Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications on Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services.
The first specification–called Business Process Execution Language for Web Services–is a programming language for defining how to combine Web services to accomplish a particular task. WS-Coordination describes how individual Web services within that task interact. A software programmer, for example, can stitch together Web services into a sequence of operations to accomplish a particular task. The third specification, called WS-Transaction, is used to ensure that transactions all complete successfully or fail as a group. Web services are emerging methods of writing software that allows businesses to interact via the Internet.
A travel Web site could use Web services to connect to airlines, hotels and car rental agencies, allowing a traveler to book an airplane, hotel room and a car at the same time. If all three reservation requests are successful, the traveler can complete the transaction. But if the airplane request is not successful, the computing system can undo the hotel room and car rental request–and ask the traveler to submit another travel request.
What may be especially interesting for us is the first one – the Business Process Execution Language. As we go about putting the modules in place using web services for enterprise applications, we must adhere to standards. Anything that can streamline business processes will be useful. Need to see how it fits in with RosettaNet Basics.
