WSDL 2.0 Builds on WS-I Basic Profile improvements; Expands with full HTTP and SOAP Support for Web Applications

27 June 2007 -- Today, W3C has finalized a Web services description language with full support of the primary protocol for the Web, HTTP, and the most frequently implemented Web services protocol, SOAP. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 incorporates both the improvements for WSDL 1.1 found in the WS-I Basic Profile, and builds in inheritance, import functions, improved description of faults and errors, and full HTTP and SOAP support. Rigorous testing and interop sessions, including week-long programming marathons by the Web Services Description Working Group itself, have produced a solid interoperable standard that delivers on the goals of the initial WSDL 1.1 version, and also meets the needs of Web applications developers today.

"It's been a long time in development, but developers can see it's been worth the wait," explained Jonathan Marsh, co-chair of the W3C Web Services Description Working Group and Director of Mashup Technologies at WSO2. "In addition to the rigorous interoperability testing, we're pleased to have given developers the HTTP binding, which provides simple Web-friendly access to a service when the advanced features available in the SOAP stack, such as WS-Addressing, WS-Security, and WS-ReliableMessaging, aren't required."

WSDL 2.0 Development Began with Stringent Interoperability Requirements, Finished with Conversion Tools and Support in Emerging Web Standards

Wide interest in SOAP 1.1 and WSDL 1.1 marked the beginning of Web Services pursuits. The hope of interoperability in the initial, non-standardized versions was not immediately fulfilled in spite of the large number of developers who moved to that model for applications development. WS-I, for example, formed to create profiles based on non-standard versions of the popular Web Services technologies.

Against this backdrop, the W3C Membership urged the Consortium to develop an interoperable WSDL standard. Through significant issue tracking by the Working Group itself, and through cooperative work with the WS-I Basic Profile Working Group, it was possible to identify initial improvements and build from there for both SOAP 1.2 and WSDL 2.0.

Those who have built implementations that conform to the WS-I Basic Profile may use a converter to WSDL 2.0, thus easing the transition to the new standard and enabling use of new features.

Further, WSDL 2.0 support is built into critical emerging Web services standards, including Semantic Annotations for WSDL (SAWSDL) and WS-Policy 1.5, both anticipated in September 2007.

WSDL 2.0 Lets Developers Choose WS Application Development Models; HTTP or SOAP

With the increased popularity of REST-model as well as SOAP over HTTP, the Working Group recognized the clear need for complete HTTP support in Web application descriptions. As a result, WSDL 2.0 has complete HTTP and SOAP support, making it useful for both simple Web applications and Web Services applications that require additional functionality.

WSDL 2.0 Created and Implemented by Industry Leaders; Wide Deployment Anticipated

The Web Services Description Working Group has enjoyed the participation of many industry leaders in the area of applications development and is co-chaired by Marsh and Tony Rogers of CA. Current participants in the WSD Working Group are, in alphabetical order, Adobe Systems Inc.; Agfa-Gevaert N. V.; BEA Systems, Inc.; BT; CA; Canon, Inc.; IBM; University of Innsbruck; IONA Technologies, Inc.; Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab at the University of Maryland; Microsoft Corporation; Oracle Corporation; Rogue Wave Software; SAP AG; Sonic Software; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; TIBCO Software, Inc.; WSO2; and Xerox Corporation.

Many companies have stated that they expect to support WSDL 2.0 in upcoming product releases, including Adobe Systems Inc.; CA; IBM; Sun Microsystems, Inc; webMethods; and WSO2. Details on support and implementation plans are provided in the testimonial sheet .

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan,and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org

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

The Burton Group's user-centric identity interoperability demonstration is to take place at the Catalyst conference next week. The Burton Group, a renown IT research firm focused on in-depth analysis of enterprise IT infrastructure, hopes to encourage the industry's work toward a widely adopted identity management model.

Based on an up-and-coming school of thought in the identity management community, user-centric identity management focuses on user empowerment in sharing personal information and self-determination in establishing relationships with relying parties. The primary approaches behind the user-centric model are identifier-based (such as OpenID) and information card (such as CardSpace) systems, plus other supporting standards and infrastructure components.

While user-centric identity models can be disruptive to existing federation strategies, Gerry Gebel, Burton Group vice president and service director, says this interoperability event can demonstrate how user-centric and traditional federation protocols can be used in concert to address a broader range of usage scenarios.

Ruchith Fernando , product manager of the WSO2 Identity Solution , who will be representing WSO2 at this event, will demonstrate the 2 relying party components and the identity provider which includes an STS and managed card issuer, of the WSO2 Identity Solution.

Other participants include projects groups Eclipse Higgins Project, Internet2 Shibboleth Project, The Pamela Project, Ian Brown (OpenInfoCard), XMLDAP, and SocialPhysics and vendors BMC Software, CA, FuGen Solutions, IBM, Microsoft, NetMesh, Novell, Nulli Secundus, Oracle, Ping Identity, Sxip Identity and VeriSign.