OASIS Announces Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) Standards Committee
Wednesday 12 October 2005Twenty-plus vendors collaborate on extensible framework for developing coordination protocols.
Members of the OASIS international standards consortium announced plans to define a set of protocols for coordinating the outcome of distributed application actions.
The new OASIS Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) Technical Committee brings together users and vendors in an open process to refine and finalize a set of specifications based on three initial contributions, Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination), Atomic Transaction (WS-AtomicTransaction), and Business Activity Framework (WS-BusinessActivity). Other contributions and changes to these input documents will be accepted for consideration without prejudice or restriction and evaluated based on technical merit.
"The ability to conduct secure, reliable transactions using protocols rather than a dependence on shared technology is a powerful concept, " said Lawrence Wilkes, Principal Analyst, CBDi. "WS-TX is the final piece of that jigsaw and with broad industry backing, it sets the direction that users are looking for."
"The interoperability of the contributed specifications has already been demonstrated by several vendors," noted Eric Newcomer of IONA, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee. "Our objective at OASIS will be to receive the broadest possible industry feedback and use that input to refine and build on what exists today."
The Committee plans to begin its work by focusing on the underlying specification, WS-Coordination. It will then proceed to advance WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-BusinessActivity.
"When you look at the industry today, a requirement to satisfy two common transaction patterns--atomic and compensating business activities--emerges," said Ian Robinson of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee. "By concentrating our initial efforts on WS-Coordination, we intend to distill the common features and provide a basis for extensibility, so that future transaction models can be supported as well."
The OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee will operate under Royalty Free on RAND Terms, as defined by the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The Committee's first meeting will be held on 16-17 November, and participation remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, and individuals. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee's work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment.
Vendors supporting the WS-TX initiative include Actional, Adobe, BEA Systems, Cast Iron Systems, DataPower, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, IONA, Microsoft, Oracle, Reactivity, Ricoh, SAP, SOA Software, Sonic Software, Systinet, TIBCO, and webMethods.
For more information on the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee, visit www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-tx .
For more information on Messaging and Transaction Coordination, visit xml.coverpages.org/coordination.html .