News Release: W3C Publishes First Public Working Draft of Web Services Choreography Description Language 1.0

Today, W3C's Web Services Choreography Working Group has launched the
first draft of Web Services Choreography Description Language 1.0.
WS-CDL describes the set of rules that explains how different components
may act together, and in what sequence, giving a flexible systemic view
of the process. It serves as a necessary complement to BPEL, Java, and
other programming languages which describe one endpoint on a
transaction, rather than the full system.

For more information, and to talk with members of the WS-CDL Working
Group, please contact Janet Daly, W3C Head of Communications, at +1 617
253 5884 (w3t-pr@w3.org) or contact the W3C Communications
representative in your region, at the bottom of this release.

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World Wide Web Consortium Publishes First Public Working Draft of Web
Services Choreography Description Language 1.0

W3C's WS-CDL Targets Peer-to-Peer Web Services Collaboration

Web Resources:

Press release
   In English:
   http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wschor-pressrelease.html.en
   In French:
   http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wschor-pressrelease.html.fr
   In Japanese
   http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wschor-pressrelease.html.ja

Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) 1.0
    http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ws-cdl-10-20040427/

W3C Web Services Activity
   http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 27 April 2004 -- The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) has issued the Web Services Choreography Description Language
Version 1.0 as a W3C First Public Working Draft. The Web Services
Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is targeted to coordinate
interactions among Web services and their users. This is the first in
the series of WS-CDL drafts.

Choreography is the Key to Enterprise-Level Web Services

Business transactions, especially those envisioned by Web services, grow
from complex interactions. These interactions can be viewed from a
variety of points in the transaction chain, not simply the start or the
expected endpoint. Modeling these interactions from a global viewpoint
allows software developers to take into account the distributed race
conditions (unexpected dependence on the sequence of events) that may
exist—in much the same way they exist in non-Web business processes.
Choreography provides the set of rules that explains how different
components may act together, and in what sequence, giving a flexible
systemic view of the process.

The Web Services Choreography Description Language is a necessary
complement to end point languages such as BPEL and Java. WS-CDL provides
them with the global model they need to ensure that end point
behavior—the "rules of engagement"—is consistent across cooperating
services.

Choreography Speeds Time to Market and Reduces Cost of Ownership

One of the aims of Web services is integration (combining components
into a system) to reduce connectivity costs and increase the utility and
thus the value of information. For many years, the only way integration
could be achieved was to plug services together by custom-coding or
"wiring" the integration points. Through the use of a global model,
choreography ensures that contractual behavior across multiple services
can be achieved without complex wiring or complex wiring tools.

Another Web services goal is conformance (the integration of
applications so that they share the same rules of engagement) which
ensures the desired business outcome. Because a well-defined
choreography guarantees conformance across application domains,
businesses gain faster time to market.

Statistically, choreography can be shown to be free from deadlocks (when
processes stop because each is waiting for one of the others), livelocks
(when processes continually react to each other and stop doing useful
work) and leaks (interference from unauthorized participants). Leak
freedom ensures greater security across connected services. The absence
of deadlocks and livelocks lowers testing costs and reduces the total
cost of ownership.

WS-CDL Defines Collaboration Between Applications

The WS-CDL specification defines peer-to-peer collaboration between Web
service participants. A user of a Web service, automated or otherwise,
is a "client" of that service. Users may be other Web services,
applications and human beings. In WS-CDL, a set of client interactions
may be related over time in a "collaboration group." A collaboration
group could be for example, a set of components that make up a business
transaction or a database transaction.

The future of e-business applications is in the loosely coupled,
decentralized environment of the World Wide Web. This environment
requires the ability to perform long-lived, peer-to-peer collaborations
between the participating services, within or across the trusted domains
of an organization. Applications that implement WS-CDL can accomplish
this shared business goal, as the Working Group developed its
requirements document to consider both broad practical business needs
and sound theories.

WS-CDL Has Sound Industrial and Mathematical Foundations

The WS-CDL specification brings together important resources from both
industry and research. WS-CDL incorporates not only business
requirements, but also seminal mathematical work in pi (π) calculus,an
algebra based on naming used to model systems that are physically or
virtually mobile. Invited Experts in the W3C Web Services Choreography
Working Group include Professor Robin Milner, the principal creator of
pi calculus; Dr. Kohei Honda; and Dr. Nobuko Yoshida. Their collective
work on pi calculus and correctness properties (livelock, deadlock and
leak freedom) is the underpinning of WS-CDL, giving the language
mathematical soundness.

WS-CDL Moves into Full Development

In preparation for today's first public release, the W3C Web Services
Choreography Working Group has already published Web Services
Choreography requirements and its model overview last month. The Working
Group designed this foundation for WS-CDL to be consistent with Web
Services Architecture, and to augment the Architecture of the World Wide
Web, First Edition, a work in progress by the W3C's Technical
Architecture Group (TAG).

WS-CDL is XML-based and supports SOAP Version 1.2, WSDL 2.0, and the
Web's architectural layers. As all W3C Web Services Working Groups are
required to coordinate with each other to ensure a smooth and sound
infrastructure, WS-CDL is designed to be interoperable with all
deliverables in the W3C Web Services Activity.

The Web Services Choreography Working Group is now focusing its
attention on refining WS-CDL, with the intention of developing early
implementations. W3C invites the Web development community to review and
comment on this publication and subsequent drafts. Technical discussion
of WS-CDL is conducted publicly on the public-ws-chor@w3.org mailing list.

Over 40 W3C Member Organizations and Invited Experts Are Building WS-CDL

The participants in the W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group (in
alphabetical order) are Apple Computer; Arjuna Technologies Ltd; BEA
Systems; Choreology Ltd; Cisco Systems; Commerce One; Computer
Associates; DSTC Pty Ltd (CITEC); EDS; Enigmatec Corporation; Fujitsu
Ltd; Hewlett-Packard; Hitachi, Ltd.; Intalio Inc.; IONA; MTA SZTAKI;
National Computerization Agency; Nortel Networks; Novell; Oracle; SAP
AG; SeeBeyond Technology Corporation; Software AG; Sonic Software; Sun
Microsystems, Inc.; Thomson Corporation; TIBCO Software; Uniform Code
Council; University of Maryland (Mind Lab); W. W. Grainger, Inc.;
webMethods, Inc., and Invited Experts Dr. Honda, Professor Milner, and
Dr. Yoshida. The group is chaired by Martin Chapman (Oracle) and Steve
Ross-Talbot (Enigmatec).

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 (MIT
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 America --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

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Received on Tuesday, 27 April 2004 10:03:35 UTC