A standards body known for creating key technologies around XML
(Extensible Markup Language) has launched an effort to develop a
standard file format that would allow office documents such as
spreadsheets and word processing files to be opened by applications
from different vendors.
The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards, or Oasis, has created a technical committee that will
attempt to conform data stored in office documents to a standard
file format based on XML, it announced yesterday.
One of the goals of the group, called the Open Office XML Format
Technical Committee, is to free corporate data from proprietary
file formats so they can be accessed for years to come no matter
what office software a company is using.
Proponents contend that companies are saving data in proprietary
file formats, such as those written in Microsoft Word, and locking
themselves into using that software indefinitely.
"This solves a number of problems for enterprises," said Simon
Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems, which is
an initial member of the technical committee. "It means that their
data becomes machine readable without having to commit to a single
vendor."
Corel, which makes the word-processing software Word Perfect, is
also an initial member of the technical committee, and said it
could benefit from such a standard. Other members include content
management software maker Arbortext and Boeing.
OpenOffice.org, the open source project that developed the office
suite of the same name, has contributed its published list of
XML-based office file formats to the group, with hopes that it
would help provide the foundation for a standard. OpenOffice.org's
software is sold by Sun as StarOffice.
"Conceptually what they're talking about is very important," said
Tim Bajarin, president of research company Creative
Strategies.
Creating an open office file format suggests that documents created
in an application that supports that file format could be opened in
other applications that support it as well. A document written
using Corel's Word Perfect, for example, could be opened in
StarOffice without affecting the layout or formatting.
Microsoft, which dominates the office software market with its
Office suite, is a member of Oasis. Microsoft is aware of the
technical committee but will not, initially, take part, a spokesman
for Microsoft said yesterday. Microsoft's next version of its
Office suite, Office 11, will be heavily reliant on XML.
Microsoft already supports an XML-based technology being developed
by the World Wide Web Consortium, called XSD, the spokesman wrote.
"What this means is that anything the Oasis group comes up with
that's based on XSD 1.0 will already work with Office 11," he wrote
in the e-mail message.
Sun's Phipps said that more specific industry standards need to be
agreed upon to allow companies to ensure that they will be able to
share data in new and important ways, and access it years from
now.
"All the document formats out there are proprietary and
undocumented," Phipps noted. "That severely limits what you can
do."