WS-* Bloat, what is actually being used

Below is a list of WS/XML Specifications that I have implemented with customers that are in production or in pilot mode. The first generation specifications (XML Schema, XSLT/XPath, SOAP, WSDL) are used widely. The second/third generation specifications would be BPEL and the WS-* standards.

• SOAP
• WSDL
• XML Schema - Pretty much the standard for data definition and more powerful than DTDs (nothing new here).
• XSLT/XPath - Standard for data transformation (haven't used XQuery yet).
• BPEL - Standard for Orchestration Web Services
• WS-RM - only have used it at one client but it provides reliability as advertised.
• WS-Security - not used in production but have several customers moving to it for up-coming releases.
• WS-Addressing - examining this and other specifications for a routing road map. Not currently used in production work that I have performed.

So as you can see there are still a lot of missing specifications that are floating in the WS-* ether as well as UDDI (an unpopular specification in project based SOA). The above is based on a sampling of 200+ customers that I have worked with from 2002.