Are Sector-Specific XML Standards Making Any Progress?

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This is very anecdotal evidence, but when I see that the people in charge of the Amazon Web Services don't know about an XML standard sponsored by the National Retail Federation and launched two years ago, I'm curious about how much traction these (wanna-be) industry standards actually get. Are bodies like OASIS doing anything actually used in production by anyone, or is this just paper shuffling?

Since the big public web services are quite crude, either the interesting action is happening behind closed doors, or things are moving at a sluggish space. I just noted how web services such as AWS don't use notification, but when I see that the OASIS technical committee on that very topic has an empty FAQ, I wonder about what's really happening in that space. Lower layers are standardized, but I guess there's still a lot of wheel re-invention above. Notification, for one, seems like pretty basic plumbing to me. The maturity cycle for any big computing paradigm is a decade (remember how client server was exciting a decade ago, but how most apps really sucked), and from where I sit web services are just halfway there. More educated readers are welcome to chime in.

Category(s): web services ·

Comments

Olivier,
Last year, I completed my thesis (at university) about the adoption of industry specific XML standards. One of my major findings was that there is an insane amount of industry specific standards. Which lead to the fact that those are not standards.
The biggest problem with these 'standards' is that there isn't a body (with enough power) to promote standards. Large companies either create their own standard or modify an existing standard in such a way that it becomes a different standard.

I am currently trying to write a new paper on this subject (for internal purposes at my work). If you have additional information on this subject, or know of sites where I can find lists of industry specific XML standards, their adoption rate, etc. I would be very interested.

In case you are interested, you can mail me at my work adress:
tvankerkom@kpmg.com

Thanks,

Tom Vankerkom

Posted by Tom Vankerkom on April 01, 2005 - 01:54 PM #

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