Appendix A.  Web Service Standardization

This appendix contains a listing of many of the better known standardization efforts (by category) currently being pursued that relate to web services in some way. A brief description is offered, but complete information is available through the information links provided.

Packaging Protocols

SOAP/XML Protocol

Originally an acronym for the "Simple Object Access Protocol," now the basis for the W3C XML Protocol effort.

Version 1.1 of the specification is available at http://www.w3.org/tr/soap. The Version 1.2 working draft is available at http://www.w3.org/tr/soap12.

More information about SOAP and the W3C XML Protocol effort can be found by visiting the W3C XML Protocol working group home page at http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/.

XML-RPC

The original manifestation of SOAP invented by Dave Winer of Userland software. This simple, popular protocol—while not officially a standard—has a significant, vocal user base in the open source community. Information is available at http://www.xmlrpc.org/.

Jabber

Jabber is both a transport protocol and a simple packaging protocol that can be used in asynchronous peer-to-peer style web services. It too is not an official standard but is building a significant user and developer base. Information can be found by visiting the Jabber home page at http://www.jabber.org.

DIME

The Direct Internet Message Encapsulation (DIME) protocol is "a lightweight, binary encapsulation format that can be used to encapsulate multiple ...

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