Web Services Activities
Here are most of the major organizations, working groups and vendor-proposed
specifications in the area of Web services. This list is intended to be
taxonomic, providing only brief summaries and pointers to more detailed
information.
1. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
2. Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards (OASIS)
3. Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)
4. Specifications Proposed by Software Vendors
Recent W3C activities are described in the
W3C News pages. The W3C has organized its Web services working groups into a
Web Services Activity.
- XML Protocol (SOAP) Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to create a simple foundation to support XML-based distributed
communicating applications. |
| Status: |
SOAP 1.2 is a W3C Recommendation |
| URL: |
http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/ |
-
- Web Services Description Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to describe the interface across which applications (Web
services user agents and Web services) communicate. |
| Status: |
WSDL 1.2 is nearing Last Call working draft |
| URL: |
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/ |
-
- Web Services Architecture Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to lay out a coherent architecture, by producing architectural
documents and advising W3C regarding work in the Web services area. |
| Status: |
working on Web Services Architecture working draft |
| URL: |
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/ |
-
- Web Services Choreography Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to create the definition of a choreography, language(s) for
describing a choreography, as well as the rules for composition of,
and interaction among, such choreographed Web services |
| Status: |
has published requirements and is now working on design |
| URL: |
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/chor/ |
OASIS has a more lightweight process for launching new standards efforts than
the W3C and has many Technical Committees related to Web services.
- Web Services Security (WSS) Technical Committee
-
-
- Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM) Technical Committee
-
-
- Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Technical Committee
-
| Charter: |
to define web services management, including using web services
architecture and technology to manage distributed resources. This
Technical Committee will also develop the model of a web service as
a manageable resource. |
| URL: |
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm/ |
-
- Web Services Component Model (WSCM) Technical Committee
-
-
- Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) Technical Committee
-
| Charter: |
to define an XML and Web services standard that will allow the
plug-n-play of visual, user-facing Web services with portals or
other intermediary Web applications |
| URL: |
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp/ |
-
- Universal Description, Discovery & Integration (UDDI) Specifications
Technical Committee
-
-
- ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement Technical
Committee
-
-
- ebXML Implementation, Interoperability, and Conformance Technical
Committee
-
-
- ebXML Messaging Services Technical Committee
-
-
- ebXML Registry Technical Committee
-
- WS-Basic Profile Working Group
-
-
- WS-Basic Sample Apps Working Group
-
-
- Testing Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to develop the supporting documentation and process for WSI Test
Tools development, and will develop the Test Materials used to test
Web service implementations for conformance with the Web Services
Basic profile |
| URL: |
http://www.ws-i.org/docs/charters/Test_Charter.pdf |
-
- Security Planning Working Group
-
| Charter: |
to develop a framework and a short-term work plan for the WS-I
Board, prioritizing and scoping security interoperability issues,
leveraging usage scenarios and use cases, and creating draft
charters for workgroups as required |
| URL: |
http://www.ws-i.org/docs/charters/2002_SecurityPlan.pdf |
There are numerous specifications that have been proposed by various sets of
vendors. In particular, Microsoft, IBM, BEA and others have frequently
collaborated. The GXA (GlobalXML Web Services Architecture) platform being
developed by Microsoft, IBM, and others includes the following specifications:
DIME, WS-Addressing, WS-Attachments, WS-Coordination, WS-Inspection, WS-Policy,
WS-Referral, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Routing, WS-Security, and WS-Transaction.
Other specifications are also included in the list below. These vendor-proposed
specifications are typically made available for comment and analysis by the
industry before a decision is made on whether and where they may be submitted
for standardization.
- Web Service Acknowledgement Protocol (WS-Acknowledgement)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems |
| Specification: |
to support reliable message exchange between services by
providing for at-least-once and exactly-once SOAP message transfer
guarantees and to enable WS-Acknowledgement senders to request
explicit acknowledgement from WS-Acknowledgement receivers that a
WS-Acknowledgement Request Message has been received. |
| URL: |
http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/WS-Acknowledgement-0_9.jsp |
-
- Web Service CallBack Protocol (WS-CallBack)
-
-
- Web Services Message Data (WS-MessageData)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems |
| Specification: |
introduces the MessageData header, which enables the re-use of
meta-data about a message across SOAP extensions. As new types of
message meta-data are standardized it is hoped that they will be
placed inside of the MessageData header so as to more easily enable
re-use. |
| URL: |
http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/WS-MessageData-0_9.jsp |
-
- Web Services Policy Framework (WS-Policy)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, SAP |
| Specification: |
provides a general-purpose model and corresponding syntax to
describe and communicate the policies of a Web Service. WS-Policy
defines a base set of constructs that can be used and extended by
other Web Services specifications to describe a broad range of
service requirements, preferences, and capabilities. |
| URL: |
ftp://edownload:BUY_ME@ftpna2.bea.com/pub/downloads/WS-Policy.pdf |
-
- Web Services Policy Assertions Language (WS-PolicyAssertions)
-
-
- Web Services Policy Attachment (WS-PolicyAttachment)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, SAP |
| Specification: |
specifies three specific attachment mechanisms for using policy
expressions with existing XML Web service technologies.
Specifically, it defines how to associate policy expressions with
WSDL type definitions and UDDI entities. It also defines how to
associate implementation-specific policy with all or part of a WSDL
portType when exposed from a specific implementation. |
| URL: |
ftp://edownload:BUY_ME@ftpna2.bea.com/pub/downloads/WS-PolicyAttachment.pdf |
-
- Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
describes an extensible framework for providing protocols that
coordinate the actions of distributed applications. Such
coordination protocols are used to support a number of applications,
including those that need to reach consistent agreement on the
outcome of distributed transactions. |
| URL: |
http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/ws-coordination.jsp |
-
- Web Services Transaction (WS-Transaction)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
describes coordination types that are used with the extensible
coordination framework described in the WS-Coordination
specification. It defines two coordination types: Atomic Transaction
(AT) and Business Activity (BA). Developers can use either or both
of these coordination types when building applications that require
consistent agreement on the outcome of distributed activities. |
| URL: |
http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/ws-transaction.jsp |
-
- Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)
-
-
- Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI)
-
| Companies: |
BEA Systems, Intalio, SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems |
| Specification: |
an XML-based interface description language that describes the
flow of messages exchanged by a Web Service participating in
choreographed interactions with other services. |
| Status: |
Published as a W3C Note; an input to the W3C Web Services
Choreography Working Group |
| URL: |
http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/wsci.jsp |
-
- Web Service Referral (WS-Referral)
-
| Companies: |
Microsoft |
| Specification: |
a protocol that enables the routing strategies used by SOAP
nodes in a message path to be dynamically configured. SOAP itself
provides a distributed processing model where SOAP messages can have
content destined for specific processing nodes. WS-Routing adds to
SOAP the capability of describing the actual message path.
WS-Referral provides a mechanism to dynamically configure SOAP nodes
in a message path to define how they should handle a SOAP message.
It is a configuration protocol that enables SOAP nodes to delegate
part or all of their processing responsibility to other SOAP nodes. |
| Status: |
Submitted to the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM)
Technical Committee |
| URL: |
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2001/10/Referral/ |
-
- Web Service Routing (WS-Routing)
-
| Companies: |
Microsoft |
| Specification: |
a simple, stateless, SOAP-based protocol for routing SOAP
messages in an asynchronous manner over a variety of transports like
TCP, UDP, and HTTP. With WS-Routing, the entire message path for a
SOAP message (as well as its return path) can be described directly
within the SOAP envelope. It supports one-way messaging, two-way
messaging such as request/response and peer-to-peer conversations,
and long running dialogs. |
| Status: |
Submitted to the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM)
Technical Committee |
| URL: |
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2001/10/Routing/ |
-
- Web Service Reliability (WS-Reliability)
-
| Companies: |
Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software, and Sun
Microsystems |
| Specification: |
to establish a standard, interoperable way of achieving
reliability at the SOAP messaging level and potentially with other
messaging protocols. |
| Status: |
Submitted to the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM)
Technical Committee |
| URL: |
http://www.sonicsoftare.com/sonic/docs/ws_reliability,pdf |
-
- Web Service Security (WS-Security)
-
| Companies: |
Microsoft, IBM, Verisign |
| Specification: |
enhancements to SOAP messaging to provide quality of protection
through message integrity, message confidentiality, and single
message authentication. These mechanisms can be used to accommodate
a wide variety of security models and encryption technologies. |
| Status: |
Submitted to the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) Technical
Committee |
| URL: |
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-secure/ |
-
- Web Service Addressing (WS-Addressing)
-
| Companies: |
IBM, BEA Systems, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
to provide transport-neutral mechanisms to address Web services
and messages. Specifically, this specification defines XML elements
to identify Web service endpoints and to secure end-to-end endpoint
identification in messages. This specification enables messaging
systems to support message transmission in a transport-neutral
manner through networks that include processing nodes such as
endpoint managers, firewalls, and gateways. |
| URL: |
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2003/03/ws-addressing/ |
-
- Web Service Inspection (WS-Inspection)
-
| Companies: |
IBM, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
an XML format for assisting in the inspection of a site for
available services. It is also a collection of rules for how
inspection-related information should be made available for
consumption. A WS-Inspection document provides a means for
aggregating references to pre-existing service description documents
that have been authored in any number of formats. These inspection
documents are then made available at the point-of-offering of the
services as well as through references, which may be placed within a
content medium such as HTML. |
| URL: |
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2001/10/Inspection/ |
-
- Web Service Reliable Messaging (WS-ReliableMessaging)
-
| Companies: |
IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems, TIBCO Software |
| Specification: |
allows messages to be delivered reliably between distributed
applications in the presence of software component, system, or
network failures. The primary goal of this specification is to
create a modular mechanism for reliable message delivery. It defines
a messaging protocol to identify, track, and manage the reliable
delivery of messages between exactly two parties, a source and a
destination. It also defines a SOAP binding which is required for
interoperability. Additional bindings may be defined. This mechanism
is extensible allowing additional functionality, such as security,
to be tightly integrated. This specification integrates with and
compliments the WS-Security, WS-Policy, and other Web services
specifications. |
| URL: |
http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2003/03/ws-reliablemessaging/ |
-
- Web Service Attachments (WS-Attachments)
-
| Companies: |
IBM, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
an abstract model for SOAP attachments and based on this model
defines a mechanism for encapsulating a SOAP message and zero or
more attachments in a DIME message. SOAP attachments are described
using the notion of a compound document structure consisting of a
primary SOAP message and zero or more related documents known as
attachments. |
| Status: |
IETF draft |
| URL: |
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nielsen-dime-soap-01.txt |
-
- Direct Internet Message Encapsulation (DIME)
-
| Companies: |
IBM, Microsoft |
| Specification: |
a lightweight, binary message format that can be used to
encapsulate one or more application-defined payloads of arbitrary
type and size into a single message construct. Each payload is
described by a type, a length, and an optional identifier. Both URIs
and MIME media type constructs are supported as type identifiers.
The payload length is an integer indicating the number of octets of
the payload. The optional payload identifier is a URI enabling
cross-referencing between payloads. DIME payloads may include nested
DIME messages or chains of linked chunks of unknown length at the
time the data is generated. DIME is strictly a message format: it
provides no concept of a connection or of a logical circuit, nor
does it address head-of-line problems. |
| Status: |
IETF draft |
| URL: |
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nielsen-dime-02.txt |
Feedback to
feedback@coolwisdom.com.
Copyright 2003 by Mark Jones.
Last updated
July 01, 2004.