The trinity of specs share some things in common with previously announced specs such as ebXML (define) and certainly rubs shoulders with the WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction schemas from Microsoft, IBM and others. How are they different?

ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said WS-CAF is focused on the B2B-oriented transactions, which is a more focused and specific problem than the more general reliable, transacted processes solved by the WS-Transaction and WS-Coordination specs.

Schmelzer and his colleague, ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, called this issue another case of vendors chopping up a particular problem into small pieces.

“In essence, this is a “divide-and-conquer” strategy,” Schmelzer told internetnews.com. “By dividing up a much larger, more significant problem area into more minute problem areas, these vendors (that are struggling to become Web Services leaders) are hoping to sway users into particular implementations that use their specs, which of course, IBM and Microsoft will simply not support.”

Read more at: InternetNews