Notification is especially important in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model engendered by Web Services. where Web Services interact with each other through the exchange of messages. In this paper we compare and contrast two competing specifications in the area of notifications. The first one, WS-Notification, is part of the Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF). The second one is the WS-Eventing specification. These specifications are expected to have far reaching implications on the development of asynchronous, complex, dynamic systems.