RSSSun Attacks Microsoft XML Strategy Shift
By David Worthington | Published March 24, 2003, 8:26 PM
Sun Microsystems fired its first salvo at Microsoft's upcoming Office 2003 by calling into question the aim of Redmond's overall XML strategy, and touting StarOffice 6.1 as a low cost alternative for cost conscious enterprises.
During a telephone interview, Sun's Iyer Venkatefen, product manager for StarOffice, told BetaNews that Microsoft was not abiding by the OASIS standards. With more than 600 members in 100 countries, OASIS, or Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is a global consortium that establishes standards to ensure interoperability.
While Microsoft embraced openness and follows base-level XML standards, it is taking a different approach towards defining office formats by letting developers decide what schema, or data structure, suits them best. For instance, a document type dubbed XBRL is intended for use in business reporting and would be an industry wide standard written with XSD.
XSD, often referred to as a schema, is an XML-based W3C standard language for describing the rules that the structure and the contents of a particular type of XML document are required to follow.
Competitors such as Sun and Corel are working with an OASIS technical committee to arrive at a common consensus for these office document schemas. Microsoft is accepting any schema so long as it is XSD compliant, allowing customers to tailor their own.
In a press release issued by Redmond last November, Microsoft XML architect Jean Paoli said, "Having these standard schemas in place allow different organizations to easily share information, even if they're using completely different technologies in their respective systems, and creates some great communication and business efficiencies." Paoli cited XBRL as one such industry specific standard.
Nevertheless, Microsoft has decided not to promote such standardized schemas. A company spokesperson told BetaNews that customers have the freedom to use any W3C compliant schema that is XSD based. OASIS was not involved with Microsoft's decisions in supporting XML, the company said.
Office 2003 will instead support a slew of standardized and proprietary schemas. Microsoft claims that Sun is trying to standardize under a single XML file format, and went on to say that XML implementation in Office was never meant to create a standard format, but a method to freely share information regardless of the platform.
Indeed, XML is not the default data format for Office 2003 applications, just an option.
Adding fuel to the fire, Microsoft recently quit the W3C Web services standards body, which has prompted some naysayers to call into questions its commitment to standardization. Microsoft refutes such claims and says its XML technologies are fully compliant.
When asked for comment on Microsoft's shift in direction, Jonathan Eunice, industry analyst at Illuminata remarked, "Another way of putting this is: Get the hell out of our back yard!"
Eunice added, "Microsoft would be quite happy for the de facto standardization of Office to prevail. And instead of there being an open standard for office documents, for the industry to simply coalesce around whatever XML definitions that Microsoft puts out in Office 2003."
Microsoft is not listed as an industry partner for the OASIS XML standards initiative, specifically for office productivity. Program Manager for Corel XMetaL, John Turnbull, acknowledged "Microsoft is not currently participating in the working group."
The group over at Sun are begining to sound like a group of pathetic crybabies.
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|One...Sun's only claim is that MS is not conforming to the standards set forth by OASIS.
Two...MS does add their own little twists to every thing that they do and claims it's standard. Look at MS DHTML.
Three...What company doesn't want to create the standards. Easier to sell more of your own products. Has MS said what compliant method for XML they are using?
Four...MS can't even decide on what format they really want documents saved for each new release of Office.
Five...Who cares what Sun or Microsoft want as standard. What is it that we really need in our businesses for standards? Run the software you want and that makes your company productive. If that's Sun then fine. If that's Microsoft then fine. If neither and it's another commercial or open source alternative then go for it.
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|"One...Sun's only claim is that MS is not conforming to the standards set forth by OASIS."
Correct. Though it would be mnore appropriate to call them "recomendations" rather than "standards" since OASIS is not the accepted international standards body for XML.
"Two...MS does add their own little twists to every thing that they do and claims it's standard. Look at MS DHTML."
Except that overlooks the simple fact that the XML files generated by MS are 100% compliant with the XML and XSD specifications. No little twists at all.
"Three...What company doesn't want to create the standards. Easier to sell more of your own products. Has MS said what compliant method for XML they are using?"
MS isn't trying to create the standards. They are accepting and 100% following the XML and XSD specs as handed down by the W3C.
"Four...MS can't even decide on what format they really want documents saved for each new release of Office."
They give the user the choice of what format to use. I greatly prefer that over them deciding for me what format shoudl be used. Please note that's what Sun is complaining about above. Microsoft is allowing the user to override the defaults and save documents using and XSD compliant XML schema. Sun would prefer that users be restricted to ONLY using the schema that they have chosen for you.
"Five...Who cares what Sun or Microsoft want as standard. What is it that we really need in our businesses for standards? Run the software you want and that makes your company productive. If that's Sun then fine. If that's Microsoft then fine. If neither and it's another commercial or open source alternative then go for it."
The standards in question here are those relating to interoperability. It does most companies no good to be productive with document management software if they can't exchange documents with any other companies.
Sun's idea towards that end is for all comapnies to accept and use the schema suggestions from OASIS. (Wonder how much they'll stick to that the first time that StarOffice has a feature that the OASIS schema didn't take into account)
Microsoft's idea is to have a default schema that most users will use for the sake of interoperability, but to also allow users to override that and use their own schema if they want to.
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|Of course, the key point here is that Sun is not saying that Microsoft's XML documents don't comply with the specs and standards for XML documents...because they do.
They are complaining about the fact that Microsoft is not accepting the "standard schemas" put forth by OASIS.
(OASIS has nothing whatsoever to do with the specs or standards for XML)
OASIS, of course, is a consortium trying to define standard schemas to make it easier for different companies and different software to exchange information.
So why would Microsoft choose to ignore the standard schemas defined by OASIS when interoperability is such a good thing? How about because of a tiny little detail that Sun chose to not mention (and therefore neither did the article).
You see, OASIS is not the only consortium working to define standard schemas for easier interchange of information. In fact, OASIS is competing directly with the Biztalk Consortium, a group founded several years ago by Microsoft with the exact same goals.
So it's just as fair to say that Sun is not abiding by the Biztalk standards as it is to say that Microsoft is not abiding by the OASIS standards.
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|Which companies are part of this BizTalk Consortium?
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|Haven't checked lately. There were over 400 as of 2 years ago. (JD Edwards was one of the original founding members)
I haven't kept up to date with them ever since we decided not to implement Microsoft Biztalk Server. We spent a couple of years working with Microsoft during its development, but it ended up taking so long that we had developed our own solution in-house before MS finally got theirs out the door.
I'm sure that Microsoft has links to the Biztalk Consortium page somewhere in/around the Biztalk Server software information pages.
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|McNealy needs to worry a bit more about his own company that keep going after Microsoft. The last I looked the SUN stock was at $3.
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|i think sun is going overboard microsoft does have the right to do what they wish. sun is just trying to destroy microsofts credibility. that is just my opinion though. maybe im wrong.
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|Personally I think Sun is right on this one. Off course they bring this up because they want people to start using Star Office, but it is true. There is more to do with the ms xml. Antivirus companies as well complained about its structure lately. Besides, the underlying code of the documents is probably still so sloppy they don’t want it to become properly xml formatted.
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|MS can go wherever they want but problem is MS wants to become the defacto standard based upon a market position not a technical base. In the 1900's the establishment of industrial standards enabled the greatest increase in common wealth that the world has ever witnessed. It is short sighted and purely selfishly motivated not to work with the established standards body just to pursue pure market interest. There is consequence for blindy being a lemming in the modern world.
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|"There is more to do with the ms xml. Antivirus companies as well complained about its structure lately."
Well, if antivirus companies are complaining about the structure of the XML generated, then they seriously need to go back and look at the actual specs for XML and XSD, because the XML that MS is generating is 100% compliant with the specs.
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|I think that the problem with anti-virus companies is the fact that you can embed macros in the xml file at any point in the file whereas in a .doc file the macros are embeded at specific areas in the file making it easier to scan.
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|That's exactly the problem that they are faced with. As it currently stands the macros can be all over the xml meaning that the av engine needs to scan the complete xml document to firstly find the macro's and then secondly to scan the macro's it does find.
This isn't a big problem for small xml documents or xml documents that have a low node count, but starts being a much bigger problem when you have huge documents or documents with a very high amount of nodes as the whole xml file needs to be read in and parsed.
The 'solution' put forward on their behalf is for Microsoft to have a specifically defined section which points to the macros in the document (so that their av engine can find the macros quickly and easily) and secondly for Office to be modified to not load any macros which are not in this particular section.
Whilst this 'solution' appears fine from the outside, the problem is that with more and more applications saving files in xml the av companies will not be able to get everyone to make life easier for them. They need to create a generic way of scanning xml files.... which if it cannot be done in any other way other than to read in the whole document will be a problem!
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|Of course, since Office XP, you'd practically have to go out of your way to accidently launch a document macro virus. Outlook has been a different story as exploits and workarounds keep being discovered and exploited, but Office 2003 appears to have beefed up the sandbox. Perhaps having the macros scattered will make it harder for Antivirus companies to quickly scan, but if MS has properly locked it up, that may not be an issue.
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|So in other words the problem is that while the files generated by Microsoft are 100% compliant with the XMl and XSD specs, the AV companies don't like the fcat that those specs don't further restrict where certain types of data can be.
If so then it appears to be:
1. Not a problem with Microsoft at all, but a problem between the AV companies and the standards bodies behind the XML and XSD spoecifications.
2. A completely bogus claim. If MS Office can read the XSD definition to dtermine where the macros are, then so can the AV software.
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|Loyal Microsoft Employee, we get the point regarding your claims of 100% compatibility, you do not need to emphasise and repeat that point at every opportunity you get.
I don't think anyone has said that MS are not providing 100% XML compliant documents, after all they could have just stuck the current binary format as a BLOB inside an xml document and that would still make it 100% compliant.
The AV companies don't like this (xml) because it makes their job harder, it computationally hard to delve into a huge xml document that is very deep node wise. It's a lot harder than it is if you have a header which tells you where everything is. The problem with this as I mentioned is that whilst MS could help the AV companies out this time it won't be much good for all the other software that writes files in xml.
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|Correct me if I'm wrong here but isnt that what you pay AV software companies for, to do the work of scanning files and such. Seems to me AV companies complaining it makes their software work harder is sort of imaterial in this.
As for the latest wimper from Sun, nothing really new here...once again their whining in public about MS to draw attention to themselves. MS is not "uncomplying" (is that a word?) with OASIS they are mearly giving additional options besides what OASIS thinks it should be to the actual user. As long as the basic is there to use if wanted whats the beef...other than sun can't say it can open all office docs if the user used a diff scheme.
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|As you already know, I'm not a Microsoft employee, nor have I ever been one.
I keep pointing out that Microsoft is generatign 100% cpec compliant files because it shows how ridiculous the complaints by Sun and the Av companies are.
You are correct that the Av companies don't want to have to read the whole file to look for viruses because it would be faster if they knew where to look. But stop for a minute and think about that. The AV companies don't want to actually LOOK for the viruses, they want MS and others to define in advance where the viruses are going to be to make their job easier. Ridiculous. As another posted already mentioned, that's what AV companies are paid to do. That's what their software is for.
The complaints of the AV companies in this respect are as foolish as if they were asking all compaines to use only one file format for any file that could ever have any kind of executable code, macros, scripts, applets, etc. because it would make their job easier. Yes it would, but so would not having any executable code on computers at all.
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