Experts see merit in Microsoft's choice of OASIS over W3C

By Eric B. Parizo, News Editor 19 May 2003 | SearchWebServices.com

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Microsoft Corp. may have a reputation as a villain, but Web services experts say the software giant did the right thing for its customers and the industry by submitting its budding Web services choreography specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for approval, instead of to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Microsoft, IBM Corp., SAP AG and BEA Systems Inc. joined forces last year to create Business Process Execution Language, a set of rules for integrating Web services with business processes, which would enable different companies' Web services to interact more efficiently.

Its creators submitted the specification, also known as BPEL and BPEL4WS, to OASIS earlier this year, even though similar efforts to establish a Web services choreography standard were already underway at the W3C. OASIS' newly created Business Process Execution Language Technical Committee met Friday for the first time to discuss the spec.

While at first glance it may have made sense for Microsoft, IBM and the others to work with the pre-existing group at the W3C, Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based research firm ZapThink LLC, said the W3C's standards ratification process is lengthy and rigorous.

"OASIS has a much more flexible, community-driven standards process, and a lot of the other core Web services standards are already being hosted by OASIS," Schmelzer said. Because the long-term success of the Web services movement is directly tied to rapid standards development, he said it makes sense for Microsoft to have submitted its specification to the group that could most quickly ratify it.

Daniel Sholler, vice president with Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group, said the W3C tends to take its time developing the best possible standard; end-user companies would benefit more, he said, from a single, consistent, broadly adopted standard that may need some refinement as time goes on.

"Among some of the vendors, I think there's been a reluctance to use the W3C as a vehicle throughout the whole evolution of Web services standards, because those vendors felt that the W3C's processes were inherently slower than those within OASIS," Sholler said.

James Phillips, chief strategist and a senior vice president at Actional Corp., a Web services management firm in Mountain View, Calif., said that the longer the industry is without a choreography standard, the more money it costs both Microsoft and its customers.

"[Customers] want to build new software to modify and manage their business processes and, when there are standards, they can make better decisions on which vendors to choose," Phillips said. "They can mix and match different products from different vendors, accelerating their willingness to adopt new technology."

Some believe this is simply Microsoft's latest effort to compel customers and business partners to conform to its world view, but Schmelzer said Microsoft is not trying to monopolize the Web services standards process for its own profit. He said BPEL is already the most-used Web services choreography specification among early Web services adopters, partly because it is based on older specs from Microsoft and IBM.

"[Web services choreography] is not really a significant market yet. It will be, but not in 2003, probably by the end of 2004," Schmelzer said. By then, he said, it won't matter that Microsoft played a key role in developing a Web services choreography standard because there will be many other vendors offering competing products.

It remains to be seen what will become of the W3C's choreography endeavor. Schmelzer said the group should step aside and let OASIS take the lead because the BPEL effort is more broadly supported.

"I think the W3C has an interesting choice," Sholler said. "They can either cede this area to OASIS, which is something they don't want to do, or they can figure out how to make the W3C standards process more attractive to the vendors who are instigating a lot of these [Web services] standards."

Phillips said it is more likely that the W3C will continue its work, and that Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp., which are involved with both groups, will attempt to synchronize their efforts. However, Schmelzer said, such a course of action could be the worst possible scenario. Not only could two separate choreography standards emerge, but he also said that vendors would choose which standard to endorse based upon their relationship with the two standards groups, rather than on the merits of each standard.

Should two standards emerge, Phillips said many companies, including Actional -- which isn't involved with either effort -- would support both standards. However, he said, doing so would increase the development costs for his firm and many other vendors, likely driving up the price of Web services products.

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