“UserLand Software, Ariba, Commerce One, Compaq Computer,
Developmentor, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, IONA Technologies, Lotus
Development Corporation, Microsoft, SAP AG today jointly proposed
to the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) a new protocol called the
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) that will allow revolutionary
new applications connecting graphic user interface desktop
applications to powerful Internet servers using the standards of
the Internet, HTTP and XML.”
“SOAP has been a two-year project, starting as a
collaboration between UserLand, Microsoft and Developmentor, in
April 1998, and now has the potential of being very widely deployed
and supported in virtually every programming and scripting
environment on every operating system, commercial and open source,
including Windows, Macintosh and Linux,” said Dave Winer, CEO
of UserLand, one of the authors of SOAP 1.1. “SOAP truly is the
next level of the World Wide Web.”
“The need to integrate with other businesses is changing how
companies build software,” said Tod Nielsen, Vice President
Developer Division at Microsoft. “SOAP, a core technology in Web
Services, represents a major shift in how Microsoft is addressing
this change. By working together with partners such as UserLand to
create open specifications that anyone can implement, Microsoft
expects to offer customers greater choice and innovation than ever
before.”