[January 21, 2002] The Web Services Component Model (WSCM) TC voted to change its name and clarify its charter. The name has been changed to 'Web Services for Interactive Applications' (WSIA). The charter has been slightly revised to the following: "The purpose of the OASIS Web Services for Interactive Applications (WSIA) TC is to create an XML and web services centric framework for interactive web applications; harmonize WSIA as far as practical with existing web application programming models, with the work of the W3C, emerging web services standards, and with the work of other appropriate business information bodies; ensure that WSIA applications can be deployed on any tier on the network and remain target device and output markup neutral; and promote WSIA to the status of an international standard for the conduct of XML and Web Services based web application development, deployment and management." Mailing lists are wsia@lists.oasis-open.org and wsia-comment@lists.oasis-open.org.

[October 22, 2001] On October 22, 2001 OASIS 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 TC Charter [2001-10]: "The purpose of the OASIS Web Services Component Model (WSCM) TC is to create an XML and web services centric component model for interactive web applications; harmonize WSCM as far as practical with existing web application programming models, with the work of the W3C, emerging web services standards, and with the work of other appropriate business information bodies; ensure that WSCM applications can be deployed on any tier on the network and remain target device and output markup neutral; and promote WSCM to the status of an international standard for the conduct of XML and Web Services based web application development, deployment and management."

References:

• OASIS Web Services for Interactive Applications TC web site
• [January 23, 2002] OASIS WSCM Changes Name to WSIA
• WSCM TC web site
• Announcement 2001-10-22: "OASIS Members Form Technical Committee to Develop Web Services Component Model for Interactive Web Applications. Cyclone Commerce, DataChannel, Documentum, Epicentric, HP, IBM, Logistics Management Institute, Macromedia, Sterling Commerce, U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, and Others Collaborate to Advance International Standard for Delivering Applications as Web Services."
• OASIS TC Call for Participation
• WSCM mailing list archives
• Mailing list archives for 'wscm-comment'
• Contact: TC Chair Charles Wiecha (IBM)
• See also: "Web Services Experience Language (WSXL)" - Main reference page.
• See also: "Web Services User Interface (WSUI) Initiative" - Main reference page.
• [March 25, 2002] "OASIS Hones Web Services Standards." By Tom Sullivan and Ed Scannell. In InfoWorld (March 22, 2002). "Looking to take Web services protocols higher up the interoperability stack, two groups within the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) are developing specifications for content delivery and end-user interfaces. Known as Web Services for Interactive Applications (WSIA) and Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP), which met this week, the groups were created to advance user-facing Web services and enable Web services and other applications to plug and play with portals and portlets. Building on this momentum, Sun Microsystems and IBM plan to announce on Monday at JavaOne a portlet specification submitted to the Java Community Process (JCP) that complements Billerica, Mass.-based OASIS' WSRP group. Thus far, the core Web services standards -- SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), XML, UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) -- have focused on system-to-system interoperability. The standard expected to emerge from the WSIA, however, would improve any service that requires users to fill out online forms, for example, said Dwight Davis, an analyst at Summit Strategies in Kirkland, Wash... recognizing this need, a host of companies have backed the WSIA initiative, including IBM, BEA Systems, Bowstreet, divine, Documentum, Epicentric, and Plumtree. And the lineup of WSRP supporters looks similar, with Documentum, Epicentric, divine, IBM, Sun, Hewlett-Packard, Iona, and Oracle all on board. 'There is a certain set of base functions that we are trying to do jointly between the two committees, and then WSIA will try to go beyond that and do some things that are not required for portals,' explained Charles Wiecha, manager of the next-generation user experience frameworks department at Yorktown Heights, N.Y.-based IBM Research and chair of the WSIA committee. The technologies expected to drive the WSIA standard include IBM Research's WSXL (Web Services Experience Language) and the combined work on Web services graphical interfaces done by Epicentric and divine. IBM has also included in its WSXL proposal plans for XLink (XML Linking Language) to be used to hook together a patchwork of Web services to make them appear as a single application..."

• [January 21, 2002]   Proposal for an OASIS Web Services Remote Portal (WSRP) Technical Committee.    A proposal has been submitted to OASIS for a new Web Services Remote Portal Technical Committee. To be chaired by Thomas Schaeck of IBM, the WSRP TC proposes to "create an XML and web services standard that will allow for the 'plug-n-play' of: portals, other intermediary web applications that aggregate content, and applications from disparate sources. These so-called Remote Portlet Web services will be designed to enable businesses to provide content or applications in a form that does not require any manual content or application-specific adaptation by consuming applications. The group would harmonize WSRP as far as practical with existing web application programming models (e.g., Portals/Portlets, Macromedia Flash, ...), with 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." Based upon the proposed specification(s), portals would be able "to consume Remote Portlet Web Services, using generic Portlet Proxies to allow to dynamically plug in any Remote Portlet Web Service; portals would be able to publish any local portlet as a Remote Portlet Web Service, and Remote Portlet Web Services could be implemented on any Web services-capable platform." [Full context]

• [October 26, 2001] "Blueprint Emerging for User Facing Web Services." By Cathleen Moore. In InfoWorld October 25, 2001. "Momentum is quietly gathering behind a prospective standard for defining how Web services will find their way into the hands of business users. At this week's Web Services Edge 2001 West show, in Santa Clara, California, OASIS (Organization for the Advancement for Structured Information Standards) announced the formation of a technical committee for the WSCM (Web Services Component Model). Influential vendors, such as IBM, Epicentric, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Documentum have thrown their weight behind it. WSCM aims to foster the development of business user-facing Web services by defining a set of XML vocabularies and Web services interfaces that allow vendors to deliver Web applications to end-users, according to Charles Wiecha, OASIS WSCM technical committee chair and IBM research manager... The committee's development work will be particularly important for the enterprise information portal market, in terms of integrating Web services and other applications for end-user consumption, IBM's Wiecha said. IBM said it intends to contribute to the WSCM committee its work in the Web Services Experience Language, a component model for interactive Web applications. Initial members of the OASIS WSCM Technical Committee include IBM, Epicentric, Hewlett-Packard, DataChannel, Documentum, Macromedia, Sterling Commerce, Cyclone Commerce, Logistics Management Institute, Republica, and U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency. San Francisco-based portal player Epicentric, which has been driving the development of a similar specification, dubbed Web Services User Interface, said it will submit its technical efforts over to the WSCM standards push. 'We feel this is a major milestone for proving app interoperability at a user presentation level,' said Ed Anuff, chief strategy officer at Epicentric. 'A Web service up until now using SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] and WSDL [Web Services Description Language] has had no presentational aspect to it. With component model Web services you can provide a complete user interface for an end-user involved in that which can be dynamically plugged into a portal without development efforts.' As the WSCM committee moves further along with a technical specification, the movement is likely to draw support from a wide array of vendors that are rushing to stake territory in the emerging Web services model, according to Wiecha... The first meeting of the WSCM technical committee will be held in January when the group plans to lay out milestones for specification efforts and other technical goals toward standard completion."