Using the Database To Do Too Much - Implementing Database Security and Auditing - page 231

In addition, they are competing technologies: you either used CORBA or
you used DCOM, so it is certainly not easy for applications using these
interoperable technologies to interoperate.
Web services are built from the ground up as Web technologies. SOAP,
WSDL, and UDDI are all based on the eXtensible Markup Language
(XML), which has taken the world by storm and has become the lingua
franca of the Web. If you know XML, then you can understand SOAP,
WSDL, and UDDI. If you understand advanced XML-related technologies
such as XML schemas, then you are even better off, but this is not manda-
tory. SOAP is basically an invocation and routing protocol that involves
XML documents that are usually delivered over HTTP to an endpoint that
is deployed on the Web. Although the underlying transport is not limited
to HTTP in SOAP, most Web services are accessed over HTTP.
Finally, the most important fact: Web services have become de facto
standards. Regardless of whether you are a seasoned software professional or
a relative newcomer, I'm sure you are aware of the phenomena involving the
Microsoft camp and the non-Microsoft camp (which then breaks down
into some additional but smaller rivalries). Many software vendors have cre-
ated “standards” in the past through consortiums, organizations, and more,
but when was the last time you remember companies such as IBM, Sun,
and Oracle together with Microsoft pushing the same set of technologies
and promoting them as standards?
Well, it's true: all of these companies are cooperating and are driving the
standards being formed for Web services. In fact, the two most dominant
companies in this campaign are IBM and Microsoft, and many of the defini-
tions and specifications result from joint work between IBM and Microsoft.
As atypical as it is, the fact that IBM and Microsoft are cooperating on a
technological basis gives anything produced within this process a tremen-
dous amount of clout, and the result is widespread industry acceptance.