Division Over Web Services Standards Work Stirs Debate

Computerworld - More than a few feathers were ruffled when the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) announced last week that a technical committee formed to standardize the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) would hold its first meeting later this month.

Debate has been heated since it became clear that Microsoft Corp. and IBM would submit to OASIS, under royalty-free terms, the BPEL4WS 1.1 specification they co-authored with BEA Systems Inc., SAP AG and Siebel Systems Inc.

That's because another leading standards body, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), had already established a choreography working group to address the similar issues of describing, managing and executing business processes that are composed of Web services. The W3C's specification is called the Web Services Choreography Interface, or WSCI.

Oracle Corp., which co-chairs the W3C's choreography working group, said it has worked hard -- to date, to no avail -- to encourage IBM and Microsoft to bring BPEL4WS to the W3C.

"We were not enthusiastic about Microsoft and IBM going to OASIS," said Don Deutsch, vice president of standards strategy at Oracle. "Primarily, our rationale was we feared fragmentation in the Web services space. Whenever there are multiple activities in the same technical space, there is a danger that they will overlap and compete. And if that happens, a likely result is confusion in the marketplace, and everybody loses."

Not Taking Sides

Now it will apparently fall to companies such as Oracle, BEA, SAP and Sun Microsystems Inc. to monitor the two groups and make sure their work is complementary. Those are some of the vendors that have indicated their intention to sit on both the W3C's choreography working group and the OASIS technical committee for BPEL4WS, which will hold its first meeting May 16.

"Sun is going to try to take the high road here. We're going to try to find alignment between these two efforts. At the end of the day, the industry needs only one specification for Web services choreography," said Ed Julson, Sun's group manager of Web services standards and technologies. Sun worked with BEA, SAP and Intalio Inc. on WSCI, which Julson said "has more similarities than differences" with BPEL.

Representatives from IBM and Microsoft said last week that they have no plans to act on invitations to join the W3C's choreography working group. Steven VanRoekel, Web services marketing director at Microsoft, said the company might join the W3C group at a later date.

But VanRoekel also said Microsoft feels that Billerica, Mass.-based OASIS is a good place for higher-level specifications such as BPEL. He said the W3C typically handles lower-, plumbing-level standards such as XML and SOAP. He also noted that the scope of the W3C's choreography group is broader than that of the BPEL committee.