[rit]

I think it is fair to say that Microsoft has never been the bearer of gifts when it comes to interoperability with anything other than Microsoft products. They do what their customers request, but ensure a tie-in to the MS product line, which is fair since they are a business concern.

Without getting to technical, it is interesting to note that a MS rep has stated Microsoft will not provide support for HTTP bindings as described in the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) specification. Instead, they will only support SOAP which provides for Remote Procedure Call.

For non-tech people, WSDL is a industry standard specification released by the self appointed World Wide Web consortium (w3c). Vendors follow W3C recommendations to ensure interoperability. However, vendors like Microsoft have extended the standards and broken interoperability in many cases.

[StJacques]

"I think it is fair to say that Microsoft has never been the bearer of gifts when it comes to interoperability with anything other than Microsoft products. They do what their customers request, but ensure a tie-in to the MS product line, which is fair since they are a business concern. . . ."

I contest this point outright. Supporting Document-Style Web Services before the W3C, which Microsoft has consistently done, will enhance the software development industry more than the operating system suppliers. Microsoft does not have a hand in the thousands of software development shops that will reap the benefits. And those types of applications can be run without ever using a Microsoft product.

You can make a case that Universal Data Access benefits Microsoft since it enhances the commercial viability of their operating systems, whether for servers or PCs, since it makes them a more viable development platform choice for software developers when designing applications. That must be admitted. But the range of choices is not limited to Microsoft alone. What IBM and others want to do is to restrict data consumer options to software that must be run on individual machines, which is what really raises the costs for business. That is why Microsoft is more economically democratic. The machine won't matter if Universal Data Access becomes the standard and businesses won't have to pay the costs of "machine access capability" as IBM and others want them to do.