Copyright © 2004 W3C® (MIT,ERCIM,Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3Cliability,trademark,document use andsoftware licensing rules apply.
This document is a glossary of Web servicesterms defined and used in the Web Services Architecture[WS Arch]. It is intended for use byWeb services spefications in order to refer to a commoncoherent framework.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in theW3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This is a publicWorking Group Note of the Web Services Glossary. It has been produced by theW3C Web Services Architecture Working Group, which is part of theW3C Web Services Activity. This publication as a Working Group Note coincides with the end of the Working Group's charter period.
Discussion of this document is invited on the public mailing listwww-ws-arch@w3.org (public archives).
Patent disclosures relevant to this document may be found on the Working Group'spatent disclosure page.
Publication as a Working Group Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress. Other documents may supersede this document.
This document contains a list of Webservices terms that are part of a coherentframework defined in the Web ServicesArchitecture[WS Arch].The relationships between the termsare defined in the concepts andrelationships section of[WS Arch].
Terms are capitalized when it is meaningful, or otherwise are defined in lowercase.
Some definitions in this document are derived verbatim fromexternal documents. In such cases, the source is indicated asa reference, listed in the3 References section.
To interact with asystem entity in order to manipulate, use, gain knowledge of, and/or obtain a representation of some or all of a system entity's resources.[RFC 2828]
Protection of resources against unauthorized access; a process by which use of resources is regulated accordingto asecurity policyand is permitted by only authorized system entities according to that policy.[RFC 2828]
Any information used foraccesscontrol purposes, including contextualinformation.[X.812]
Contextual information mightinclude source IP address, encryption strength, thetype ofoperation being requested, time of day, etc. Portionsofaccess control informationmay be specific to the requestitself, some may be associated with theconnection via whichthe request is transmitted, and others (for example,time ofday) may be "environmental".[RFC 2829]
A description of the type of authorized interactions asubject can have with a resource. Examples include read, write, execute, add, modify, and delete.[WSIA Glossary]
Aperson or organization that may be the owner ofagents that either seek to useWeb services or provide Web services.
A physical or conceptual entity that can performactions. Examples: people; companies; machines;running software. An actor can take on (orimplement) one or more roles. An actor at one levelof abstraction may be viewed as a role at a lowerlevel of abstraction.
An agent is a program acting on behalf of aperson or organization. (This definition is a specialization of the definition in[Web Arch]. It corresponds to the notion of software agent in[Web Arch].)
The quality orstate of being anonymous,which is the condition of having a name or identity that is unknown or concealed.[RFC 2828]
The software architecture of a program or computingsystem is the structure or structures of the system.This structure includes software components, theexternally visible properties of those components,the relationships among them and the constraints ontheir use. (based on the definition of architecture in[Soft Arch Pract])
A software architecture is an abstraction of therun-time elements of a software system during somephase of its operation. A system may be composed ofmany levels of abstraction and many phases ofoperation, each with its own softwarearchitecture.[Fielding]
A piece of digital information. An artifact may be anysize, and may be composed of other artifacts. Examples of artifacts:a message; a URI; an XML document; a PNG image; a bit stream.
An interaction is said to be asynchronous when theassociated messages are chronologically and procedurallydecoupled. For example, in a request-response interaction, the clientagent can process the response at some indeterminate point in thefuture when its existence is discovered. Mechanisms to do this includepolling, notification by receipt of another message, etc.
A distinct characteristic of an object. An object's attributes are said to describe the object. Objects' attributes are often specified in terms of their physical traits, such as size, shape, weight, and color, etc., for real-world objects. Objects in cyberspace might have attributes describing size, type of encoding, network address, etc.[WSIA Glossary]
An audit guard is a mechanism used on behalf of an owner that monitors actions andagents to verify the satisfaction ofobligations.
Authentication is the process of verifying that apotential partner in a conversation is capable of representing aperson or organization.
The process of determining, by evaluating applicableaccess control information, whether a subject isallowed to have the specified types of access to a particularresource. Usually, authorization is in the context of authentication. Once a subject is authenticated, it may be authorized to perform different types of access.[STG]
An association between aninterface, a concreteprotocol and a dataformat. A binding specifies theprotocol and data format to be used in transmittingmessages defined by the associated interface.[WSD Reqs]
The mapping of aninterface and its associatedoperations to a particular concrete messageformat and transmissionprotocol.
See alsoSOAPbinding.
A capability is a named piece of functionality (or feature) that is declared as supported or requested by anagent.
A choreography defines the sequence and conditionsunder which multiple cooperating independentagents exchange messages inorder to perform a task to achieve a goal state.
Web Services Choreography concerns theinteractions of services with their users. Any user of a Web service,automated or otherwise, is a client of thatservice. These users may, in turn, be other WebServices, applications or human beings. Transactionsamong Web Services and their clients must clearly bewell defined at the time of their execution, and mayconsist of multiple separate interactions whosecomposition constitutes a complete transaction. Thiscomposition, its message protocols, interfaces,sequencing, and associated logic, is considered to bea choreography.[WSC Reqs]
A component is a software object, meant to interactwith other components, encapsulating certainfunctionalityor a set of functionalities. A component has a clearlydefined interface and conforms to a prescribedbehaviorcommon to all components within anarchitecture.[CCA T&D]
A component is an abstract unit of softwareinstructions and internal state that provides atransformation of data via its interface.[Fielding]
A component is a unit of architecture with definedboundaries.
Assuring information will be kept secret, withaccess limited to appropriate persons.[NSA Glossary]
A collection of properties which may be changed. Aproperty may influence the behavior of an entity.
A transport layer virtual circuit established between two programs for the purpose of communication.[RFC 2616]
To cause a desired change in state. Management systems may control the life cycleofmanageable Web services or information flow such as messages.
A Web service conversation involves maintaining some state during an interaction that involves multiplemessages and/or participants.
Data that is transferred to establish a claimedprincipal identity.[X.800]
A delivery policy is apolicy that constrains the methods by whichmessages are delivered by the message transport.
A value computed with a cryptographic algorithm andappended to a data object in such a way that any recipient of thedata can use the signature to verify the data's origin andintegrity. (See: data origin authentication service, data integrityservice, digitized signature, electronic signature, signer.)[RFC 2828]
The act of locating a machine-processable description of aWeb service-related resource thatmay have been previously unknown and that meets certain functional criteria. It involves matching a set of functional and other criteria with a set of resource descriptions. The goal is to find an appropriate Web service-related resource.
A discovery service is aservice that enables agents to retrieveWeb services-related resource description.
Any data that can be represented in a digitalform.[UeB Glossary]
The automated exchange of any predefined and structureddata for business among information systems of two or moreorganizations.[ISO/IEC 14662]
A domain is an identified set ofagents and/or resources that is subject to the constraints of one of morepolicies.
Cryptographic transformation of data (called"plaintext") into a form (called "ciphertext") that conceals the data'soriginal meaning to prevent it from being known or used. If the transformation is reversible, the corresponding reversalprocess is called "decryption", which is a transformation thatrestores encrypted data to its original state.[RFC 2828]
An association between abinding and a network address, specified by a URI, that may be used to communicate with an instance of aservice. An end point indicates a specific location for accessing a service using a specificprotocol and data format.[WSD Reqs]
An agent that terminates amessage on an inboundinterface with theintent of presenting it through an outbound interface as a new message. Unlike aproxy, agateway receives messages as if it were the final receiver for the message. Due to possible mismatches between the inbound and outbound interfaces, a message may be modified and may have some or all of its meaning lost during the conversion process. For example, an HTTP PUT has no equivalent in SMTP.
Note: a gateway may or may not be aSOAP node; however a gateway is never aSOAP intermediary, since gateways terminate messages and SOAP intermediaries relay them instead. Being a gateway is typically a permanent role, whilst being a SOAP intermediary is message specific.
Property of an interaction whose results andside-effects are the same whether it is done one or multipletimes.[RFC 2616]
Safe interactions areinherently idempotent.
An identifier is an unambiguous name for a resource.
TheSOAP sender that originates aSOAP message at the starting point of aSOAP messagepath.
Assuring information will not be accidentally or maliciously altered or destroyed.[NSA Glossary]
Coupling is the dependency between interacting systems. This dependency can be decomposedinto real dependency and artificial dependency:
Real dependency is the set of features orservices that a system consumes from othersystems. The real dependency always exists and cannot be reduced.
Artificial dependency is the set of factors thata system has to comply with in order to consume thefeatures or services provided byother systems. Typical artificial dependency factorsare language dependency,platform dependency, API dependency, etc. Artificialdependency always exists, but it or itscost can be reduced.
Loose coupling describes the configuration in which artificial dependency has been reduced to the minimum.
AWeb service becomes a manageable service with additional semantics, policy statements, and monitoring and control (or management) capabilities (exposed via amanagement interface) all for the purpose of managing the service.
The utilization of the management capabilities by themanagement system in order to perform monitoring ofvalues, tracking of states and control of entities in order toproduce and maintain a stable operational environment.
Capabilities that aWeb service has for the purposes of controlling or monitoring the service, and that can be exposed to a management system for the sole purpose of managing the service.
Interface throughwhich themanagement capabilities of a service are exposed.
Policy associated witha Web service solely for the purpose of describing the managementobligations andpermissions for the service.
The management semantics of a service augment thesemantics of a service withmanagement-specific semantics. These management semantics form thecontract between theprovider entity and therequester entity that expresses the effects and requirements pertaining to the management and management policies for a service.
A message is the basic unit of data sent from oneWeb servicesagent to another in the context of Web services.
The basic unit ofcommunication betweenaWeb service andarequester: data tobecommunicated to orfrom a Web service asa single logicaltransmission.[WSD Reqs]
See alsoSOAPmessage.
Message correlation is the association of amessage with a context. Message correlation ensures that therequester agent can match the reply with the request, especially when multiple replies may be possible.
A Message Exchanage Pattern (MEP) is a template,devoid of application semantics, that describes ageneric pattern for the exchange ofmessages betweenagents. It describes therelationships (e.g., temporal, causal, sequential, etc.) of multiplemessages exchanged in conformance with the pattern, aswell as the normal and abnormal termination of anymessage exchange conforming to the pattern.
Message reliability is the degree of certainty that amessage will be delivered and thatsender andreceiver will both have the same understanding of the delivery status.
A message transport is a mechanism that may be used byagents to delivermessages.
Method by which the sender of data is provided with proof of delivery and the recipient is assured of the sender's identity, so that neither can later deny having processed the data.[INFOSEC Glossary]
An obligation is a kind ofpolicy that prescribes actions and/or states of an agent and/or resource.
A set ofmessages related to a singleWeb serviceaction.[WSD Reqs]
An orchestration defines the sequence and conditions in which oneWeb service invokes other Web services in order to realize some useful function. I.e., an orchestration is the pattern of interactions that a Web service agent must follow in order to achieve its goal.
A permission is a kind ofpolicy that prescribes the allowed actions and states of an agent and/or resource.
A permission guard is a mechanism deployed on behalf of an owner to enforcepermission policies.
A person or organization may be the owner ofagents that provide or requestWeb services.
A policy is a constraint on the behavior ofagents orpersonor organization.
A policy guard is a mechanism that enforces one or morepolicies. It is deployed on behalf of an owner.
Asystem entity whose identity can be authenticated.[X.811]
A set of rules and practices that specify or regulate how aperson or organization collects, processes (uses) and discloses another party'spersonal data as a result of an interaction.
Anagent that is capable of and empowered to perform the actions associated with aservice on behalf of its owner — theprovider entity.
Theperson or organization that is providing aWeb service.
A set of formal rules describing how to transmit data,especially across a network. Low level protocols define the electricaland physical standards to be observed, bit- and byte-ordering and thetransmission and error detection and correction of the bitstream. High level protocols deal with the data formatting, includingthe syntax of messages, the terminal to computer dialogue, charactersets, sequencing of messages etc.[FOLDOC]
Anagent that relays amessage between arequester agent and aprovider agent,appearing to theWeb service to bethe requester.
Quality of Service is anobligation accepted and advertised by aprovider entity to service consumers.
A reference architecture is the generalizedarchitecture of several end systems that share one or more common domains. The reference architecture defines the infrastructure common to the end systems and the interfaces of components that will be included in the end systems. The reference architecture is then instantiated to create a software architecture of a specific system. The definition of the reference architecture facilitates deriving and extending new software architectures for classes of systems. A reference architecture, therefore, plays a dual role with regard to specific target software architectures. First, it generalizes and extracts common functions and configurations. Second, it provides a base for instantiating target systems that use that common base more reliably and cost effectively.[Ref Arch]
Authoritative, centrally controlled store of information.
A softwareagent that wishes to interact with aprovider agent in order to request that a task be performed on behalf of its owner — therequester entity.
Theperson or organization that wishes to use aprovider entity'sWeb service.
Property of an interaction which does not have anysignificance of taking an action other than retrieval of information.[RFC 2616]
Configuring, securing and/or deploying of systems orapplications enabling asecuritydomain.
A plan and set of principles for an administrativedomain and itssecuritydomains that describe thesecurityservices that a system is required to provide to meet the needs of itsusers, the system elements required to implement the services,and the performance levels required in the elements to dealwith the threat environment. A complete security architecturefor a system addresses administrative security, communication security, computer security, emanations security,personnel security, and physical security, and prescribes security policies for each. A complete security architecture needsto deal with both intentional, intelligent threats andaccidental threats. A security architecture should explicitly evolveover time as an integral part of its administrative domain's evolution.[RFC 2828]
Aservice that reliablyand securely records security-related events producing an audit trail enabling the reconstruction and examination of a sequence of events. Security events could include authentication events, policy enforcement decisions, and others. The resulting audit trail may be used to detect attacks, confirm compliance with policy, deter abuse, or other purposes.
An environment or context that is defined bysecurity models and asecurityarchitecture, including a set of resources and set of system entities that areauthorized toaccess the resources. One or more security domains may reside in a single administrative domain. The traits defining a given security domain typically evolve over time.[RFC 2828]
A process (or a device incorporating such a process) that can be used in a system to implement asecurity service that is provided by or within the system.
A schematic description of a set of entities and relationships by which a specified set ofsecurity services are provided by or within a system.[RFC 2828]
A set of rules and practices that specify or regulatehow a system or organization providessecurity services to protect resources. Security policies are components ofsecurity architectures. Significant portions of securitypolicies are implemented via security services, usingsecurity policy expressions.[RFC 2828]
A mapping ofprincipal identitiesand/or attributes thereof with allowable actions. Security policy expressions are often essentially access control lists.[STG]
A processing or communicationservicethat is provided by a system to give a specific kind of protection to resources, where said resources may reside with said system or reside with other systems, for example, an authentication serviceor a PKI-based document attribution and authenticationservice. A security service is a superset of AAA services. Security services typically implement portions ofsecurity policies and are implemented viasecurity mechanisms.[RFC 2828]
A service is an abstract resource that represents acapability ofperforming tasks that form a coherent functionalityfrom the point of view ofproviders entities andrequestersentities. To be used, a service must be realized by aconcreteprovider agent.
WSDL service: A collection ofend points.[WSD Reqs]
SeeWebservice.
A service description is a set of documents thatdescribe theinterface to andsemantics of aservice.
A service interface is the abstract boundary that aservice exposes. Itdefines the types ofmessages and themessageexchange patterns that are involved in interacting with the service, together with any conditions implied by those messages.
A logical grouping ofoperations. An interfacerepresents an abstract service type, independent oftransmissionprotocol and data format.[WSD Reqs]
A service intermediary is aWeb service whose mainrole is to transformmessages in a value-addedway. (From a messaging point of view, an intermediaryprocesses messages en route from one agent toanother.) Specifically, we say that a serviceintermediary is a service whose outgoing messages areequivalent to its incoming messages in someapplication-defined sense.
SeeSOAPintermediary.
Seeprovider agent andprovider entity. See also thediscussion aboutservice provider in[WS Arch].
Seerequester agent andrequester entity. See also thediscussion aboutservice requester in[WS Arch].
An abstract set of tasks which is identified to berelevant by aperson or organizationoffering aservice. Service rolesare also associated with particular aspects ofmessages exchanged with a service.
The semantics of aservice is the behavior expected when interacting with the service. The semantics expresses a contract (not necessarily a legal contract) between theprovider entity and therequester entity. It expresses the effect of invoking the service. A service semantics may be formally described in a machine readable form, identified but not formally defined, or informally defined via an out of band agreement between the provider and the requester entity.
A set ofcomponentswhich can be invoked, and whoseinterface descriptions can be published anddiscovered.
A lasting interaction betweensystem entities, often involving a user, typified by the maintenance of somestate of the interaction for the duration of the interaction.[WSIA Glossary]
Such an interaction may not be limited to a singleconnection between the system entities.
The formal set of conventions governing the format and processing rules of aSOAP message. Theseconventions include the interactions amongSOAP nodes generating and accepting SOAP messages for the purpose of exchanging information along aSOAP message path.
A software entity that produces, consumes or otherwise acts uponSOAPmessages in a manner conforming to the SOAP processing model.
The formal set of rules for carrying aSOAPmessage within or on top of another protocol (underlying protocol) for the purpose of exchange. Examples of SOAP bindings include carrying a SOAP message within an HTTP entity-body, or over a TCP stream.
A collection of zero or moreelement information items targeted at anultimate SOAPreceiver in theSOAP messagepath.
The outermostelement information item of aSOAP message.
A SOAPelement information item which contains fault information generated by aSOAP node.
An extension of the SOAP messaging framework typically associated with the exchange of messages between communicatingSOAPnodes. Examples of features include "reliability", "security", "correlation", "routing", and the concept of message exchange patterns.
A collection of zero or moreSOAP headerblocks each of which might be targeted at any SOAP receiver within theSOAPmessage path.
Anelement information item used to delimit data that logically constitutes a single computational unit within theSOAPheader. The type of a SOAP header block is identified by the fully qualified name of the header blockelement information item.
A SOAP intermediary is both aSOAPreceiver and aSOAPsender and is targetable from within aSOAPmessage. It processes theSOAP header blocks targeted at it and acts to forward a SOAPmessage towards anultimate SOAPreceiver.
The basic unit of communication betweenSOAP nodes.
A template for the exchange ofSOAP messages betweenSOAP nodesenabled by one or more underlyingSOAP protocolbindings. A SOAP MEP is an example of aSOAPfeature.
The set ofSOAP nodes through which a singleSOAP message passes. This includes the initialSOAP sender, zero or moreSOAPintermediaries, and anultimateSOAP receiver.
The embodiment of the processing logic necessary to transmit, receive, process and/or relay aSOAPmessage, according to the set of conventions defined by this recommendation. A SOAP node is responsible for enforcing the rules that govern the exchange of SOAP messages. It accesses the services provided by the underlying protocols through one or moreSOAP bindings.
ASOAP node that accepts aSOAP message.
ASOAP node'sexpected function in processing a message. A SOAP node can act in multiple roles.
ASOAP node that transmitsaSOAP message.
A set ofattributes representing the properties of acomponent at some point in time.
An interaction is said to be synchronous when theparticipating agents must be available to receive and process the associatedmessages from the time the interaction is initiated until all messages areactually received or some failure condition is determined. The exact meaning of "available to receive the message" depends on thecharacteristics of the participating agents (including the transfer protocol ituses); it may, but does not necessarily, imply tight time synchronization,blocking a thread, etc.
An active element of a computer/network system. For example, an automated process or set of processes, a subsystem, a person or group of persons that incorporates a distinct set of functionality.[RFC 2828]
Transaction is a feature of thearchitecture that supports the coordination of results or operations onstate in a multi-step interaction. The fundamental characteristic of a transaction is theability to join multiple actions into the same unit of work, such that theactions either succeed or fail as a unit.
TheSOAP receiver that is a final destination of aSOAP message. It is responsiblefor processing the contents of theSOAP body and anySOAP header blocks targeted at it. In somecircumstances, a SOAP message might not reach an ultimate SOAP receiver,for example because of a problem at aSOAPintermediary. An ultimate SOAP receiver cannot also be a SOAP intermediary for the same SOAP message.
Service that reliablyand securely records usage-related events producing an audit trailenabling the reconstruction and examination of a sequence of events.Usage events could include resource allocation events and resourcefreeing events.
There are many things that might be called "Webservices" in the world at large. However, for the purpose of thisWorking Group and this architecture, and without prejudice towardother definitions, we will use the following definition:
A Web service is a software system designed to supportinteroperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has aninterface described in a machine-processable format (specificallyWSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a mannerprescribed by its description using SOAP-messages, typically conveyedusing HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with otherWeb-related standards.
This document has been produced by theWeb Services Architecture Working Group.
Members of the Working Group are (at the time of writing, and by alphabetical order): Geoff Arnold (Sun Microsystems, Inc.), Mukund Balasubramanian (Infravio, Inc.), Mike Ballantyne (EDS), Abbie Barbir (Nortel Networks), David Booth (W3C), Mike Brumbelow (Apple), Doug Bunting (Sun Microsystems, Inc.), Greg Carpenter (Nokia), Tom Carroll (W. W. Grainger, Inc.), Alex Cheng (Ipedo), Michael Champion (Software AG), Martin Chapman (Oracle Corporation), Ugo Corda (SeeBeyond Technology Corporation), Roger Cutler (ChevronTexaco), Jonathan Dale (Fujitsu), Suresh Damodaran (Sterling Commerce(SBC)), James Davenport (MITRE Corporation), Paul Denning (MITRE Corporation), Gerald Edgar (The Boeing Company), Shishir Garg (France Telecom), Hugo Haas (W3C), Hao He (The Thomson Corporation), Dave Hollander (Contivo), Yin-Leng Husband (Hewlett-Packard Company), Mario Jeckle (DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology), Heather Kreger (IBM), Sandeep Kumar (Cisco Systems Inc), Hal Lockhart (OASIS), Michael Mahan (Nokia), Francis McCabe (Fujitsu), Michael Mealling (VeriSign, Inc.), Jeff Mischkinsky (Oracle Corporation), Eric Newcomer (IONA), Mark Nottingham (BEA Systems), David Orchard (BEA Systems), Bijan Parsia (MIND Lab), Adinarayana Sakala (IONA), Waqar Sadiq (EDS), Igor Sedukhin (Computer Associates), Hans-Peter Steiert (DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology), Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University), Bryan Thompson (Hicks & Associates, Inc.), Sinisa Zimek (SAP).
Previous members of the Working Group were: AssafArkin (Intalio, Inc.), Daniel Austin (W. W. Grainger, Inc.), Mark Baker (Idokorro Mobile, Inc. / Planetfred, Inc.),Tom Bradford (XQRL, Inc.), Allen Brown (Microsoft Corporation), DiptoChakravarty (Artesia Technologies), Jun Chen (MartSoft Corp.), Alan Davies(SeeBeyond Technology Corporation), Glen Daniels (Macromedia), Ayse Dilber(AT&T), Zulah Eckert (Hewlett-Packard Company), Colleen Evans (Sonic Software), Chris Ferris (IBM), DanielaFlorescu (XQRL Inc.), Sharad Garg (Intel), Mark Hapner (Sun Microsystems,Inc.), Joseph Hui (Exodus/Digital Island), Michael Hui (Computer Associates),Nigel Hutchison (Software AG), Marcel Jemio (DISA), Mark Jones (AT&T),Timothy Jones (CrossWeave, Inc.), Tom Jordahl (Macromedia), Jim Knutson(IBM), Steve Lind (AT&T), Mark Little (Arjuna), Bob Lojek (Intalio, Inc.), Anne Thomas Manes(Systinet), Jens Meinkoehn (T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft),Nilo Mitra (Ericsson), Don Mullen (TIBCO Software, Inc.), Himagiri Mukkamala (Sybase, Inc.), Joel Munter (Intel), Henrik Frystyk Nielsen (MicrosoftCorporation), Duane Nickull (XML Global Technologies), David Noor (Rogue WaveSoftware), Srinivas Pandrangi (Ipedo), Kevin Perkins (Compaq), Mark Potts (Talking Blocks, Inc), Fabio Riccardi (XQRL, Inc.), Don Robertson(Documentum), Darran Rolls (Waveset Technologies, Inc.), Krishna Sankar(Cisco Systems Inc), Jim Shur (Rogue Wave Software), Patrick Thompson (RogueWave Software), Steve Vinoski (IONA), Scott Vorthmann (TIBCO Software, Inc.),Jim Webber (Arjuna), Prasad Yendluri (webMethods, Inc.), Jin Yu (MartSoft Corp.) .
The people who have contributed to discussions on thewww-ws-arch public mailing list are also gratefully acknowledged.