This section provides a brief background on many of the important consortia and standards organizations working on specifications related to Web Services. At one time, software standards needed to be approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The last decade or so, however, has seen the rise in importance of industry consortia developing standard specifications. The reasons for this vary, but industry consortia now play an important role in the creation of standards.
It may seem that with all the consortia and traditional standards bodies, the specification setting may become a competitive process. That does happen, but more often, you find organizations working together. Some examples include:
- UDDI.org developed the initial release of Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) and then turned it over to Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
- Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP) from The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has a SOAP mapping. SOAP is from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
- The adoption of W3C's SOAP in the electronic business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) transport specification. RosettaNet also announced its adoption of the ebXML transport.
- ebXML is sponsored by United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS. OASIS has adopted specifications that resulted from this sponsorship.
- Microsoft developed the C# object-programming language and submitted it to ECMA. C# is now an ECMA standard.
- ContentGuard developed the eXtensible rights Markup Language (XrML) and contributed it as the base of a rights language in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
Organizations described on this site are listed below. You can also navigate among the organizations by using the menu tree at the bottom of each page.
- Consortia
- Cross-industry consortia
- Business Process Modeling Initiative (BPMI.org)
- Data Center Markup Language (DCML) Interest Group
- Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
- electronic business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML)
- Information Technology Research and Standardization Center (INSTAC)
- Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
- Java Community Process (JCP)
- Liberty Alliance Project
- Object Management Group (OMG)
- Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGi)
- Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
- The Open Group
- Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
- RosettaNet
- Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)
- Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- www.udef.com
- XBRL International
- XML/EDI Group
- Industry consortia
- ACORD
- AdsML Consortium
- Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS)
- Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC)
- FIX Protocol Limited (FPL)
- HR-XML Consortium
- IDEAlliance
- Interactive Financial eXchange Forum (IFX Forum)
- International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC)
- International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA)
- Meat & Poultry Data Standards Organization (mpXML)
- Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO)
- National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
- Open Financial Exchange (OFX) Consortium
- The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA)
- Parlay Group
- Petroleum Industry Data Exchange (PIDX)
- PSLX Consortium
- Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS)
- Research Information eXchange Markup Language (RIXML).org
- Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
- SWIFT
- Cross-industry consortia
- Individual contributing organizations
- Standards organizations
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