Open Standards: The building blocks of Web services interoperability

Darren Self, Micro Focus developer and representative at the Web Services Interoperability organization (WS-I), highlights the role of open standards in the search for interoperability, and emphasises the need for active participation in the community that defines and develops them.

As momentum grows in the move towards service-enablement, application developers are finding the Web services landscape to be littered with a bewildering array of acronyms that continue to come across from the open standards world. For most, it has been enough so far to know that Web services are defined in XML and presented in the form of a WSDL file. This is especially true when you consider that these WSDL files are very often produced automatically by the developers’ tools and thereby hide much of the underlying complexity. But now, as organizations move beyond the purely experimental stages and into the delivery of real-world business value, the need is there to understand which of these standards are relevant and mature enough to consider adopting in practice, and how these standards can help build the mission-critical service-oriented platforms on which businesses can run.

The first thing to consider is that Web services are not simply about the definition of an interface. They are about interoperability. They are a contract between two parties – the service producer and its consumer. And whether you think of this contract in terms of server and client, application and end-user, or indeed, ultimately, IT and the business, it clearly represents much more than the XML that passes between the two.

IT departments exist to serve the business, and in doing so must ensure that every innovative step forward is not greeted, somewhere down the line, by a similar step backwards. Web services offer organizations a huge step forward; the chance to un-bundle and serve up applications in whichever agile manner best meets the needs of the business. But it is no silver bullet. To realise the full potential of Web services, organizations must embrace the open standards being developed to support them. Only by doing this can application developers avoid creating islands of interoperability, where integration with others comes at the price of using one vendor’s technology over another. For application providers seeking to capitalise on the widest possible marketplace, open standards offer a considerable opportunity for profit.

The Web Services Interoperability organization

Formed in March 2002, the Web Services Interoperability organization (WS-I) exists as an advisory group, helping in the definition and development of the open standards that underpin the success of Web services. Comprising leading players in the Web services arena, the WS-I describes itself as “an open industry organization chartered to promote Web services interoperability across platforms, operating systems, and programming languages.”

Micro Focus has been a part of the WS-I since April 2002, and actively participates in numerous working groups. Through this involvement, Micro Focus is not only able to ensure that its own tools and deployment platforms deliver Web services functionality in line with WS-I guidelines, but is also well-positioned to ensure that the needs of COBOL and the wider legacy community continue to be addressed.

The fundamental building blocks

In order for Web services to succeed, the need for vendors to agree on the fundamental building blocks of its implementation can not be over-stated. Micro Focus has been actively engaged in the development of one such core element – the Basic Profile – which promises to remove many of the common problems associated with Web services interoperability. As Dan Sholler, from META Group, is quoted as saying on the WS-I web site (http://www.ws-i.org):

“Support for the Basic Profile is the baseline for interoperable Web services. Customers should demand that all of their Web services-enabled technology be compliant with the Basic Profile, and that in turn will lay the foundation for Web services to fulfill their promise and provide technology independent interoperability.” 

Micro Focus, through its role as secretary, is also particularly active in the WS-I Requirements Working Group, to which all new work and interoperability issues are brought and discussed. If necessary, new working groups will be chartered to deal with these requirements, a prime example being the recent XML Schema working group.

Supporting the move to a service-oriented architecture

With maturity comes responsibility, and Web services are no exception. The need for practical standards in areas such as security, systems manageability, or transactionality, can not be denied. The WS-I is already actively involved in work to ensure the relevance and applicability of open standards to Web services security, and as issues arise in other areas will become increasingly involved elsewhere.

Open standards do not have all the answers, and can not be expected to deliver all the functionality that people are looking for in their Web services implementations. But while vendors and end users continue to participate in groups such as the WS-I, and continue to voice the concerns and interests of the communities they represent, then business will undoubtedly be well served, and stand to benefit from the open, agile, IT infrastructure it so very much needs.

For further information on the work of WS-I, please visit http://www.ws-i.org.