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World
Wide Web Consortium
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Contact: Mark A. Hale, Ph.D., P.E. Interwoven 1195 W. Fremont Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (408) 220-7483 (408) 774-2002 FAX mark.hale@interwoven.com |
Position
Paper
Content Management for Web Services
Interwoven, a leading content management provider, boasts an infrastructure that allows users to integrate applications that provide active content into their eBusiness environment. We are seeing a noticeable shift from applications to Web services as they are being increasingly used to provide active content from across the Internet. Our infrastructure has proven to be important in this process because it is used to engineer production quality services through a rigorous development, test, and deployment cycle.
Interwoven endorses the standardization of Web services and supports further activities that lead to interoperability. We believe that the services must be engineered to be used accountably in businesses settings. Engineering is essential if the routine use of Web services is to gain widespread adoption by the business community. We have highlighted some key areas below that we feel are important to engineering Web services and should be studied by the working group. We will encourage the group to define a reasonable scope for any such Web service initiative so that baseline implementations can be worked on in a reasonable timeframe.
Engineering Environment
What does the engineering environment look like for
development, test, and deployment of Web services? Will debug tools be incorporated into this environment? Are there certification procedures in place?
Interwoven is committed to bringing Web services to the production
environment. We will work with the Web services effort to provide a reasonably
scoped problem and then define baseline requirements to deploy realistic
services for business applications.
Description and Discovery of Web Services
How are Web services described? How and where will Web services be
registered? What discovery mechanisms
are there for locating services in a production environment? Are there varying QOS levels for the Web
services that can be expected? How can
the data formats (DTDs, Schemas, etc.) used to communicate with Web services be
catalogued to facilitate integration (there are literally hundreds of DTDs from
domains alone)? Does the registration
authority maintain the catalogue?
Interwoven works directly with application, commerce, and
personalization servers in content management.
Their services are integrated through the use of well-defined APIs. We work to standardize the way in which
active content is presented in the development cycle. This work also includes the addition of meta-data, necessary for
the construction of the semantic Web, in which services are described in a way
that promotes accuracy of their use. We
also have techniques for discovery at the content, classification, and
meta-data levels.
Aggregation
Can Web services from different sources be
aggregated into new services? Is there
a manageable workflow model that can be used to govern this? How can these new services be developed and
tested for deployment in real business settings? How is session security maintained across multiple service
providers? How are aggregates of
services certified?
Interwoven
has experience in managing Web services in its products. Currently, we are able to integrate and test
services as providers of active content.
We have implementation experience from co-chairing the proof-of-concept
team for ebXML, a body that provides a foundation for integrating business
services across the Internet.