WS-I releases Basic Profile testing tools |
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By Michael S. Mimoso, Senior News Editor
17 Mar 2004 | SearchWebServices.com |
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The Web Services-Interoperability organization (WS-I) completed the final phase of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 today when it released two testing tools that enterprises can use to determine if their Web services comply with the Basic Profile.
The Basic Profile is considered to be a guideline for enterprises on how Web services specifications should be used to develop interoperable Web services. The Basic Profile covers specifications including SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, XML 1.0 and XML Schema.
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This is a milestone for the organization.
Andy Astor
Board member, WS-I
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The testing tools are the third and final piece of the Basic Profile puzzle. The profile itself was released last August, and in December WS-I followed that release with WS-I Sample Application 1.0, which demonstrates the features of the Basic Profile. Those applications modeled a supply chain management scenario.
"This is a milestone for the organization," said Andy Astor, chairman of the WS-I marketing and communications committee and a WS-I board member. Astor and WS-I are in Vancouver this week for the WS-I Spring Community Meeting, where five companies will be demonstrating the capabilities of the Basic Profile.
The tools, the Web Service Communication Monitor and the Web Service Profile Analyzer, are available for download from WS-I and are available in Java and C# editions for J2EE and .NET development environments, respectively.
The tools complement each other. Web Service Communication Monitor sits between Web services and logs information about each of the messages going across a wire, Astor said. The Web Service Profile Analyzer then looks at the message and validates the description and registration artifacts like the WSDL document that describes the Web service, the XML schema files that describe the data and UDDI registration entries.
"It uses that information to identify areas where a Web service appears to be non-conformant," Astor said. "You then get a report that tells you what you didn't do. It's very specific and points to the code and tells you why a test failed."
More than 300 test cases have been written and automated for the Analyzer tool. Each test case exercises between 50 and 90 test procedures, a statement from the WS-I said.
Astor added that work is already under way on an extension of the Basic Profile with special attention placed on attachments and the multiple technologies needed to accommodate them.
"As more [enterprises] are using Web services for more than elementary needs like checking a stock price or the weather and are using them for business needs, you are going to run into a scenario where you have to attach a binary file to a Web services transaction," Astor said.
WS-I is also expected to publish a first draft of the Basic Security Profile this quarter. Currently, the Security Scenarios Working Group draft, announced last month at the RSA security conference, is available for public review. The draft explains security risks associated with Web services and makes recommendations for countering those.
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