Two individuals from Microsoft joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Choreography (WS-Choreography) working group on Thursday, the day of the group’s inaugural meeting.
A W3C spokesperson said Microsoft’s request to join the working group was received first thing Thursday morning. In a statement, Microsoft’s first on web services choreography in months, the company said its employees attended the meeting to better understand the group’s scope.
Microsoft’s eleventh-hour decision to participate follows last year’s publication of Business Execution Programming Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), also for choreography of web services, developed with IBM and BEA Systems Inc.
The W3C had expressed interest in including BPEL4WS in WS-Choreography. However, the W3C’s working group, created in January, was forced to proceed without BPEL4WS after Microsoft failed to make intellectual property (IP) contained in the proposed specification available on a Royalty Free (RF) basis. IBM and BEA said separately they supported making BPEL4WS available on an RF basis.
The working group has, meanwhile, adopted the existing Web Services Choreography Interface (WSCI) from Sun Microsystems Inc, SAP AG and others, along with Web Services Architecture.
WS-Choreography chairman Martin Chapman, and Oracle Corp’s director of web services standards Jeff Mischkinsky told ComputerWire that both IBM and Microsoft had been invited to participate prior to Thursday’s meeting. IBM declined to participate, though, while Microsoft failed to respond, Chapman and Mischkinsky said. BPEL4WS co-author BEA, meanwhile, is already a working group member.
At time of going to press, IBM was unable to confirm whether it had received such a request or say whether it would join the WS-Choreography effort now Microsoft is participating.
The W3C believes input from Microsoft has increased the chances of WS-Choreography’s survival and industry up-take. Concern was growing that vendors would back rival specifications, fragmenting the market until one side won at the customers’ expense.
It’s always good to have implementers at the table. The best way to ensure they adopt what they do is to be involved in what you do, the spokesperson said.
However, Microsoft would not say whether its participation in WS-Choreography spelt the end of BPEL4WS. Microsoft will continue to stay actively involved on several different fronts, the company said.
The W3C spokesperson added any participation from IBM would also help develop WS-Choreography. The more skills and more competence the better. We would love to see IBM participate, she said.
Source: Computerwire
