[Rets-dev] Google Base Housing vs. RETS

[Dan Woolley]

To keep the RETS standard effort in perspective, let's compare some of
what we're discussing with the popular newsfeed standards RSS and Atom.
These are standards that the broader industry is working on, including
the IETF, and that are generally seen as easy to use and accessible.
I'd also say that they have a simpler mission than RETS.
 
RSS started in 1999, and today there are 9 incompatible versions (forks
and flavors).  All RSS clients need to deal with most of the 9, since
hosts use whichever flavor they feel like, and toolkits need to abstract
away the funkiness.  Sound familiar?  I'd say that abstracting away the
interpretations or forks of a standard of any complexity is the norm
rather than the exception.
 
Enter Atom, a fresh design based on existing HTTP and XML specs to
eliminate all the complexity of what came before.  Atom was started in
2003, joined with the IETF in 2004, and released as RFC-4287 in 2005.
The intent was that by learning from the past, including all the right
people, basing it on modern day and widely used technology, and creating
carefully worded and complete specs, they would create a better
protocol.  Sound familiar?  I'm no expert*, but it looks to me like Atom
is an improvement.  I also know that the various RSS flavors will all be
around for another half decade.
 
Point is, it takes time and momentum to improve and release a new spec.
If it took the Atom group 3 or 4 years to get from inception to public
use, I'd imagine it will take our group just as long or longer.  A lot
of this is due to the volunteer nature of the groups, some due to
politics, and some due to constructive public discussion and debate.  I
think things are fine, as long as we keep up the momentum.
 
 
* Check out "RSS and Atom In Action" by Dave Johnson
<http://www.manning.com/dmjohnson/>.  Highly recommended.  Goes beyond
simple feed readers and into the future of content syndication, which is
something affecting our vertical right now.
 
 
Dan Woolley
Senior VP of Technology
www.eneighborhoods.com
 
 
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