OASIS Members Collaborate to Advance Web Services Notification

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

OASIS Members Collaborate to Advance Web Services Notification

AmberPoint, Arjuna Technologies, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer
Associates, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC, Novell, OpenNetwork, SeeBeyond, Sonic
Software, webMethods, and Others to Standardize Web Services Interactions

Boston, MA, USA; 17 March 2004 -- Members of the international standards
consortium, OASIS, announced plans to standardize the way Web services
interact using the Notification pattern. The OASIS Web Services Notification
(WSN) Technical Committee will advance a pattern-based approach that will
allow one Web service to disseminate information to a set of other Web
services, without prior knowledge of those services. 

"The Notification pattern has many applications in the arenas of system or
device management or in commercial domains such as electronic trading,"
explained Peter Niblett of IBM, convener and proposed co-chair of the OASIS
WSN Technical Committee. "Our goal is to define a set of royalty-free,
interoperable and modular specifications that allow this pattern to be
modeled in an explicit and standardized fashion." 

The OASIS WSN Technical Committee will coordinate efforts with the OASIS Web
Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee (also announced
today). Members of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee plan to conform their
work to the implied resource pattern specified by WSRF and will make use of
WSRF specifications concerning lifetime and properties.

"The potential benefits common standard foundations such as WSRF and WSN
present enterprise customers are considerable," said William Vambenepe of
HP, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee, "Both can be
applied to many domains, including management, smart devices and grid
computing, ultimately helping enterprises better manage and optimize use of
their existing resources."

Authors of WS-Notification--a set of documents recently published by Akamai
Technologies, Computer Associates International, Fujitsu Laboratories of
Europe, the Globus Alliance/Argonne National Laboratory, HP, IBM, SAP AG,
Sonic Software, and Tibco Software--plan to submit their work to the OASIS
WSN Technical Committee at its first meeting. Other contributions conforming
to the charter of the Technical Committee (if any) will be evaluated upon
submission.

In submitting WS-Notification and WS-Resource to OASIS, the authors express
their support for the creation of open, stable, interoperable systems, and
believe this is best achieved by the creation of standards for both new and
component technologies of WSN and WSRF within organizations such as OASIS.
The level of interoperability that results from an accepted standard,
sanctioned through an open, trusted process with the support of the vendor
and end user communities, is key to widespread adoption of WSN and WSRF.


Industry Support for WSN

"Notifications play a central role in modern management systems. A
standardized mechanism for delivering notifications should help greatly in
our goal of interoperability between various types of management systems. We
are pleased to be able to contribute our experience in Web services
management to these standards efforts," said Paul Butterworth, AmberPoint
CTO.  

"OASIS WSN will work synergistically with other standards supported and
contributed by CA to enable on-demand dissemination of information across
digital infrastructures, using widely-accepted Web services
and Grid computing principles. CA will continue to work closely with other
industry leaders and with OASIS to develop and implement standards that
empower companies to build, manage and secure highly adaptable technology
solutions that improve business performance, enable more tightly bonded
customer relationships and create new revenue streams," said Dmitri
Tcherevik, director of Web services at Computer Associates.   

"With this standard, OASIS for the first time brings open standardization to
the previously proprietary world of pub-sub systems that are so important in
financial services and the intelligence community. DataPower's XML-aware
network routers will support this specification to help drive broad adoption
of event-driven computing beyond its current niche," said Eugene Kuznetsov,
chairman and CTO at DataPower.  

"Fujitsu is pleased to contribute to WSN standardization by offering the
services of our staff as a members of this OASIS Technical Committee. The
standardization of Royalty Free and freely available specifications, such as
WSN and WSRF, is critical to the use of Grid technologies in a broad
commercial market. We believe that this commercial market demands that
implementations of these specifications can proceed without infringing
proprietary technologies, while making sure that these specifications remain
under the control of an open standard body for their future evolution. The
activities in this Technical Committee should be harmonized with the other
OASIS activities, and we hope our contribution to the OASIS WSN Technical
Committee helps to accomplish this. We believe OASIS is the ideal venue for
the standardization of the WSN technologies," said Seigo Hirosue, General
Manager of Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group of Fujitsu
Limited. 

"As our customers continue to implement increasingly complex Web services
projects, the need for standards that address important infrastructure
components and frameworks such as WSN and WSRF become increasingly critical.
We are pleased to support OASIS in this important effort by participating in
these technical committees. These efforts underscore Novell's commitment to
promoting interoperability based on open, royalty-free industry standards,"
said David Litwack, senior vice president for Novell's exteNd and Nsure
product lines. 

"The ability to manage Web services and their underlying resources is
critical to a comprehensive security strategy. The adoption of standards in
Web services security will further increase the need for Web services
management standards such as WSDM, WSRF, and WSN," said Bob Worner, VP of
engineering at OpenNetwork. 

"WS-Notification provides a general-purpose publish-subscribe mechanism that
fills a common gap in Web services applications. It will be applicable to
many domains ranging from systems management and business process management
to sophisticated supply chain management applications. WS-Notification
provides a scaleable architecture suitable for large-scale systems due to
provision of brokered notifications. As one of the WS-Notification authors,
SAP will play an active role in the OASIS WSN Technical Committee to make
sure that the new standard will meet our customers' requirements in
heterogeneous and large-scale business applications," said Michael Bechauf,
Vice President NetWeaver Standards at SAP. 

"webMethods is advancing the work of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee
because of the importance that emerging standards have in helping companies
create and manage robust Service-Oriented Architectures. We have long been a
leader in publish and subscribe messaging and believe that WSN offers a way
for us to carry forward those capabilities into the world of Web services,"
said Marc Breissinger, vice president and chief architect, webMethods, Inc. 


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 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and
individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org


Additional information:

OASIS WSN Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsn

OASIS WSRF Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrf

Cover Pages: Stateful Web Services
http://xml.coverpages.org/statefulWebServices.html



Press contact:

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