Organization adds new architecture; SOAP support on its way.The Web Services Interoperability Organization Thursday announced the availability of documents to support the organizations Basic Profile 1.0, which is expected to be released in the second quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, the WS-I recently voted to amend the Basic Profile to include Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) attachments in Version 1.1 of the profile, which the organization will release shortly after the release of the Basic Profile 1.0, WS-I officials said.
In addition, WS-I officials said nominations for WS-I board membership continue to come in and that Web services security remains a key concern for enterprises.
The WS-I Thursday released its Sample Application Technical Architecture, use cases and usage scenarios for the Basic Profile. The WS-I Basic Profile is a set of implementation guidelines for how a set of Web services specifications should work together to develop interoperable Web services.
The documents released Thursday feature a model of a supply chain management system, said Rob Cheng, a Web services evangelist for Oracle Corp. and chairman of a WS-I committee.
Cheng said the new documents will help to establish best practices for using the profile and deploying Web services in production environments. The Sample Application Technical Architecture provides a way to check SOAP messages, schema naming conventions, SOAP message styles and issues involving the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL).
The use cases and usage scenarios are key in that "they drive the other work," Cheng said. The usage scenarios translate the use cases into technical requirements, he said. Essentially, the new documents will be used to help prove the viability and reliability of the Basic Profile 1.0
Meanwhile, WS-I officials said nominations for board seats continue to arrive. Earlier this week, webMethods Inc. and Cape Clear Software Inc. announced they had nominated company executives to the WS-I board. Both companies are WS-I members. webMethods nominated its vice president of enterprise Web services, Andy Astor, and Cape Clear nominated its chief scientist, Jorgen Thelin.
In a statement announcing Thelins nomination, Cape Clear said: "Jorgens candidacy is based on two core issues; firstly the need for the WS-I Board to represent the small and medium sized firms who make up over ninety percent of the membership and secondly to promote greater transparency and accountability from the Board to the WS-I membership."
Cheng said he was surprised at the discussion of a perceived bias toward the big vendors in the organization.
"This is very surprising to me. The whole initiative for including the [SOAP] attachments was driven by big end-user companies and the smaller companies," Cheng said, noting that the small company concerns are being addressed.
Cheng said the WS-I is first addressing the Basic Profile, but the organization has established a task force to address security and look for points where interoperability issues intersect with security issues. The task force is scoping future work and is likely to become "a future technical working group. We will announce them as theyre chartered," he said.
"Security is critical in Web services," a WS-I spokeswoman said. "Weve heard that loud and clear."
Enterprise Applications 
