The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. It develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools). The list of W3C members includes the world's major IT companies and research organizations.

Some of the most important specifications of W3C are: CSS, DOM, HTML, HTTP, SOAP, WSDL, XHTML, XML, XML Schema, XML Linking, XML Pointer, XPath, and XSL & XSLT.

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a non-profit consortium that drives the development and adoption of open standards (mainly for Web services, security, and e-business). OASIS was founded in 1993 and has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. The official documentation of the approved OASIS Standards is available on the OASIS website. OASIS also hosts two of the most widely respected information portals on XML and Web services standards: Cover Pages and XML.org.

The Object Management Group

The Object Management Group (OMG) is an international, open membership, non-profit computer industry consortium. OMG was initially focused on distributed object-oriented systems and created the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard. OMG's present focus is on the development of modeling standards that enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and processes.

The most known modeling standard of OMG is the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a standardized general-purpose modeling language. UML includes a set of graphical notation techniques to create models of specific systems. OMG offers three levels of OMG Certified UML Professional (OCUP) certifications: Fundamental, Intermediate, and Advanced.

OMG has also developed other important modeling standards, including MetaObject Facility (MOF), Model Driven Architecture (MDA), and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN).

The Apache Software Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit organization supporting a large number of open source software projects. Many software products produced by Apache have become very popular and are considered to be standard solutions: HTTP Server, Ant, Geronimo, Lucene, Maven, MyFaces, Struts, Tapestry, Tomcat, and Tuscany, just to name a few.

The OW2 Consortium

The OW2 Consortium is an open source community committed to the development of open source distributed middleware, in the form of flexible and adaptable components, such as software frameworks, protocols, and integrated platforms. Membership in OW2 is open to all types of organizations including commercial, educational and governmental organizations, as well as individuals. The list of OW2 projects covers a broad scope of functionality including application platforms, persistence/database solutions, workflow engines, and software engineering.

The Toronto Java Users Group

The Toronto Java Users Group is an independent non-profit, volunteer run organization. Its meetings are held on a monthly basis and include presentations made by product vendors and experienced professional developers.