An announcement from Akamai, The Globus Alliance, HP, IBM, Sonic Software, and TIBCO on January 20, 2004 described the release of three new Web Services Resource Framework specifications providing a scalable publication/subscription messaging model and the ability to model stateful resources using Web services. Further development of these specifications is now targeted for work in the OASIS Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee.

Two additional documents relevant to the Web Services Resource Framework were published on March 31, 2004. Web Services Base Faults (WS-BaseFaults) "defines an XML Schema type for base faults, along with rules for how this base fault type is used and extended by Web services. The goal of WS-BaseFaults is to standardize the terminology, concepts, XML types, and WSDL usage of a base fault type for Web service interfaces. A designer of a Web services application often uses interfaces defined by others. Managing faults in such an application is more difficult when each interface uses a different convention for representing common information in fault messages Support for problem determination and fault management can be enhanced by specifying Web services fault messages in a common way. When the information available in faults from various interfaces is consistent, it is easier for requestors to understand faults. It is also more likely that common tooling can be created to assist in the handling of faults."

The Web Services Service Group Specification (WS-ServiceGroup) "defines a means by which Web services and WS-Resources can be aggregated or grouped together for a domain specific purpose. In order for requestors to form meaningful queries against the contents of the ServiceGroup, membership in the group must be constrained in some fashion. The constraints for membership are expressed by intension using a classification mechanism. Further, the members of each intension must share a common set of information over which queries can be expressed."

The two new specifications have been inspired by portions of the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) Version 1.0. The OGSI v1.0 specification has been refactored into five separate specifications in the context of the new Web Services Resource Framework.

Bibliographic Information

• Web Services Base Faults (WS-BaseFaults). Draft Version 1.0. 3/31/2004. 11 pages. Appendix I provides the XML Schema; Appendix II supplies the WSDL (version 1.1). XML Namespace: 'http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/stdwip/web-services/WS-BaseFaults'. Authors: Steve Tuecke (Globus / Argonne, Editor); Karl Czajkowski (Globus / USC/ISI); Jeffrey Frey (IBM); Ian Foster (Globus / Argonne); Steve Graham (IBM); Tom Maguire (IBM); Igor Sedukhin (Computer Associates International); David Snelling (Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe); William Vambenepe (Hewlett-Packard). Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 Computer Associates International Inc., Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, International Business Machines Corporation and The University of Chicago.

  Status: "This WS-BaseFaults specification is an initial draft release and is provided for review and evaluation only. The Companies hope to solicit your contributions and suggestions in the near future. The Companies make no warrantees or representations regarding the specifications in any manner whatsoever."

  "Special thanks to the Global Grid Forum's Open Grid Services Infrastructure working group, which defined the OGSI v1.0 specification from which WS-BaseFaults was inspired. This specification has been developed as a result of joint work with many individuals and teams. The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions from many people, including: Bryan Murray, Nataraj Nagaratnam, Jay Unger."

• Web Services Service Group Specification (WS-ServiceGroup). Draft Version 1.0. 3/31/2004. 33 pages. Appendix I provides the XML Schema; Appendix II supplies the WSDL (version 1.1). XML Namespace: 'http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/stdwip/web-services/WS-ServiceGroup'. Authors: Steve Graham (IBM, Editor); Tom Maguire (IBM, Editor); Jeffrey Frey (IBM); Nataraj Nagaratnam (IBM); Igor Sedukhin (Computer Associates International); David Snelling (Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe); Steve Tuecke (Globus / Argonne); William Vambenepe (Hewlett-Packard). Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 Computer Associates International Inc., Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, International Business Machines Corporation and The University of Chicago.

  Status: "This WS-ServiceGroup specification is an initial draft release and is provided for review and evaluation only. The Companies hope to solicit your contributions and suggestions in the near future. The Companies make no warrantees or representations regarding the specifications in any manner whatsoever."

  "This specification has been developed as a result of joint work with many individuals and teams. The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions from many people, including: Tim Banks, Dave Booz, Rob High, Jim Knutson, Heather Kreger, Frank Leymann, and Jay Unger."

About Web Services Base Faults (WS-BaseFaults)

Problem determination in a Web services setting is simplified by standardizing a base set of information that may appear in fault messages. WS-BaseFaults defines an XML Schema type for base faults, along with rules for how this base fault type is used and extended by Web services.

A designer of a Web services application often uses interfaces defined by others. Managing faults in such an application is more difficult when each interface uses a different convention for representing common information in fault messages.

Support for problem determination and fault management can be enhanced by specifying Web services fault messages in a common way. When the information available in faults from various interfaces is consistent, it is easier for requestors to understand faults. It is also more likely that common tooling can be created to assist in the handling of faults.

WS-BaseFaults defines an XML Schema type for a base fault, along with rules for how this fault type is used by Web services.

This specification intends to meet the following requirements: (1) Define a standard XML Schema type containing base fault information; (2) Define how this base fault type is used within WSDL defined interfaces... It is not an objective of this specification to define a common hierarchy of common faults upon the base fault." [from the Abstract and Introduction]

About Web Services Service Group Specification (WS-ServiceGroup)

The goal of WS-ServiceGroup is to standardize the terminology, concepts, message exchanges, WSDL and XML needed to express the aggregations of Web services and resources as defined by the implied resource pattern.

In this document, we consider a distributed computing environment consisting of Web services and stateful resources. A pattern defining the relationship between Web services and stateful resources is detailed in Modeling Stateful Resources with Web services. The term WS-Resource is used to describe the relationship between a Web service and a stateful resource.

This WS-ServiceGroup specification defines a means by which Web services and WSResources can be aggregated or grouped together for a domain specific purpose. In order for requestors to form meaningful queries against the contents of the ServiceGroup, membership in the group must be constrained in some fashion. The constraints for membership are expressed by intension using a classification mechanism. Further, the members of each intension must share a common set of information over which queries can be expressed.

In this specification, the ServiceGroup membership rules, membership constraints and classifications are expressed using the resource property model. Groups are defined as a collection of members that meet the constraints of the group. The ServiceGroupRegistration interface extends the basic ServiceGroup capabilities with message exchanges for managing the membership of a ServiceGroup.

The ServiceGroup and ServiceGroupRegistration interfaces defined in this document are commonly expected to be composed with other application domain specific interfaces, which define more specialized interaction with the service group and/or with the services that are members of the service group. For example, specialized interfaces may offer means of querying the contents of the ServiceGroup, and for performing collective operations across members of the ServiceGroup.

This specification intends to satisfy the following requirements:

• Define the standard resource properties by which a requestor can query and retrieve contents of a service group.
• Define the standard resource properties by which a requestor can query and retrieve details of an entry in the service group.
• Define standard message exchanges and resource properties by which a requestor can add new entries for a member in a service group. [from the Introduction]