The W3C

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Throughout this chapter, references to the W3C and various recommendations have been mentioned. This is a great time to briefly discuss the W3C and its role in XML development.

Tim Berners-Lee started the W3C to focus the growth of the Internet and help standardize the technologies that were quickly evolving. The mission of the W3C is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.

You can easily imagine how a company might adopt a particular strategy and integrate it into its products, forcing use of a technology simply through convenience. Many XML developers accuse Microsoft of this approach through their use of XML Data Reduced (XDR) Schemas, although others believe that Microsoft furthered the adoption of schemas by providing a working draft in many of their products, such as BizTalk and Commerce Server. Despite the finger-pointing surrounding standards evolution and adherence, the W3C has been integral in forming working groups from various companies and technology backgrounds to develop vendor-neutral standards and implementations of XML technology.

The W3C is a standards body, but only governments can make official standards by international agreement. For this reason, the W3C issues recommendations that carry the same weight as a standard in the development world.

A technology is first proposed to the W3C who considers the proposal on its merit and decides if it's worth standardization. The next step is to route the proposal through the recommendation track.

The Recommendation Track

As you work with XML, you will see references to outdated recommendations or hear that a particular technology is still a working draft or a release candidate . What do these terms this mean?

A working draft is essentially the beginnings of a recommendation. When a proposal becomes a working draft, a working group is formed through the W3C who devises a charter. Simply accepting a proposal does not mean that everyone agrees on the proposal: It only means that the working group has committed to pursue the work.

The next step of a proposal is the last call working draft . A last call means that the working group is asking for comments or suggestions on the working draft. Comments are solicited from the W3C, other W3C working groups, and the public. At this stage, the working group believes to have fulfilled its charter.

After a proposal becomes a last call working draft and it passes the commenting period, the proposal becomes a candidate recommendation . A candidate recommendation is believed by consensus to have met the working group's charter and is published to gain implementation experience and feedback. At this stage, tool vendors usually announce support for an XML- related technology.

After a candidate recommendation passes, it becomes a proposed recommendation . A proposed recommendation is a formal notice to the W3C, requesting review. This stage represents sufficient implementation experience to warrant the W3C's consideration to become a W3C recommendation.

When a proposal becomes a W3C recommendation, the technology becomes a standard in the Internet community. Any future revisions to the recommendation result in a new proposal and a new version number is assigned to the recommendation.

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