WS-Coordination

Document:	Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination)
Purpose:	To specify how multiple services work together. When WS-Coordination is in effect, a requester interacts with a coordinator (or coordination service), which is composed of the following: An activation service: On invocation, an activation service returns a context. A context is data (such as an ID) that must be available to any service that participates in a coordination protocol, which is a particular activity such as a database transaction. The requester receives the context from the activation service and uses the context to invite other services to register for (and then participate in) the coordination protocol. A registration service: A registration service allows a service that holds a context to register for a particular activity. One effect of the registration is to provide the access details for one or more coordination-protocol services, as described next. Coordination-protocol services: The coordination-protocol services provide the functionality that is being coordinated. That functionality might define a transaction from an initial database change, through other database changes, up to and including a subsequent commit, rollback, or compensation. The specifics of the coordination protocol are usually defined in another standard such as WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-Business Activity, or WS-BPEL. The addresses passed between services conform to the rules describe in WS-Addressing.
Sponsor:	OASIS
Link:	http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ws-tx#technical