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Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp. has recently implemented additional Web service specifications that update the terms and regulations. It was decided to rework the policy assertion – which specifies the requirements put upon a Web service – for allowing it to exchange data between Web services.

To make Web services more secure, reliable, and able to support transactions better, Microsoft decided to update its Web service specifications to address these needs; however, “the change affects many of Microsoft's online services, specifically including Hotmail, SkyDrive, Bing and Windows Live Messenger,” according to news reported PC Pro .

This movement by Microsoft follows a similar update done to Google's terms, which had violated European data regulations. Google’s (News - Alert) new terms, which were established in January of this year, had made a shift in policy to make the consumer experience simpler by lowering its privacy strategies from 70 to only a few.

The Web services updates offered by Google and Microsoft may appear similar with intentions to ensure they are more service-oriented for clients. Granted Microsoft’s changes were not as wide-approaching as Google’s, they do, however, show interest in presenting a simplified strategy for Web service goals that "provide, protect and improve" their products and services.

Microsoft has addressed a service-oriented approach, which is based upon policy, governing the behavior and expectations of a given service while also providing specifications for service definition and execution.

The Web services supported by Microsoft uses a Web service management framework to support an easy-to-use application programming interface (API) abstraction on targeted Web service specifications for data exchange, based on Web protocol specification, like SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

SOAP is the communications protocol for XML Web Services that performs data exchange via standard HTTP using Microsoft Web Services Enhancements (WSE), like WSE 3.0 for Microsoft .NET (News - Alert) for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services; whereas, the Microsoft ASP.NET supports SOAP to build Web applications.

To sum up, Microsoft’s latest Web services amendments and the declarative policy model for WSE 3.0 has simplified the securing of common SOAP message exchange via the W3C (News - Alert) SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) specification.

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