RSS, Microformats, OpenID, Tagging - all these formats, protocols and practices are extending the underlying philosophies of the OSI Model to provide continuity across multi-vendor environments. In fact, an initiative to formalize this 'extention' is already on at dataportability.org . As they say on their website: The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together. [Their] mission [is] to put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community. Notably, all the major players from Google/Yahoo/MySpace to Microsoft/Verisign are already a part of this initiative. However, this initiative, just like the OSI Model - has more to do with the developer/vendor community and little to do with common users. And this is where DataPortability needs to differ from the OSI Model....

Continuing from my previous post, clearly the web of software services to inter-operate with each other need an extension of the OSI Model to services level. There are many service which are working in this direction viz. RSS: Really Simple Syndication RSS is a format used to publish updates of your website content. Typically RSS is used by news websites or blogs - where content is dynamic and requires users to keep checking the site for updates. RSS updates could be just pointers to changes (or summary of changes) or it could contain the full feed ( i.e. all the new content). An RSS is typically read using a feed reader - a program similar to an email client which keeps checking for updates. While the primary function of an RSS feed is to provide information updates - it also helps in separating the 'presentation' from the underlying 'content' - just as the OSI Model separates presentation from data. With RSS in place, you need not read a blog or news only in the fo...

Way back in 1977 when a working group on Distributed Systems at ANSI was asked to work on OSI Model ( Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model ) - they had little idea that the concept of distributed systems would one day grow to create the mother of all 'distributed systems' - the Internet. Technically the internet is a massive network of hardware - but conceptually, its a platform (or a cloud if you prefer) upon which Software Services can run seamlessly making it transparent to the users, where the software is running, where the data comes from, which hardware is serving server cycles ... and so on. All this abstraction is possible today only because of the well designed OSI Model which separates the "Presentation" from data and network from the underlying hardware. The OSI model has also helped to come up with protocols like TCP which have made compatibility a non-issue when it comes to connecting computers across the world (which run on different hardw...