IBM, Microsoft Corp. and BEA Systems Inc. on Friday will announce three new Web services standards to address such areas as transactions, workflow and business process execution.
The three companies, two of which—IBM and Microsoft—have taken the lead in the Web Services Interoperability organization, will deliver on promises they made to invest in creating a services platform for business interaction.
BEA also is a member of the WS-I.
Sources said the first of the three standards will be Business Process Execution Language for Web Services.
That standard is actually a combination of the Web Services Flow Language from IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., and XLang from Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., which both did much the same thing. The newly combined offering is a Web services language that brings business processes together under the realm of services and makes sure each service knows what the other is doing.
The two companies, along with BEA, also are releasing standards for transactions in a Web services environment—WS-Transaction—and for coordination of transactions in a Web services environment—WS-Coordination.
The transaction and coordination standards solve the issues of the integrity of Web services transactions and making sure the transaction completes, and how Web services interact with one another.
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