Page II: Multiple standards muddy the waters and keep customers from taking the Web services plunge.
The WS-I offers a sort of Web services seal of approval, providing certification that Web services adhere to standards put out by other standards organisations, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) or the Internet Engineering Task Force (
Last year, the group, whose members include both technology companies and customers, released a "basic profile," a set of tests and sample applications to measure whether Web services products from different providers are interoperable. Later this summer, it will publish a security profile advising how to effectively work with a number of Web services-related security standards, WS-I executives told CNET News.com.
Getting the message
Once the security profile is complete, the WS-I expects to take on reliable messaging, an important technology for the use of Web services as a replacement for proprietary integration software. While there was a good deal of agreement in the first phase of basic Web services protocols, there is a significant rift between backers of different reliable messaging proposals, pitting IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems and their technical partners against Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Hitachi and others.
The rivalry among two reliable messaging specifications is so intense that one software executive decried IBM's "assassination attempt" of the Web services Reliable Messaging spec (WS-RM), which is now being developed through the standards body OASIS. An IBM executive had provided a technical critique of that specification in a meeting at the end of April. IBM, Microsoft, BEA and Tibco are backing an alternate proposal, which has not been submitted to a standards body.
The WS-I plans to convince the dueling groups to eventually merge the work from the technical committees, said Tom Glover, an IBM executive and the chairman of the WS-I board.
"There's an agreement that we need to do a reliable messaging profile. That's placing pressure of some form on people who are supporting various proposals to come together and find agreement," Glover said.
Too many cooks, too soon
Other conflicts, born of parallel standardisation efforts, also need resolution. Earlier this month, executives from 11 technology companies sent an open letter to the W3C requesting that an advisory committee be formed to find "convergence" between the two Web services specifications.
The uncoordinated standards processes stems from the practice of "forum swapping," in which vendors submit their existing technology to a standards body that best suits their needs, said Andrew Updegrove, an attorney with Gesmer Updegrove.
"The practice is currently running riot in the Web services area, where a varying group of companies that usually includes Microsoft, IBM, BEA and a few other companies 'pre-bake' the standard, and then offer it to a standards body," said Updegrove, a standards expert.
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