Industry group to define Web services

MILPITAS, CALIF. - Work is now officially under way by the World Wide Web Consortium to hammer out a formal framework for Web services.

In its first face-to-face meeting last week, the recently formed W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group began crafting a paper that, among other things, will describe what Web services are, the technologies needed for them, how they'll interact with each other, and how to address privacy and security. The paper is due out by year-end.

Eventually, when approved by the W3C, the specified architecture could be adopted by vendors of development tools, application servers, databases and packaged applications. For enterprise network shops, this should translate into Web services that are easier to create and that can easily work together.

Last week, some 60 representatives from more than 40 vendors and corporations met in person after about two months of telephone conferences, which were designed to give the assembled working group a starting point for discussion.

Corporate members include Boeing, ChevronTexaco, DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology, and W.W. Grainger. Vendors include BEA Systems, Compaq, Contivo, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SAP and Sun.

Initially, the group is defining a Web service as an application identified by a URL that has an interface that can be defined, found and used by XML-based objects, and that works directly with other similar applications using XML-based messages over Internet protocols.

An array of W3C groups are addressing various Web services technologies, such as XML, the Web Services Definition Language and Simple Object Access Protocol, says Dave Hollander, CTO of data integration software maker Contivo and a member of the architecture group.

"This new group will let us define the architecture requirements for Web services so these other projects won't go out and create incompatible results," he says. "What's been happening until now is that we've been getting the [Web services] transport layer stuff to the point where it's 'good enough.'"

Now attention can be focused on what's needed so that Web services don't simply connect to each other, but understand each other and work together in elaborate ways.

As the architecture draft is created, drawing heavily from work by other W3C groups, it will be fed back into these groups for review and comment.

That coordination, and the active participation of key vendors, could lead to product implementations by early 2003.