Janet Daly of the W3C has announced a panel and discussion entitled "XML Protocols Shakedown" to be held at WWW9 in Amsterdam this May.

Panelists include representatives of Sun, AT&T, IBM and Microsoft, as well as Henry Thompson of the W3C and Dave Winer, co-author of the XML-RPC and SOAP specifications.

Stemming from discussions at XML'99 last year, the ongoing XML protocol discussions are ripe for the "shakedown" the title suggests. A session at XTech 2000 and subsequent discussions on xml-dist-app have not yet resulted in a clear way forward for a W3C XML Protocols Activity.

Daly states the aims of the panel as being to review XML protocol proposals such as SOAP, XML-RPC etc, and "identify their common threads, while taking into account:

1. the wishes of developers for lean, lightweight protocols, and
2. the commercial needs for robust technologies that will support the full weight and demands of business-to-business ecommerce systems"

She concludes:

The panelists hope to engage the audience in the evaluation of a range of proposals, and continue discussion that separates out the needs for common, interrelated standards.