WS-Reliability Ratified As OASIS Standard

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

WS-Reliability Ratified As OASIS Standard

Booz Allen Hamilton, Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, NEC, Novell, Oracle, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, and
Others Produce Open Standard for Guaranteeing Message Delivery with Web Services


Boston, MA, USA; 15 November 2004 -- The OASIS international standards consortium today announced that its members have approved
WS-Reliability version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed through an
open process, WS-Reliability provides a method to guarantee message delivery over the Internet, enabling companies to conduct
reliable business-to-business trading or collaboration using Web services. 

"Reliable message delivery is one of the key issues to be addressed if there is to be widespread adoption of Web services,
particularly in business-to-business scenarios," said Neil Macehiter, research director at Ovum. "Communications using
Internet-based protocols, such as HTTP and SMTP, are inherently unreliable and do not support the assured or ordered delivery
demanded by the applications on which businesses depend. WS-Reliability, being an approved OASIS Standard developed in open forum
that addresses these limitations, is an important step on the path to realizing the promise of Web services."

WS-Reliability supports guaranteed delivery, which ensures the message is delivered at least once, duplication elimination, which
certifies that the message is delivered at most once, and message delivery ordering, which guarantees messages in a sequence are
delivered in the order sent.

"Financial transactions are just one example of the kind of applications that need WS-Reliability to meet quality-of-service
standards. A message requesting a money withdrawal, for instance, must be received by an application once and only once," noted Tom
Rutt, chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM) Technical Committee. "With the WS-Reliability OASIS Standard,
information can be shared between software programs over the Internet as reliably as within a single application on a laptop." 

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, applauded the efforts of the technical committee members who produced the new standard,
recalling, "The genesis for WS-Reliability was submitted to OASIS in March 2003 by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software,
and Sun Microsystems. These companies recognized the importance of advancing their work within an open process where the entire
community of vendors, users, and governments could contribute. Today's approval of WS-Reliability as an OASIS Standard is proof
positive that it is possible to garner broad input on the development of a standard and still meet time-to-market needs."

Participation in the OASIS WSRM Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. End-users and system
integrators are invited to join OASIS to participate in the adoption phase of this international standardization effort. OASIS hosts
an open mail list for public comment and the ws-reliability-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the
standard. WS-Reliability was created by a royalty-free process technical committee within OASIS.


Industry Support for WS-Reliability OASIS Standard:

Fujitsu 
"Fujitsu believes that reliability of messaging is critical to the successful deployment of Web services. For this reason, we have
been actively contributing to the design of WS-Reliability, leveraging the technologies and expertise we have accumulated in
developing our customers' enterprise systems. We intend to apply this OASIS Standard, not only for Web services, but also in our
work relating to the Business Grid Computing Project in Japan, which aims to effectively utilize distributed IT resources on the
network in enterprise systems. We are pleased, therefore, to see this reliability technology becoming an OASIS Standard and expect
that it will accelerate the adoption of Web services," said Seigo Hirosue, general manager of the Strategy and Technology Division,
Software Group of Fujitsu Limited.

Hitachi 
"Hitachi is pleased with the result of the OASIS WS-Reliability standardization efforts. WS-Reliability is critical for extending
business processes across a sometimes imperfect internet. Our customers demand perfect operation of Web services applications, and
WS-Reliability provides the capability to meet their needs. One project that will see immediate utilization of WS-Reliability is the
Business Grid Computing Project supported by Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This project, jointly developed by
Hitachi, Fujitsu, and NEC, which is approaching its third and final year, will generate middleware to encourage the wide deployment
of failure tolerant, low cost, and flexible business grids.  Innovations such as these will transform Web services technologies from
a laboratory curiosity into a commercial reality with daily practical use. WS-Reliability is a fundamental part of this
transformation," said Kiyoshi Kozuka, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi, Ltd.

NEC
"NEC is pleased to see WS-Reliability become an OASIS Standard. We are convinced that this standard will accelerate the adoption of
Web services in mission critical enterprise applications, where guaranteed and ordered delivery of messages is crucial to the
business process. WS-Reliability will also be widely used in the business grid system we are developing, through an activity of the
Japan business grid project," said Yosuke Takashima, General Manager of System Platform Software Development Division, NEC
Corporation.

Novell
"The ability to reliably exchange messages is a fundamental requirement from customers that deploy Web services across enterprise
boundaries for collaboration and electronic transactions. Novell supports OASIS in the development of the WS-Reliability standard in
order to provide a secure, reliable and manageable Web services platform," said Frank Auger, vice president of product management
and marketing for Novell exteNd and Nsure.

Oracle
"As an original supporter of this effort, Oracle views ratification of the WS-Reliability OASIS Standard as an essential step toward
allowing organizations to realize the benefits that Web services can offer," said Jeff Mischkinsky, director of Web Services
Standards at Oracle Corp. "The WS-Reliability OASIS Standard increases the business value and interoperability of Web services
facilities by enabling guaranteed delivery, duplicate elimination, and guaranteed ordering of Web service messages."

Sun Microsystems
"Reliable messaging is a key enabler for broad industry adoption of Web services, and WS-Reliability allows companies to deploy Web
services with confidence that information is being exchanged between services with the appropriate level of reliability required for
the application. Sun is proud to have been a supporter of WS-Reliability from the beginning, and we look forward to incorporating
this technology into our product plans," said Ed Julson, Director of Web Technologies & Standards, Sun Microsystems. 


Additional information:

OASIS WSRM Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrm

Cover Pages Technology Report: Reliable Messaging
http://xml.coverpages.org/reliableMessaging.html

About OASIS:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international 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. The consortium produces
open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific
markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,500 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100
countries. Approved OASIS Standards include AVDL, CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WS-Reliability, WSRP, WSS,
XACML, and XCBF. 
http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact:

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