Members Approve Web Services Transaction as OASIS Standard

Business Wire, May 8, 2007

More than 20 Organizations Collaborate to Define Protocol Framework for Coordinating Distributed Application Actions

BOSTON -- OASIS, the international standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Transaction (WS-Transaction) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WS-Transaction describes an extensible framework for providing protocols that coordinate the actions of distributed applications. Such coordination protocols can be used to support a wide variety of applications that require consistent agreement on the outcome of distributed transactions. WS-Transaction is offered on a Royalty-Free basis, as provided under OASIS policies.

"Web services increasingly tie together large numbers of participants to form distributed applications. The result can be extremely complex," said Eric Newcomer of IONA, co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Transaction (WS-TX) Technical Committee. "WS-Transaction gives developers the framework they need to build reliable, distributed applications."

The WS-Transaction OASIS Standard comprises three specifications: WS-Coordination; WS-AtomicTransaction; and WS-BusinessActivity. WS-Coordination enables an application service to create the context necessary for propagating an activity to other services. WS-AtomicTransaction defines agreement protocols for short-lived activities having the all-or-nothing property, and WS-BusinessActivity defines protocols for long-running transactions that require compensation-based agreement. Working together, these specifications enable existing transaction processing, workflow, and other systems to hide their proprietary protocols and operate in a heterogeneous environment.

"The technical committee recognized that there is no single transaction model appropriate for all use cases, and so WS-Transaction defines an extensible coordination framework that accommodates classic two-phase-commit, as well as more relaxed forms of transactions with isolation behavior appropriate in loosely-coupled systems," noted Ian Robinson of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee.

"The effort to standardize WS-Transaction brought together most of the major stakeholders in Web services--large, multi-national companies as well as smaller innovators," OASIS president and CEO, Patrick Gannon, observed. "We applaud these organizations for collaborating in the open process to deliver a Royalty-Free standard to the marketplace."

The WS-Transaction OASIS Standard was developed by representatives of Active Endpoints, Adobe Systems, AmberPoint, BEA Systems, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, IONA, Microsoft, Nortel, Oracle, Red Hat, Ricoh, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, and others. IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat verified successful usage of WS-Transaction, in accordance with eligibility requirements for all OASIS Standards.

The WS-Transaction OASIS Standard and the archives of the OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee are publicly accessible. OASIS hosts the ws-transaction-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Support for WS-Transaction OASIS Standard

Executive quotes from Adobe, Hitachi, IBM, IONA, Microsoft, Red Hat, and SOA Software are available at http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2007-05-08.php.> Additional information

WS-Transaction OASIS Standard:

http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#wstransactionv1.1

OASIS WS-TX Technical Committee:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ws-tx

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