1. Lecture 6A: Standards and Interoperability IT202 Internet Applications Based on notes developed by Morgan Benton

2. For Today Standards What are standards? Why are they important? How are they developed? Interoperability What does it mean to be interoperable? What are common platforms for interop?

3. What are standards? A standard is a common way of solving a problem in the world Some examples: The metric system English and other natural languages HTTP, FTP and other internet protocols SQL, HTML, C++, and other programming and markup languages Source: Benton, M. (2002) “Standards 101: A tutorial for IT Managers” Journal of the Standards Engineering Society, Jan/Feb 2002.

4. Why are standards important? Standards: Facilitate progress of the human technological infrastructure Promote efficiency (i.e. reduce waste) Facilitate the global spread of technology Are fundamental to interoperability

5. How are standards developed? Two types of standards: de facto—default standards; earned through market share, e.g. Microsoft Windows OS de jure—mandated by law, e.g. FDA standards By whom are standards developed? National/International standards development organizations, e.g. ISO, ANSI Individual companies Industry consortia, e.g. W3C, WECA Ad-hoc volunteer groups, e.g. IETF

6. Standards Development Organizations (SDO) Emphasis is on fairness and includes: Broadly inclusive participation structures Open discussion and debate of all issues Due process (i.e. formal complaint/appeal processes) Democratic voting procedures Emphasis on consensus as opposed to majority rule

7. SDO Pros and Cons Pros Legitimacy Stability Support Cons Slow Redundant Overly consensus-based Voting influence not commensurate with economic investment in the process Non-stakeholder participation drags out process Too expensive Processes out of date Writers inexperienced Inefficient prioritization of issues

8. Consortium Standards Consortia are made up of representatives from companies Members pay a fee (usually annual) to join Membership may be open or closed Standards-setting procedures are decided by the members of the consortium Two types (Updegrove 1995): Strategic Consortia Standards-setting consortia

9. Benefits of Consortia stronger control over the resulting specifications, meaning that possibly more favorable implementations result non-stakeholders are not allowed to vote or participate focus is on the results--i.e. producing a standard within a timeframe reasonable by market standards--rather than on process possible ownership of part or all of the intellectual property rights (IPR) of a given standard strategic advantage over competitors who are not members of the consortium or who are members of a rival consortium the chance to be first to market with products based on the new standard

10. Problems with consortia No inherent protection for consumers or un- represented stakeholder groups No controls over the process Oddly the actual people who develop standards for either SDO’s or industry consortia are the exact same people!

11. Individual Companies Pros Tightly integrated solutions Faster Cons Not even the semblance of democracy Can be expensive Lack of widespread acceptance or built-in set of users

12. Ad-hoc Volunteer Groups Notably this is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which: Has no members, no dues, no formal organization Meets 3 times a year Is made up entirely of volunteers who form task groups that disband once a solution has been produced

13. IETF Pros and Cons Pros "no kings, no votes, rough consensus, running code, and dual competing implementations" (Cargill 1997, pt1) Fast, cheap, practical, widespread acceptance, legitimacy, open Cons ?

14. W3C Technically an industry consortium with over 500 members At heart it works like an SDO Explicitly does NOT call its specifications standards, but refers to them as “recommendations” I like to call them the sheep in wolf’s clothing

15. So what? Why should we care about standards and where they come from?

16. Interoperability Interoperability is a term that refers to the degree to which different systems are able to exchange or share data, information, and other resources Standards are the key to interoperability

17. Why Interop? It is relatively clear that interoperability leads to improved efficiency In other words, we, as a species, get more work done, and do that work better, when we work together Interop allows us to work together

18. How do we achieve interop? For networked applications there are several ways: EDI Java (theoretically) COM, CORBA XML-RPC, SOAP

19. How it came about… In the 80’s and 90’s many companies created proprietary platforms with vertical integration so that switching costs for clients would prevent them from migrating to a competitor’s products Over time the desire for smooth integration is winning and there is less dependence now on individual platforms

20. The model for XML SOAP Server Running Web Application Server Running Web Service authenticate(username, password) method on host computer Client Computer Using Web Browser HTTP Request HTTP Response SOAP message Invoking remote Method contained In HTTP Request SOAP message Returning results Of method call In HTTP Response

21. What’s special about SOAP? Would the following work? With SOAP, it works /* myCppFile.cpp */ #include myVBFile.vb Void main () { myVBmethod(); … }

22. Summary At some level the history of human civilization has been all about how we have learned to cooperate to make our world a more comfortable place to live Never has that effort been more explicit than in the work we’re doing in interoperability of modern computer platforms, but it’s a tough job

23. For Next Time Implementing a web service using XML and SOAP