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Sun to Provide Open Source Web Services Implementations

Stefan Tilkov,

Continuing to drive interoperability between its Java technology and the .NET platform, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) today announced it will help facilitate interoperability with the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) via developing and distributing open source implementations of key WS*-specifications.

Why is that newsworthy, you ask?

I have no idea.

First of all, it’s not as if the JWSDP hasn’t been around for years, and as if it hadn’t been obvious that more and more WS-* specs would have to be added as they become available. Secondly, I don’t think anybody uses Sun’s implementation, anyway …

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On November 8, 2005 12:03 PM, Anne Thomas Manes said:

Stefan,

I agree with your point that almost no one uses Sun’s JWSDP implementation. But I still think this news is newsworthy — at least a little bit — mostly because it shows support for the next generation of the web services framework.

Microsoft WCF (formerly known as “Indigo”) provides automatic support for secure, reliable, transacted web services using WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-AtomicTransaction. But in order to use these extended capabilities, you must also use SOAP 1.2. If Sun is committing to interoperate with WCF, then that also implies a commitment to support SOAP 1.2. I’m always encouraged to see any vendor announce plans to support SOAP 1.2. Perhaps Sun’s move will encourage other vendors to follow suit and implement full support for SOAP 1.2

I’m also always encouraged to see any vendor commit to providing open source implementations. (I’ve not been especially happy with the way Sun conducts its open source projects, but that’s a different matter.) Based on past projects, I assume that Sun will distribute the source under the CDDL license.