News

Microsoft move could slow Web services

• By Richard Adhikari
• March 26, 2003

In a move that observers say could slow Web services momentum, Microsoft Corp. (http://www.microsoft.com) has resigned from the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) so-called Web services choreography working group.

Microsoft notified the W3C of its exit following a meeting earlier this month to work on the standard, which aims to create a specification for using Web services to develop tools that allow businesses to share data and processes. Observers said Microsoft officials decided to withdraw after the meeting due to a disagreement over the direction of the W3C debate.

In a prepared statement, Microsoft officials suggested that they would turn to alternative options for creating choreography standards. The statement contended that the W3C organization, the keeper of the World Wide Web, "is not the only vehicle in which to impact and evaluate a set of technologies." At least one other consortium -- the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) -- can accept submissions on Web services choreography standards, observers noted.

The move may fragment the Web services choreography market much like competing Unix standards prevented efforts in the 1980s to create a single version of that operating system for multiple processors and platforms. At this point, Microsoft continues to work with IBM, Tibco and BEA Systems to create its own set of Web services choreography specifications, WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction, based on BPEL4WS. Still another proposed specification, written jointly by Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC and Sonic Software, has been submitted to the OASIS consortium.