Split threatens Web services standards

By Martin LaMonica, CNET News, 16 April, 2003 12:59

NEWS

IBM, Microsoft and BEA Systems plan to submit a high-profile Web services proposal to the Oasis standards body, company executives said, despite an ongoing effort by the World Wide Web Consortium to sort through similar proposals. Led by the three powerhouse companies, about 20 businesses will propose the creation of a technical committee within the Oasis standards body to standardise the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), which is a language for automating complex business processes. The companies, which include SAP and Siebel, will make the submission to Oasis as early as Tuesday, according to the IBM executive. An official announcement from Oasis is expected in about a week. Executives at IBM, Microsoft and BEA said that any products based on BPELWS (also referred to as BPEL) can be sold without any royalties to the authors of the specification. IBM and Microsoft intend to implement the BPEL standard within their respective products this year, company executives said. The group of companies backing BPEL also plans to publish an update to the BPEL specification when it is submitted to Oasis. BPEL was originally authored by IBM, Microsoft and BEA. The submission of BPEL to Oasis is the latest move in a series of manoeuvres among information technology providers around Web services standards. By using XML-based Web services standards, businesses can more easily share information between disparate systems. The ability to automate a multistep business process using Web services -- called choreography or orchestration -- is an important capability to drive broader adoption of Web services, according to analysts. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) last month created a choreography working group to sort out several overlapping standards proposals. The W3C group has garnered membership from several companies, including industry heavyweights Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. The W3C requested that IBM, Microsoft and BEA participate in the choreography working group and submit the BPEL specification for consideration. Microsoft representatives attended the first meeting but decided to break with the working group after one day. IBM and Microsoft executives said they decided to submit BPEL to Oasis because it has been active in recent Web services standards efforts, including WS-Security, that the two companies have spearheaded. Although members of the Oasis technical committee will monitor the work done at the W3C's choreography group, there are no plans to officially interact with the W3C, IBM and Microsoft executives said. "We're hopeful that the choreography field is big enough that there are complementary areas that the (W3C choreography) group can work on, rather than focusing on areas that don't allow us to build momentum," said Karla Norsworthy, director of e-business technology at IBM. By joining forces with enterprise application providers SAP and Siebel, IBM, Microsoft and BEA have mustered considerable weight behind BPEL and its standardisation through Oasis, according to some analysts. "BPEL is gaining traction right now," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at research firm ZapThink. "The bottom line is that the W3C is out of their league on this." BEA, for one, which participated in the original W3C choreography meeting, is shifting its allegiance to BPEL. "We believe that the rallying point in the industry will be the work done in Oasis," said John Kiger, director of Web services strategy at BEA. Oracle, which holds the co-chair seat for the W3C choreography working group said it was "disappointed" by the move to submit BPEL to Oasis. "We did not want any potential fragmentation of Web services standards, and when you set up a second activity when there is already one underway, there is always that potential," said Don Deutsche, vice president of standards strategy for Oracle. Deutsche said he hopes the W3C work can continue and be complementary to the Oasis standardisation process, if both members of both groups are willing to coordinate. One of the stated reasons for standardisation of Web services choreography through the W3C is that the W3C has a defined policy regarding patents and royalties. In general, companies cannot charge royalties on patented software that is used within a W3C standard. Critics of IBM and Microsoft contend that the two companies shunned the W3C choreography effort because of issues related to patents. Even though the Oasis submission will be royalty-free, Oracle's Deutche said, it would still be important to view the details regarding the royalties terms around the Oasis submission once they are published. "One man's royalty-free may not be another man's royalty-free," Deutsche said. "The proof is in the legalisms defined in the usage policy." IBM, Microsoft and BEA executives said they expect there will be several products based on the BPEL specification that will not demand royalty payments, including open-source versions of BPEL.

What standards will drive the next wave of Web-based services, and how will they interact? Check out the latest developments on .Net, Java, Liberty Alliance, Passport and other technologies at ZDNet UK's Web Services News Section, including analysis, case studies and management issues. Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.

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