The CoI leadership should be the champions of promoting the use of Web services open industry standards (XML, WSDL, UDDI, etc.) for community systems interoperability. The community CoI can make it clear that interface standards based interoperability is the best practice approach over platform heterogeneity, point-to-point, or hub-an-spoke message broker based interoperability.
Although some of the newer more specialized standards are still maturing, the Web Services standards as a set have gained wide spread utilization throughout the world and the risk of their abandonment is minimal. SOA can be achieved through the use of other interoperability standards (e.g., CORBA IDL, JMF, XML RMI), but no alternative to Web services has the wide spread applicability or adoption for system to system interoperability.
It is important to understand the distinction between Web Services interoperability standards and community Community Interface Specifications. Web services standards are the general language constructs used to create community Community Interface Specifications. For example, the WSDL standard is used to describe the operations that a service can perform and the XML\XSD standard is used to describe the community data dictionary that services utilize. Creating a single common set of operations and data, instantiated in a single Community Interface Specification as the definitive vernacular for community interoperability, is ideal and can be achieved over time but it is very difficult to accomplish during the early stages of Net-Centricity. As history proves, getting a very large community of organizations to agree on a single data model is laborious and time consuming with a high risk of failure. This is where the use of Web Services standards delivers significant benefits.
Even if two organizations do not use the same Web Services based Interface Specification, because they are based upon the Web Services standards, interoperability can be achieved through Web Services translation using XML Schema Language for Translation (XSLT) or semantic mediation services. This translation can easily be automated and often does not require any coding development. Translation is unavoidable and is a healthy part of Net-Centric interoperability maturation. If all community Community participants agree to use Web services then this is a major step forward that will lead to faster interoperability results. A single common Community Interface Specification is the goal and the community must progress towards that end but agreeing on utilizing Web Services interoperability standards enables incremental progress as a function of “marketplace” evolution rather than working group decree.
The CoI leadership can promote the use of Web services industry standards through policy, financial incentives, architecture guidance, implementation efforts, governance, and any other means by which they can exert influence. It is imperative that CoI leadership place the interface specification driven approach as the centerpiece of community interoperability.
Additionally, the community CoI and the component organizations should strategically and actively participate in industry standards bodies such as OASIS, OMG, and W3C. Active participation ensures that the community will influence the continuing evolution of the standards to meet their needs. Participation also will greatly assist the community in developing, propagating, and maintaining expertise in open industry standards that will translate into more effective systems interoperability implementation.
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