Sun Microsystems was dismayed at not being invited to participate
in newly proposed Web services specifications spearheaded by IBM,
Microsoft and BEA Systems.
Last week Microsoft, IBM and BEA introduced a Web services
specification for handling workflow, business process execution and
transaction integrity and co-ordination.
Suzy Struble, manager of XML initiatives at Sun, said, "We were not
asked to participate," and she added, "You'll have to ask Microsoft
and IBM [about] that."
Struble said that of the BEA, IBM and Microsoft standards effort,
BPEL4WS (business process execution language for Web services) may
even be redundant with an existing Sun plan submitted to the
W3C.
"This work really needs to be converged. We do not need separate
and diverging efforts," she explained.
This is the second time this year that Microsoft, IBM, and BEA have
formed standards initiatives and left Sun out in the cold. In
February, the three companies formed the Web Services
Interoperability Organisation (WS-I) to promote Web services
interoperability.
BPEL4WS is the union of two previously rival standards, WSFL (Web
services flow language) from IBM and XLang from Microsoft. An
executable language, BPEL4WS is designed to ensure that differing
business processes can understand each other in a Web services
environment.
Struble said BPEL4WS looked similar to the Sun-led Web Services
Choreography Interface (WSCI) specification. This is intended to
"choreograph" events and transactions taking place between
computers, applications, and services accessed over the Internet.
W3C has acknowledged the WSCI submission but has not adopted it as
a formal standard. BEA has participated in the WSCI
submission.
It is possible BPEL4WS and WSCI could be converged, Struble said.
"We would absolutely welcome that." she added.
In spite of not supporting the Sun technology, John Kiger, director
of product marketing at BEA, said, "It is our intention to work
closely with Sun, as well as our other industry partners, to drive
convergence of the industry around a single set of standards for
automating business processes and transactions for Web services."