Summary: Out of the gate, XML was a data format to end all data formats. It was very meta – had a strong ‘data-about-data’ aspect that would allow one program to tell another program how to deal with data. But XML as a base for a standard document format has been the hot interoperability news item lately, as Microsoft went before ISO to standardize Office Open XML. Clearly, whether any and all flavors of XML can be ‘standards’ for interoperability is an underlying matter of contention. Some are more equal.

By Jack Vaughan

As I remember the early days of XML, they were very much about interoperability. XML was a data format to end all data formats. What format isn’t? But this one was different. It was very meta – had a strong ‘data-about-data’ aspect that would allow one program to tell another program how to deal with data. If things changed, as things tend to do, meta data could explain that a change was made or that the altered format could be discerned by calling a describer somewhere.
 
As Mr. Rogers used to intone: “Can you say ‘Lingua Franca?’”
 
The controversy over Microsoft’s efforts to get ISO acceptance of Office Open XML show that even linguas franca can get garbled, or at least that there are a few ways to pronounce ‘potatoes.’ It appears that standardizing document formats is a bit tougher than standardizing Web services.
 
Microsoft seemed to like XML right off the bat. But the company had a track record. So when Microsoft [with some outside help] came up with SOAP, it was nice, but not big news. There was every chance that the XML used by SOAP would become MSXML after a few churns through the Redmond product cycle. When IBM embraced SOAP, it became a different story; and when IBM, Microsoft and others started creating a full collection of Web services standards, well Web services were off to the races.
 
Finally we had a slew of interoperability standards. Microsoft and IBM could tell customers interoperability was available via Web services. How much effort that involved and what type of tradeoffs Web services required remained to be seen. It is probably fair to say that transactions, where volume and speed are paramount, have not yet been an area in which Web services could shine completely, but XMLism has permeated computerism.
 
There things did sit. For a time vendors were happy. They agreed on things that didn’t matter to them desperately, and duke it out where they really, really cared.
 
A lot of the discussion on the Interop Blog is about Web services and ways of interoperating without using Web services. Office Open XML has not been a topic of attention; we are more about transactions, by and large, thank you very much. But Office Open XML has surely been a newsworthy interop topic this week. After long dormancy, it seems document formats are an area where a lot of vendors and people suddenly care again.

The news: Microsoft got some negative feedback from ISO on its proposition that Open Office XML should be an ISO standard.  It lost a vote that would have ‘fast-tracked’ Office Open XML. It also got numerous suggestions on how it could try and fix its standard’s application. This followed a long off-again-on-again Office Open XML quest to be accepted by the state of Massachusetts.

Being an ISO standard would help MS when it is selling to large customers like he government of China and or the IT department at Walmart. Microsoft will keep trying to get ISO standardization, but there is a lot of wariness in regards to approving a document standard that was created and is maintained, in effect by a single vendor. Apple is a significant player that has seen some merit in Office Open XML, but Steve Jobs’ mind could change on this. IBM and Sun, suddenly interested in word processing standards, have lobbied against Microsoft. Microsoft has lobbied against them. It just seems like an XML standard that is not going to get the same treatment as SOAP.

As with  some other standards undertakings, Microsoft is able to say: ‘We will always have ECMA.’  But document format just don’t fly like transactional services through standards processes these days.

The political aspects of this story are familiar. Of course there are technical issues too. The Microsoft Office suite has some miles on it,  Office Open XML is built to work with it, and it is more complex by far than the alternative Open Document Format. Wouldn’t an intermediary format between OOXML and ODF make sense? For that, the parties would have to sit down and talk, as they did with Web services.

The Web blog posts on this topic are so vast, I don’t really which single off-link to present. That is a canned Google Blog search for your use. 

Do you have any cogent post you’d point to? Use our comment mechanism. And thanks for reading TheServerSide Interoperability Blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 3:39 pm and is filed under XML/Web services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.