W3C Publishes Open Standard for Describing Web Services Policies

September 5, 2007; 08:58 AM
http://www.w3.org/--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, the World Wide Web Consortium issued a critical Web standard for extending the features of Web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications. Building on the fundamental open Web services standards from W3C, Web Services Policy enables developers to meet requirements for secure transactions, reliable messaging, addressing metadata, and other scenarios, in modular fashion. With Web Services Policy 1.5, SOA developers can enable extensions to a service without disruption or requiring changes to lower level service descriptions. The extensions themselves (consisting of what are called "policy assertions") are defined by other specifications.

Web Services Policy 1.5 Based on Industry Needs, Experience

Years of customer experience with commercial Web services applications have made clear the need for a modular approach for describing required and optional extensions used by a service. Without this capability, it can be costly to rewrite an entire service whenever application needs change. Web Services Policy 1.5 can reduce this cost. It connects the core Web services standards -- SOAP 1.2, WSDL 2.0, and XML Schema -- to a growing set of extensions that reflect industry needs and experience.

The W3C Web Services Policy Working Group invited implementers to demonstrate interoperability by evaluating software against the group's test suite. Ten implementations of Web Services Policy 1.5 helped confirm the maturity of the specification. The tests focused on security assertions, one of the most important use cases cited by industry.

Another use case, addressing metadata, is the focus of W3C's WS-Addressing Working Group. The two W3C Working Groups have collaborated to ensure that the Addressing Metadata Specification is aligned with the policy framework.

The W3C Web Services Policy Working Group also secured review from several OASIS Web Services Technical Committees (UDDI, WS-RX, WS-TX, and WS-SX) to ensure that Web Services Policy 1.5 would satisfy their use cases.

Web Services Working Group Brings Together Industry Leaders

The Web Services Policy Working Group brings together leaders from across the software industry including Adobe Systems Inc; Axway Software; BEA Systems, Inc; CA; Fujitsu Limited; IBM; IONA Technologies, Inc.; JBoss Inc.; Layer 7 Technologies; Microsoft Corporation; Nokia; Nortel Networks; Oracle Corporation; SAP AG; Sonic Software; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; webMethods, Inc.; and WSO2.

Many of the group participants have made commitments to support the specification in products, as indicated by the testimonials.

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/