Press Release

Members Approve WS-ReliableMessaging as OASIS Standard

New Standard Assures Secure Message Exchange Using Web Services

Boston, MA, USA; 21 June 2007 — OASIS, the international open standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-ReliableMessaging) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WS-ReliableMessaging allows messages to be transferred reliably despite failures in software components, systems, or networks. It enables a broad range of reliability features, including ordered delivery, duplicate elimination, and guaranteed receipt.

"Reliable messaging is one of the features customers demand most as they move to electronic business. The problem is that messages can be lost, repeated, or reordered, and host systems can fail," explained Paul Fremantle of WSO2, co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable Exchange (WS-RX) Technical Committee. "WS-ReliableMessaging addresses all these risks by providing a modular mechanism that identifies, tracks, and manages the reliable transfer of messages between a source and a destination."

Sanjay Patil of SAP, co-chair of the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee, added, "WS-ReliableMessaging delivers a key element in the openness of an enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) and provides a critical building block that can be used in conjunction with other specifications and application-specific protocols to reliably handle a wide variety of SOA requirements and scenarios."

The extensible nature of WS-ReliableMessaging allows additional functionality, such as security, to be tightly integrated. It incorporates a SOAP binding for interoperability and allows additional bindings to be defined. The protocol can be implemented with a variety of robustness characteristics ranging from in-memory persistence scoped to a single process lifetime, to replicated durable storage that is recoverable in the most extreme circumstances.

OASIS president and CEO, Patrick Gannon, noted, "WS-ReliableMessaging integrates with and complements the WS-Security OASIS Standard as well as other Web services specifications. Combining these standards offers companies many reliable, secure messaging options."

The WS-ReliableMessaging OASIS Standard was developed by representatives of Adobe, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, IONA, Microsoft, NEC, Nortel, Novell, Oracle, Progress Software, Red Hat, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, webMethods, and others. The WS-ReliableMessaging OASIS Standard and the archives of the OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee work are publicly accessible. OASIS hosts the ws-reliablemessaging-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Support for WS-ReliableMessaging OASIS Standard
ACORD "On behalf of ACORD, we welcome the official release of the WS-ReliableMessaging OASIS Standard. ACORD is committed to Web services standards as part of its Service Oriented Architecture strategy and has been working for several years with its members on a profile for Web service protocols based on insurance industry use cases. WS-ReliableMessaging is a piece of the puzzle we have been critically expecting in support of robust message exchange, flexible deployment of services, and mass transit on the Internet. We are strongly encouraging the implementation of this set of protocols in software libraries and tools, in support of Web services deployment in the insurance industry," said Lloyd Chumbley, Assistant Vice President of Standards, ACORD.

Adobe "Interoperable reliable messaging is a critical component in enabling real-world distributed Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). WS-ReliableMessaging provides a framework for reliable and robust exchange of business information as part of Web services and SOA, enabling the enterprise to realize reliable integration and collaborative business processes leveraging disparate applications," said Charlton Barreto, Senior Computer Scientist and Architect, Adobe Systems.

BEA Systems "The acceptance of WS-ReliableMessaging as an OASIS Standard represents an important milestone in the development of reliable, secure services that can leverage today’s heterogeneous infrastructures. Ensuring that messages are delivered, eliminating duplicate messages, and delivering messages in the order they are sent are fundamental capabilities for building flexible, SOA-based applications. With the standardization of WS-ReliableMessaging, BEA Systems plans to continue its commitment to and leadership in Web services standards," said Gilbert Pilz, Sr. Principal Technologist, Office of the CTO, BEA Systems, Inc.

Hitachi "Enterprise systems are nothing if they are not reliable, and no Web service that employed intermediaries could be reliable until now. WS-ReliableMessaging is widely adopted. Platform users can now have high confidence that this core functionality will be available to them on a variety of platforms from most enterprise vendors. We thank the committee for all of its work in resolving the many challenges that arose in the production of this specification. Hitachi anticipates that this result has been worth the work," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi Ltd.

Microsoft "Microsoft is pleased to see WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 become an approved standard. Product interoperability is increasingly important, and we believe that the addition of reliable message exchange to the suite of standard WS-* protocols will benefit both customers and the industry," said Omri Gazitt, a Product Unit Manager at Microsoft.

Oracle "Oracle is committed to driving standards that facilitate the development of modular business services that can be easily integrated and reused–creating flexible, adaptable IT infrastructures. The new WS-ReliableMessaging standard will help provide an interoperable way to guarantee message delivery to applications or Web services, which is an essential capability for implementing Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs)," said Don Deutsch, vice president Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle.

Red Hat "With WS-Security and WS-Transaction having been approved as OASIS Standards, WS-ReliableMessaging is the last key component to enable secure, reliable and transacted Web services in an interoperable fashion. We’re pleased to have been associated with such an important standard," said Mark Little, Director of Standards for Red Hat.

Sun Microsystems "We are pleased to have contributed to the standardization of this much-needed software infrastructure component. Wide industry support for the WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 standard will lead to highly interoperable Web Services stacks, making this technology ubiquitous for users who require robust service-oriented applications. It will be a welcome addition to the Web Services capabilities (JAX-WS) of Sun Java(TM) System Application Server, Open Source Project Glassfish, and Sun Java(TM) System SE/EE," said Thomas Kincaid, executive director, Application Platforms, Sun Microsystems.

Additional information:
WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 OASIS Standard: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#wsrx-rm1.1
OASIS WS-RX Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-rx/
Cover Pages Technology Report: Reliable Messaging http://xml.coverpages.org/reliableMessaging.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. 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)