Uses of the WS Choreography Spec

I think it might be useful to identify the potentials uses to which the
specifications developed by this group could be put as, it will help us
identify requirements,and start of by suggesting a couple - I am sure there
are others ...

PUBLIC CHOREOGRAPHY DEFINITION
This use of a choreography definition would allow standards groups to define
"Public Choreographies", for example RoesttaNet to define their PIPs, or,
organizations like UN/CEFACT to define standard public choreographies for
international trade.

The main benefit of standard choreographies would be that software vendors
could build solutions that could then be used directly for B2B with less
adaptation. As a result the cost of doing B2B would go down significantly.

However if you follow this through this requirement through, it leads to a
couple of additional requirements on the way in which choreographies are
defined, including:
1. Detailed message format independence. Business documents necessarily vary
in their structure, for eaxmple: a) Invoices in the US include sales tax
whereas in Europe they contain VAT, or b) line items on travel related
invoice could contain flight segment information. This means that the
choreography defintion should be independent of any specific document
format.
2. Service implementation independence. The same choreography must work no
matter who has implemented the services that generate and accept the
messages in the choreogrpaphy. This means it should be possible to define a
choreography independently of the WSDL.

RUN-TIME CHOREOGRAPHY CHECKING
A choreography definition should be usable at run time to check that an
implementation is generating and receiving messages in the correct sequence.
Since successful B2B is completely dependent on following a choreography
correctly, then being able to check that messages are being sent in the
correct sequence is independent. If this can be done by interpreting the
choreography definition, then it allows new definitions to be implemented
with confidence.

Thoughts? Any other ideas?

David

Director, Product Management, Web Services
Commerce One
4440 Rosewood Drive, Pleasanton, CA 94588, USA
Tel/VMail: +1 (925) 520 4422; Cell: +1 (925) 216 7704
mailto:david.burdett@commerceone.com; Web: http://www.commerceone.com