SOAP to clean up B2B standards mess

The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis) is to use SOAP as the message level protocol for its ebXML B2B standards, which are aimed at simplifying and standardizing commercial transactions over the web.

The SOAP standard, originally developed by Microsoft, was jointly submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) by both IBM and Microsoft. After criticism for a lack of security in the standard, it was modified by an unlikely collaboration between the two rivals, resubmitted early this month and adopted by Oasis.

Last month, Oasis started work on a more complex protocol which would cover complex transactions across multiple platforms and be usable to coordinate and process web services from different organizations.

Oasis is part of CEFACT (the Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) the UN-backed standards body responsible for the first standards for EDI (electronic document interchange) in the mid 1980s.