REDMOND, Wash., April 11, 2001 — Barnstorming the country, Microsoft Corp. today made a number of product and industry announcements at different events dedicated to XML Web Services. In keynote presentations at XML DevCon Spring 2001 in New York City and at Web Services World and the W3C Workshop on Web Services in San Jose, Calif., Microsoft executives this week debuted a new SOAP Toolkit, announced native SOAP support for the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system, invited SOAP developers to an interoperability event, confirmed acceptance of the jointly authored XML key management specification (XKMS) digital certificate specification by the World Wide Web Consortium and presented a road map for future XML Web Services directions to theW3C Workshop on Web Services.
“XML Web Services provide an open, Internet-native way to integrate different applications,”
said Dan’l Lewin, vice president of .NET business development at Microsoft.
“Microsoft continues to help lead the industry through the open definition of standards as well as great products and tools that enable broad development and deployment for XML Web Services.”
Microsoft SOAP Toolkit
Microsoft this week announced an updated version of the popular Microsoft SOAP Toolkit for the Visual Studio® 6.0 development system. The new version 2.0 provides full support for SOAP 1.1 and the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). With the Toolkit, developers can build high-performance, commercial-quality XML Web Services or add such capabilities to any existing application that supports the Component Object Model (COM). In addition to offering new samples and debugging tools, this release also is fully interoperable with XML Web Services built using the Microsoft .NET Framework and has been tested with SOAP implementations from a variety of other vendors. A release candidate is available for download on at http://msdn.microsoft.com/ , with the final release expected to be available from the same location later this month.
“SOAP is the core protocol that lets us integrate XML Web Services over the Internet,”
said Dave Reed, general manager for XML at Microsoft.
“The SOAP Toolkit is another effort by Microsoft to make XML Web Services accessible and easy for any developer.”
Native SOAP Support for Windows XP
In addition to the stand-alone Toolkit, Microsoft also announced that Windows XP would have native support for SOAP, simplifying the efforts of developers building XML Web Services on Windows XP and ensuring that customers will be able to utilize such services easily. Just as Windows 2000 was the first operating system with native XML support, Windows XP is expected to be the first in the industry with native SOAP support.
SOAP Industry Interoperability Event
In addition, working with the SOAP community, the company announced its sponsorship of several upcoming interoperability events to ensure the highest level of industry compatibility around SOAP 1.1. More information is available to interested developers at http://msdn.microsoft.com/ .
XKMS Specification Accepted by W3C With Strong Industry Support
The W3C recently acknowledged the submission of the XML key management specification, which was jointly authored by Microsoft, VeriSign Inc. and webMethods Inc. with submission support from Baltimore Technologies, Citigroup Inc., Entrust Technologies Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., IONA Technologies Inc., PureEdge Solutions, Reuters Limited, RSA Security and Science Applications International Corp. The XKMS specification helps enterprises and developers use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) digital signatures and encryption with XML Web Services. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2001/Apr01/04-10VeriSignPR.asp
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