Press Release

OASIS Members Organize to Define Stateful Resources Using Web Services

AmberPoint, Arjuna Technologies, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC, Novell, OpenNetwork, Ricoh, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, webMethods, and Others Advance Open Framework

Boston, MA, USA; 17 March 2004 — Members of the international standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to define a generic, open framework for modeling and accessing stateful resources using Web services. The OASIS Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee will define a set of royalty-free, interoperable, and modular specifications that will allow the relationship between a Web service and its state to be modeled in an explicit, standard fashion.

"Web services implementations are usually stateless–the lifetime of a dynamic state does not exceed the processing of an individual message. Web service interfaces, on the other hand, often imply some form of stateful interaction with the clients of the service," explained David Snelling of Fujitsu, convener and proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee. "WSRF, which will formalize this implied resource pattern, will include mechanisms to describe views on state, to support its management through associated properties, and to describe how these mechanisms are extensible to groups of Web services."

"Our work will create a framework within which Web services can access state in a consistent and interoperable manner," added Ian Robinson of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee. "WSRF will simplify the definition of new service interfaces and enable more powerful discovery, management and development tools."

Authors of WS-Resource–a set of documents recently published by Computer Associates, Fujitsu, the Globus Alliance, HP, and IBM–plan to submit their work to the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee at its first meeting, with the same intent as the parallel submission of WS-Notification. Other contributions conforming to the charter of the Technical Committee (if any) will be evaluated upon submission.

The OASIS WSRF Technical Committee will coordinate efforts with the OASIS Web Services Notification (WSN) Technical Committee (also announced today). Members of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee plan to conform their work to the implied resource pattern specified by WSRF and will make use of WSRF specifications concerning lifetime and properties.

According to officials of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), WSRF and WSN have the potential to more closely connect the Grid and Web services communities. Both OASIS technical committees look forward to active participation from GGF. "As GGF moves forward with the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to leverage our efforts with OASIS and explore the synergies between WSN, WSRF, and OGSA," noted Charlie Catlett, GGF Chair and Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

Industry Support for WSRF

"In order to build solutions that enable organizations to realize the full value of Web services, the industry requires a simplified means of modeling stateful resources. We are glad to be contributing our Web services management expertise to these efforts, as we see the WSRF specification as vital to the development of these enabling technologies," said Fred Carter, AmberPoint’s chief architect.

"The OASIS WSRF–in conjunction with the other Web services security and management standards supported and contributed by CA–will facilitate realization of robust, secure and scalable services-oriented architectures based on Web services and Grid Computing principles. CA will continue to work closely with OASIS and other industry leaders to ensure the ability of CA customers to build high-value, manageable business applications using state-of-the-art technologies," said Dmitri Tcherevik, director of Web services at Computer Associates.

"Fujitsu is pleased to contribute to WSRF standardization by offering the services of Dr. David Snelling of Fujitsu as a co-chair of this OASIS TC. The standardization of Royalty Free and freely available specifications, such as WSRF and WSN, is critical to the use of Grid technologies in a broad commercial market. We believe that this commercial market demands that implementations of these specifications can proceed without infringing proprietary technologies, while making sure that these specifications remain under the control of an open standard body for their future evolution. We hope our contribution to the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee helps to accomplish this. We believe OASIS is the ideal venue for the standardization of the WSRF technologies," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manager of Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group of Fujitsu Limited.

"webMethods’ work with the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee is indicative of the company’s ongoing support of Web services standards. The creation and management of stateful resources are a critical component to creating sophisticated applications with an Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture. As a provider of these infrastructures for many years, webMethods is excited about the opportunity to help shape the standardization of these important capabilities," said Marc Breissinger, vice president and chief architect, webMethods, Inc.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global 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. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

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

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

Cover Pages: Stateful Web Services http://xml.coverpages.org/statefulWebServices.html

Press contact:

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