Two months ago I posted an item comparing tight and loose coupling including a table. I received a lot of feedback, and I've since updated that table for my forthcoming book, Loosely Coupled: The Missing Pieces of Web Services. The book will be out in March.

Now there's a discussion thread on the topic on W3C's web site. [Doug Kaye: Web Services Strategies]

Ten months ago I linked to a December 2001 paper from OASIS on their idea for a Universal Business Language (UBL), an XML version of EDI. Last month in InfoWorld, Paul Krill wrote that a version 0.70 spec was ready for review, with a general release expected later this year--roughly 18 months after the first description. On one hand, that's awfully slow and rather typical of the UN/CEFACT process. On the other hand, web services aren't ready for UBL anyway, so perhaps the timing's not so bad after all.

In Krill's story he quotes Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink as saying he "doubted OASIS would succeed in providing standard forms for business. [Schmelzer said] 'How can hospitals and manufacturing firms and aerospace industries all share the same notion of an invoice?...Even if they all adopt the core business language, they're going to have different extentions on it.'" Schmelzer, a smart guy, is said by Krill to favor the semantic web instead, although I see the concepts as somwhat orthogonal. [Doug Kaye: Web Services Strategies]