Microsoft and IBM unveil directory service protocol

Microsoft and IBM have produced another webServices standard for easy B2B service location over the internet.

The proposed protocol will sniff out a required service using industry or subject-specific directories held on the net that are based on another webServices standard called universal description discovery and integration (UDDI).

WS-Inspection is the fourth standard that Microsoft and IBM have produced together after simple object access protocol (SOAP), UDDI and web services description language (WSDL).

However, the two companies will be competing at a commercial level when the standards are utilised within their webService-based visions of the future, .Net and Websphere respectively.

Mike Thompson, principle analyst of Butler Group dismissed accusations that the webService standards are likely to become "proprietary-standards" in a similar vein to the supposedly open Unix and XML.

Thompson said: "This announcement is an extension to the central standards, not a change to the standards themselves. The core standards are built on ratified standard languages like XML although they themselves are not yet ratified by the W3C."

He added: "Although you will see different versions of these extensions to the core standards coming out of organisations using them, this is not going to become a proprietary set of standards. I do not believe this will go back to the Unix model. This will not become proprietary."

Companies involved in creating an intelligent internet that will do the hunting and sifting of information for you are Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Oracle, Sun Microsystems Hewlett Packard and BEA Systems that all base their services on the webServices protocols.