed mostly by Microsoft.
SOAP doesn't rely on any proprietary technology. The SOAP/Perl bits run on Linux/Apache with no black magic from M$. The Java bits also don't require any M$ software. Sun's Lee is obviously misinformed.
DB
SOAP (nor XML-RPC) will not scale as well as
IIOP used by Corba, simply because it's human
readable. It consumes more bandwidth and is
much more difficult to parse. I agree that It's nice for toy appliacations.
The argument that port 80 is already open on most firewalls, is really silly. If everybody does some
kind of RPC over it, soon there will be closed to not allow arbitrary calls.
Iona joins RW/Neuveau and is supporting SOAP.
Here's the link: http://www.iona-iportal.com/news/prsui te.htm
DB
"The Fortune 1,000 prefers CORBA 2-to-1 over COM"-- Forrester Research, July 1999, "Internet Middleware", by Eric G. Brown (ebrown@forrester.com), Ted Schadler, Amanda J. Ciardelli, Ben Worthen, Stephanie Smith
Wanna see more, buy the report. Now where's your proof?
I scratched my head when I read this and wondered what all the fuss was about. Its seems to be just another bunch of silliness written by people that don't really understand the underlying technology.
:-) and implementing method calling protocols.
1. Why is it a threat to Java - or any other programming language for that matter ? This is a protocol for passing objects by value (come on CORBA3 - hello RMI
2. Using XML in this way is hardly novel. There must be 101 projects out there that are doing exactly the same thing. It would be nice if there was a single mechanism though.
3. "Firewalls don't allow arbitrary ports to be open for the average distributed object protocol" (paraphrased from the MS SOAP site). Well there's a damn good reason for that. It makes your server terribly insecure. Allowing arbitrary method calls to be made over HTTP just expands the problem enormously. This is the distributed object equivalent of MACRO languages. Before widespread use of MACROS we only really had to worry about binary viruses and worms - which were tricky to write but sort of detectable. With the advent of MACROs everywhere the virus problem is ten times worse than it was before - and allowing arbitrary method calls over HTTP is just doing the same thing.
4. Why are CORBA and DCOM complicated ? Well at their core they're pretty simple. They define an interface definition language which is a subset of most common procedural declaration syntaxes. This allows the definition of complex object interactions to be defined without reference to a particular language. However the complexity of CORBA and DCOM comes in the peripheral definitions it was realised had to be made in order to make them useful. i.e. they define a suite of services - Object resolution, Events, Transactions, Security etc, etc, which are non-trivial pieces of software. This is exacerbated by the fact that the OMG hasn't provided reference implementations and that CORBA was interpretable 100 different ways. Object interaction - methinks not.
Anyway I guess the final point is CORBA (and probably DCOM - but its such a hybrid bastard that its hard to tell) started out life as really simple ideas. Probably even simpler than SOAP or any similar projects. The problem is, their actual problem domain is huge, encompassing most of the computing industry and its exactly this sort of half-baked "Oh look we solved all the world's ills" thinking that led to 'products' like COM and the huge shambling mess that is CORBA (read DCOM here too).
The rather strange thing is, by getting something like SOAP ratified as an Open Standard MS probably has the greatest chance of this thing stalling and never seeing the light of day. By the time 20 or 30 companies start squabbling over minor details this will all disappear in a puff of smoke.
With industrial strenghth ORBs like ACE and MICO out that run and well at that under NT- do we need another "standard" that MS propagates? Will they keep it open or as they extend it to their own ends, will they pervert it so that you really have to use MS tools to do SOAP development right?
MS just doesn't get it do they?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unlike DCOM, Corba was developed using input from many companies. Therefore it is simply better
I differ. CORBA was developed by a ton of companies who each wanted their "very important features" to be in there. It is therefore an unnecessarily bulky and complicated standard. DCOM has the advantage of being developed by one company and didn't have that problem. Of course, CORBA has the advantage of working with multiple vendors, but it is certainly not better because it was developed by many companies.
Mmmm.. Donuts
After Microsoft convinced everyone to wash their
hands with SOAP and to quietly eat their SOUP, now
it comes back with the LEMON protocol. Presently they refuse to disclose the meaning and details of their new Open Protocol. Meanwhile some anonymous sources claim to be "Lamers Entitled to Moron Over the Network". Anyway it seems this will be the last blow Microsoft plans to give their concurrents. First it was SOUP where they teached a lesson to all those dirty and nasty Linux boys. Later it was SOUP where they teached good manners to IBM and SUN.
"Finally we get the final standard..." says Mr. John Johnson of expert Gardners Group. With a clear and fresh yellow smile, he explained the great advantages of the new protocol. "You see, it might not taste well at first sight, but similarly to a real lemon, it can give you a lot health to your enterprise. It has a lot of vitamin C on it..."
It seems that Microsoft has already filed a proposal to international standards bodies to make it an new well accepted protocol. So, soon, every one of us will be happily eating lemons while roaming the net...
It seems like it may be a reasonable protocol, we should judge it on its merits. :/
This worries me: "This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 except that the right to produce derivative works is not granted." Whats the point of a RFC without this? I dont suppose theres much chance of getting em to change their minds
It being completely based on http-post, and an xml dataformat is, well, odd. It kinda seems innovative, but we could do all this stuff anyway. Being based on http is very good on the implementation process, firewalls already understand it etc.
I'm a bit concerned about performance, and also I've had problems in the past with stream i/o over http, especially when a poxy proxy gets in the way.
So far its hardly a replacement for corba though, imo.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
>ah yes, I recall hearing that. Well, good for them to use an open >file format - as long as they dont 'embrace and extend'.
And what makes you think MS will actually use this file format? This is crap along the lines of Microsoft actually being interested in an open IM standard. Nobody really took them seriously about that and there's no reason to take them seriously about this, especially in light of Microsoft's "Linux Myths" WWW page.
After reading the spec, I'm going to take up my position as liking SOAP. Why? :
1. Keep it simple & stupid. SOAP looks like a very dumb protocol. It's basically a near wire level protocal; sits o top of XML. The only thing it cares about is proper formatting of XML in passing information (looks like you can even pass structs). It's up to the applications to deal with whatever it needs to deal with (like sessions and whatnot). Example of KISS successes? HTML and TCP/IP. All I'm going to say about this is for the OSI model, I should get the shirt saying, "Milliones of dollars, an international consortium, and all I got was a picture with 7 layers." HTML and TCP/IP was so successful because they were simple to use and implement.
2. Security concerns. NONE. Why is that good? Well, what would happen if the protocol handled the security? I think we would get bogged down with the overhead of security negotiations... And what if there was a flaw, then we'd all be @#$%... Looks like the security is up to the user, and I'd rather trust the security in my web server (Apache) instead.
3. Cross platform... come on! It's only Text...
4. DCOM? COM was never ment to be cross machine, and DCOM was a hack (IMO) to solve these RPC issues. Even still, DCOM has a lot of overhead to keep the session and connection alive. A lot of overhead to get one call to and back. Not to mention all the crap you have to do to actually implement DCOM... IPointers... god awful!
5. CORBA? Repeat DCOM argument... Too much overhead and you need to learn this model. CORBA isn't implemented with all platforms. DCOM isn't implemented with all platforms... Neither is SOAP, but it looks like you can just write some quick perl script and shove it on the web server.
Uhm. I just woke up so my thoughts are lost... that's all i have.
Yes, the "real world" consists primarily of heterogeneous environments, and so CORBA is used much more extensively than DCOM.
A lot of the comments on this page are MS stooges astroturfing!!!
Notice how as an aside to a valid argument, they'll introducing FUD and/or straight Crapola -
such as DCOM is more popular than CORBA*
This has gives makes their FUD more legitimate sounding. Beware this sort of tactics.
MS has sh*tloads of underhanded pr people and psychologists.
* IT'S NOT, unless you limit your survey very carefully to NT users only (like the FUD surveys MS cronies spit out every so often) In terms of distributed object transactions per day across networks worldwide, CORBA outweighs DCOM by a huge amount.
From the SOAP specification:
When carrying out an invocation, a SOAP client must first try the invocation using the M-POST invocation style.
...snip...
a) If using the M-POST verb, a mandatory extension declaration must be present that refers to the namespace "http://www.microsoft.com/protocols/ext/SOAP". For the purposes of this section, suppose that said declaration chooses to map the namespace to the header-prefix "01". If the POST verb is used, the namespace header-prefix is not used. For example, a MethodName header would have an M-POST value of "01-MethodName" and a POST value of "MethodName".
I guess this is microsoft's way of making sure they stay in the distributed object game for a while.
For information on the OMG's efforts in integrating XML into CORBA, and white papers discussing the similarities and differences between CORBA and SOAP/XML-RPC, take a look at http://www.omg.org/library/corbaxml.html.
At first I almost thought this was a joke because of the stupid acronym...
CORBA is already open and very flexible and proven. The latest version of the spec integrates with Enterprise Java Beans. What more could anyone want? Add RMI and Java into the scene and a proprietary distributed architecture from Microsoft is totally unnecessary.
let's hope SOAP goes the way of COOL...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Here's what Dave Winer had to say about it this morning:
from http://davenet.userland.com/19 99/10/19/youGottaBelieve
Click click.. Earth to SlashDot
I almost broke my work flow as the SlashDot folks discovered SOAP over the weekend. I thought it might be worth a comment because they played the usual tune, more fear of Microsoft. I just want to shake the Linux community until they hear me. You don't lead a revolution with fear. It's OK to be scared, but if you want to win you have to go thru it.
They may be the last group to figure out that the world no longer revolves around Microsoft. Microsoft gets it. That's why they did SOAP. But Microsoft losing dominance doesn't mean that Linux rules the world. The vast majority of people don't use Linux. As one of several non-dominant OSes, it's in Linux's favor if other OSes are open to it. That's what SOAP is about. It's an invitation, an open door, but the Linux voices only see a threat.
An old friend of mine said "Too bad, so sad." That's what I would have said, but it's so well-rehearsed, instead I stayed with my own revolution, and didn't break out and write a separate piece about it.
So now they get a sudden attack of morality?
Again... ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: http://news.cnet.com/news/ 0-1003-200-853508.h tml?tag=st.ne.1002.tgif?st.ne.fd.gif.d The following error was encountered: Invalid URL Some aspect of the requested URL is incorrect. Possible problems: Missing or incorrect access protocol (should be `http://'' or similar) Missing hostname Illegal double-escape in the URL-Path Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed Generated Sat, 16 Oct 1999 12:38:22 GMT by 127.0.0.1 (Squid/2.1.PATCH2)
I don't know much about this, but i have seen info when i was researching XML.
Here are some icky MS links:
Microsoft's XML page has some stuff about this soap thing, and they actually say that they want people to use XML as a standard format for data (not a Office2000 format of some sort instead??)
Their SOAP explanation is here.
Juln
What microsoft doesnt realize is that unix is more then just an OS. It's a way of life for alot of people. It's like that first coffee in the morning. Why can't they just accept the fact that some people prefer Unix to Windows, probably cause they're greedy. Oh well, Unix forever.
a while will you all? YEESH
...need a name tho ;) SOAPY sounds cool.
SOAP like XMLRPC are both very interesting and promising efforts to standardise RPC. Microsoft no doubt would have developed SOAP anyway - DCOM is far more successful than CORBA is in the world - and Microsoft isn't threatended by either CORBA or Java RMI. I think Microsoft is just trying to give the "XML touch" to everything they do now in the same way they did with the internet.
That's microsoft's brilliantness, they can quickly adopt a technology or idea (usually they haven't developed it) and then start thinking of new interesting ways of using it - QUICKLY implementing these ideas.
Personally, I've read thru the somewhat brief SOAP spec, and it looks ok, but I like XMLRPC better, XMLRPC seems a bit simplistic at the moment tho. I think I'm going to write my own one for Java
Everyone here seems to treat Microsoft like it's one single entity. Well, you know, MS is run by many individuals, no one person usually makes a decision. And all this "when did microsoft suddenly go moral" etc etc is ridiculas. They can do what ever they want, and if you choose to hate EVERYTHING they do NO MATTER WHAT then what's the use of pointing it out ALL OF THE TIME unless you want to give some reasons beyond "blah blah Microsoft evil blah blah monopoly blah blah Linux will kill Microsoft".
It's silly to think that Microsoft would want you to be able to choose something besides NT to do your serving or something besides NT or 9x to do your desktop work. They haven't ever done this -- ever. How many MS SQL servers run on Solaris? How many Exchange servers run on Irix? How many BSD machines run IIS? Even things like Word and Excel tend to be ported to MacOS with as little effort as possible... and MacOS is the only other platform.
Microsoft has most of their business exactly because vendors are locked into a single, proprietary operating system. Compatable alternatives tend to not come along easily because their ``open'' APIs are incomplete or wrong -- just ask the WINE team -- or add ``features'' which break open protocols. People who get conned into using Exchange or IIS or MS SQL are forever tied into using Microsoft products.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
The "RFC" isn't a decent one - no right for derivative works? It's a request for comments - there /havce/to be derivative works.
All M-POST protocol headers to contain a mandatory link to microsoft.com?
Hardly outside microsoft's control.
This "RFC" should be shot down like a rabid bat.
/havce/to should read /have/ to
The purported reason for SOAP to be a "good thing" is that it's a way of layering a messaging model atop HTTP; of course, if this was truly their interest, honesty would require admission that it is possible to layer IIOP/GIOP atop HTTP, with ILU as the most obvious manifestation of an implementation of this.
The problem with SOAP is that it pushes you back towards defining messages, rather than protocol, as IDL provides.
My suspicion is that the real purpose is to get people to build messaging systems using XML. That is not, in and of itself, a bad thing; I'd much rather see people building asynchronous messaging systems where messages are represented in XML rather than in some less-well-known format. (And, plug, plug, use Isect as the transport mechanism...)
If you're wanting to build a reliable system using that "SOAPed" XML, Wouldn't it be better to transport that XML around using MSMQ with reliability guaranteed using a TP Monitor like MTS?
How much would you want to bet that reliability of the MSFT tools would be deliberately limited so as to encourage widespread use of MSMQ/MTS?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
>>1> Office 2000 saves html documents(save as web page or some such option) in a broken XML format, support for which is available only in IE 5.
Basically yes.
>>2> The page cannot be displayed at all w/ netscape.
Basically no. The files open just fine in Netscape. You can read all the content. You don't get all the fancy stuff though.
Everytime Microsoft is mentioned i see "FUD" used to the point of being rediculous, whining, and foul language. Slashdot used to be a great place to visit, pick up some gems, and occasionly put in my two cents when I had some additional info on the current topic, but most of what's on Slashdot now is crap, articles and comments.
Now, look at what MS is doing:
That has about as much chance of being "open" as the Windows API does: Sure, you may be able to read & write data (more or less, given how much of the extended HTTP standard you get), and you may be able to parse some of the tags, but MS can simple define new tags that only they understand.
I'll beleive in the promise of XML when good, well defined standards exists for defining tags, and standard tags are defined for standard things.
I'll beleive in SOAP when entropy runs backwards.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Just because Netscape can't display XML properly, isnt MS fault.
> Stats I have seen (but have no pointers to) say CORBA is twice as popular as DCOM.
Surely, all telco companies use CORBA-based distributed systems. AFAIK, the rare times a DCOM interface is offered in these circumnstaces is just a 'plus'.
And then, there is already a standard protocol (IOOP) and a standard encapsulation in http (IOOP on HTTP).
Perhaps it's my own paranoia, but I don't trust MS on this one. They see themselves as having something to gain. My guess is that it's one of two things:
1) They'll finally have a real innovation to their credit (actually they won't, but this looks more like one than anything they've had so far, so more people will be fooled).
2) Like everything else, they already have plans to Embrace and Extend their own protocol. In a way I guess this would be like the Windows hidden API's.
My guess is, it's the second. I suppose I could be simply paranoid as well, but I doubt it; Microsoft has given us no reason to trust it over the years, and plenty of very good reasons not to. So forgive me, Billy, if I take your words with not a grain of salt, but a planeload.
I'm not entirely happy with SOAP either.. but for different reasons. It seems just a smidgen more complex then XML-RPC but I don't see any significant advantage over the latter. XML-RPC works just fine for me and it's just as cross-platform.
LDO, now, is probably as good as dead wrt to being any kind of standard. It is probably more efficient and/or "better" than XML-RPC/SOAP in many ways.. but it just doesn't have the momentum or backing to make it fly. I think it's telling that the lead author of LDO is one of the most active participants on the XML-RPC lists.
Wasn't it just a year ago that we were delighted to read this quote from an internal Microsoft document:
"Generally, Microsoft wins by attacking the core weaknesses of OSS projects.
De-commoditize protocols & applications
OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
Sounds like this SOAP thing is just another Microsoft Trick; not a Treat...
The real question is, does MS really need another distributed object specification? Chances are, the microsoft implementation model will be built on top of COM/COM+. ...
I was employed for 2 months over my summer researching MS's COM so I could teach the company programmers what it was all about. Along the way, I attended a couple of talks by Inside COM+'s author (Mr Platt). From what I've seen, COM+ is a great specification - if 1) it wasn't changed every 2 months, and 2) if what is promised can be delivered.
Now, I'm not blind to the fact that the proposed SOAP is an Open standard, but, the point is that MS is going to be the first people to implement it. Because of this, I don't see many Open Source zealots rushing to implement it as well, seeing MS's track record on so-called Open standards. I'm always reminded of a quote from Inside COM - "At Microsoft, we feel we can always improve upon a standard" (this refers to the IDL, by the way).
Ah well. Enough of my miserable drivel. Now to actually go and look at the SOAP spec
.my 2p
Right: CORBA is already open!!
MS doesn't like CORBA since it's got a head of steam up, and they'd rather control anything like that. (Remember when Sun was pushing RMI instead of CORBA? They got their noodle whacked, and now are back to their indifferent CORBA support, but using RMI tools on top of it.)
I know a lot about IIOP, having done the first implementation and worked with OMG. That nasty multi-canonical stuff would be worth removing (it was an attempted compromise with the DCE/DCOM folk that fizzled). But otherwise it's not so bad as binary protols go -- easy enough to implement, but of course it's the infrastructure which most matters. SOAP would have a couple years to go before it could have the amount of infrastructure as CORBA.
If you want to do Open XML messaging over HTTP, you don't need (or want) SOAP to do it !!
There's a lot of potential with XML messaging on the web. Don't blow it by going retro with Yet Another RPC System. Adopt the model of document exchange to drive workflow. Going to the RPC world is really not forward motion.
This is one of the things I love about slashdot. Here you have already come up with the perfect guerrilla anti-marketing soundbite: anybody who advocates this technology is 'bending over to pick up the SOAP.' *snicker*
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
If MS were truely interested in better integration, they should just comp up with the MSORB, slap some visual tools with wizards on it and presto, folks that already use CORBA will not have to trash their existing infrastructure, and the world will not have to decide between an open standard which benefits from 10 years of development vs. some new drivel from MS which is close to, but not like whats out there. At least it has a catchy name
I agree. If M$ was really interested in opening up the playing field, they wouldn't have to invent SOAP; they would collaborate with other players and develop a technology with features common to all. Apparently, sharing/cooperation seems to be a problem.. unless they're sharing something with you that will give them control/the edge/more $.
How much you wanna bet that while SOAP may be used on any platform, it only really works well on MS platforms...
I'd be willing to bet you're right on this one. Either that, and you're stuck with a POC, or.. they'll charge you some nice $ for a "service pack".
Insert mind here.
Unlike DCOM, Corba was developed using input from many companies. Therefore it is simply better. MS wants us to belief that NT in combination with COM/DCOM is the solution to all your problems. Their marketing department has managed to spread this belief for a few years and many companies were fooled enough to start using it. In some cases it worked, in some it didn't. A few months ago I read somewhere that despite what MS wants us to believe, NT is mainly used in small scale companies to do simple stuff like email and databases for small departments. Don't misunderstand me this is not a small market but it is nowhere near the great stuff MS wants people to belief NT is capable of.
Windows 2000 has the smell of failure all around it. Endless delays, features nobody is asking for, features that already exist in other products. Really if you need directory thingies, you're problably using netware already. If you really need RPC, CORBA has been around for years. Most companies that actually need these features have already found them in non MS products.
MS's marketing department has clearly lost its touch with reality. The much hyped MS DNA has died within months of its introduction. Nobody bought it. This new thing (SOAP they call it LOL, I mean are they serious or what???) will burst also. XML and Java are both past the hype stage now, so people will no longer blindly buy anything that be associated with either of these terms.
Untill a year ago or so MS was always one step ahead of their competition. They killed netscape by creating explorer, they killed os/2 with succesfull marketing and windows 95. They killed wordperfect wit office. But they failed to kill Java, they saw no other choice but to embrace XML and didn't even bother to provide a propietary alternative. Their proprietary HTML extensions are going nowhere because most people want their pages to be readable in non MS browsers as well. EJB and CORBA is eating their lunch in the ecommerce department. Linux is eating their lunch in the small department server market (so far their only market for NT). SUN is giving away star office for free, this has to hurt in ms office revenues.
So are they going to die?? Of course not! Their shareholders will eventually stop them and get them back to what they were once good at: reinventing and marketing the wheel. MS shouldn't bother inventing new stuff nobody asked for because they are pretty lousy at it.
MS DNA and MS SOAP bubble only show they are getting nervous. Both things will go away (pretty soon) and will be replaced with other stuff. Windows 2000 will be the turning point. Shareholders will be pretty pissed of when they find out companies refuse to convert to w2k. This combined with the unavoidable DOJ case output will cause some serious change within MS.
Their traditional markets (operating systems/office ware) are eroding because there are increasingly succesful, free alternatives. In the end there won't be enough profit margin in creating operating systems and word processors This is something they noticed (hence their activity in the ecommerce and internet market), so they are trying to find new markets.
Jilles
So the proof... let's see those stats. I'm sick of ppl never posting their proof anymore and expecting me to take their word for it. I bet I could come up with proof showing both more successful than the other considering all those platforms are owned by companies :). MS is a company in a country where other companies compete. This is how it works. It is UM's job to look at the market & choose a path. This is what MS does & very succesfully I might add. This is also why Larry Ellison & Scott McNealy hope to one day "be like Bill," and they won't get there off the backs of free programmers. As a matter of fact nobody has yet, not even the currently traded "OSS" companies out there.
Now I'm really pissed! How can a news organization get away with misleading the un-technical world this way? Quote of two adjacent paragraphs in artical: "The benefit to Microsoft? The company is hoping that greater compatibility between Windows-based software and Java and Unix-based systems could lead to greater adoption of Windows 2000, the company's forthcoming operating system. SOAP, in effect, could be bad news for Sun, IBM, Oracle, and other Java backers since it could nullify the effectiveness of proprietary "lock-in" marketing strategies."
I was just recently at Internet World 1999 and my impression is that Microsoft is indeed threatened by Java/Corba. Most successful e-business/e-commerce solutions run on *nix using Java servlets, Corba and XML. Any vendor that is out to make money for himself (and most are) choose non-MS solutions. They are more reliable, extendible, and don't lock you into waiting for MS to provide you "additional" features or standards. So instead you wait for Sun & OMG. Whats the difference here? You're still waiting on somebody with a strangelhold with the standard. Give it up... you ppl just want somebody to monpolize their tech over MS so that your skills become _More_ relevant. So you can charge more to sit on your butt doing administration work & never touching the code yourself.
I agree. This discussion is silly, full of people that don't know real distributed code.
I am going back to java thanks.
It's kind of VERY hard to lock up SOAP since XML is human readable, it wouldn't take much of a chimp to be able to figure out what tag does what.
Cause not everyone in the world uses Java.
And Java solutions like RMI only work with Java objects - and the point of SOAP and XMLRPC is that it can work with everything. (DCOM _could_ work with everything - but it's harder to understand).
MS's marketing department has clearly lost its touch with reality.
You say this as if there were marketing departments that haven't...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It is common for implementors of internet enabled apps to need to pass messages back and forth. Since the only way past the corporate fireway is via the proxy, these apps have no choice but to overload http. Applix Anyware, among many, does this. SOAP is a standardization of this practice.
CORBA is too heavyweight for these applications. Worse, a corba-over-http bridge must be used to get out via the proxy.
Without SOAP implementors will keep writing custom implementations over and over again. Thus SOAP is a Good Thing because it lets us code this once and for all and move on.
Considering what happened with style sheets:
Microsoft appears to hold a patent on them, and this was only found out after W3.org adopted them as a internet standard. (W3.org statement)
If you excuse the pun, I have a sinking feeling about the possibility of a submarine patent on any "open" standard Microsoft suggest.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
I used DCOM for some client/server projects and it was a disaster. I learned more about registry editing than I ever wanted to know. The projects were rewritten to use vanilla TCP sockets and all of the problems vanished.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Hey, looks like some guy has already implemented your "SOAPY" in Java. A guy named Don Box says he "just published my first SOAP server in Java. It took me 195 lines including support for M-POST." Onto to SOAPY 2!
of course!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Its a simple concept called "ride with the outlaws, die with the outlaws". I dont care if they are "moral" individuals or not. They have chosen to support the evil empire's trashing of all things not their own. They can hang right along side their boss for all I care. I won't be sending flowers.
Ex Libris Veritas
...DCOM is far more successful than CORBA is in the world...
What is this obvious FUD piece doing marked up to 4? Sure, Slashdot shouldn't be one-sided, and even pieces like this deserve to be heard one in a while, just to see the interesting rebuttals, but 4?? Go figure.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
http://www.xmlrpc.com/discuss/msgReader$555
An eye-opener to say the least.
OK, remote procedure calls are one thing, but what if I want to pass new code to the other machine and then execute it there? None of the solutions mentioned so far (CORBA, DCOM, XML/RPC, SOAP, etc.) allow that in any way that is halfway practical. Why are all the C/C++ programmers still trying to solve yesterday's problems (RPC)? Anybody ever heard of Java? It's simple. This kind of thing is child's play in Java. If you don't like bare bones RMI, you can now use JINI, IBM's T-spaces, or write your own higher-level distributed system fairly easily. Things like object serialization (with XML or any other format) and RPC's are only a small part of what a distributed system can do. A whole new world opens up when code itself can be mobile. I haven't heard of anything in SOAP that is new or interesting as compared with what Java can do.
Microsoft have made a major gaffe. at least here in Australia. I have already got the copyright for SOAP! http://linux.org.au/projects/SOAP/ It is pretty ugly at the moment as i havent had time to do anything past initial concept. the page went up about 3 months ago, which should be in the logs somewhere, so i beat microsoft to the name. now if enough people can get on developing this, it would be a race against MS. "harnessing colective IQ". the address to subscribe to is majordomo@lists.linux.org.au with subscribe soap in the body. We must beat Microsoft. send food code and lawyers!
Here are two items summarized from the strategy section of Microsoft's Halloween Memo, "released" almost exactly 1 year ago:
* Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities.
* OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.
Microsoft's SOAPBOX... err sorry, SOUP, oops, noo I mean SOAP is exactly one of these. Are we surprised? Our response should be to ignore it, to lampoon it, to copy it in our own, truly open protocols, whatever, but not to adopt it.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Seriously, a lot of firms have clued in and already established CORBA as the standard. We're using it where I work, buying nice tools from IBM and Borland that all use CORBA.
And I think people are also aware that MSFT is trying to "embrace and extend" so that they control all the cash again.
Will in Seattle
This remind me of a review of Ofice 2000 in PC World (India). The review made the following relevant points:
1> Office 2000 saves html documents(save as web page or some such option) in a broken XML format, support for which is available only in IE 5.
2> The page cannot be displayed at all w/ netscape.
If M$ plans to use the same format for SOAP...
Funny... the pages display perfectly fine in Opera. It's Netscape's crappy CSS/XML/XSL/DHTML implementation.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I don't know what Lee is talking about when he says "[SOAP] does have some proprietary software code". SOAP is just a simple protocol that uses HTTP to transmit XML in a traditional RPC-like request/response pattern.
Lee's statement about folks grudginly using CORBA because it's tricky - I've heard exactly the opposite from friends using it. I wish folks would stop adding fuel to the object war fires.
M-POST isn't just an MS thing. Check out the spec at the W3C. H. Frystyk Nielsen (W3C) is the lead author. Both he and Paul Leach (of MS) were on the HTTP 1.1 spec as well.
It might actually make sense to use SOAP as a new transport mechanism with CORBA. Coders would get to keep their language bindings and their existing code base, and CORBA would get a more or less standard way to travel over HTTP (which is the whole point of the SOAP excercise. HTTP means that every firewall will understand it)
Agreed. SOAP is intentionally simple and as nonobtrusive as possible. I'd like to be able to make SOAP calls to objects whose runtime is CORBA, Java, COM, Perl, etc., from any CORBA, Java, COM, Perl, etc. runtime. SOAP is so much simpler than DCOM, IIOP, JRMI, etc., and it really just codifies the existing practice of transmitting XML over HTTP, which lots of folks are already doing. If folks are going to ignore it just because some MS guys are on the spec, then I think that's rather sad.
As for M-POST, if you check out the spec I linked to above, you'll see that it provides a sane way for firewalls to filter based on HTTP headers. SOAP uses M-POST to be firewall friendly (it's easy to block all SOAP requests, or just certain ones depending on its endpoints or the logical type of the request; i.e., the interface or method name).
The only reason they're doing this is that Corba 3 is going to use the JavaBeans model.
I don't see how SOAP has anything to do with component technology. It's just a simpler RPC wire protocol than the fiercely competing alternatives (IIOP, DCOM, RMI, etc.)
I don't know a lot about XML....
... but, if MS manages to use this to kill the other protocols (I know thats not their announced intention), how long would things remain open?
How long to MS build Lock in code into the SOAP spec?
Years and years of MS have just built up too much suspicion for me to be impressed by announcements like this.
See ya
Dan
Not that this is an unusual practice. Just that I find your claim that every project at MS is independant is a fallacy.
Here's an interesting thought (and perhaps not related to the post, just in general): Even if one corporation isn't managed by a single person making most of the decisions, is there a certain ``mentality'' that will steer everyone in a similar direction? Do general MS employees make decisions that would usually fit in with commands from higher-ups? Can we generalize this to other big companies? Is there an (Oracle|IBM|Sun|SGI) ``mindset''?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I'm not happy with SOAP.
- It's too much RPC and not enough distributed objects. They support the concept of session/transaction IDs, (although these seem nicely spoofable). But the persistence model is too weak and object refs are not explicit.
- They're INCORRECT when they say that no current distributed protocols can be deployed on the current web infrastructure. IIOP tunneling over HTTP is quite simple and exists now.
SOAP is weak, but it's kinda cute and easy to implement. But Casbah LDO is better. http://casbah.org/LDO/
Is this not very sly of M$?
Adopting the most popular (XML) and turning it on their chosen target (CORBA)?
So it is that good warriors take their stand on ground where they cannot lose, and do not overlook conditions that make an opponent prone to defeat. - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Can anyone confirm/deny the validity of this claim/FUD:
But most companies use CORBA-based technologies grudgingly: the technology is difficult to master and tricky to implement.
And just what is the nature of the M$ code?
Sun's Lee said while SOAP supports XML and HTTP, the protocol, as it stands, does have some proprietary software code because it was developed mostly by Microsoft.
by MS doublespeak. If they are truely interested in getting windows programs to integrate better in a diverse environment, they don't have to develop, from scratch, YET ANOTHER PROTOCOL!
They are admitting that DCOM is not the smashing success they anticipated. They also feel that CORBA is too complex. If MS were truely interested in better integration, they should just comp up with the MSORB, slap some visual tools with wizards on it and presto, folks that already use CORBA will not have to trash their existing infrastructure, and the world will not have to decide between an open standard which benefits from 10 years of development vs. some new drivel from MS which is close to, but not like whats out there. At least it has a catchy name.
In the end, they are not interested in helping the world with better tools, only in decomoditizing existing protocols. How much you wanna bet that while SOAP may be used on any platform, it only really works well on MS platforms...
True enough. Microsoft, as a corporation, is not to be trusted at all. If it weren't for Linux and the threat it represents, we'd see Windows2000 out for release *right now* and MS would continue its practice of letting its customers debug its code for them. Would *you* run mission-critical applications on a platform that generates at least one bad security hole a month? Gates and Ballmer expect you to. Would you drive a car that stopped for no apparent reason in the middle of the highway? Would you drive one that slowed down to the point where you had to turn it off and start it again to get performance from it?
Interestingly enough, a lot of the SOAP development happened outside of Microsoft. Don Box of Developmentor is listed as the lead author on the RFC. Dave Winer has been involved as well: XMLRPC is based on an early draft of the SOAP spec. The most comprehensive information currently available on SOAP can be found at http://www.develop.com/soap/. There's a Perl-based implementation that runs under both NT/IIS and Linux/Apache. This stuff is great -- check it out!
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
The C|Net article nails it when they say that Microsoft has spent a lot of effort making component programming relatively painless. Until UNIX and most of the programming tools embrace component technology, the natural result of standardizing on any technology that Microsoft proposes or can utilize will be that Windows coders will make very wide use of it while only really large UNIX projects will make use of it.
Also, don't confuse this with an alternative to DCOM. DCOM is multi-protocol capable. Microsoft's own explanation of SOAP gets this mixed up, claiming DCOM is a protocol! Eventually, like the multi-protocol capability of Windows, that fact will become irrelevant as TCP/IP and XML become the only protocols actually used. Subsequently, the lines may begin to blur and COM (DCOM is just COM that actually uses RPC) may come to rely on XML, use LDAP instead of OXID resolver, etc. Then, in a next-gen component technology that further blurs the lines between components and native objects in a particular language, you get a Java-oid C++ derivative that is totally dependent on SOAP and its friends. Neat. (And I predict the next shoe to fall will be an open Internet-oriented virtual machine.)
Don't, also, mistake SOAP as a replacement for CORBA. Generally, all distributed component technologies are built on RPC technologies. SOAP is an RPC technology that uses XML.
The SOAP approach does have some interesting aspects: If all the distributed component/object technology implementations could agree on SOAP as an underlying protocol, the need for the clumsy COM-to-CORBA gateway approach to interoperation would go away. Java servlets could easily talk to Windows controls. Microsoft is clearly betting they have the weight to dominate without any mechanism to impose a single higher-level component technology.
What this points out is that, for all the flaws in Windows, component technology does matter, and Windows makes good use of it. Can Linux, or any UNIX, adapt to this challenge? Or is a different approach needed? If I were Steve Jobs I would either adopt SOAP, or find an alternative ASAP, otherwise OS X will not impress among the crowd for whom component technology matters. Adopting SOAP could make the Objective C distributed object technology a player. Furthermore, SOAP opens a new way for Apple's OS X to distinguish itself from other UNIXs.
This will get more and more interesting. If you ask any Microsoft product or program manager "What are you going to do about..." any topic whatever, the answer is likely to be "XML."
I wrote parts of this stuff
A Technical Comparison of CORBA vs DCOM:
s /HTML/DCOMnCORBA/S.html
o rbacom.html
http://www.research.microsoft.com/~ymwang/paper
The paper concludes that they are roughly equivalent, but the diagrams indicate to me that the design of CORBA is much cleaner.
A survey of CORBA usage vs DCOM, etc. (from 1998):
http://www.cutter.com/consortium/architecture/c
SOAP huh? Sounds like another microsoft WASHout product. ;P
It's funny how quick MS is to want open standards when they are losing a battle. This reminds me of the whole instant message war. MS, like Sun, AOL, AT&T, and others, want to control the way things are done. From the language we code in (Sun's Java) to the environment we develop for (MS's Win32 API), to the way we communicate (Instant Messeges) to how are data is transfered (AT&T's Cable Lines). MS proved a long time ago how powerful and profitable this control can be and everyone knows it. This leads to the companies that do not have the control screaming for open standards while they quietly protect the proprietary monopolies that they do have.
-- soldack
Finally Microsoft is doing something right. The OMG does not have its act together - most CORBA implementations have varying degrees of conformance and varying degrees of intercompatability. I hope this Microsoft effort straightens this mess up.
Just try to get two or more vendors IIOP tunneling to work together. I tried and failed - everyoone has their own proprietary and incompatable scheme. Good luck.
WRT to who will be first to implement SOAP, I think that it was actually Keith Brown at DevelopMentor who produced a Perl implementation that runs on NT ( IIS/Apache ) and Linux ( Apache ). You can download the bits at http://www.develop.com/soap DevelopMentor also plan to provide COM and Java versions fairly shortly ( don't press me for a tighter time frame, I don't have one ). Regards Martin Gudgin DevelopMentor
I don't understand your title, but I agree that this SOAP stuff is first rate work.
And where is the part where objects come in?
CORBA and DCOM are far too complex and require far too much time to develop distributed apps. This SOAP deal sounds like a good idea.
The M-POST verb is defined using the HTTP 1.1 extension framework. This is a reasonable thing to do. Some corporations will not like the idea of uncontrolled RPC calls passing through their firewall. The special verb will help them get control of the situation and generally fell better about SOAP.
That is what DTDs are for.
I think you had better read a little about XML before you start making comments like that.
The whole idea of XML is that it is a self describing file format. Sure, you might make mistakes like creating a new DTD before you check for an existing one, but that is your fault for begin an idiot, not the format.
This is exactly the same as the Glade guys defineing their own DTD for a GTK user interface.
If you really think that MS controls XML, i would advise you to get out a bit. Sure, Linux is behind the times a bit in XML support, but companies like IBM and Oracle are doing significant work in XML, now.
Didn't you read that interview with Tim O'Riely earlier this week?
You might want to go and have a look at IBM's XML workshop
As for M-POST, it is a good thing. It allows increased HTTP capabilties through firewalls.
In this case, Microsoft has done a good job. You can be anti-MS all you want, but don't try posting FUD - make sure your facts are straight.
Thanks for spanking the person who doesn't know sh*t about XML and probably does not even know what a DTD is.
You are very right that Microsoft does not control XML. But it is extremely irksome that XML (in its SGML incarnation) has been around and been used for over ten years now, and only when MS jumps on the bandwagon does the media and the world stand up and take notice (and that same media often proceeds to mis-attribute XML as MS's invention, AS IF!! poor Charles Goldfarb and the people who slaved over ISO 8879 and all the rest of us have the right to be pissed about this).
What is the big deal? SOAP is a simple and fairly intuitive way to do object messaging and data exchange across the WEB. It is perfectly useable with Java, CORBA, Python, COM or whatever else ultimately handles execution of the appropriate method on the specified object. It will not replace any of these. It is only a communication protocol. It says nothing about the many services necessary to have a true distributed object environment. Now that the proposal is out there is no way for MS to control who makes use of the basic idea.
Also, CORBA always has been non-proprietary and OS independent.
As much as I hate to say it: Exactly
But SGML was always too complex to take off in common acceptance, and the push XML needed was (I believe) more people running into the annoying limitations of HTML, and thinking wouldn't it bw nice....
The point is XML is a good thing, and yes, it is a bit of a bandwagon, but it is a good bandwagon to be on.
I'm not advocating that (as I have seen previously) Linux should get rid of the .rc files and go to a XML based configuration format, but I would like to see more tools on Unix that allow easy production of useful data in XML formats.
Until then, and we blame the media for thinking XML is a Microsoft show? I can't. MS has done an excellent job of getting at least some XML support into their major app. (IE5 & "Data Island" or whatever they are called - need I say more?)
Stuff like this should be a wake up call to the OSS community, not to moan, but to Show me the code.
like a good idea. That is, if M$ can actually let it be an open protocol and not try to dominate it with anything proprietary. This does sort of remind me of when IE4 came out a while back. They tried to make all interfaces HTML (at least their own brand of HTML) which would have worked if it hand't needed a Pentium IV 1200mhz processor to run correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong but they want to make new components for programs out of XML so they basically make their OS and programs XML readers and interpreters that just talk to each other over HTTP? That to me sounds like a reworked idea of Active X controls, which had they been really open and used a public API might have been cool. I'll withhold judgement until I see an actual product that uses it.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
First: the title of this /. item is misleading:
CORBA is already open.
I've written my own CORBA implementation in perl using only the freely available documentation from the OMG (see COPE).
Second: about XML and remote procedure/method calls.
From the MS SOAP specification it looks like the scope of SOAP is far more limited than that of CORBA. The same can be said of Dave Winer's XML RPC (I forgot the exact name).
The difference is that the XML-based specifications only tell you how to make a method call. What they don't tell you are things like
CORBA uses IDL to write the contracts. Or you can use an Interface Repository.
The embrace-and-extend angle.
I noticed that MS felt the need to implement a new HTTP method called M-POST. So even though from a distance everything looks standard (XML, HTTP), a closer look reveals thta for best results people should use web servers, client libraries, proxy-servers and firewalls that are all taught to properly handle M-POST.
Conclusion
It might actually make sense to use SOAP as a new transport mechanism with CORBA. Coders would get to keep their language bindings and their existing code base, and CORBA would get a more or less standard way to travel over HTTP (which is the whole point of the SOAP excercise. HTTP means that every firewall will understand it)
I've never seen this and I don't think that's what we're seeing now. They have attempted to subvert every truly non-proprietary standard that threatened them. It's to be expected because to do otherwise would not be in their best interest. That's fine, no problem.
But Microsoft's best interests and mine are two different things.
Bill Gates book, or at least one of the latest ones, has a whole section of analogies comparing computers to cars. Clearly he hasn't considered what kind of Fatal Exception a fatal exception on the freeway would be! I dont think I would want a car that has to be restarted suddenly all the time (hmm..maybe he was thinking of my old Crown Vic when he said that...it was sort of like Windows)
Thats right, the same book, I think, where he said 'The most obvious mathematical breakthrough would be the development of away to factor large prime numbers'. Factor...prime numbers. But thats off topic.
Juln
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-853508.htm
BLAMMO shaken not stirred
Yikes! Is it me? I read the bit about an addition to HTTP (thinking "hey hey HEY WHOA run that by me again please?"), and I was wondering exactly how incompatible this would be with existing Web software (does this relate to the client at all? All those old netscapes out there, made useless?) and then it hit me...
Isn't the gag that you're supposed to not drop the soap in the showers because of what would happen to you when you bend over to "pick up the SOAP"?
Is that an accident or are these guys really that cynical? Are they actually considering 'secondary' embrace and extend effects to existing stuff like HTTP to be primary, is the primary agenda here to, you know? "Wups! Looks like it might be a good idea for you to PICK UP THE SOAP!" *plook*
Certainly that's what they are trying to do to the government and DoJ funding, but are they really thinking like this at all levels, so much that it colors their product names and makes anal rape their personal metaphor for the embrace and extend planning? Why are they not being more careful about this potential public relations disaster?
DCOM is far more successful than CORBA is in the world
Stats I have seen (but have no pointers to) say CORBA is twice as popular as DCOM.
Microsoft isn't threatended by either CORBA or Java RMI
Regardless of what you profess to believe, M$ acts as if threatened by everything they don't own. That's all that counts. Your perceptions of what threatens them is insignificant.
--
Infuriate left and right
It's important to be objective about both Linux and Windows 2000. I think Windows 2000 on the workstation will take off pretty fast, as it has key features like USB support, better power management, very easy install/setup, etc - so many NT4 users will upgrade to it within 6-12 months of release.
Windows 2000 on the server is another story - Active Directory is unlikely to stabilise for quite some time since it is brand new. Using Win2000 without AD doesn't bring that many advantages, though there are some (e.g. IPSEC).
I use Linux as my main home OS and am experimenting with Windows 2000 - the RC2 version installed pretty well and was working well, up until I tried installing Active Directory, when the entire machine locked up so hard that the mouse pointer was frozen (this happened twice).
Linux has many strengths, but I really don't think Windows 2000 is going to fail - if Linux is going to succeed in business, it's best to acknowledge the strengths of Windows 2000 as well as the weaknesses.
I mean, come off it. If M$ really cared about "open standards" should they be following them, rather then proposing new ones? IIOP, CORBA and so on are here now and are already being used and deployed. Shouldn't M$ join the fun, or should we throw all the existing CORBA effort out the window (no pun intented) on their say so? Why of course! And because those unix boxes gave us so much growing pains, why not try deploying the new tech on NT, say. Of course, the growing pains will be just as painful (or more), but by then, M$ will have your money. Personnaly, I find this highly insulting. -Philip
Here are my quips:
What is meant by "programming model"? Do you mean programming language? That would be feasible; CORBA already does this. But if you mean "programming model" in the more general sense, i.e. architecture, such as remote invocation, remote objects, publish and subscribe, etc. (in other words, the part that really matters), then this statement is pure fantasy.
This sentence contradicts itself. How are Microsoft plans to establish their own invention as a standard not an attempt to steer the software development business? That is exactly what they are doing.
First, using SOAP is choosing a model; the SOAP model. Second, SOAP itself might not be best suited to solving the problem at hand.
Gee I wonder why. Most companies have to survive in a market where multiple competing standards exist and must be interfaced with. No reasonable engineer wants to use multiple mechanisms that do the same thing. SOAP will just be added to the mix, not eliminate it.
This already exists; it's called CORBA.
This is the most misinformed statement of all. CORBA is a specification from a standards body. It specifies an architecture, not an implementation. CORBA specifies no communications protocol other than IOP (interoperability protocols such as GIOP, IIOP, etc.). CORBA runs over whatever protocols the ORB implementers choose, in fact most use RPC as a foundation. There is absolutely nothing proprietary about CORBA.
Straight from the mouth of marketing. XML is a grammar. How does is magically make all programming "models" compatible? It's like saying if we always communicate using English, systems will magically be interoperable. For example, you have a credit-card billing system and I am going to send you the account information for a purchase that I want you to charge. Ready? Here comes the data in our compatible English interface..."The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy sleeping dog". Got it? Now you can just charge that account, right?
Right, so Microsoft can be the sole definer of SOAP. Isn't this the definition of proprietary?
Wait a minute? I thought that XML magically made all business systems compatible?!?
Then you (Smith) must be deaf. How about visiting IBM's web site, or Sun's, or any of the other thousands. You just might find something called CORBA.
Arc
You complain about assertions without proof. You seem to think just saying "No taint so" is good enough. Come on, show your stats, the world awaits...
--
Infuriate left and right
if this is the metaphoric dropping of the SOAP, who's the silly bastard that's gonna pick it up??
This remind me of a review of Ofice 2000 in PC World (India). The review made the following relevant points:
1> Office 2000 saves html documents(save as web page or some such option) in a broken XML format, support for which is available only in IE 5.
2> The page cannot be displayed at all w/ netscape.
If M$ plans to use the same format for SOAP...
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
That's why it's being submitted as an RFC, so that it will be a standard outside of Microsoft's control. Compare and contrast with Sun, who won't submit Java to any standards body that they don't control.