W3C

World Wide Web Consortium
Workshop on Web Services

11-12 April 2001
San Jose, CA - USA

 

 

 

Contact:

Mark A. Hale, Ph.D., P.E.

                                                Interwoven

                                                1195 W. Fremont Ave

                                                Sunnyvale, CA  94089

                                                (408) 220-7483

                                                (408) 774-2002 FAX

                                                [email protected]

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.