The verbosity of XML has been an issue for some new use-cases like large docs over slow connections. Sun recognized this a while ago and participated in the ISO/ITU-T Fast Infoset standard, which we then included in Metro (tag), the Web Services stack in GlassFish, but, planning ahead, Metro was intentionally designed to support additional encodings.

After FI, Santiago and Paul joined the W3C EXI effort, and Santiago just reported on the First EXI Public Draft. It is still too early to tell how it will compare to FI but GlassFish is ready - and so will the Additional Containers that are adopting Metro!

Several updates on the Fast Infoset front. First, Paul reports on successful Interoperability across 3 FI implementations: Noemax, OSS Nokalva and FI@GlassFish. This is very good; we had previously reported 6 implementations, but two of them are pretty experimental, so there is only 1 to go. Plus products like JEUS get a free pass as they use FI directly from GlassFish.

Other recent news include two tools: one is a utility for converting XML to Typed FI, and the other is an update to WSMonitor to support FI. A slightly older news is that FI was integrated into the latest JAX-WS, and is also in GlassFish V2. As a testament to the New JAX-WS Architecture, the integration task was much easier than before.

And, on a different direction; if you are interested in the details of the Fast Infoset encoding, check Paul's Recent Presentation to the EXI W3C Working Group (blog, presentation).