A Second WS-CDL Tool-Suite Is Born

Posted by Mark Little on Nov 28, 2007

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WS-CDL has been around for many years, evolving from WSCI through the W3C. It has had a strange history, often being misunderstood as a competitor to WS-BPEL. However, those that do take the time to understand the specification typically come away enthused. As Jeff Schneider said:

The original WS-CDL specification was less than impressive, however, the concepts were right on. I haven't gone back to revisit the specs but I will. It will take people some time to understand the fundamental 'centralization' problem associated with BPEL. Until then, alternatives will largely be ignored.

Or as Charlton Barretto commented:

CDL enables the business stake holder, the business analyst, the enterprise architect and the application engineer to share their views of the same system in a synchronised fashion, by providing the means for each level of detail for each stake holder to be captured without that detail being necessarily exposed to the others. Also CDL provides the necessary provenance to enforce requirements at each level. In this fashion, CDL also enables the A in SOA, since it provides the manner in which architecture can be modelled, described and implemented.

However, despite this (or maybe because with the exception of Oracle, no major vendor has supported WS-CDL since the start) there has been limited tooling around for developers to use. It is interesting to note that despite Oracle's support, they have no WS-CDL implementation either. In fact, the only option until recently was the tooling available from HatTrick Software, related to the Pi4 Technologies Foundation. That should come as no surprise, given that Steve Ross-Talbot is a co-author of the standard. However, one is the loneliest number and WS-CDL hasn't exactly caused the same kinds of waves as other WS-* technologies.

Until now. As Steve mentions on his blog:

At last, Christmas has come early. Congratulations to Hongbing Wang and his team in China. A new WS-CDL tools suite is born and we at Pi4 Tech are no longer out on our own.

I feel every more sure that others will join the fray.

http://wscomposition.seu.edu.cn/index.html

Now as the song says, "Two can be as bad as one It's the loneliest number since the number one". This may not be a wave, but maybe it's a ripple. Perhaps WS-CDL is finally turning the corner to mainstream acceptance as people see that WS-BPEL is not the final solution.

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