OASIS Web Services Distributed Management TC

FAQ

  1. What does the OASIS Web Services Distributed Management Technical Committee do?

    The OASIS WSDM TC is defining standards for the use of Web services within a management system. These break down into two primary areas: using Web services to perform management functions and the management of Web services themselves.

    Thus, the OASIS WSDM TC is defining two sets of specifications: WSDM: Management Using Web Services (MUWS) and WSDM: Management Of Web Services (MOWS).

    Management Using Web Services (MUWS) defines a Web service interface for management providers. This can be used to manage any manageable resource and any manager. WSDM MUWS 1.0 defines how to represent and access the manageability interfaces of resources as Web services. It is the foundation of enabling management applications to be built using Web services and allows resources to be managed by many managers with one set of instrumentation. This specification provides interoperable, base manageability for monitoring and control managers using Web services. WSDM MUWS 1.0 consists of two specifications, MUWS Part 1, which defines the base architectural concepts and required components, and MUWS Part 2, which defines standard composeable support for manageability capabilities.

    Management Of Web Services (MOWS) defines a specialization for the case where the manageable resource is a Web service. Specifically, WSDM MOWS defines the manageability model for managing Web services as a resource and how to describe and access that manageability using MUWS.

    The OASIS WSDM TC expects that providers of management for resources other than Web services will provide analogous specializations their respective manageable resources.

    The complete charter for this group can be found at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsdm/charter.php.

  2. Who will benefit from WSDM?

    WSDM benefits three communities:

    • Providers of manageable resources: Resource providers can use MUWS to expose the manageability of their resources regardless of how they are instrumented. This preserves their investment in their management instrumentation. Because WSDM is described and accessed as a Web service, any management vendor can use the interface, reducing the amount of custom support resources need to implement for each management vendor their customers use.

    • Providers of management software: As providers of resource management software adopt WSDM, management applications can take advantage of the standard interface(s) to deliver functionality to their users. This will increase the number of resources that management software can access and over time reduce the cost of maintaining support for resource provider specific instrumentation.

    • Customers of multiple resource providers and multiple management software providers: WSDM will allow management software from different vendors to interoperate more easily, enabling end-to-end and even cross-enterprise management.

  3. Who is involved in WSDM?

    The OASIS WSDM TC enjoys representation from a broad range of companies. This includes management companies, hardware device companies, Web service and application server providers, as well as customers of these companies. A list of OASIS WSDM TC members is maintained at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=wsdm.

  4. How does WSDM compare with related efforts elsewhere?

    The OASIS WSDM TC's work has been influenced by the W3C Web Service Architecture and Web Service Description working groups.

    The OASIS WSDM TC has been working to ensure that the needs of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), Open Grid Services Architecture Working Group are incorporated in the developing standard.

    The OASIS WSDM TC has been involving other management standards groups (e.g. DMTF) to ensure that the models produced by these groups can be represented using WSDM.

  5. What other specifications are involved?

    The MUWS and MOWS specifications are based upon other work ongoing within OASIS. Most importantly, the OASIS WSDM TC has defined managed resources as resources in a Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) based context. Thus, the WSDM specification will rely on the following OASIS specifications:

    WS-Addressing
    WS-ResourceFramework WS-ResourceProperties
    WS-ResourceFramework WS-ResourceLifeCycle
    WS-ResourceFramework WS-ServiceGroup
    WS-Notifications Base Notification

  6. Is WSDM publicly available?

    Yes. All documents produced by the OASIS WSDM TC can be accessed from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=wsdm.

    Links to the current revisions of the documents are posted at:
    http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/cd-wsdm-muws-part1-1.0.pdf
    http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/cd-wsdm-muws-part2-1.0.pdf
    http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/mows/cd-wsdm-mows-1.0.pdf

    Related XML Schemas and WSDL file can be found generally at extensions of the URL:
    http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/muws/wsdm-muws or
    http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/2004/12/mows/wsdm-mows.

    Email archives of this TC's work can be viewed from http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/wsdm/.

 

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