There are a variety of specifications associated with web services. These specifications are in varying degrees of maturity and are maintained or supported by various standards bodies and entities. These specifications are the basic web services framework established by first-generation standards represented by WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI.^[1] Specifications may complement, overlap, and compete with each other. Web service specifications are occasionally referred to collectively as "WS-*", though there is not a single managed set of specifications that this consistently refers to, nor a recognized owning body across them all.

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (August 2008)

These sites contain documents and links about the different Web services standards identified on this page.

• IBM Developerworks: Standard and Web Service^[2]
• innoQ's WS-Standard Overview ("Diagram" (PDF).)
• MSDN .NET Developer Centre: Web Service Specification Index Page
• OASIS Standards and Other Approved Work
• Open Grid Forum Final Document Archived 2013-10-22 at the Wayback Machine
• XML CoverPage
• W3C's Web Services Activity

• XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
• XML Namespaces
• XML Schema
• XPath
• XQuery
• XML Information Set
• XInclude
• XML Pointer

• SOAP (formerly known as Simple Object Access Protocol)
• SOAP-over-UDP^[3]
• SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism
• WS-Notification
  • WS-BaseNotification
  • WS-Topics
  • WS-BrokeredNotification
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Transfer
• WS-Eventing
• WS-Enumeration
• WS-MakeConnection

• JSON-WSP
• WS-Policy
• WS-PolicyAssertions
• WS-PolicyAttachment
• WS-Discovery
  • WS-Inspection
• WS-MetadataExchange
• Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI)
• WSDL 2.0 Core
• WSDL 2.0 SOAP Binding
  • Web Services Semantics (WSDL-S)
• WS-Resource Framework (WSRF)

• WS-Security
• XML Signature
• XML Encryption
• XML Key Management (XKMS)
• WS-SecureConversation
• WS-SecurityPolicy
• WS-Trust
• WS-Federation
• WS-Federation Active Requestor Profile
• WS-Federation Passive Requestor Profile
• Web Services Security Kerberos Binding
• Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile
• Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol
• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
• XACML

• P3P

• WS-ReliableMessaging
• WS-Reliability
• WS-RM Policy Assertion

• Web Services Resource Framework
  • WS-Resource
  • WS-BaseFaults
  • WS-ServiceGroup
  • WS-ResourceProperties
  • WS-ResourceLifetime
• WS-Transfer
• WS-Fragment
• Resource Representation SOAP Header Block

These specifications provide additional information to improve interoperability between vendor implementations.

• WS-I Basic Profile
• WS-I Basic Security Profile
• Simple Soap Binding Profile

• WS-BPEL
• WS-CDL
• Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI)
• WS-Choreography
• XML Process Definition Language
• Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL)

• WS-BusinessActivity
• WS-AtomicTransaction
• WS-Coordination
• WS-CAF
• WS-Transaction
• WS-Context
• WS-CF
• WS-TXM

• WS-Management
• WS-Management Catalog
• WS-ResourceTransfer
• WSDM

• Web Services for Remote Portlets

• WS-Provisioning – Describes the APIs and schemas necessary to facilitate interoperability between provisioning systems in a consistent manner using Web services

• Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS)
• ebXML

• ISO/IEC 19784-2:2007 Information technology -- Biometric application programming interface -- Part 2: Biometric archive function provider interface
• ISO 19133:2005 Geographic information -- Location-based services -- Tracking and navigation
• ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 Information technology -- Service management -- Part 1: Specification
• ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 Information technology -- Service management -- Part 2: Code of practice
• ISO/IEC 24824-2:2006 Information technology -- Generic applications of ASN.1: Fast Web Services
• ISO/IEC 25437:2006 Information technology -- Telecommunications and information exchange between systems -- WS-Session -- Web Services for Application Session Services

• Web service