DIVERSITY WILL NOT be the undoing of Web services infrastructure standards, says Jean-François Abramatic, chairman of the International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1996. Abramatic, who oversees the strategic direction of the W3C, believes it’s a good thing for the Web services standards that the W3C oversees — including XML; SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), an XML-based messaging standard; and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) — to be implemented in a variety of languages and environments. Abramatic, who is also senior vice president of research and development for iLog, which provides customizable, pre-built C, C++, and Java components for application development, spoke in a recent interview with InfoWorld associate news editor Eugene Grygo about the momentum of the Web services standards effort. InfoWorld: First of all, I guess we should talk about what you consider a Web services standard and how you see things shaking out. Abramatic: The availability of the XML infrastructure has made it possible, I mean reasonable, [for] Web services to be deployed. And naturally people have invested energy in that direction. So, first of all, [I see] the XML protocol as the common default front. The SOAP [standard] has been submitted to W3C, which gives it sort of an official status in the W3C process. We’re at the second working draft stage [with SOAP], so it’s … on its way to recommendation and there is no reason to doubt that it will not come out. WSDL is at an earlier stage, but it’s also built upon SOAP anyway. It’s at the level of submission. … it’s been submitted by more than 20 companies, which is a record for the organization. Meaning that, one, it shows the interest [and] the momentum, [and] two, [it shows] the level of first-level consensus in the community. … So, those are the two pieces which are on W3C’s agenda. UDDI [Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration] is not. InfoWorld: Sun is claiming that a de facto standard is stronger than a standard set by a body, and they’re also claiming that Java will be the de facto standard for Web services. Is there any validity to what Sun is saying? Abramatic: Well, I don’t think there is any contradiction. I mean [if you consider] SOAP and WSDL — SOAP describes protocol [and] WSDL describes services. And the programming language in which the Web services are implemented — or any layer of the protocols are implemented — [is controlled by] the standard. … Web services can be implemented in Java and there is a good likelihood that Java will be used as a programming language to implement Web services, as well as other languages. That’s the whole benefit of this technology, that it is programming language independent. InfoWorld: How do you see Microsoft’s .Net effort and Sun’s effort at pushing Web services fitting into that? Abramatic: The companies you’ve mentioned are members of the consortium and they participate in the development of standards. So, .Net is the Microsoft approach, Java is the Sun approach, and [there are] other approaches — some of them [rely on] those technologies, some others not. But for me, it’s a totally normal process at this stage [to have] standardization [of] layers and then competition for products and services on top of those standardization layers. InfoWorld: You don’t see that it’s toppling the whole Web services effort or your efforts? Abramatic: No, I think it actually will be a good test of the validity of the standard if it’s implemented in a variety of languages. And interoperability between those implementations will be checked. InfoWorld: Is the agreement around Web services standards unprecedented? Abramatic: Well, it’s true that the birth of XML took longer — the pregnancy, so to speak, was longer. But the Web technology community evolves as well. There are more and more people who can contribute, the layers are higher and higher. … People agreed that there was a need for something that happens to be called XML now which was [deferred] when the [HTML] initiative was launched. … Never forget that when we launch an activity at W3C, before any piece of technology is available, there is a discussion at the membership level, a review at the membership level of whether or not this is a useful activity. And yes, the momentum has probably widened because the organization itself has widened. We are now 500 members. When we launched XML we were 100 plus. InfoWorld: If vendors try to mold the standards to meet their own needs, how damaging will that be to the adoption of Web services? For example, if the .Net and Sun camps can’t agree, could there be competition in the Internet community like there was between the OSF and AT&T in the Unix community? Abramatic: Well, I think the situation is different if you compare it to the Unix competition a few years ago, in the sense that people [in the Web community] agree. To some extent, all these players have learned their lessons from that experience. And companies recognize that there is a need for a shared infrastructure and that competition has to be built on top of it. To some extent, the Internet itself has taught this lesson to the whole community, right? Nobody argues about TCP/IP. Nobody argues about SMTP. InfoWorld: How do you perceive the standards and technologies behind the Semantic Web effort? Abramatic: The idea [behind] the Semantic Web is that the [Web] infrastructure can also be used for machine-to-machine communication. And information metadata should be made available so machines can cooperate over the Web for the benefit of the user. [Semantic Web] relies on more advanced technologies. … The W3C has started an advanced development project … [so] the [Web] communities can leverage such an infrastructure. So there is more of a “research aspect” [now with] the Semantic Web. And it is to some extent in an infancy stage. However, RBF, the language [used] to describe metadata, is leveraging XML technology very heavily, and the same mechanicals are used to create working groups, develop the first generation of products, and gather the communities around it. InfoWorld: Do you think the peer-to-peer technologies that are evolving, and this push toward grid computing from IBM and others, will bolster Web services and make them more palatable to mainstream computing? Abramatic: I think it’s very early to make definitive statements in these areas. It’s for sure that we are being cautious that the XML protocol and higher layers are independent of the lower layer protocols so that it could be implemented on other protocols than HTTP. So yes, we’re taking action to allow the activity or innovation to come at the lower-layer protocol levels. If there is a winning association in this area, at least we’ve played our role to make it possible to happen. However, it’s not within our realm in the W3C that we address those [issues] at this point. Technology Industry