Microsoft Continues to Drive Home Standards
Two Microsoft Corp.-driven Internet standards accomplished some important steps at the end of 1999. The BizTalk Framework Document Specification 1.0 was approved by the BizTalk Steering Committee and is now available at the <A HREF="http://www.biztalk.org/">BizTalk.org</A> Web site. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.0 was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF, <A HREF="http://www.ietf.org/">www.ietf.org</A>) for review.</P><P>Microsoft's (<A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/">www.microsoft.com</A>) BizTalk Framework provides specifications for the design and development of solutions for communicating between applications and organizations by using Internet technologies such as XML, XML schema, and MIME. Microsoft had submitted the specification in September.</P><P>Anyone can access the specifications and use them to implement solutions using the BizTalk Framework. Microsoft hopes corporate and independent software developers will immediately begin developmen