14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft, along with the additional members of OASIS, including IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Intel, Nokia, Novell, Red Hat, and others, made an important step toward the finalization of core Web services standards. February 5, 2009 marked the approval of no less than nine new versions of Web services specifications as OASIS standards. Subsequently, the WS Reliable Exchange (WS-RX), WS Transactions (WS-TX), and WS Secure Exchange (WS-SX) now have the highest level of ratification possible, the Redmond company informed. The OASIS standardization represents a guarantee of support for WS-RX, WS-TX, and WS-SX, indicating that the Web services specifications are capable of not only supporting reliable message exchange, but also of delivering coordination when it comes down to the result of distributed application actions, as well as delivering trusted relationships.
"The standardization of these versions of the WS-SX, WS-RX and WS-TX specifications is a major step that finalizes the core Web services standards. By aligning references across these OASIS Standards and the W3C WS-Addressing and WS-Policy Recommendations, these standards encourage even more interoperable vendor implementations for Web services messaging, security, policy, reliability and transactions. The Web services standards offer mature support for critical customer enterprise scenarios, whether the protocols are used alone or in combination, thereby scaling from simple to complex scenarios," explained Paul Cotton, partner group manager, Connected Systems Division, Microsoft.
WS-RX standards are designed to compensate eventual failures associated with software, systems or networks. WS ReliableMessaging 1.2, WS ReliableMessaging Policy 1.2, and WS MakeConnection 1.1 will ensure that information is transferred reliably even in scenarios involving various issues due to infrastructure components. With mixed source environments becoming a standard, WS-Coordination 1.2, WS-AtomicTransaction 1.2, and WS-BusinessActivity 1.2 essentially deliver a framework capable of managing transactions with a focus on heterogeneous environments. At the same time, WS-Trust 1.4, WS-SecureConversation 1.4, and WS-SecurityPolicy 1.3 provide a high level of security for all exchanges of data.
"The WS-RX, WS-TX, and WS-SX standards were designed to be implemented individually or in combination with one another, so they can be tailored to meet specific SOA requirements," added Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS. "These new versions of the specifications reference each other where appropriate to enable easy composability amongst themselves and other Web services standards."