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Services and Contracts
My panel on services and contracts went pretty well, I think. We went through many of the issues I identified earlier. A few new things came up that I hadn’t thought through. First, we discussed WS-Policy and some of the identity issues surrounding service contracts. Second, we got into a discussion of directories (UDDI). The reason for discussing directories is that much of contracts has to do with exchanging metadata and one of the ways metadata is delivered is from the directory. I’m not sure we made that clear enough for the audience.
Posted by windley on May 5, 2005 3:04 PM
Comment from Jack Krupansky at May 9, 2005 5:48 PM
We need to be very clear and have distinct terms for the type of contract that a computer-based service provides and the type of contract between legal entities under which the "technical contract" operates. The two types of contract are related, but not in a clear and obvious manner.
It's quite unfortunate that technologists have begun tossing around the term "contract" or "service contract" as if it was an end-all usage.
A "computational service contract" between an application and a "computational services provider" does indeed require "definition of terms", which will of course be manifested in meta-data form, but should also have a real-world form (or XML form that can trivially be translated into traditional contractual format).
This is yet another example of how advances in technology are beginning to seriously overlap real-world concerns.
-- Jack Krupansky