The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published three new standards to help vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems
improve Web services performance for customers.
The standards body on Tuesday issued XML-binary Optimized Packaging, SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism and
Resource Representation SOAP Header Block to help developers package and send binary data in a SOAP 1.2 message.
The new schemas aim to solve a much-maligned problem in sharing and employing data between different flavors of Web services
software. This includes simple tasks such as sending a video clip from a handheld computer to a desktop and major jobs such
as exchanging large documents among several collaborators.
A major part of the problem is that Web services
sufficient language for simple reading tasks. But when a programmer encodes binary data as XML, it yields a large, or “fat”
file that sops up bandwidth and slows down applications.
When users try to run this software on computing devices, performance is so slow that it often renders tasks unmanageable.
The new standards should ease some pains, said Yves Lafon, team contact for the group tasked with optimizing XML for Web
services, the XML Protocol Working Group.
Lafon told internetnews.com the XML-binary Optimized Packaging (XOP) and the Message Transmission Optimization
Mechanism (MTOM) provide a more efficient way to transmit a SOAP message. XOP includes binary data along with a single specification for optimizing XML that employed XOP and MTOM. Header Block (RRSHB) parcel to send all the data needed to process the message — even when the data would not be quickly available due to slow bandwidth or lack of file access. the W3C XML Binary Characterization Working Group is looking at different ways to process binary data in XML. will ramp up the amount of XML they employ in their networks, expanding from 15 percent today to almost 50 percent by 2008. which XML is being used for new applications that are outside the bounds originally conceived of for the language. MTOM and RRSHB, Schmelzer told internetnews.com, will boost efficiency by trimming the traffic that SOAP messages can create. standards in a statement. The three companies are pacing the industry both in Web services products and standards but have not found an answer to the XML optimization issue.
with and XML document in a package. MTOM uses XOP to let SOAP
This, Lafon said, makes Web services faster and more usable. But the process was hardly easy. Lafon said his group started
Realizing that one spec was not enough to encode binary data in XML, the group developed the Resource Representation SOAP
However, Lafon warned that XOP is not a comprehensive resolution for the problem of putting binary data in XML, noting that
Zapthink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said the idea of making XML more efficient is becoming more popular, noting that businesses
Schmelzer said the fact that XOP aims to allow XML to support large binary media types is an indication of the prevalence in
IBM , Microsoft
and BEA
expressed support for the new Web services
The progress should also benefit vendors such as DataPower, Tarari and Rogue Wave, which are working to boost the performance of XML and Web services.