14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, the two open formats have begun lashing out at each other, both supporters criticizing each other's format.
"The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory. The Open XML format is designed for performance. XML is fundamentally slower than binary formats, so we have made sure that customers won't notice a big difference in performance," Alan Yates, the general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy, told ZDNet UK.
Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance, said that the two products cannot be compared since there is no Open XML product on the market.
"ODF is supported and implemented not just by OpenOffice, but by multiple applications including StarOffice, IBM Workplace, KOffice, Abiword/Gnumeric and Google Writely. All these applications have different performance behaviors," Marcich told the same site.
Additionally, ODF Alliance's managing director said that Open XML is more difficult to implement than the ODF, the first having 4000 pages of documentation and the latter 700.
Analysis company Gartner recently forecast that ISO's approval of OpenDocument thwarts Microsoft's chances of getting its XML document format certified by the standards group.
The Office Open XML file formats will be included in the Office 2007 suite and they will theoretically be available to other developers who wish to implement Office Open XML in their own applications and services.