The success of web services heavily depends on standards. Why? The key driver for web services adoption is integration, (Per the estimation of zapThinks, 70% of today's IT budgets are dedicated to solving integration problems.) Interoperability is a prerequisite for intergration, and standards are prerequisite for interoperability.
However, the first generation of web services "standards", such as WSDL 1.1 and SOAP 1.1, were mostly cooked in the kitchen of Microsoft and IBM, not many people had a chance to express their opnions about what should be included in the recipe. It's no surprise that many of the specifications are not perfect - they contain errors and ambiguities which may lead to different interpretations by different implementors. As a result, not after long, the industry realized that web services generated by different vendor tools often can not talk to each other:)). The customers are pounding on the door for a "supreme court" to provide clarifications and guidances. WS-I is an answer to that demand.
SAP is a founding board member of WS-I, and has been very active in the working groups that produce the profile and build prototype sample applications to validate the profile. In the last year, with contributions from various member companies, the profile working group have resolved more than 200 issues with the underlying specifications. The result of the year long diligent work is the set of rules specified in the profile. More than 150 WS-I member companies, including SAP, Microsoft, IBM, and Sun have endorsed the profile and promised that the set rules will be followed in the platforms they provide.
In the process of making the profile, we have been in constant contact with our development team for SAP web services platform in WebAS6.30, and the profile requirements have been reflected in 6.30. Customers who use WebAS 6.30 can operate directly with the profiled implementation guidelines.
