OASIS Mulling Modeling And Accessing Stateful Resources Via Web services
03/18/2004
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.
“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.
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.
