New WSCI Spec Enhances Web Services

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(06/26/02, 03:06:24 PM EDT)

Santa Clara, Ca. - Sun Microsystems, Inc., with several other web services providers have just publication of the XML-based Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI), which is considered a critical element of making the promise of automated application to application collaboration across the Web a reality.

This new specification is available for public comment at the the web sites of the companies, which in addition to Sun were co-editors on the specification: BEA Systems, Intalio, and SAP AG.

"Interoperability of Web services needs to extend beyond basic messaging, and WSCI enables Web services to interact with each other in specified ways to accomplish the needs of complex business processes," said Richard Green, vice president and general manager, Java/XML Technologies, at Sun. "This is a major step forward for the industry and will provide a key piece of technology to support Sun's Java Web Servicessoftware initiatives."

WSCI describes the flow of messages exchanged by a Web service in a particular process, and also describes the collective message exchange among interacting Web services, providing a global view of a complex process involving multiple Web services.

Today's service description languages are adequate for simple information retrieval, such as a stock quote, but they do not provide the rich behavioral detail that describes the role the service plays as part of a larger, more comprehensive collaboration.

One of the key benefits of WSCI is that it bridges the gap between business process management and Web services by describing how a Web service can be used as part of a larger, more complex process. These processes may reside entirely within the confines of a single company, or span across multiple organizations or companies.

After a public review period, WSCI will be submitted, on a royalty-free basis, to an industry standards body.

The WSCI specification is available royalty free for download from each co-editor's Web site: http://dev2dev.bea.com/techtrack/wsci.jsp ; http://www.intalio.com/wsci ; http://ifr.sap.com/wsci ; http://www.sun.com/software/xml.