Paul Cotton joined Microsoft in May, 2000 and is currently Program Manager of XML Standards. Paul has 28 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. He has been involved in computer standards work since 1988 when he began representing Fulcrum Technologies in the SQL Access Group where he was heavily involved in the development of the SQL Call-Level Interface (CLI) which is the de jure standard based on ODBC.

Paul has represented his employer and Canada on the ISO SQL and SQL/Multi-Media committees since 1992 and was the Editor of the SQL/MM Full-Text and Still Image documents from 1995 until joining Microsoft. Paul was a founding member in the consortium efforts to standardize JDBC and SQLJ which provide interfaces to SQL for the Java language.

Paul has been participating in the W3C XML Activity since mid-1998 when he became IBM's prime representative on the XML Linking and Infoset Working Groups. Paul has been chairperson of the XML Query Working Group and a member of the XML Coordination Group since September 1999. Paul was elected to the W3C Advisory Board in June 2000 soon after joining Microsoft. Paul is also Microsoft's alternate on the XML Protocol Working Group.