Standards are crucial in many information technologies, but in no area are they more intertwined and vital than in Web services. It's no stretch to say that without standards, there would be no Web services.
The first phase of Web services followed the launch of XML in 1996. As XML use grew in enterprises, many of them built back-end services and XML-based processes that were clearly Web services in everything but name.
Starting in 2000, the releases of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) made it much easier to deliver, find and describe Web services. In so doing, these standards launched Web services as we know them today.
In a typical year, no more than three or four proposed standards reach full-standard level (or recommendations, as the World Wide Web Consortium calls them). So Web services developers can be forgiven if they were a little stunned when four new Web services standards were announced in the last week of January.
