Welcome to OpenWDDX.org, a web-based project to promote the use and evolution of the Web Distributed Data Exchange, or WDDX. This technology and project emerged out of work that Allaire (now Macromedia, Inc.) was doing in the Web application server space, specifically in solving the problem of sharing data and transactions between different servers on the Web. The solution, WDDX, was one of those things that emerged as an after-effect of other work. Simeon Simeonev, the architect of WDDX, realized that this could be generalized and supported by any Web language environment, and set to work to make WDDX as robust and compatible as was possible within the scope of an initial release.

The key realization, of course, was that exchanging content and commerce assets across the Web is not a problem unique to any specific platform. It is a fundamental problem of the Web, and reaching the true potential of the Web as a new economic platform required that we and the rest of the Web development community work towards some common forms of data exchange. Through this, we decided to shift the development and evolution of WDDX into a 'dot org' project, and work with others in the development community to help implement different language modules to support WDDX.

As a web-based project, OpenWDDX.org seeks to evolve the core capabilities of WDDX and build a broad variety of sub-projects that leverage WDDX. The key to the success of the project is that different -- and sometimes competing -- language and vendor communities establish a common working space evolving open source standards for distributed web applications. Going forward, we'd like to see work done to improve the WDDX model to support new extensions. Some of these will be to the core WDDX specification, others will be based on projects that create new language modules and build services around these modules. Examples of sub-projects we'd like to see stem from OpenWDDX.org include creating semantics for remote procedures, common structures for defining syndication relationships, systems for guaranteed delivery of WDDX packets, and common extensions for compressed delivery. These are a few of the exciting projects that await us in OpenWDDX.org!

Getting Involved with OpenWDDX.org

OpenWDDX.org is an open, collaborative project for Web developers. The WDDX modules are available for review, changes and redistribution based on the WDDX Public License (WPL). Developers can use and extend the WDDX implementations to their hearts content, and can optionally submit their ideas back to OpenWDDX.org for incorporation into future general releases.

More importantly, we want OpenWDDX.org to be the home to new ideas, a place to discuss interesting projects built with and around WDDX, and to share source with others on new extensions to the core WDDX implementations for various platforms. Currently, the vehicles for collaboration and input are principally based on Web-based threaded discussions and email addresses for direct interaction with WDDX project members. The following vehicles for participation are available:

WDDX Public Forums. Public forums for discussion of using WDDX, creating new modules, example applications, or sharing ideas for WDDX extensions and changes with project creators.

Submissions - submit information about source changes and updates made; this is the primary vehicle for communicating to OpenWDDX.org about changes made to source-code and that are voluntarily shared back with the project creators.

projects@OpenWDDX.org - submit information about specific application projects using WDDX, or ideas for new projects to be sponsored by OpenWDDX.org (e.g. WDDX RPC, WDDX Syndication, etc.).

All of these communnication vehicles are monitored by OpenWDDX.org project contributors, and responses to questions and submissions will be handled on an as available basis.

Project Contributors

Simeon Simeonov. Simeon is the inventor of WDDX, and principal guardian of the WDDX DTD. In his full-time capacity, Simeon manages the language group at Macromedia, Inc.. He is the principal architect of the ColdFusion language and application server. Simeon provided the principal contributions to the SDK and DTD.

Jeremy Allaire. Jeremy is the principal evangelist and motivator for the OpenWDDX.org project. He has been instrumental in guiding the vision, mission and capabilities of WDDX, and the formation of the OpenWDDX.org project.

Nate Weiss. Nate is the creator of the WDDX SDK, and a primary contributor to WDDX implementations for COM/ASP and JavaScript. He is also the author of chapters on WDDX in the forthcoming Advanced ColdFusion 4.0 Development book from Que publishing.

David Medinets. David created the Perl WDDX modules. David is a fantastic evangelist of both ColdFusion and Perl, and the author of Perl 5 By Example, from Que publishing.

G. Hussain Chinoy. Hussain contributed to the original Perl WDDX modules. Hussain is the Chief Information Architect at Granularity Information Architecture, Inc., and an outstanding ColdFusion and Perl developer.

Jeremie Miller. Jeremie is the creator of XParse, a fabulous, light-weight and hyper-browser compatible JavaScript XML parser which gives WDDX so much more power on existing browsers. Jeremie runs www.jeremie.com, a website dedicated to cutting-edge technologies using XML and DHTML.

Other Thanks. Many other people have indirectly contributed to the success of WDDX. Nate Zelnick for the ongoing dialog and thinking on things XML and data, and for helping the world understand what this is all about. Tim Bray for creating and defining XML, James Clark for creating the oh so useful expat XML parser, an open source project to enable standards-based XML parsing everywhere.