Microsoft and IBM have announced specifications for the reliable delivery of messages, WS-ReliableMessaging, and for asynchronous messaging, WS-Addressing.
The specifications, announced last week with BEA Systems Inc and Tibco Software Inc, slot into an emerging web services framework co-developed by IBM and Microsoft. That framework includes specifications for policy, coordination, transactions and security.
However, IBM and Microsoft’s latest specifications overlap with work already announced by Sun. That company announced WS-Reliability in January with Oracle and others.
WS-Reliability is a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based protocol for exchanging messages with guaranteed delivery and avoiding duplication.
Sun immediately branded IBM and Microsoft’s latest work as disruptive, accusing the companies of fragmenting the industry. There is absolutely no reason for vendors to duplicate efforts that are currently underway, the company said in a statement.
Publication of WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing came as vendors also take an opposite stance in the field of web services choreography. ISVs late last week began work on the Oracle-backed WS-Choreography, with an inaugural meeting of a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WS-Choreography working group.
Working group members had hoped to include Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), developed by IBM, Microsoft and BEA, along with the Sun and SAP AG-backed Web Services Choreography Interface (WSCI) in their work.
BPEL4WS was dropped, though, and the sticking point is believed to center on how to make intellectual property (IP) contained in BPEL4WS available to the industry on a royalty free (RF) basis. IBM and BEA support RF, but Microsoft has been non-committal.
Fragmentation of the industry around web services is a prospect vendors, publicly at least, fear. Vendors believe web services will enable them to tap fresh markets, overcoming legacy infrastructure and the lock-in for customers associated with their existing suppliers’ platforms. Fragmentation would reduce mass-market share.
Microsoft director of web services Steven VanRockel, insisted the company’s goal is unification of rival messaging standards, not fragmentation, adding the existence of WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Addressing and WS-Choreography indicates a healthy market.
Our goal is to have one set of specifications that the industry adopts, VanRockel said.
He said Microsoft will develop the specification through customer and partner feedback, then decide which standards group to submit WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Addressing to, for ratification. A decision is expected during the next six to eight months.
IBM, meanwhile, denied the companies sought to fragment the market by announcing proposed standards that overlap with WS-Reliability. We reviewed [WS-Reliability] and concluded that there were enough differences in the work we had underway that we should finish our specification and make it available to the industry for feedback. Microsoft, IBM and industry partners have been working on these reliable messaging specifications for some time, the company said in a statement.
Source: Computerwire
