[February 2006]
Bob Freund (Hitachi, Ltd.), Mark Nottingham (Yahoo! Inc.), Chairs,Note: This is the second charter for the Web Services Addressing Working Group. The previous charter is still available.
The Working Group follows the rules and requirements of the latest operative version of the World Wide Web Consortium Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document and the W3C Process Document, the W3C Process Document shall take precedence.
The purpose of the Web Services Addressing Working Group, part of the Web Services Activity, is to produce a W3C Recommendation for Web Services Addressing by refining the W3C Member Submission "WS-Addressing" based on consideration of the importance of this component in the Web Services architecture, implementation experience, and interoperability feedback. WS-Addressing defines how message headers direct messages to a service or agent, provides an XML format for exchanging endpoint references, and defines mechanisms to direct replies or faults to a specific location.
These facilities are expected to be broadly available and should be provided on a timely fashion. Therefore, this Working Group shall be schedule-driven. This charter features an aggressive schedule and a tightly constrained scope designed to ensure that the Working Group will meet its schedule. This charter is intended to carry WS-Addressing consensus and interoperability forward, as outlined in Tips for Getting to Recommendation Faster.
The Working Group is chartered to standardize the mechanisms for referencing and addressing Web services by refining WS-Addressing, which includes the following components of the Web Services Architecture:
Note: the Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition indicates that distinct resources must be assigned to distinct URIs. This must be considered when refining the mechanism for the service specific message headers.
The components must be extensible to enable other mechanisms such as new kinds of relationships between correlated messages, policies, or service semantics to be built upon Web Services Addressing. The components must also be usable independently of the SOAP or WSDL version in use.
In addition, the Working Group is chartered to define:
The components must be defined so as to allow binding to protocols other than SOAP.
The deliverables for the SOAP 1.1 and WSDL 1.1 bindings must include language that the bindings are defined for backward compatibility only.
While the definition of new WSDL MEPs, composition of MEPs, or interaction patterns, such as pub-sub, callback or notification mechanisms, is outside the scope of the Web Services Addressing Working Group, the Working Group shall accomodate the use of the addressing mechanism in the context of such scenarios. The Working Group should coordinate with other groups wishing to define such interaction patterns.
The expiration date of this charter is 30 September 2006.
The Working Group should coordinate with the Web Services Description Working Group to define the use of message headers in the context of WSDL 2.0 Message Exchange Patterns and to support the definition of Web Service Addressing property values in WSDL 2.0 service descriptions. To ensure that coordination with WSDL 2.0 does not delay the schedule for the core WS-Addressing functionality the Working Group must produce a separate specification for the WSDL 1.1 and 2.0 bindings.
The charter of the Working Group is expected to be extended in October 2006 to do post-Recommendation and errata work.
In case of significant schedule changes, the Advisory Committee MUST be notified of any significant schedule changes.
The Working Group should coordinate its efforts with the W3C Working Groups involved in the Web Services Activity, especially:
The following organizations have groups that may utilize the Web Services Addressing:
WS-MessageDelivery is a W3C Member Submission and may provide a source of comment and review on WS-Addressing.
Effective participation is expected to consume one workday per week for each Working Group participant; two days per week for editors. The Chair shall ensure that the criteria for Good Standing are understood and followed.
To be successful, we expect the Web Services Addressing Working Group to have 10 or more active participants for its duration.
Participants are expected to carry out their assignments in a timely fashion, attend most meetings, and to remain familiar with group documents and mailing list discussion (W3C Process Document, section 6.2.1.7). Active participation will help ensure rapid progress.
The Chairs of this Working Group are Bob Freund (Hitachi Ltd.) and Mark Nottingham (Yahoo! Inc.).
The Chair is expected to use the means provided by the W3C Process to help the Working Group remain on schedule and avoid scope creep (see the list of expected milestones). The Chair will:
The initial W3C Team contacts are Hugo Haas and Philippe Le Hégaret. It is expected that this Working Group would consume about 0.30 FTE, including administrative logistics.
The Working Group will have distributed and face-to-face meetings.
At least up until the Last Call period ends, a two-hour Working Group distributed meeting will be held every week. When necessary to meet agreed-upon deadlines, distributed meetings may be held twice a week. Face-to-face meetings are expected to happen every 6 weeks. Thereafter, a one- to two-hour Working Group distributed meeting will be held every week. When necessary to meet agreed-upon deadlines, distributed meetings may be held twice a week. Face-to-face meetings are expected to happen every 2 months.
When deciding a substantive technical issue, the Chair may put a question before the group. The Chair must only do so during a group meeting, and at least 50% of participants in Good Standing must be in attendance.
As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), the Working Group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.
When the Chair conducts a formal vote to reach a decision on a substantive technical issue, eligible voters may vote on a proposal one of three ways: for a proposal, against a proposal, or abstain. For the proposal to pass, there must be more votes for the proposal than against. In case of a tie, the Chair will decide the outcome of the proposal.
The Working Group will utilize a public mailing list, [email protected].
A Member-only mailing list [email protected] is also available for administrative purposes only.
The proceedings of this Working Group are public, subject to exceptions made by the Chair, after consultation with the Working Group.
This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.