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Jan van den Beld: Welche Vorteile bringt die Open XML Standardisierung?

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Jan van den Beld, der langjährige Generalsekretär der ECMA, somit ein Veteran der Standardisierung, schreibt in seinem Weblog, welche Vorteile die Standardisierung von Open XML mit sich bringt.

Das sind seine sechs Punkte:

  1. Transfer of control.
  2. Transfer stewardship.
  3. Chance for industry and implementors.
  4. Evolution of the standard.
  5. Interoperability
  6. Conformance and interoperability testing.

Im folgenden ein paar zusätzliche Details dazu:

1. Transfer of control.

  • Microsoft took the first step to put the control of the development and future evolution of the OpenXML standard already in December 2005, in the first Ecma meeting, in Brussels.
  • In June 2006 the NBs of JTC 1 SC34 gathered in their plenary meeting in Seoul got invited to send their delegates to the Ecma meetings. Also the first, rapidly growing draft of the forthcoming standard ECMA-376, was distributed by SC34 and made available by the Ecma web site to the world at large.
  • The milestone marking the completion of the first step was the publication of ECMA-376 in December 2006, the first publication of an international standard for OpenXML.
  • The second step following the Ecma process was the transfer of control into the public hands of ISO/IEC. After its approval in December 2006 the Ecma standard was submitted to the Fast-Track process of ISO/IEC JTC 1, a process that takes 10 to 18 months.

2. Transfer stewardship.

  • The transfer of stewardship to ISO/IEC is a transfer to a very wide group of interested users, manufacturers and governments world wide.
  • In a way it is a pity that an interested Ecma member such as IBM has not started earlier to actively participate already in the Ecma process. IBM have a lot of criticism to OpenXML and if IBM would have provided their feedback in Ecma instead of during the Fast-Track process, IBM would have extended their time to express critique in a constructive and efficient way by at least seven to twelve months.
  • But opening up and transferring control usually progresses step by step as has been shown by Patrick Durusau, the Editor of ODF, in his recent (February 6th, 2008) perceptive article about 'OpenXML as a poster child for open standards development' . See: https://www.durusau.net/publications/OpenXMLPosterChild.pdf

3. Chance for industry and implementors.

  • Industry and other implementors now have the chance to make new products that come to the market where also MS operates and that can build on top of Microsoft technology without being dependent on MS goodwill – and this is especially true for SMEs and start-ups which explore niche markets for specific applications on the top of Office, knowing that the standard guarantees stability of the interface and that they can be associated to its maintenance and evolution.
  • There are already 300 companies active in that field using ECMA-376 for their implementations, e.g., Altova, Altsoft, Apple, Adobe, Corel, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, OpenXML/ODF Translator, QuickOffice.
  • Moreover, competing standards in ICT are more the rule than the exception: see the study by Prof. Blind in Germany: An economic analysis of parallel standards illustrated using the example of the Ecma OpenXML Standard and the ISO/IEC ODF Standard, August 2007.
  • Both users and competitive manufacturers can not only take advantage of the standard today but can also strongly influence its future development in the open standardization environment of ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC34.

4. Evolution of the standard.

  • The sooner the standard is there, the sooner its evolution can start.
  • The world will certainly not have arrived at the end of the development of document formats with the publication of ODF and OpenXML. Some other ones are even already around the corner, such as UOF and CDF.

5. Interoperability

  • This is a key condition for the success of ODF and OpenXML products.
  • The first basis for such an effort will very likely come from the DIN NIA 34, i.e. the German JTC 1 mirror committee for JTC 1 SC34 that has started an inventory study on all differences and similarites between the two technologies in May 2007.
  • Interoperability demands and possibilities will depend on user requirements and architectural feasibility. To give this effort a chance the further development of both ODF and OpenXML must be put in the hands of SC34. For OpenXML this has already been promised publicly, following the JTC 1 Directives.
  • An interesting further set of contributions to foster interoperability was announced by Microsoft on February 15th, 2008 by publishing the documentation of the Office binary formats and putting it under their Open Specification Promise (OSP) , and by announcing the start of a Binary 2 OpenXML Translator Project on Sourceforge. (https://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx)

6. Conformance and interoperability testing.

  • Until there is a standard, there is no opportunity to develop a test suite that can be used to check whether a new product complies with the requirements in the standard for which the product claims conformance.
  • Equally important can be interoperability testing. But this only makes sense after a solid ISO/IEC standard for OpenXML has been approved.

Der gesamte Blog Post inklusive vieler weiterführende Links findet sich hier: Six benefits you can get from an ISO/IEC standard on OpenXML