As I was looking into the Web Services Interoperability Organization and the WS-I Basic Profile they publish, I was struck by complex relationship between this high level standard and a variety of other standards published by other organizations. The WS-I basic profile version 1.1 dated April 10, 2006 has a convenient appendix giving links to 15 different specifications included "by reference."
Digging into each of these standards revealed that some were very stable and well recognized while others were evolving as new needs and problems became apparent. In this article I am going to attempt to summarize the status of these standards and the organizations that publish them in the hope you will appreciate how complex the industry's standard setting effort is.
I thought about using the WS-I Basic Profile version 1.2, now in "Board Approval Draft" stage, but it cites 43 specifications so lets keep this simple by sticking to version 1.1 Where practical I have listed links to the most current version of the applicable standards which may have changed considerably from the one cited in WS-I Basic Profile version 1.1. Dates of publication are abbreviated in mm-dd-yyyy format.
For each organization publishing a standard, I am listing the internal hierarchy in terms of activities, followed by the standards which that activity publishes.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The W3C is the main organization for creation of internationally recognized standards for the World Wide Web. It is a consortium whose member organizations assign staff for cooperative development of standards. Proposed standards proceed through a series of public drafts to reach final W3C Recommendation status. In many cases, standards are cited befor they become final recommendations, and the process of revision conti
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nues. For this reason the W3C keeps early drafts online.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity
There are 10 different XML related standardization groups in the W3C listed under this activity. Here are the standards cited in the WS-I Basic Profile plus some more recent versions:
Web Services Activity
There are a number of Web services related standardization groups in the W3C listed under this activity. Internal organization of "working groups" and "coordination groups" changes frequently. Here are the standards cited in the WS-I Basic Profile plus related more recent standards:
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium founded in 1993. It serves as host for a large number of XML and web service related standardization efforts and portals.
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) Activity
The UDDI protocol is intended to provide a standard interoperable system that lets companies and applications dynamically locate web services. Version 3.0 of the protocol became an OASIS standard on 3 Feb 2005. Note that WS-I Basic Profile version 1.1 cites version 2.04.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.
Request For Comment (RFC) Activity
Internet standards are published as RFC (Request For Comment) statements with a unique number, for example RFC2616 for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Internet-Draft Working Documents Activity
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force
