1 Introduction
A Web Service is a software application identified by a URI [RFC2396],
whose interfaces and binding are capable of being defined, described and discovered by XML
artifacts, and which supports direct interactions with other software applications using XML-based
messages via Internet-based protocols. The full range of application functionality can be
exposed in a Web service.
The W3C Internationalization Working Group, Web Services Task Force,
was chartered to examine Web Services for internationalization issues.
The result of this work is the Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios document
[WSIUS]. Some of the scenarios in that document
demonstrate that, in order to achieve worldwide usability, internationalization
options must be exposed in a consistent way in the definitions, descriptions,
messages, and discovery mechanisms that make up Web services.
The following is a list of the requirements to address these issues.
2 Requirements
2.1 R007 Integrate Internationalization with Web Services Standards
Problem Statement: Internationalization should be integrated with
the architecture and general evolution of Web services and should not represent
a departure in design from existing solutions.
Requirement: Specifications and formats developed for the
internationalization of Web services should be composable with other
quality-of-service type standards, such as those related to security,
reliable messaging, or addressing.
2.2 R001 Locale Information in SOAP
Problem Statement: Service providers and services need information
about the locale, language preference, time zone, or other international preferences
(such as currency, collation, etc.) of the requester.
Requirement:
A Specification or Specifications for a SOAP header or data structure (possibly a SOAP Feature, see [SOAP-Feature],
Section 5: A Convention for Describing Features and Bindings)
to send the Web service provider international context information
(such as locale, language, or other culturally linked preferences)
about the requester and which the provider can use to tailor the language, invocation,
or operation of services or the operation of the provider
(such as language selection in the generation of Faults and so forth).
2.3 R002 Locale Information in WSDL
Problem Statement: Service providers need to indicate that the SOAP headers or data structures
described in R001 are available for a specific service or collection of services. The specific "international preference" information of use to the service or aspects of the service must be described so that properly formatted data can be interchanged, enabling internationalized operation.
Requirement: A specification or specifications for WSDL data structures that can be use in Web service descriptions to indicate that the headers or data structures described in R001 are available for a particular service and describe the binding and invocation requirements related to this.
2.4 R003 International Policies in WSDL
Problem Statement: Service providers need a way to provide information
about how a specific instance of a locale-affected Web service will execute or to differentiate
instances of the same service.
Examples: For service 'Z', binding 'A' executes in French, binding 'B' executes
in Japanese, and binding 'C' attempts to match the user's preferences.
Requirement: A specification or specifications for WSDL data structures that allow a service to describe a "locale
execution policy" for a service or a binding of a service, including any additional derived
information of interest to users of the service (allowing users to select the service and
binding that most closely matches their needs or to tailor the operation of the service via
header information). The specification(s) must allow services to describe one or more languages or
locales available for a specific service and allow for a runtime user choice (language/locale
negotiation) when that is appropriate. They must also provide a way to indicate that a specific
service always executes using specific international settings or returns data in a specific
language.
2.5 R004 International Policies in SOAP
Problem Statement: Given the WSDL features in R003, requesters must be able to
indicate their preferences (when choices exist) when invoking a service and providers must be able to indicate which choice was
applied when the service actually executed (as in a response).
Requirement: A specification or specifications for SOAP headers or data structures that describe the locale preferences the
requester wishes to have applied to a service (in a request) or which were actually
applied to a service by the provider (in a response) as described in the Web service
description defined in R003. This mechanism may be the same as in R001.
2.6 R005 Locale Identifiers
Problem Statement: Although there exist standards for identifying languages
and language preferences on the Web, there are no standards for identifying locales or certain
other international preferences. These data structures are of interest in enabling Web services
and other Web applications for multi-lingual or global operation.
Requirement: A standard for identifying platform neutral international
preferences (that is, locale identifiers). This should include the protocol for matching requests with actual values (locale negotiation), along with guidelines for implementation. Possible mechanisms for this might be a standard
extension to the proposed extension [ID-langtags] of
RFC 3066 [RFC3066] that describes international preferences or the use of URIs to refer to locale data or identifiers on the Web.
2.7 R006 Multi-Lingual Service Discovery Requirements
Problem Statement: Web service discovery needs to allow
users to find the same service in multiple languages and to find services that will meet
their specific language or locale requirements.
Requirement: Document best practices and approaches for the discovery of Web services,
including via non-W3C standards such as UDDI.
Requirement: Liaise with appropriate standards organizations working on Web service discovery.