The list of proposals for Web-services standards continues to grow. The latest, called Web Service Choreography Interface, is from BEA Systems Inc., Intalio Inc., SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems Inc. WSCI is XML based and would help developers program the sequence of multiple transactions defined as Web services within a business process. WSCI, which has been published on the companies' Web sites, will eventually be submitted to an industry standards body.
Noticeably absent among the companies endorsing WSCI are IBM and Microsoft, which use other technologies to orchestrate the flow of Web services. Research and consulting firm Delphi Group said that "the proposed standard itself is moving into areas in which IBM and Microsoft haven't been able to come to agreement around a standards vs. a proprietary value-add approach to the market." Nevertheless, such technology is needed to use Web services as part of a larger, more complex business process, instead of simple information retrieval, Delphi said.
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