[wsrp] Questions around Relationship between WSIA and WSRP

[Eilon Reshef <eilon.reshef@webcollage.com>]

Title: Message

Hi Everybody,

Since the initial meeting of the OASIS WSRP committee is next week, I wanted to bring up to discussion the relationship between the WSIA committee and the WSRP committee. Naturally, this will be part of the discussions next week and since there is a significant overlap between the individuals attending both committees, this will probably be an interesting discussion. Yet, I thought it might help to bring up some the questions ahead of time, so that by the time we all meet we will have had some time to come up with an opinion.

The stated goals of the two committees are:

WSIA. Create an XML and web services centric framework for interactive web applications. The designs must achieve two main goals: enable businesses to distribute web applications through multiple revenue channels, and enable new services or applications to be created by leveraging existing applications across the Web.

WSRP. Create an XML and web services standard that will allow for the 'plug-n-play' of: portals, other intermediary web applications that aggregate content, and applications from disparate sources. These so-called Remote Portlet Web services will be designed to enable businesses to provide content or applications in a form that does not require any manual content or application-specific adaptation by consuming applications. 

Clearly, in both cases the goal is to facilitate integration of interactive applications (or: components) into new contexts. In WSIA, the "Consumer" applications are generic, whereas in WSRP, they are specifically portal applications.

Based on the preliminary work in both committees, there's a set of base services common to both cases, which handles the fundamental questions of how are interactive applications represented and integrated.

         +----------+
         +   Base   + 
         +----------+

And then some application-specific interfaces/protocols, which deal with portal integration (e.g., admin screens and user management) and non-portal integration (customization, commerce integration, etc.).

+-------------+ +-----------------+
+   Portals   + +   Non-portals   +
+-------------+ +-----------------+

Naturally, we will have to decide - between the two committees - which one handles the "base" services. These are naturally issues around the basic request model (actual API and flow), URL rewriting, instantiation, etc.

It would seem that WSRP will evolve from this into portal-specific questions and WSIA will evolve into tighter integration scenarios.

There are pros and cons to having each committee handle the base services:

- WSRP is a more advanced in terms of actual protocols for base services. (But, naturally, those protocols may not less adequate for the general case)
- WSIA has a wider view of the requirements. (But, naturally, may require some more time to converge).

Again, since there's a large overlap between the two committees, this is more of a procedural issue than it is of a real issue, but I thought it might be worth pointing out before the meeting.

Looking forward to see you on Monday,

Eilon

PS: Sorry if this message gets to you twice - I posted it to both committees.