New web standard agreed

A MAJOR software group which includes all the big names has agreed on a new standard intended to promote interoperability between Web applications.

It will serve as a basic building block for Web applications to talk to one another, provide a framework for applications to exchange and decipher messages, and generally chat to one another

The WS-Addressing specification was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium this week. The WWW consortium will form a working group to look at the standard.

WS-Addressing was developed and backed by a group of software manusfacturers whose members include Microsoft, Sun, IBM, BEA and SAP.

A lack of interoperability has is seen as one of the reasons why Web services never really took off.

Sun came in late to the WP-Addressing standard and when it saw that there was industry consensus building, it decided to drop its own addressing ideas. µ