Update: Microsoft, BEA, Tibco tout Web services events spec

Microsoft, BEA Systems, and Tibco Software on Wednesday published a specification, WS-Eventing, which is intended to provide a common way of communicating events within and between Web services.

The companies plan to submit the specification for consideration by an industry standards body such as W3C or OASIS. This submission will happen after seeking feedback and testing for interoperability during the next several months, according to a Microsoft representative. WS-Eventing is intended to provide a common way to communicate events, which are being defined as real-world occurrences that trigger actions in software, such as an order being placed or a package being shipped. Without a common communications method, developers have been forced to develop ad hoc solutions that are incomplete and inflexible, according to Microsoft.

"What WS-Eventing is, is a specification that basically allows a Web service to subscribe to and accept subscriptions for event notifications generated by other Web services," said Steven VanRoekel, director of platform strategy at Microsoft.

"Anytime you can automate a manual task, you're going to bring in efficiency," VanRoekel said.

With WS-Eventing, Web services can send and receive information about events that have occurred, regardless of whether the event is originating in the firmware of a device or in large-scale enterprise systems, according to Microsoft.

WS-Eventing co-authors are proposing a set of fundamental protocols, message formats, and interfaces for a Web service to subscribe to events that come from another Web service, Microsoft said.

A Sun official, in an e-mail response, was highly critical of the specification. "While this specification may indeed have some value in furthering Web services capabilities, it is seriously flawed. This is yet another example of a couple of companies focused on unilaterally defining Web services instead of using open processes in recognized standards bodies," said Ed Julson, group manager of Web services technologies and standards.    

An official at IBM said the company was contacted about the WS-Eventing specification, but chose not to participate at this time. The company has been pursuing its own work in this area, said the official, Karla Norsworthy, director of dynamic e-business technologies at IBM.

"Our view is clearly [that] this is an important area. We've been a leader for years in message-oriented middleware," Norsworthy said.

The company wants any Web services event solution to scale, have an event notification mechanism, and enable use of grid computing, Norsworthy said.

"These are the three requirements we want to make sure a solution meets and we're not ready to sign up to one until we make sure we have that whole set of requirements met," she said.

IBM is pledging to study the WS-Eventing proposal, Norsworthy said.

The specification can be applied to scenarios in the enterprise, home, or in devices and can form the basis of more complex vertical solutions in the future, Microsoft said. It also utilizes capabilities of published specifications such as WS-Addressing, WS-Security, and WS-ReliableMessaging.

WS-Eventing supports SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2 Envelopes,

Microsoft has published a briefing on WS-Eventing at http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2004/01/ws-eventing.