Standards hold key to Web services

This week our Special Focus takes a look at the progress of key Web services standards for security, reliable messaging, process workflow, choreography and management specifications.

To realize the promise of Web services, experts say a new generation of protocols has to be developed within standards bodies such as the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Here are the key standards and where they stand in the development process:

* Security: OASIS is working on WS-Security, a secure way to exchange messages between Web services. A final draft is expected in the fall.

* Process Workflow: OASIS is working on Web Services Business Process Workflow and the W3C is developing the Web Services Choreography Interface. Both are working on a mechanism to describe how a collection of Web services work together to perform a task or complete a process. Both specifications are open at the moment.

* Reliable Messaging: WS-Reliability (OASIS), WS-ReliableMessaging (IBM/Microsoft). These specs guarantee transactional integrity in that messages are delivered once and only once. The OASIS version is planned for September; IBM/Microsoft published an independent spec in March.

* Management: OASIS is working on the Web Services Distributed Management Framework for implementing management using Web services and managing Web services themselves.The final draft is expected in January 2004.

There’s lot more to this article. Read it: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0609specialfocus.html