Assessment of Web Services Specifications to Support Long-Running Conversations

Abstract

Web service is the leading choice of technology among integration designers, as it promises to provide the required integration capability in standardized and inexpensive manner. In order to guarantee consistent and reliable execution of the integrated systems, web services need to support long-running business conversations among services. Web services support these conversations through specifications such as Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL), Conversation Policy for XML (cpXML) and Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL). This paper develops a set of requirements to support long-running conversations based on Language-Action literatures. These requirements are utilized to assess the above specifications for their ability to support long-running conversations. Assessment reveals that cpXML specification provides better support than WS-CDL and WSCL.

Keywords: web services, conversations, language-action perspective, lap