Relationship to work of W3C Web Services Resource Access Working Group

["Johannes Echterhoff" <johannes.echterhoff@igsi.eu>]

Hi.

I am new to this list, therefore I am going to quickly introduce myself: my
name is Johannes Echterhoff and I am involved in standardization activities
of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC - http://www.opengeospatial.org).

Recently, there was quite a discussion in an OGC working group on how to
create standards that support both REST(ful) and WS-* (based upon standards
from W3C and OASIS) style web services. A lot of these discussions revolve
around the resources we need to model and how to do that in both
architectural styles. For the WS-* style, this brought me to the WS Resource
Framework specifications from OASIS. I favoured the OASIS specifications
because they reached the final specification status.

Now I learnt of the activities of a new W3C working group, named "Web
Services Resource Access Working Group". I have some questions that I hope
you can answer:

How are the activities of the W3C working group, especially the resulting
documents / standards related to the work done by OASIS? There seems to be
functional overlap of W3C WS-(Resource)Transfer with the
WS-ResourceProperties specification from OASIS. The current working drafts
from the W3C group look like they are more compatible with the http
interface (get, put, delete etc.), so the functionality implemented by the
proposed operations look like they could be more easily ported to a
REST(ful) style web service.

For my work at the OGC, I need guidance which approach (that from W3C or
OASIS) to use and promote. It would help a lot if there was a public
statement to what extent these apparently competing standards differ or
share the same functionality. If possible, guidance why one should use one
approach over the other would be highly appreciated - something like best
practices for various use cases. Right now the only arguments pro/contra an
approach for me are its current specification status
(submission/recommendation/draft/etc.), the functionality required/provided
and the available toolbase.

You see that I am a bit confused with the (apparently emerging) functional
overlap of W3C and OASIS specifications. I hope you can help to clarify the
current situation.

Best regards,
Johannes Echterhoff