OASIS has announced the formation of a new Web Services Component Model technical committee organized to create an XML and web services centric component model for interactive web applications. The TC activity "is focused upon two main goals: to enable businesses to distribute web applications through multiple revenue channels, and to enable new services or applications to be created by leveraging existing applications across the Web. The Web Services Component Model (WSCM) will provide a coordinated set of XML vocabularies and Web services interfaces that allow companies to deliver Web applications to end users through a variety of channels -- directly to a browser, indirectly through a portal or embedded into a third party Web application. With WSCM, companies will be free to syndicate their applications across different portals and Web site platforms without being limited by proprietary products. They will be able to dynamically share Web services without the time and labor of creating multiple vendor-specific connectors written to different Web languages such as Java, COM/.Net and Perl. The OASIS WSCM TC will consider contributions of related work from other groups and companies: (1) The Web Services User Interface (WSUI), an initiative proposed by a working group of software providers earlier this year, plans to submit their specification to the new OASIS technical committee; (2) IBM intends to contribute Web Services Experience Language (WSXL), a Web services-centric component model for interactive Web applications, as work to be considered in the WSCM TC. Initial members of the WSCM Technical Committee, chaired by Charles Wiecha of IBM, include Cyclone Commerce, DataChannel, Documentum, Epicentric, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Logistics Management Institute, Macromedia, Sterling Commerce, U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), along with other OASIS Contributors and Individual members."

From the announcement:

"Right now, there is no industry standard mechanism for packaging the display component of a Web service," explained Charles Wiecha of IBM, chair of the new OASIS WSCM Technical Committee. "WSCM will enable any Web application -- a package tracker, a calendar application, a stock quote, anything -- to be delivered and displayed to an end user as a Web service, regardless of the underlying Web platform, vendor-specific application format or display device."

Wiecha emphasized that WSCM will be developed in light of standards and specifications issued by OASIS, UN/CEFACT, ISO, W3C and other relevant standards bodies. "We aren't trying to reinvent the Web presentation layer. Our goal is to harmonize WSCM as far as practical with existing Web application programming models (e.g. Portals), the work of the W3C (e.g. XForms, DOM, XML Events, XPath, XLink, XML Component API task force), emerging Web services standards (e.g. SOAP, WSDL, WSFL) and with the work of other appropriate business information bodies."

From the TC call for participation:

As currently envisioned, the WSCM work will take place in five phases:

• A first phase to gather requirements across web application deployment, development and management vendors.
• A second phase to define a set of "base" web services interfaces that can be used to expose web application function and adaptation.
• A third phase to define a "wiring mechanism" to declaratively specify web application semantics.
• A fourth phase to define a set of web services interfaces that can be used to partition web applications into model, view and control (MVC).
• A fifth phase to define a set of design patterns to guide WSCM developers in creating re-useable application components. In addition the TC will encourage implementations, test suites and interoperability guidelines.

If the work actually does take place in this form, then it is estimated that the first, second and third phases will take roughly one year to complete and that the fourth and fifth phase will take roughly one year.

TC proposers include:

• Norbert Mikula, DataChannel <norbert@datachannel.com>
• Michael Hyman, DataChannel <michaelh@datachannel.com>
• Don Robertson, Documentum <don.robertson@documentum.com>
• Ed Anuff, Epicentric <ed@epicentric.com>
• Dean Moses, Epicentric <moses@epicentric.com>
• Royston Sellman, HP <royston_sellman@hp.com>
• Charles Wiecha, IBM <wiecha@us.ibm.com>
• Sim Simeonov, Macromedia <simeons@macromedia.com>