Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Ratified as OASIS Standard

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

Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Ratified as OASIS Standard

AmberPoint, CA, ESI Acquisition, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM,
Intel, Oracle, Ricoh Company, Sonic Software, Tibco, and webMethods, and
Others Develop Royalty-Free, Open Standard for Modeling Stateful
Resources


Boston, MA, USA; 24 April 2006 --  The OASIS international standards
consortium today announced that its members have approved the Web
Services Resource Framework (WSRF) version 1.2 as an OASIS Standard, a
status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSRF provides a
generic, open framework for modeling and accessing stateful resources
using Web services. The WSRF OASIS Standard comprises a set of
royalty-free, interoperable, and modular specifications that make it
easier both to define and implement a Web service and to integrate and
manage multiple services. 

A Web service is characterized by the messages that flow to and from it.
Any resource manipulated by the service, such as a shopping cart at an
online retail site, needs to be identified and described by the messages
that are exchanged. 

"WSRF solves the problem of how stateful resources can be represented
and managed using Web service technologies," explained Ian Robinson of
IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee. "In particular,
WSRF addresses the requirements of the Web Services for Distributed
Management (WSDM) OASIS Standard and other industry standards to expose
and operate on fragments of a resource's state, which is essential in
resource-constrained or low-bandwidth environments."

David Snelling of Fujitsu, co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical
Committee, added, "The WSRF OASIS Standard provides a platform for many
higher level WS Service applications including, but not limited to,
management and Grid Computing infrastructures. Using WSRF, companies can
provide a standardized, interoperable platform for resource-based Web
services."

WSRF is already experiencing a high degree of acceptance in the
marketplace, including the open source community. "We already have
thousands of people coding to the Globus implementation of WSRF," said
Dr. Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute at Argonne
National Laboratory and University of Chicago, and a leader in the
Globus Alliance, developers of the Globus open source implementation of
WSRF. "The finalization of WSRF as an OASIS Standard will help
accelerate adoption for interoperable distributed systems." 

"The WSRF OASIS Standard was developed to help simplify Web Services and
make them more flexible. Together, WSRF and Web Services Notification
(WSN), which is also advanced at OASIS, are enabling a closer connection
between the Grid services and Web services communities," noted Patrick
Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "We congratulate the members of the
OASIS WSRF Technical Committee-as well as those who participated in the
public review and who have already implemented WSRF--for all their work
in advancing WSRF as an OASIS Standard."

The OASIS WSRF Technical Committee remains open to new participation.
All interested parties are encouraged to exchange information on
implementing WSRF via the wsrf-dev mailing list
(http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/). As with all Consortium projects,
archives of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee's work are accessible to
both members and non-members, and OASIS hosts an open mail list for
public comment on the standard. 


Support for the WSRF OASIS Standard

CA
"By providing an open, broadly accepted standards-based mechanism to
access representations of state across complex environments, the OASIS
Web Services Resource Framework will provide a useful foundation that
will increase the utility and manageability of Web Services to meet
changing business challenges," said Muhi Majzoub, vice president of
engineering, enterprise systems management--applications at CA. "CA will
continue to work closely with OASIS to develop workable standards that
enable our customers to optimally utilize available information
resources and streamline the management of their increasingly complex IT
environments."

Fujitsu
"Fujitsu, as a leading provider of enterprise systems, their management
infrastructures and a strong supporter of open standards in the field,
welcomes the publication of the WSRF standard suite of specifications.
Fujitsu and Fujitsu Laboratories have been involved in the development
of these specifications and interoperable implementations from the
beginning and look forward to their wide-spread adoption in the
industry," said Yoshiyuki Tanakura, Corporate Senior Vice President of
Fujitsu.

IBM
"Our customers are already seeing the benefits of large-scale SOA
deployments," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, software standards,
IBM. "The WSRF OASIS Standard provides the mechanism for describing the
resources in these distributed IT infrastructures, including devices and
services. This will simplify the task of integrating systems across and
between enterprises. For example, this enables distributed management
standards such as WSDM to have visibility to resources and their
status."


Additional Information:

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

WSRF Primer
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsrf/wsrf-primer-1.2-primer-cd-01.pdf


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 5,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS
Standards include AVDL, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML
Messaging, ebXML Registry, EML, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI,
WSDM, WS-Reliability, WSRF, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, XCBF, and XML
Catalogs. http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact:

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