W3C Workshop on Data and Services Integration October 20-21 2011, Bedford, MA, USA

Call For Participation

Background

Integration of heterogeneous data and services has always been a concern for creators and managers of services. With the emergence of the Web, the need for reusing data and services became even stronger, as the number of available services raised.

The emergence of XML-based protocols, amongst them SOAP, which became the base of Web Services, was one direction in solving the services and data integration issue. However, it did not solve the "impedance mismatch" issue at the data level. Also, the genericity of the Web Services stack, abstracting from the transports and their intrinsic model, made them disconnected from the general Web usage. Thus, new services based on direct use of HTTP emerged. Those two approaches are currently co-existing.

The Semantic-driven way of looking at integration, like WSMO or OWL-S, suffered from an exclusively top-down approach, failing to embrace the diversity of existing services and the methodologies used to create them.

In parallel, multiple technologies are now available to describe and serialize data structures (XML and XML Schemas, JSON, etc...). All are striving for exchanging data in an interoperable manner. New efforts, like the USDL Incubator are starting to encompass different models of services

Cloud-based services are also created using those different paradigms and present the same challenges as the ones found in Enterprise Services, or on the Open Web, and the opportunity to create mashups of services using different models.

There is currently extensive deployment experience with Web Services; the Semantic Web is more mature; and the XML Stack has become ubiquitous. The increasing use of JSON-based services and Cloud-based computing combined with experience and maturity of the XML-based services and of the Semantic Web technologies suggests that now is a good time to find ways to bridge and combine these various technologies to make a coherent platform for future business and technical work.

Scenarios

Here are some scenarios depicting cases for integration of data and services

  1. Company A is hosting services on multiple Cloud instances on different continents, and needs to adapt its resource consumption through the different cloud management interfaces. It needs to create an uniform view of those computing resources
  2. Company B is exchanging data between different Cloud Platforms on behalf of users, it needs an uniform way of handling the identity of the user and the permission to retrieve data from the different Cloud platforms
  3. Company C expose some services as Web Services, and want to move to the Open Web Platform by providing an HTML5-based interactive interface and JSON-based services instead.
  4. Big Company D has many divisions, which have data in every format. Some export data through services, some use Web Services, other divisions use JSON through a RESTful API, other stick with original 'native' formats. As there are many types of data and services exported, the need for integration of heterogeneous data and services, management of those services, and analyzing the impact of a change in the core engines behind the exported services becomes crucial. Data security, provenance and operating agreements are significant issues in this scenario.
  5. Big Company E is engaging in a large joint venture project in partnership with Big Company F, using services from other vendors. There are complex rules determining which of the companies involved (E, F and involved vendors) have read and write access to different parts of the information pertaining to the joint venture. Data security, granular access controls, data provenance and operating agreements are significant issues in this scenario.

Goals and Scope

The goal of this workshop is to bring together different ways of looking at the issues left unsolved by the existing stacks, investigate the possible paths to help bridging services built using different paradigms, and identify points where standardization would help integration of services and data.

Topics for position papers may include, but are not limited to:

The workshop will discuss the similarities, gaps and differences between the different technology stacks currently used for enterprise service integration, with a view toward identifying standardization opportunities. Participants will, in particular, include practitioners, technologists, and service providers.

Participation Requirements

All participants are required to submit a position paper by 16 September 2011. W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop.

The total number of participants will be limited. To ensure diversity, a limit might be imposed on the maximum number of participants per organization.

Instructions for how to register will be sent to submitters of accepted position papers. These instructions will also indicate a possible limit on the maximum number of participants per organization.

Workshop sessions and documents will be in English. Position papers, presentations, minutes and the workshop report will be public.

There is no fee to participate.

Expression of Interest

To help the organizers plan the workshop: If you wish to participate, please as soon as possible send a message to [email protected] with a short (one paragraph) "expression of interest" stating:

Note: Sending that expression of interest does not mean that you registered for the workshop. It is still necessary to send a position paper (see below), which then must be considered for acceptance by the Program Committee.

Position Papers

You paper must meet the following criteria:

Submit Papers to [email protected].

Based on a review of all submitted position papers, the Program Committee will select the most relevant and invite the submitters of those papers to the Workshop. From among all accepted papers, the program committee will choose a small number of papers judged most appropriate for fostering discussion, and ask the authors of those papers to give short presentations about them at the Workshop. After the workshop, those presentations will then be published on the workshop home page.

Important dates

Date Event
04 August 2011 Call for Participation issued
16 September 2011 Deadline for position papers
23 September 2011 Acceptance notification sent
30 September 2011 Program released
14 October 2011 Deadline for Registration
20-21 October 2011 Workshop

Workshop Organization

Workshop sessions and documents will be in English.

Chairs

Program Committee

Venue

The Workshop will be hosted in Bedford, MA, USA by MITRE. More detailed venue information will be made available in due course.

Deliverables

Position papers, agenda, accepted presentations, and report will also be published online.