Tech giants back new Web services

"Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services.

The first specification--called Business Process Execution Language for Web Services--is a programming language for defining how to combine Web services to accomplish a particular task. Web services are emerging methods of writing software that allows businesses to interact via the Internet.

The second, WS-Coordination, describes how individual Web services within that task interact. A software programmer, for example, can stitch together Web services into a sequence of operations to accomplish a particular task. The third specification, called WS-Transaction, is used to ensure that transactions all complete successfully or fail as a group."

Good. But where is the Locomotive of this train. InfoWorld seems to have the answer.