OASIS Symposium – Round-table on Web Services and SOA

In the work of the OASIS Reference Model for SOA, I and others repeatedly raised the issue of whether we should spell “web services” –upper case or lower case? For me, Upper case implies the WS-* stack of specifications, whereas lower case could be used more generically for all types of SOA-based services, including ebXML and others. The panel seemed to be focussed more on the former but in the discussion and debate the issue opened out more.

One of the key issues: how to keep business focus on developing services? In the same way that SOA is supposed to keep the complex business of behind-the-scenes service execution away from the service client, then surely the whole business of developing web services – including the choice of the technology stack, the orchestration of complex services – itself should be taken up a level by concentrating on the semantics of the services, rather than the technologies.

How about a web service to help you build a web service? Maybe Open Composite Services Architecture (Open CSA) will help?

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