The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) has just announced that it has completed its mission and will betransitioning all further efforts to OASIS. As their recent press release states:
The release of WS-I member approved final materials for Basic Profile (BP) 1.2 and 2.0, and Reliable Secure Profile (RSP) 1.0 fulfills WS-I’s last milestone as an organization. By publishing the final three profiles, WS-I marks the completion of its work. Stewardship over WS-I’s assets, operations and mission will transition to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a group of technology vendors and customers that drive development and adoption of open standards.
Now at any other time this kind of statement from a standards organization might pass without much comment. However, with the rise of REST, a range of non-WS approaches to SOA and the fact that most of the WS-* standards have not been covered by WS-I, is this a reflection of the new position Web Services finds itself in, over a decade after it began? Perhaps this was inevitable given that the over the past few years there has been a lot more emphasis on interoperability within the various WS-* working groups? Or are the days of interactions across heterogeneous SOAP implementations in the past?