I thought that some of you on this list might be interested in one of the outcomes of the latest MoU MG (Memorandum of Understanding Management Group) meeting.
The MoU is a document signed by ITU-T and ISO and IEC and UN/CEFACT and OASIS saying that they would collaborate on and coordinate the development of international standards for e-business, in order to avoid redundant effort. The MoU MG has few real teeth, but has a reasonable amount of moral authority within the signatory organisations. At the latest meeting in Baltimore, the following Recommendations were passed: 02/07 (6.4): It is recommended that RELAX NG, ASN.1, and XSD be considered as important and to some extent complementary candidates for XML schema definitions. 02/08 (6.4): It is recommended that groups producing XML schemas for E-business should consider parallel specification using at least two of the above in order to maximize the tools available to developers, and in order to benefit from efficient binary encoding (currently available only in ASN.1). 02/09 (6.4): It is recommended that standard setting bodies do not further extend their standards where the area is already covered by one of the above (for example, binary encoding for XML). For those wanting more background, the powerpoint slides for the presentation and the related (and much more extensive) paper can be found at: http://www.larmouth.demon.co.uk/baltimore.ppt and (click "Proceed to public areas") http://isotc.iso.ch/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2489/Ittf_Home/MoU-MG/Moumg105Rev1.pdf??Redirect=1 John L
