Oracle Corp has called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to mediate a growing web services standoff around XML specifications.

Oracle said rival choreography specifications backed by IBM, Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc should be passed to W3C to prevent fragmentation of standards. The company believes the W3C to be a valuable, open form.

Don Deutsch, Oracle vice president of standards strategy and architecture, said fear of fragmentation has forced Oracle to go public. The company has been noticeably silent over web services specifications, avoiding the headlines.

However, things changed in June with the creation of Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BEPL4WS) by Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems Inc and the Sun Microsystems Inc and SAP AG-backed Web Services Choreography Interface (WSCI).

"We don't want to see more than one standard," Deutsch said. "It doesn't serve the interest of standards."

Oracle believes a single standard should emerge from an open forum, like the W3C. As such the company is jointly backing a W3C WS-Choreography working group to undertake the work. Deutsch said a final standard should draw on both sides' specifications.

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