Heavyweights join hands over WS-Eventing spec |
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By Michael S. Mimoso, Senior News Editor
01 Sep 2004 | SearchWebServices.com |
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IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., and others have apparently cast aside their differences over notification specifications and have joined Microsoft and BEA Systems Inc.'s efforts to develop the WS-Eventing spec.
The announcement, which included an update to the WS-Eventing spec, continues a new air of cooperation between the leading vendors on Web services specification development. Earlier this month, Sun and Microsoft were co-authors, along with SAP and BEA, of the WS-Addressing spec, which was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Lines in the sand over notification were drawn in January when Microsoft published WS-Eventing and IBM and others released WS-Notification. Microsoft and IBM will continue to develop WS-Notification, which will support WS-Eventing. Eventually, the two specs may converge, said ZapThink LLC senior analyst Ronald Schmelzer.
"This is like an alternate universe. Microsoft, IBM and Sun don't usually get along on these things," Schmelzer said. "I don't care about the reasons why they may be doing this. The big benefit is for users. They win out because eventually they all may be doing messages the same way and the rate of adoption will go up. It will be a matter of time before there are products that support this."
WS-Eventing provides for a standard for asynchronous notification of events between XML-based Web services. It is a set of protocols, message formats and interfaces that allow a Web service to subscribe or accept subscriptions for event notifications. For example, Schmelzer said you can make a request to process a particular transaction and when the process is complete, the sender will receive a message assuring the transaction has been processed.
The difference is that WS-Notification is intended to blend Web services with grid computing, a term for pooled computing resources that an enterprise can tap into as needed.
"For now, IBM wants to cast their support in favor of a specification that is increasingly gaining traction. At the end of the day, it's the customer that's going to win this one," Schmelzer said.
Today's update incorporates feedback from the developer community aggregated since the January release and focus on interoperability issues.
"Until now, companies would have to implement a single product to achieve cross-organizational messaging, but specifications like WS-Eventing promise widespread interaction across multiple companies trying to achieve distributed computing using Web Services in a reliable way," Schmelzer said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft, IBM and Sun continue to sit closer at the table of cooperation and have formed their own ad hoc standards group. Microsoft and Sun, for example, are bound by a $1.6 billion legal settlement to cooperate over a 10-year period on development. Schmelzer said the two companies have formed an ad hoc group of their own called the Redwood Group that will concentrate on service-oriented architectures. Specifically, it would provide guidance for companies struggling with SOA implementations via online forums, white papers and sample code.
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