OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) TC

The original Call For Participation for this TC may be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200309/msg00003.html

The charter for this TC is as follows.

Name

OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) Technical Committee

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of OASIS FWSI TC is to facilitate implementation of robust Web Services by defining a practical and extensible methodology consisting of implementation processes and common functional elements that practitioners can adopt to create high quality Web Services systems without re-inventing them for each implementation.

It solves the problem of the slow adoption of Web Services because of lack of methodologies to implement Web Services, and a lack of understanding of whether solutions proposed by vendors have the necessary components to reliably implement an application based on Web Services.

It is anticipated that the TC will establish liaisons with some of the key web services standards in interoperability, security, business process management and orchestration etc; in formulating the web service implementation process specification. Obviously criteria may have to be set to select the appropriate standards or specifications. However, the focus on the TC must be to determine the commonly used functional elements and specify the scope and purpose of the identified functional elements.

The efforts of this TC would:

  1. accelerate implementation of Web Services-based systems
  2. improve the performance and robustness of such systems
  3. improve understanding of Web Services implementations
  4. reduce the complexity of such systems and hence reduce the developmental and maintenance efforts; and
  5. reduce the risk of implementation.

Why is there a need for the FWSI TC?

Through the experience of developing Web Services solutions and working with the industry in actual implementations of web service-enabled applications, it became apparent that web services implementation needs a lot of actual implementation guidelines and there are also a lot of commonalities that exist throughout these implementations. If harnessed properly, the movement towards getting web services to the mass market can be realised that much faster. As such, the thoughts for contributing this knowledge and harnessing the vast knowledge out there from all parts of the industry was mooted and hence the work towards the formation of this TC.

Scope of Work

The TC will develop the following:

  1. Web Services Implementation Process Specification. The TC will define an implementation process for Web Services by building on the work of existing standards. The implementation process specification will describe the common implementation steps needed to build robust Web Services within the context of a typical system lifecycle process using the Web Services Functional Elements. Web Services, being highly distributed in nature, do not lend themselves well to classical implementation processes. A model implementation process that is tried-and-tested will help practitioners in avoiding the common pitfalls of implementing Web Services.
  2. Web Services Functional Elements Specification. The TC will specify a set of functional elements that practical implementations of Web Services-based systems will require. These functional elements form a basis for practitioners to instantiate into a technical architecture using the Web Services Implementation Process. It is the purpose of the TC to explore and define the right level of abstraction for these functional elements and to specify the purpose and scope of each functional element to facilitate efficient and effective implementation of Web Services.

The TC will not implement actual commercial products and solutions based on the specifications listed above. This will be left to commercial entities to implement. The TC's work will be complete when the members of OASIS approve the specifications as OASIS Standards.

An analogy of the scope of the TC's work would be the recipe for baking a cake. The implementation process will be analogous to the instructions for baking the cake (eg pre-heating the oven or mixing which ingredients) while the functional elements will be analogous to the ingredients for baking the cake.

List of Deliverables

The key deliverables and completion dates of the FWSI TC are:

  1. Web Services Implementation Process Specification - 30 Apr 2004
  2. Web Services Functional Elements Specification - 30 Sep 2004

Anticipated Audience

The work of the TC will be used by system integrators and software vendors as a basis for implementing Web Services solutions. In-house Web Services developers in large corporations will also benefit from the work of the TC.

Language

All meetings (both face-to-face and phone meetings) as well as official correspondences amongst FWSI TC participants will be conducted in English.

 

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