WS-I Publishes Basic Profile Working Draft; Now Available for Public Comment

Business Wire, Oct 29, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2002

Today at the Gartner Group Application Integration and Web Services conference, Tom Glover, chairman of the Web Services Interoperability Organization ("WS-I") announced the availability of the WS-I Basic Profile Working Draft.

The WS-I Basic Profile Working Group has made this working draft public in order to solicit feedback from the Web services community, with the goal of releasing a final version in early 2003. The WS-I Basic Profile Working Draft can be accessed at www.ws-i.org.

"We've met a major milestone by releasing the working draft ahead of schedule," said Glover during his keynote address at the Gartner Group conference. "While the Basic Profile is composed of detailed guidelines aimed at helping developers build interoperable Web services, we expect that broad adoption of the profile will provide a level of confidence for executives making investment decisions about Web services and Web services products."

Basic Profile Defined

The Basic Profile consists of implementation guidelines recommending how a set of core Web services specifications (SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, XML 1.0 and XML Schema) should be used together to develop interoperable Web services. The following Web services component technologies lie within the scope of the Basic Profile:

-- Messaging: the exchange of Web service protocol elements, usually over a network

-- Description: the enumeration of the messages associated with a Web service, along with implementation details

-- Discovery: metadata that enables the advertisement of a Web service's capabilities

-- Security: mechanisms that provide integrity, privacy, authentication and authorization

WS-I is requesting public comment on the Basic Profile Working Draft from all interested parties to ensure quality and broad applicability. Feedback should be directed to wsbasic_comment@ws-i.org. The final version of the Basic Profile is expected to be released early next year.

"The Web Services Interoperability Organization is founded to address the essential issue surrounding Web services: the promotion of a set of standards and guidelines enabling Web services to interoperate," said Yefim Natis, vice president and research director at Gartner Group. "Gartner believes that assured Web services interoperability across products of all Web services vendors would help to build credibility of Web services as a strategic technology choice for mission-critical enterprise computing. The availability of the Basic Profile Working Draft is the first step in the right direction."

In addition to the Basic Profile, WS-I is also producing the following deliverables. Early versions of some of these deliverables are expected to be available by the end of the year.

-- Testing Tools: monitor and analyze interactions with a Web

service to determine conformance with the Basic Profile

-- Use Cases and Usage Scenarios: define distinct classes of

real-world business and technical requirements for Web

services

-- Sample Applications: demonstrate best practices for the

implementation of applications based on the Basic Profile

About WS-I

WS-I is an open industry organization committed to promoting consistent and reliable interoperability among Web services across platforms, applications and programming languages. The organization unites a diverse community of Web services companies by providing guidance, recommended practices and supporting resources for developing interoperable Web services. Since its formation in February 2002, more than 150 companies have joined WS-I. For a complete listing of member companies, please visit http://www.ws-i.org. Companies that are interested in joining WS-I can request a membership kit by sending e-mail to: membership@ws-i.org.