Netscape Communications Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. this week announced their joint support for a proposed Internet-based standard that will enable disparate workflow software to interoperate.
More than 20 vendors and organizations are supporting the development of the Simple Workflow Access Protocol (SWAP). If approved, SWAP will allow customers to use software from multiple vendors to build workgroup and process-automation systems on their intranets that can also be accessed by partners, customers and suppliers on extranets, Netscape officials said in a statement.
The proposed protocol will be used by leading workflow products to manage, monitor, initiate and control the execution of workflow processes in a standard way, between different systems and over the Internet.
SWAP will be based on extensions to the HTTP 1.1 standard and use the object model of the jFlow submission to the Object Management Group as well as the workflow architecture laid out by the Workflow Management Coalition, according to the statement.
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