02/17/2005 7:17 AM
post4562
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Guarantee Terms
The value of detailed specification in the GuaranteeTerm part of WS-Agreement is questionable. Standardisation of
concepts such as "business value", "importance", "preference" is probably premature.
The specification addresses this in a way that may be appropriate for best effort services (offering no real guarantees)
but which is unlikely to be useful in a commercial context.
A guarantee should be unambiguous about the service to be provided, the performance to be delivered (including how this
is to be measured in a way that can be independently audited), the price and the consequences of any breach. Commercial
SLAs are complex legal constructs which it would be premature to attempt to standardise.
In practice, WS-Agreement is likely to supplement existing commercial relationships which will define the relevant terms
and conditions. Reference to external agreements should be sufficient.
WS-Agreement does a good job of standardising the basic structure of an agreement but attempts to standardise some of
the more complex aspects are counter-productive. Even as optional content these add to the complexity of the
specification and are unlikely to be useful.
The community needs to gain experience in the use of web services with performance guarantees, particularly in a
commercial context before standardisation can be undertaken.
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