Representatives of IBM and Microsoft downplayed concerns over patent issues and said they still have not fully announced their own choreography plans. Last summer, IBM, Microsoft and BEA Systems merged their respective choreography proposals. The unified specification is called BPEL4WS, or the Business Process Execution Language for Web services. IBM and Microsoft representatives on Thursday said they have not decided to which standards body they will submit BPEL4WS. "We believe that BPEL4WS is the right place to start from a choreography perspective, and we are in the process of completing that work to take it to standards bodies," said Karla Norsworthy, IBM's director of e-business technology. IBM intends to provide a royalty-free license for BPEL4WS, which will be formalised once it is submitted to a standards body, Norsworthy added. Steven VanRoekel, Microsoft's director of Web services, said the software giant will indicate its plans regarding royalties when BPEL4WS is submitted to a standards body. "Our intention is to have broad adoption of this specification," VanRoekel said. "We will do whatever it takes to ensure the broadest adoption of this one." In the meantime, the W3C working group will seek to consolidate several other overlapping proposals, including Web Services Choreography Interface, which was published by Sun Microsystems, Intalio, SAP and BEA. Also under consideration is the business processing modelling language from the Business Process Management Initiative and the Business Process Specification Schema, which is being developed in the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). As of now, the Microsoft and IBM-backed BPEL4WS standard is not under the W3C's purview, although the co-chairs of the WS-Choreography working group said the two companies could join at any time. The charter of the choreography committee is to have the outlines of a converged specification within a year. Within two years, the chairs expect to have implementation of the standard in commercial products and software to test conformance. Oracle, which is hosting the initial meeting and co-chairs the working committee, said it is in its own self interest to push for IBM and Microsoft's participation. "We think Oracle is better off and the marketplace is bigger and open with royalty-free standards on the table," said Jeff Mischkinsky, Oracle's director of Web services strategy. "We sincerely hope that (Microsoft and IBM) will join in this effort."
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