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The World Wide Web Consortium has acknowledged receipt of a WS-PAEPR Member Submission from Axway, BEA Systems, Inc., JBoss Inc., Nokia, Oracle, and Progress Software Corporation. The Web Services Policy Attachment for Endpoint Reference (WS-PAEPR) specification as contributed defines a mechanism to attach policies written using the W3C Web Services Policy 1.5 — Framework specification to an endpoint reference, defined by the Web Services Addressing 1.0 — Core Recommendation. Intellectual Property Statements from the six companies conforming to W3C rules have been filed, including copyrights and W3C Royalty-Free patent licensing requirements.
Background: The W3C WS-Addressing Recommendation defines an XML Infoset-based representation for specifying endpoint references. The corresponding XML syntax involves an EndpointReference element with contained elements Address, ReferenceParameters, and Metadata. The Metadata element allows child elements from any namespace. Such metadata can be used to define the 'the behavior, policies and capabilities of the endpoint.' Typically, these are used to include WSDL definitions that apply to that endpoint as well as Policies or Policy References that apply to that endpoint. The Web Services Addressing 1.0 — Metadata specification defines how to include WSDL metadata in an EPR's metadata section.
The contributed Web Services Policy Attachment for Endpoint Reference (WS-PAEPR) specification "defines how to include Policies and Policy References within the Metadata element as well as the semantics of such inclusion. It also addresses the semantics of Policies and Policy References directly included within the Metadata element in combination with Policies and Policy References included within WSDL definitions that are also included in the Metadata element."
While the WS-PAEPR specification discusses how to associate Policies with endpoints, it does not discuss how such Policies can be used. The W3C WS-Policy Working Group has published several documents that describe how Policies can be used:
- Web Services Policy 1.5 — Attachment. W3C Proposed Recommendation 06-July-2007
- Web Services Policy 1.5 — Primer. W3C Working Draft 05-June-2007
- Web Services Policy 1.5 — Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors. W3C Working Draft 30-March-2007.
Submitters of the WS-PAEPR specification have suggested that W3C make the submission available for consideration by members or other third parties. They further suggest that the W3C refer the submission to the WS-Addressing Working Group and WS-Policy Working Group for further processing, preferably as a W3C Recommendation. Assistance from the companies to the Consortium will be provided as needed to help with advancement of this technical work.
A Team Comment from Philippe Le Hégaret (W3C Architecture Domain Leader) reports that the WS-PAEPR submission "will be brought to the attention of the Web Services Addressing and Web Services Policy Working Groups, as well as the Web Services Coordination Group. The W3C would be however concerned if one of the Groups would decide to start the work using the Submission as a basis, without considering the Web Services Metadata Exchange specification. The W3C is interested in avoiding competing solutions in the Web Services space and in working with the various parties to come up with a common solution."
