Six OASIS Committees Form to Standardize Service Component Architecture (SCA) for SOA
Axway, BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software, Red Hat, SAIC, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, and Others Collaborate on Standards to Simplify SOA Application Development
Boston, MA, USA; 9 August 2007 — OASIS, the international open standards consortium, has formed six new technical committees to simplify SOA application development by advancing the SCA family of specifications. SCA defines a flexible model for creating business solutions using service components. The work will be organized within the OASIS Open Composite Services Architecture (Open CSA) Member Section, and the resulting specifications will be offered for implementation on a royalty-free basis.
"SCA is based on the idea that business functions are provided as a series of services that can be wired together to create solutions for particular business needs. These composite applications can contain new services created specifically for the application and reuse existing business functions from existing systems," explained Anne Thomas Manes, Vice President and Research Director for Burton Group. "SCA offers the potential to streamline the SOA design process by enabling the delivery of easy-to-use tools developers need to transform IT assets into reusable services."
"Each of the six new OASIS committees will address a different aspect of SCA. This will allow smaller groups of members with specific expertise or interest in one area to collaborate more effectively," noted Jeff Mischkinsky of Oracle who chairs the OASIS Open CSA Member Section Steering Committee, which will handle overall coordination of the work.
The SCA model encompasses a wide range of technologies for service components, access methods that connect them, and policy that provides declarative qualities of service. For components, this includes not only different programming languages, but also frameworks and environments commonly used with those languages. For access methods, SCA compositions allow for the use of various communication and service access technologies in common use. For policy, this includes a framework for integrating commonly used policy languages and quality of service expressions.
Mischkinsky will convene the OASIS SCA-Assembly Technical Committee (TC), which will define the core composition model. The group will work closely with the SCA-Policy TC, convened by Michael Rowley of BEA Systems, to define a policy framework for SCA as well as specific reliable messaging, security and transactions policies.
Mike Edwards of IBM will convene the SCA-Bindings TC, which will standardize bindings for SCA services and references to various communication protocols, technologies and frameworks. Edwards will also convene the SCA-BPEL TC, which will specify how SCA component implementations can be written using the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL).
The OASIS SCA-C-C++ TC, convened by Pete Robbins of IBM, and the SCA-J TC, convened by Henning Blohm of SAP, will develop specifications that standardize the use of C and C++ and Java ™ technologies, respectively, within an SCA domain.
The SCA Technical Committees have committed to developing a test plan, test cases, and scenarios for each specification.
"These six OASIS SCA TCs plan to address the tough ‘last mile’ of SOA project implementation," said James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at OASIS. "If a group of software engineers want to compose two specific services into an application using C and BPEL, for example, they’ll face some challenging design choices. The SCA TCs plan to provide practical help, in the form of language bindings, a policy framework, and code patterns."
Participation in these OASIS SCA TCs remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, governments, academic institutions, and individuals. Archives of the work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will offer a mechanism for public comment.
Support for SCA
BEA Systems "BEA is pleased to be sponsoring and participating in the SCA Technical Committees at OASIS. SCA is quickly emerging as a centerpiece technology for building next generation, service-oriented applications. OASIS provides the ideal venue for the development of this important set of standards," said Ed Cobb, Vice President, Emerging Technology and Standards at BEA Systems Inc.
Hitachi
"The SOA initiative at OASIS is promising to Hitachi’s customers, since it provides the potential for the normalized extension of their stable of applications under a long-lived service-oriented paradigm. That extension should deliver the benefits of well-managed transitional application stability and economic advantage. We wish all of the new TCs harmonious and thoughtful execution and ultimately a useful result," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi Ltd.
IBM
"IBM is pleased to see the Service Component Architecture enter the more formal standardization process. This is an indicator of both the maturity of the specifications and their increasing momentum in the industry. Our customers today require SOA solutions that work with a variety of vendor platforms and programming languages. SCA offers application programmers and architects the critical usability and flexibility features for building composite service applications designed for SOA. With broad industry support, this initiative is very compelling and is of high interest to our customers," said Karla Norsworthy, Vice President of Software Standards, IBM Software Group.
Oracle
"In our continued efforts to drive industry standards, Oracle is extremely pleased at how rapidly the SCA work has moved from the incubator osoa.org collaboration phase into the open standards process. We plan to play an active role in the newly chartered technical committees and look forward to leveraging the resulting standards throughout the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of hot-pluggable middleware software," said Don Deutsch, vice president Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle.
Primeton Technologies
"SOA starts with components. The official establishment of OASIS SCA TCs has paved the way for broad acceptance of component-oriented approach to SOA. Primeton will fully support SCA/SDO standards in the coming release of our flagship product, EOS," said Larry Huang, CTO of Primeton Technologies.
Red Hat
"Red Hat is pleased to see the various component specifications with SCA becoming the core of new OASIS technical committees. A fully standardized SCA is important for the industry, and we’re glad to be an active participant," said Dr. Mark Little, Director of Standards for Red Hat.
SAIC
"The demand for robust systems that allow business analysts to interact with Information Technology in an intuitive, user-centric manner led us to support standards such as SCA. We view SCA as an essential enabler providing a concrete implementation ‘blueprint’ model for assembling components into composite applications rapidly and flexibly," said Sam Chance, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).
SAP
"SCA aims to standardize composition across heterogeneous platforms, and enabling existing platforms such as Java EE with SCA capabilities is a pragmatic step in that direction. As a founding member of the SCA standardization initiative, we are excited to continue the standardization effort under OASIS as a member of the steering committee for the Open CSA Member Section and as a convener of the SCA-J TC," said Sanjay Patil, Standards Architect, SAP AG.
Sun Microsystems
"Sun is pleased that the OASIS membership has moved forward with the SCA specifications through the formation of the Technical Committees. As more and more applications are being built on an SOA, the challenge of composing services is growing. Richer, standardized metadata supporting such composition will benefit developers building applications on an SOA," said Mark Hapner, distinguished engineer, Sun Microsystems.
TIBCO
"With active participation and contributions to almost all of the new SCA Technical Committees, TIBCO is proud to be part of this formative milestone. We will continue to support SCA and the OASIS Open CSA Member Section as a leading standard for SOA," said Matt Quinn, vice president of Product Strategy, TIBCO.
Additional information:
OASIS Open CSA Member Section http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/
OASIS SCA Technical Committees http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/committees
About SCA http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/sca/
Cover Pages: SCA Report http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-07-06-a.html
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for the global information society. A not-for-profit consortium, OASIS advances standards for SOA, security, Web services, documents, e-commerce, government and law, localisation, supply chains, XML processing, and other areas of need identified by its members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. 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)