A profile is a set of pre-configured, named and versioned specifications that are designed to work together. A profile is a way of packaging several specifications together to allow end users to adopt a new release of the entire set. The desire is for the entire set to be successfully pre-tested, thus mitigating the impact of adopting several independent specifications.

In web services, the first profile to be released is the WS-Basic Profile from WS-I.

Note that this type of profile is different than a Trading Partner Profile.