OAGIS is a standard published by the Open Application Group, which is a standards organization. The idea with OAGIS is to give XML messages

some kind of uniform semantic meaning and provide for an increased interoperability between different computer systems and organizations when they exchange messages.

OAGIS itself is actually very exciting when you think about the possibilities. For example, if you have a business and always order CDs from a certain supplier, you should be able to order from another supplier easily if both used the OAGIS standard for their web service XML messages. No need to change any schema or and code. Almost no changes.

Interoperability is the key here.

With that in mind, the current documentation for OAGIS 9 is funny.

The irony lies in the fact that parts of the documentation, which is in HTML, is ONLY viewable with Microsoft Word. It is not even completely viewable with Internet Explorer 7.
Now how about that for standard compliance and interoperability?
When you view the source it is an absolute horror. It is obvious that the person who made the documentation did a straight "save as html" from MS Word.

View it yourself here: http://openapplications.org/oagis/9.1/Documentation/Architecture.html

[EDIT 2010-02-26: The URL is no longer valid. The documentation is updated.]

The images appear if you open it in MS Word.

Interoperability to the people!