WSCI to Coordinate Web Services

BEA Systems Inc., Intalio Inc., SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems Inc. have announced the publication of the XML-based Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) specification for application to application collaboration.

The new specification, released Wednesday and made available for public comment at the companies Web sites, provides a foundation for delivering on the claims of Web services to deliver automated, application to application collaboration, said Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun.

WSCI describes the flow of messages exchanged by a Web service in a particular process and the collective message exchange among interacting Web services, providing a global view of a complex process involving multiple Web services, the companies said. Todays 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, officials of the companies said. The companies also said WSCI 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 business process, Phipps said. These business processes may reside entirely within the confines of a single company, or span across multiple organizations, he said.

“In essence, WSCI lets Web services developers express the business capabilities of Web services,” Phipps said.

In a statement, Richard Green, vice president and general manager, Java & XML Technologies, Sun Microsystems, said: “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. This is a major step forward for the industry and will provide a key piece of technology to support Suns Java Web Services software initiatives.”

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

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

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