PHILADELPHIA—The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Wednesday announced the availability of the WS-I Sample Application 1.0, a set of Web services that serve as proof that the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 supports interoperability in real-world scenarios.
The WS-I Sample Application 1.0 features technology and use cases developed by 10 companies that are members of WS-I and members of the WS-I Sample Applications Working Group, officials of the organization said. The sample application offering features the WS-I Supply Chain Management Use Cases 1.0, the WS-I Usage Scenarios, the WS-I Supply Chain Management Technical Architecture 1.0 and Sample Application 1.0 implementations developed by the 10 vendor companies, WS-I officials said. WS-I announced the new deliverable at the XML 2003 conference here.
Rob Cheng, a Web services evangelist for Oracle Corp. and a spokesman for the WS-I said the documents and implementations in the new sample application model a supply chain management scenario and demonstrate features in the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0.
"We promised three main deliverables: profiles, sample applications and deliverables," Cheng told eWEEK at the XML conference. WS-I Sample Application 1.0 represents "a core deliverable and gets some concrete stuff in developers hands. Its really a proof of concept. It shows developers are actually getting practical solutions to some of their concerns."
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Sinisa Zimek, director or technology architecture at SAP AGs SAP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., and chairman of the WS-I Sample Applications Working Group, said, "The basic idea of the sample applications is for us to go beyond the scope of what the other standards bodies are doing."
"We collected use cases and usage scenarios," Zimek said. "The use cases are basically the business view, and then we have documents and a technical view of the various Web services and how they interact."
The Sample Application Technical Architecture 1.0 defines the design and implementation of the supply chain management application, WS-I officials said. Among the goals of the WS-I Sample Application 1.0 is to explore as many of the aspects found in the Basic Profile 1.0 as possible, Zimek said. To do this, the Sample Application Technical Architecture implements several schema-naming conventions, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message formats, SOAP message styles, and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) design practices that comply with the Basic Profile.
Zimek said the sample application supports 10 different platforms, based on operating systems, programming languages and runtimes. He said there are three Microsoft .Net-based platforms supported and seven Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) based platforms supported in the sample applications. In addition, some companies such as SAP have their own legacy environments such as SAPs Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) environment. "This demonstrates our ability to support the different platforms." he said.
The WS-I Sample Application 1.0 provides a configurable collection of Web services that put the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 to the test via a supply chain scenario that simulates interactions between multiple retail storefronts, warehouses and manufacturers, Cheng said. WS-I Sample Applications Working Group members include BEA Systems Inc., Bowstreet Inc., Corillian Corp., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Novell Inc., Oracle Corp., Quovadx Inc., SAP, and Sun Microsystems Inc. All these companies have implemented the WS-I Sample Application 1.0 using their own tools and runtime platforms, WS-I officials said. The organization is demonstrating the various vendors implementations at an interoperability demonstration at the XML 2003 conference.
Cheng said the last deliverable relating to the WS- Basic Profile are the testing tools, which are slated for general availability in early 2004. However, he said developers can get an early draft version of the tools from WS-I.
"What we do currently is very lightweight testing to verify and define the tool suite," Zimek said.
Meanwhile, the WS-I is completing support for SOAP with Attachments and is working on delivery of the Basic Security Profile, Cheng said. The WS-I security working group is targeting two deliverables, he said: a security scenarios document by years end and a draft of the WS-I Basic Security Profile in the first quarter of 2004.
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