Sun, others propose new Web services standard

IDG News Service - Sun Microsystems Inc. and a group of software vendors are proposing to add another standard to the recipe for building Web services.
On Wednesday, the companies detailed a specification that would allow developers to "choreograph" events and transactions that take place between computers when applications and services are accessed over the Internet. The specification is called the Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) and is designed to work with Web services based on the standard data format XML.
Joining Sun in drafting and publishing the specification are software makers SAP AG, BEA Systems Inc. and Intalio Inc.
For Web services that make use of several existing Web-based applications, the specification aims to define a standard way for developers to describe which actions must occur and in what order they must take place so that the Web service they are building can process information in an orderly manner, said Karsten Riemer, an XML architect at Sun.
For example, a Web site where users can book airline tickets online might require an application that combines existing Web services for various tasks, such as determining whether the user is a member of a frequent flier program, figuring out which airlines fly to the destination being requested and checking that the user has sufficient funds in his bank account to purchase the ticket.
Technologies for choreographing interaction between Web services aren't new, and WSCI isn't the only standard to have been proposed, said Mike Gilpin, a research fellow at Giga Information Group Inc. Intalio, which makes application infrastructure software and developed much of the WSCI specification, has been using a technology related to WSCI in products it already sells.
"There are a bunch of these things around," Gilpin said.
In fact, while several standards used to create and deploy XML-based Web services have already been agreed upon by vendors, many have come up with their own technologies for choreographing Web services, a process also known as workflow orchestration.
IBM's MQSeries Workflow tool uses an orchestration specification called Web Services Flow Language. Microsoft Corp. has its own technology called XLang, which is used by its BizTalk Server. A third technology used by some companies for similar purposes is Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), Gilpin said. Intalio is a lead member of the group that developed BPML.
Sun said it plans to release later this week the test version of a developer tool that includes support for the specification. Called the Sun ONE WSCI Editor, the graphical editing tool should help developers choreograph a series of transactions