OASIS TC call for participation: Business Transactions

[Karl Best <karl.best@oasis-open.org>]

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The Business Transactions
Technical Committee has been proposed by Rocky Stewart, BEA Systems (chair);
Pal Takacsi-Nagy, BEA Systems; Frederick Carter, Sun Microsystems; and Mark
Hale, Interwoven.

The request for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC process, and
is appended to this email.

To become a member of this new TC you must notify Rocky Stewart
(rocky.stewart@bea.com), the committee chair, of your interest at least 15
days prior to the first meeting and then you must participate in the first
meeting on March 13, 2001. You should also subscribe to the TC's discussion
list. (For the procedure for joining after the first meeting see the TC
process at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml.)

The mail list business-transaction@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee
discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members
should subscribe to the list. Do this by sending a message to
business-transaction-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe"
as the body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not
make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC
chair as described in the preceeding paragraph.)


</karl>
============================================================
Karl F. Best
OASIS - Director, Technical Operations
978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org



Business Transactions Committee Proposal

BEA Systems, a member of OASIS, proposes to start a Technical Committee in
OASIS to develop technology for business transactions on the Internet. Long
lasting business transactions spanning multiple enterprises pose a unique
challenge to B2B systems. The interdependent workflows managed among
multiple trading partners, which drive business transactions, need to be
coordinated to ensure that the outcome of the transaction is reliable. As an
initial input, BEA intends to offer a specification for our Business
Transaction Protocol (BTP), which provides this functionality and is
implemented in our Weblogic Collaborate product. BTP is an eXtensible Markup
Language (XML)-based protocol for representing and seamlessly managing
complex, multi-step business-to-business (B2B) transactions over the
Internet.  The protocol allows complex XML message exchanges to be tracked
and managed as loosely coupled “conversations” between and among businesses.
BTP goes beyond the problem domain currently being addressed by ebXML and is
independent of transport protocols and messaging frameworks. We believe that
it can be layered on any underlying transport mechanism including ebXML
Messaging, RosettaNet, or XML-PC (SOAP).

The purpose of this committee is:
· To develop an agreed to set of requirements for a business transaction
protocol
· To evaluate the BEA technology submission and other available technologies
made available to the committee and determine their suitability to the
requirements identified by the committee
· To produce a final specification for a business transaction protocol which
works in conjunction with existing business messaging standards,
particularly those being developed in the ebXML initiative

BEA will make its detailed submission available by the end of February 2001,
before the first meeting, and will make a presentation describing the
proposed BTP technology at the first meeting.

An initial schedule for the committee is summarized below:
· January 19, 2001 – OASIS issues Call for Participation
· March 13, 2001 – First Meeting to be hosted by BEA Systems at our San Jose
headquarters
· April 30, 2001 – Initial Requirements Document ready for review
· May 31, 2001 – First Specification Draft available for review
· July 31, 2001 – Final Specification Draft available for Version 1.0

We propose to set the detailed schedule at the first meeting of the
committee to accommodate the needs of the members, including dates for
conference calls (most likely bi-weekly) and at most two additional
face-to-face meetings (one in the middle of the schedule and the latter to
review the final draft). BEA Systems will host the first meeting in San
Jose, California on March 13, 2001. For those unable to travel to San Jose,
a dial-in number will be provided. BEA will assume responsibility for the
setup of conference calls as required. The TC will conduct its business in
English.

The initial committee membership will be as follows:

· Rocky Stewart, BEA Systems (chair) – rocky.stewart@bea.com
· Pal Takacsi-Nagy, BEA Systems – - pal.takacsi@bea.com
· Frederick Carter, Sun Microsystems – frederick.carter@sun.com
· Mark Hale, Interwoven - mark.hale@interwoven.com