Surviving the Web Services Roadmap.
By Gavin ClarkeThe problem with roadmaps is that you need a vehicle. The problem with vehicles is, if you're not on-board then you risk either getting run over or being standing.
IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp this week announced WS-Federation, the latest installment in their WS- roadmap. Joining them were BEA Systems Inc, Verisign Inc and RSA Securities.
The companies said WS-Federation does not compete with the Liberty Alliance Project's work on federated identity. Instead, they said that they see Liberty as "complementary" and talked of future convergence between their works.
Convergence, though, it seems would be on the terms of IBM and Microsoft. Liberty should be cautious and not assume that it's safe in coming months simply because of an early lead in single sign-in and vast industry support.
Liberty has a considerable edge over WS- federation. The group spent the best part of two years defining XML-based specifications based on (Security Assertion Mark-up Language) SAML to encompass companies' existing sign-in systems.
Liberty also has a strong membership base - 170 organizations - and has moved onto phase two of its specifications, to share attributes other than individual identity. Liberty is also being adopted by heavyweights like Amex and General Motors, Liberty members.
In spite of this lead, IBM and Microsoft believe they have the best approach to building web services specifications. Their approach is to work on specifications internally until they are a "point eight or point nine", according to Microsoft's director of web services marketing Steven VanRoekel, and then open them up to the public and standard bodies.
VanRokel said this approach builds better specifications and in a short time span, rather than assess requirements and build from the ground-up in a community-based forum such as Liberty. Microsoft also believes it has expertise to build specifications and is mystified users should want to compete by building their own infrastructure.
Such a world-view means IBM and Microsoft will not be bent from their goal of build core elements of the industry's major web services specifications, via the WS- roadmap.
WS-Federation presents Liberty with two problems. The first is momentum: Yes, Liberty has 170 members and numerous implementations while WS-Federation is backed by just five vendors. WS-Federation, though, is sure to catch up Liberty. WS-Federation will pass to a standards body, likely to be the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), for ratification by a wider audience which Microsoft believes will help it to make-up the numbers.
Liberty also appears to face a technical challenge. Microsoft claims WS-Federation accepts multiple assertions as does Liberty, but using Liberty, an ISV or Liberty must first write a SAML assertion for X509, Kerberos or Passwords adding a layer of potential complexity. It is not clear how much similar coding is needed in WS-Federation.
Liberty is composed of some strong companies and so it is unlikely to simply allow itself to be "converged" with WS-Federation, as IBM and Microsoft wish. That said, users do want simplicity - in this case possibly a single federated identity system rather than competing systems. At the very least, they will want interoperability.
Liberty's challenge is to respond to IBM and Microsoft and maintain its distance and innovation. If not, it risks losing ground, as IBM and Microsoft creep up and slowly build support.
A foreshadowing of possible events is provided by web services choreography. Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) was slipped-out by IBM, Microsoft and BEA but languished for some months, during which time the World Wide Web Consortium focused on choreography. The WS-Choreography working group met for the first time earlier this year with backing from Sun Microsystems Inc and Oracle Corp.
IBM and Microsoft caught up this year and have now, arguably, surpassed WS-Choreography. A flurry of activity in May saw BPEL4WS re-christened and submitted to the OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) technical committee while support for BPEL came from SAP AG, NEC Corp, Novell Inc and Sybase Inc among others. Oracle and Sun, are also now working on the specification, meaning WS-Choreography risks becoming an historical footnote.
Liberty, also backed by Sun, needs to keep a wary eye on parallel industry developments.
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Title Annotation: | WS-Federation |
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Publication: | Computergram International |
Geographic Code: | 1USA |
Date: | Jul 11, 2003 |
Words: | 695 |
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