Microsoft, BEA Systems and Tibco Software on Wednesday published a specification designed to communicate events between Web services.
The specification, called Web Services Eventing, is intended to simplify the development of applications that rely on events to trigger an action. For example, a business application might rely on a product inventory being replenished (the event) before it generates a shipping label and an invoice (the action). So, for instance, tools built around WS-Eventing would make it easier for developers to construct a Web service that sends out an e-mail alert once a stock reaches a certain price. Once the technology is built into products, developers will be able to subscribe to a given event, automate a response and set conditions on the interaction, according to the specification's authors.
The specification is written so that it could be used in a wide range of devices and scenarios, including complex business applications, according to a statement from the companies. The WS-Eventing specification uses Web services techniques based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) to re-create many of the "publish and subscribe" capabilities of messaging middleware products from companies such as Tibco and IBM. Web services attempt to bridge proprietary software from many manufacturers, in order to offer a standard way to link distributed systems. The companies said they plan to submit the WS-Eventing specification to an industry standards body for consideration. But they did not provide a time frame for the submission or disclose which organization they would apply to.
News source: C|Net News.com
