OASIS Advances Protocol for Asynchronous Web Services

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS Members Advance Protocol for Monitoring and Controlling
Asynchronous Web Services

Boston, MA, USA; 10 November 2003 -- Members of the OASIS international
standards consortium have begun work on a specification to enable the
control and monitoring of asynchronous or long-running Web services. The
OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP) Technical Committee is
developing an extension of the World Wide Web Consortium's Simple Object
Access Protocol (SOAP) that will accommodate latency between the request
for a resource or service and its actual return. ASAP is applicable for
areas as diverse as workflow, business process management, e-commerce,
data mining, and mobile wireless devices.

"Not all services are instantaneous -- especially when transactions
involve human intervention or approval," observed Jeffrey Ricker, chair
of the OASIS ASAP Technical Committee. "Probably the biggest
breakthrough ASAP can offer is the ability to treat manual processes as
Web services. Mass integration need no longer be held hostage by the
weakest link. Mass integration can proceed without waiting for full
automation of every process in every organization."

OASIS ASAP Technical Committee members include representatives of
Computer Associates, DataPower, Fujitsu, and others. Participation
remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS provides
mechanisms for public review and comment.

"ASAP represents a simple but critical component of Web services," noted
Karl Best, vice president of OASIS. "Technical Committee members intend
to incorporate full compatibility between ASAP and both the ebXML
Message Services OASIS Standard and the OASIS Web Services Reliable
Messaging specification to ensure the accurate delivery of
transactions."

Industry Support for ASAP

"Asynchronous communication among Web services is critical to both the
simplification of enterprise application integration and the
facilitation of next-generation business models," said Gavenraj Sodhi,
eTrust product manager at Computer Associates.  "CA is actively
participating in the enablement of this asynchronous communication by
supporting standards efforts and incorporating those standards into our
industry-leading Web services management, security, and provisioning
solutions."

"The ultimate killer app of the Internet is email, and it is not an
accident that it is completely asynchronous. Pervasive enterprise-grade
XML web services will require protocols to work the same way that
enterprise apps do -- asynchronously, reliably and securely. We believe
the OASIS ASAP effort can deliver a simple, pragmatic solution for
DataPower customers deploying XML-aware networks," said Eugene
Kuznetsov, chairman and CTO, DataPower.

"Fujitsu Software is proud to be a part of the OASIS Asynchronous
Service Access Protocol (ASAP) Technical Committee. We are dedicated to
helping develop and promote open standards for system interoperability,"
said Keith Swenson, Chief Architect Fujitsu Software. "ASAP will be a
key ingredient for linking Busness Process Management servers and
Enterprise Application Integration servers to each other and to legacy
systems. Openly developed standards in this area should make it much
easier to link different process technologies together, lowering the
overall cost of system integration and allowing for more effective
automation of business processes."


About OASIS
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the
development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members
themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open
process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite
disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web
services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing,
topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded
in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,500 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
http://www.oasis-open.org



Additional information:

OASIS ASAP Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=asap

Cover Pages Technology Report:
Asynchronous Transactions and Web Services
http://xml.coverpages.org/async.html


Press contact:

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org)
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209