Members Approve WS-Notification as OASIS Standard

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

**Link to this press release at
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2006-10-11.php 

Members Approve WS-Notification as OASIS Standard  

AmberPoint, CA, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Sonic Software, Tibco,
webMethods, and Others Advance Standard for Disseminating Information Amongst
Web Services


Boston, MA, USA; 11 October 2006 -- OASIS, the international standards
consortium, today announced that its members have approved WS-Notification
version 1.3 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of
ratification. WS-Notification defines a  pattern-based approach for
disseminating information amongst Web services.

"The purpose of WS-Notification is to standardize the way Web services interact
using 'Notifications' or 'Events,'" explained Patrick Gannon, president and CEO
of OASIS. "The new OASIS Standard offers a foundation for event driven
architectures built using Web services."

"WS-Notification provides a standardized way for one Web service (or other
entity) to disseminate information to another set of Web services, without
having to have prior knowledge of those services," explained Peter Niblett of
IBM, co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Notification (WSN) Technical Committee.
"It lets Web services participate in a pattern of interaction that's already
frequently used for inter-object communications in other domains."

William Vambenepe of HP, co-chair of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee, agreed.
"The event-driven pattern that's defined in WS-Notification is very similar to
the one used by publish/subscribe systems from message-oriented middleware
vendors and in many device management applications," he said. "There are many
use cases for WS-Notification in the areas of system and device management and
also in commercial fields, such as electronic trading."

The WS-Notification OASIS standard consists of three specifications:
WS-BaseNotification; WS-BrokeredNotification; and WS-Topics.
WS-BaseNotification defines standard message exchanges that allow one service
to register or de-register with another, and to receive notification messages
from that service. WS-BrokeredNotification builds on WS-BaseNotification to
define the message exchanges to be implemented by a "Notification Broker." A
Notification Broker is an intermediary that decouples the publishers of
notification messages from the consumers of those messages; among other things,
this allows publication of messages from entities that are not themselves Web
service providers. WS-Topics provides an XML model to organize and categorize
classes of events into "Topics," enabling users of WS-BaseNotification or
WS-BrokeredNotification to specify the types of events in which they are
interested. 

WS-Notification was designed to fit well with related standards. It makes use
of the Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) OASIS Standard, and is, in turn,
used by the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) OASIS Standard.

Amberpoint, Fujitsu, and IBM have all implemented WS-Notification either
internally or externally (in keeping with the consortium's requirement that at
least three parties assert successful implementation prior to OASIS Standard
balloting). Fujitsu's implementation is available as open source tool through
unicore.forge.net.

Participation in the OASIS WSN Technical Committee remains open to all;
suppliers, end-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to
advance the continued development and adoption of WS-Notification. OASIS hosts
an open mail list for public comment and the wsn-dev mailing list for
exchanging information on implementing the standard.


Support for WS-Notification

CA
"WS-Notification provides an essential publish/subscribe event mechanism for
higher-level, service-oriented management protocols such as OASIS WSDM. This
standard will enable the IT community to further advance the flexibility,
efficiency, and ease by which enterprises can maintain the health of their
increasingly complex computing environments," said Paul Lipton, senior
architect for CA's Wily Technology Division. 

SOA Software
"Notifications represent an important decoupling mechanism in enterprise IT
environments. Having a protocol-based specification supporting the
interoperability of notification systems is important to businesses looking to
realize the benefits of SOA in real-time computing," said Alistair Farquharson,
vice president technology at SOA Software.

TIBCO Software
"The approval of WS-Notification is a significant milestone for developers and
users responsible for SOA at their organizations. By standardizing the way
events are communicated using open, as opposed to proprietary protocols,
WS-Notification has become a key element to the foundation of service oriented,
event driven enterprise architectures," said Matt Quinn, vice president of
Product Management and Strategy at TIBCO Software.



Additional information:

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

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


Press contact:

Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
+1.941.284.0403 (mobile)