RE: Nailing down the definition of "Web services" and the scope o fWS A for the document

This sounds fine to me -- except possibly for the 1.2 version numbers.
I'm not objecting here, I'm just questioning.  There are one heck of a
lot of Web services implementations based on WSDL and SOAP 1.1.  And 1.2
doesn't really exist, does it?  So how can one define an architecture
based on something that doesn't exist?
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 12:24 PM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Nailing down the definition of "Web services" and the scope
o fWS A for the document


 

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Christopher B Ferris [mailto:chrisfer@us.ibm.com]
	Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 1:03 PM
	To: Colleen Evans
	Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org; www-ws-arch-request@w3.org
	Subject: Re: Nailing down the definition of "Web services" and
the scope o fWS A for the document
	
	

	WSA-compliant is way too strong a term IMO. Why can't we just
call it a Web Service? 
	
	 

The basic argument for distinguishing generic Web services from "WSA"
Web services is to try to end the year or so of discussion on this
definition.  If we say, for example, that "Web services" must have a
formal description and use XML, then we get pushback from all sorts of
people who say "Application FOO is a 'web service' but it doesn't use
XML, and the developers just read the documentation to learn how to use
it."  It would be nice, IMHO, to be able to say "OK, OK, 'FOO' is a Web
service, fine ... but it does not meet the additional constraints that
define the W3C WSA."   
 
More formally, here's my [personal, not wearing co-chair hat] sense of
this:
 
Constraints on "generic Web service"
1.  ...  is designed and deployed to provide information to or perform
some action  at the request of a software agent without human
intervention

 2.  ...  is a resource and has identity, thus can be uniquely
identified by a URI ; agents communicate with the service via a standard
protocol that directly or indirectly uses the URI to access the service.


 3.  ... has a description available that is sufficiently explicit to be
efficiently communicated to the developer of an agent that uses the
service.

Additional constraints on "Web service in-scope for WSA"

4. ... has a formal interface description that is [or can be] encoded in
XML and has at least the descriptive power of WSDL 1.2

5. ... communicates using an extensible XML protocol with at least the
capabilities of SOAP 1.2

In other words, the point of the "generic" definition is to make the
political aspects of our job easier; the point of the "WSA" definition
is to make the technical aspects of our job easier.