The W3C's XML Protocol Activity has been incorporated into a new W3C Web Services Activity, organized under the W3C Architecture Domain "to develop a set of technologies in order to bring Web services to their full potential." Initially, the W3C Web Services Activity includes a Coordination Group and three Working Groups: (1) Web Services Architecture Working Group; (2) XML Protocol Working Group; (3) Web Services Description Working Group. Members of the Coordination Group include the Chairs of the Activity Working Groups (Christopher Ferris, David Fallside, and Jonathan Marsh), the Web Services Activity Lead (Hugo Haas) and the Semantic Web Activity Lead (Eric Miller). The Architecture Working Group "will identify the technologies necessary for Web services to be used, described, discovered, how Web services interact with each other (such as long-time conversations, routing, composition); it will clearly delimit the boundaries of each identified component, and model the interfaces between them, so that the scope of new Working Groups created to address each piece of is unambiguously defined." The XML Protocol Working Group "creates simple protocols that can be ubiquitously deployed and easily programmed through scripting languages, XML tools, interactive Web development tools, etc. The Web Services Description WG will review the scope of the WSDL 1.1 specification as part of the interface component design task (message, message exchange patterns, protocol binding).

From the Web Services Architecture Working Group charter: "The area of Web services is broad. Many different functionalities are required in order to obtain a fully automated, functional, distributed system. The Working Group is tasked to come up with a document which will describe the architecture of Web Services... The architecture document will identify the technologies necessary for Web services to be used, described, discovered, how Web services interact with each other (such as long-time conversations, routing, composition, ...), etc. The Working Group will use the conclusions reached during the Web services workshop as an input for this work. The Working Group should also identify what existing W3C technologies already address functions required by the architecture identified. In particular, the Working Group will clearly delimit the boundaries of each identified component, and model the interfaces between them, so that the scope of new Working Groups created to address each piece of is unambiguously defined. The Working Group will also provide a model of the various Web services concepts used in the various Working Groups in order to ensure that the various specifications actually work together and use the same concepts and terminology. The Working Group may also suggest a glossary used by Web Services specifications in order to ensure the consistency of Web Services terms..."

From the XML Protocol Working Group charter: "A broad range of applications will eventually be interconnected through the Web. The initial focus of this Working Group is to create simple protocols that can be ubiquitously deployed and easily programmed through scripting languages, XML tools, interactive Web development tools, etc. The goal is a layered system which will directly meet the needs of applications with simple interfaces (e.g. getStockQuote, validateCreditCard), and which can be incrementally extended to provide the security, scalability, and robustness required for more complex application interfaces. Experience with SOAP, XML-RPC, WebBroker, etc. suggests that simple XML-based messaging and remote procedure call (RPC) systems, layered on standard Web transports such as HTTP and SMTP, can effectively meet these requirements..."

From the Web Services Description Working Group charter: "One of the requirements for the development of Web services is the ability to describe the interface, the boundary across which applications (Web services user agents and Web services) communicate. Applications can then interoperate using this interface. The Web Services Description Working Group, part of the Web Services Activity, is chartered to design the following components of the interface: (1) the message: a definition for the types and structures of the data being exchanged; (2) the message exchange patterns: the descriptions of the sequence of operations supported by a Web service' (3) the protocol binding: a mechanism for binding a protocol used by a Web service, independently of its message exchange patterns and its messages... In addition to the specification of a description language, the Working Group will produce a primer in order to help novices familiarize themselves with this technology. A test suite will be developed by the Working Group in order to assess advancement to Proposed Recommendation stage and to promote interoperability..."