Web services are a set of emerging standards that enable interoperable
integration between heterogeneous IT processes and systems. You can think of them as
a new breed of Web application that is self-contained and self-describing, and that
can provide functionality and interoperation ranging from the basic to the most
complicated business and scientific processes. In short, Web services hold the
promise for providing a common standard mechanism for interoperable integration
among disparate systems, and the key to their utility is their standardization. This
common mechanism for delivering a "service" makes them ideal for implementing a
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Besides using the common Web transports, Web services also require a common
language for the data exchanged -- Extensible Markup Language (XML). Of course,
XML is just the scaffolding for the actual exchange. For the Web services
protocols to be interoperable across diverse systems and suitable for serious
applications, standards bodies, such as W3C, OASIS, and WS-I, must formally
standardize these protocols. IBM® continues to be a leader in and key
contributor to that process. You'll see how this is relevant for Web services when
you look at the breakdown of these standards and specifications below.
IBM is continuing to provide leadership to the SOA community with the establishment of new SOA standards. Check out these new articles from IBM's experts reviewing the new standards and how IBM has the products, services and expertise to support them. These are the first of a series of article that will be available as new standards develop.
If you would like to understand more about the architecture standards available for
SOA, please check out this joint paper from The Open Group, OASIS, and OMG standards
organizations that will give you an overview of the types of standards, how they
relate to each other, and guidance on which ones may be useful to your organization.
IBM's software patent licensing policies support widespread adoption of these
standards. For more information, see the IBM Interoperability Specifications Pledge.
The following image gives a graphical representation of how all the categories of
standards and specifications fit within the context of a Web services framework.
Below it is a breakdown of the individual specs and how they relate to this
framework:
Transports
BEEP, the Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (formerly referred to as BXXP), is
a framework for building application protocols. It has been standardized by IETF
and does for Internet protocols what XML has done for data.
Messaging
These messaging standards and specifications are intended to give a framework for
exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment.
Description and discovery
Web services are meaningful only if potential users may find information
sufficient to permit their execution. The focus of these specifications and
standards is the definition of a set of services supporting the description and
discovery of businesses, organizations, and other Web services providers; the Web
services they make available; and the technical interfaces which may be used to
access those services.
Reliability
It is not possible to solve business issues if the participants are unable to be
sure of the completion of message exchanges. Reliable messaging, which allows
messages to be delivered reliably between distributed applications in the presence
of software component, system, or network failures, is therefore critical to Web
services.
Transactions
Transactions are a fundamental concept in building reliable distributed
applications. A Web service environment requires coordination behavior provided by
a traditional transaction mechanism to control the operations and outcome of an
application.
Security
Using these security specifications, applications can engage in secure
communication designed to work with the general Web services framework.
Business processes
A business process specifies the potential execution order of operations from a
collection of Web services, the data shared between these Web services, which
partners are involved and how they are involved in the business process, joint
exception handling for collections of Web services, and other issues involving how
multiple services and organizations participate. BPEL specifies business processes
and how they relate to Web services.
Management
Web services manageability is defined as a set of capabilities for discovering
the existence, availability, health, performance, usage, as well as the control
and configuration of a Web service within the Web services architecture. As Web
services become pervasive and critical to business operations, the task of
managing and implementing them is imperative to the success of business
operations.
Other
As the area of Web services and SOA continues to evolve, there are a variety of
categories for which new standards and specifications are being created. Some don't logically fit under the typical categories, so we list them here.
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