The SOA standards space is constantly evolving. This page is an attempt to provide visibility into the various standards bodies and their current status on significant deliverables.

The primary SOA standards bodies are:

• OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)
• OMG (Object Management Group)
• OSOA (Open SOA)
• W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
• WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization)

SOA standards fall into roughly three categories: format standards, service standards, and process standards.

Format Standards

• SOAP - W3C SOAP spec
• XML-RPC - XML-RPC spec
• REST - Roy Fielding’s dissertation (especially chapter 5)
• EDI - UN/EDIFACT (International) and ANSI ASC X12 (North America)

Service Standards

There are a slew of SOA / Web service standards that address enterprise service topics, including security, transactions, guaranteed delivery, and policy enforcement to name a few.

• IBM provides a very thorough reference site on SOA and Web Services standards.
• Thomas Earl’s WS-Standards.com website is a great resource for finding out more.
• Another great resource is WebServiceStandards.com.

Process Standards

• Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) - WS-BPEL Spec [OASIS]
• Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) - BPMN Spec [OMG]
• XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) - XPDL Spec [WFMC]
• Electronic Business XML (ebXML) - ebXML Spec [OASIS]
• RosettaNet - RosettaNet Spec