News Release: W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities to Explore Next Web Services Layer

Today, the W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities for Web 
Services begins, hosted by Oracle in Redwood Shores, CA, USA. During 
the two-day event held 12-13 October 2004, attendees will discuss 
vocabularies for describing common constraints and capabilities and 
frameworks for combining them. Workshop participants will also discuss 
the relation of this work to other core Web services work being 
standardized at W3C, as well as the relation of the work to other Web 
technologies.

For more information, please contact Karen Myers, W3C Media Relations 
Officer, at +1.617.253.5884 or +1.978.502.6218 (karen@w3.org) or 
contact the W3C Communications representative in your region, listed at 
the bottom of this email.

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W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities to Explore Next Web 
Services Layer

Workshop Draws Numerous Speakers Interested in Web Services Constraints 
and Capabilities Framework

Web Resources:

This press release:
      In English: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/wscc-pressrelease.html.en
      In French: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/wscc-pressrelease.html.fr
      In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/wscc-pressrelease.html.ja

W3C Workshop on Constraints and Capabilities for Web Services
      http://www.w3.org/2004/06/ws-cc-cfp.html

Web services home page:
      http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 12 October 2004 -- Leading Web services to its 
full potential, the World Wide Web Consortium has organized a Workshop 
on Web services Constraints and Capabilities, hosted by Oracle, on 
12-13 October 2004, in California (USA). During the two-day event, 
attendees will discuss vocabularies for describing common constraints 
and capabilities and frameworks for combining them. Workshop 
participants will also discuss the relation of this work to other core 
Web services work being standardized at W3C, as well as the relation of 
the work to other Web technologies.

"I am pleased to see so much interest among W3C Members to share 
crucial information about Web Services through the W3C process. The 
need for Web Services standards is becoming more and more important as 
we automate the use of so many Web Services applications. This in turn 
sets the direction for new work," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director.

A W3C workshop is an opportunity to bring together W3C Members and the 
public to discuss possible future directions for W3C work. After a 
successful workshop, W3C may initiate a new Working Group to develop a 
standard in that area.

Sharing Vocabularies for Describing Web Services

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL2.0) specification provides 
the basic building blocks for describing a Web service. Designers may 
achieve more detailed descriptions of Web services constraints and 
capabilities by using domain-specific vocabularies, implemented as 
extensions to the basic WSDL model.

"Various aspects of a Web service may require description," explained 
Mark Nottingham (BEA Systems), co-Chair of the workshop. "This includes 
its constraints (e.g., 'You must use HTTP authentication when accessing 
this service') and its capabilities (e.g., 'I can support GZIP 
compression'). Likewise, clients accessing Web services have 
constraints and capabilities of their own to consider. This workshop is 
being held to discuss the establishment of a standard framework for the 
expression of such constraints and capabilities and their association 
using technologies such as SOAP, WSDL, and HTTP."

In order to participate in the workshop, W3C Members and the general 
public were required to submit position papers. The more than 35 
position papers received indicate substantial interest in this topic. 
The papers address subjects ranging from specific problem domains (such 
as security, reliable messaging, and internationalization), to the use 
of rule-based languages for building vocabularies, to the construction 
of a general framework to accommodate a wide variety of vocabulary 
design needs.

To help focus discussion, participants were asked to address in their 
position papers a pre-selected use case. Participants were asked to 
discuss how their proposal would allow a Web service designer to 
stipulate (among other things) that (1) clients are required to support 
a reliable messaging protocol, (2) clients are required to encrypt a 
specific header with WS-Security using an X.509 or user name security 
token in order to send an acceptable request message, and (3) the 
service has a P3P privacy policy associated with it. Workshop attendees 
will discuss vocabularies for expressing policies, how to communicate 
those policies and policy decisions to other parties, how to manage 
policies (e.g., how to handle delegation or revocation), and the 
relation of this work to existing work at W3C and elsewhere.

W3C Actively Developing Core of Web Services Architecture

This workshop represents one of several Web services initiatives at W3C 
at this time. W3C Members have already selected W3C as the organization 
to develop core Web services specifications that have become W3C 
Recommendations or are on their way, including SOAP 1.2 and WSDL 2.0.

W3C has been working on the core architecture of Web Services since 
2000 and Constraints and Capabilities is the next fundamental piece of 
it," said Philippe Le Hégaret, Architecture Domain Leader for W3C and 
co-Chair of the workshop. "In this work we are looking at extending 
WSDL 2.0 and its expressiveness, in ways that allow us to combine 
existing and future Web Services extensions, such as the security 
mechanisms."

In August 2004, two new SOAP specifications advanced to Candidate 
Recommendation status, indicating that W3C considers them ready for 
implementation: "SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism" and 
"Resource Representation SOAP Header Block." The WSD Working Group also 
issued a "Last Call" for three WSDL 2.0 specifications, indicating that 
the Working Group believes that the specifications fulfill the Working 
Group's technical requirements.

On 7 October 2004, W3C launched a new Web Services Addressing Working 
Group to further work in that core area. The Workshop on Web Services 
Capabilities and Constraints will help to determine the direction of 
future Web services work at W3C. It is likely that progress in the area 
of component descriptions will also accelerate the development of 
related specifications such as WSDL 2.0.

In addition to the Working Groups that are developing these Web 
services specifications, W3C representatives are engaging the community 
on the case for W3C's Web services standards and their relation to 
other Web standards developed at W3C. Chief Operating Officer Steve 
Bratt and David Booth (W3C Fellow from Hewlett-Packard) will be 
speaking and conducting a workshop on WSDL 2.0 at the Gartner 
Application Integration and Web Services Summit mid-November. Also 
mid-November, W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee will be a keynote speaker at 
the Second International Conference on Service Oriented Computing.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing 
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly 
run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 
(CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics 
and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in 
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of 
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and 
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new 
technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the 
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

Contact Americas and Australia --
     Karen Myers, <karen@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.978.502.6218
Contact Europe, Africa and Middle East --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <yasuyuki@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

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