RE: Structure of Web Services Architecture Document

Well, it's a little late.  The Web Services Architecture Working Group disbanded quite a while ago.

I will make some comments that reflect my opinions, for what they are worth:

We were certainly aware of SOA during the lifetime of the WG, but we felt that the term is not well defined.  Some people considered it a marketing term.  There is some truth to that, I think.  If you look at the definitions of SOA from various major technology vendors you will find that they differ in significant ways.  An only slightly cynical person might think that each company defines it in a msnner that tilts toward areas where they feel they have some sort of advantage.  Whether or not that is true, SOA is a very ill defined term.  The concept of Web services, on the other hand, were defined by that WG very explicitly, and the WS-* stack of specifications, although not entirely gelled, is nonetheless reasonably stable and usable in a number of important areas.  You apparently feel that you understand what Service Oriented Architectures really are and the relationship of Web services to that architecture, and I have no doubt that you could amplify that into some sort of document.  Unfortunately, a lot of other people could do the same and the results would, in my experience, differ quite materially.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alexander Sadek
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 4:16 AM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Structure of Web Services Architecture Document


Hi!

I don't know whether this is the right method to give feedback on the "Web Services Architecture W3C Working Group Note 11 February 2004" but I hope this will get to the right people.

I had some difficulties differentiating between SOA and Web Services in that note.
You can find many papers that talk about the WS-Architecture meaning SOA-Architecture and the other way around. Thus, such a clarifying document from W3C would be very good.

I learned that SOA is the general concept from the stakeholder's perspective that defines the architecture. And Web Services define technological standards (WSDL, etc.) that are used within that SOA architecture.
So before introducing the WS-Technologies in the WS-Stack it would be nice to first introduce the general SOA stack or referencing to such an introduction.
(Good explanation in:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/SG246303/wwhelp/wwhimpl/java/html/wwhel
p.htm
-> chapter 2, Figure 2-6)

Cheers,
Alex

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Received on Sunday, 19 March 2006 03:41:07 UTC