BOSTON, USA: OASIS, the international open standards consortium, announced that its members have approved new versions of nine Web services specifications as OASIS Standards, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification.

The WS Reliable Exchange (WS-RX), WS Transactions (WS-TX), and WS Secure Exchange (WS-SX) standards support reliable message exchange, coordinate the outcome of distributed application actions, and enable trusted relationships. These standards now include updated references to the latest versions of all cited specifications, enhancing their composability and stand alone use. Their approval marks a milestone in the maturity of Web services technology.

“Working together, these standards provide a level of consistency across multiple services that is critical as customers move core business processes to SOA,” said Judith Hurwitz, president of Hurwitz & Associates.. “WS-RX, WS-TX, and WS-SX standards offer developers a sophisticated switchboard of services to support the complex interactions required by today's enterprise.”

Three WS-RX standards: WS ReliableMessaging 1.2, WS ReliableMessaging Policy 1.2, and WS MakeConnection 1.1, allow messages to be transferred reliably despite failures in software components, systems, or networks. They enable a broad range of features, including ordered delivery, duplicate elimination, and guaranteed receipt.

Three WS-TX standards: WS-Coordination 1.2, WS-AtomicTransaction 1.2, and WS-BusinessActivity 1.2, describe an extensible framework for coordinating transactions across a mixed vendor environment.

Three WS-SX standards: WS-Trust 1.4, WS-SecureConversation 1.4, and WS-SecurityPolicy 1.3, provide methods for issuing security tokens, establishing trust relationships, and allowing key material to be exchanged more efficiently.

“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,” said 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.”

All nine standards were developed under the Royalty-Free on RAND mode of the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. Participation in the WS-RX, WS-TX, and WS-SX Technical Committees remains open to all interested parties. Archives of the work are publicly accessible, and OASIS offers a mechanism for public comment.