IONA, Arjuna, and Oracle Showcase Interop for WS-Context

Industry Leaders Demonstrate WS-Context Interoperability

IONA, Arjuna, and Oracle Showcase Viability of OASIS Committee Draft Specification

Dublin, Ireland, Waltham, MA USA, and Newcastle, England. December 13, 2004.

IONA Technologies, a world leader in high-performance integration solutions for mission-critical IT environments, along with Arjuna and Oracle, today announced the recent successful public demonstration of WS-Context, an important Web services specification that has been approved by the OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee as a Committee Draft.

"Web services, and by extension SOA, are all about turning enterprise diversity into an asset. Key to that process is making certain that the services customers build and deploy are executed consistently, independent of execution environment," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA. "By successfully demonstrating WS-Context's ability to do just that, we're one more step closer to advancing this crucial specification."

Organizations are rapidly evolving beyond initial, exploratory Web services projects that are deployed in controlled environments. However, many of today's Web services standards do not provide the critical support for real-world, heterogeneous enterprise computing requirements. A number of Web service draft specifications currently under consideration, including WS-Context, are intended to bring these required enterprise qualities to Web services.

WS-Context ensures that multiple Web services deployed in a variety of execution environments behave as if they are deployed in a single, consistent environment. For example, an organization's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) may require security information, conversational session information, database and file handles and process IDs, among other services, to be shared across multiple execution environments built on different platforms. In this situation, WS-Context helps to make certain that the Java, .NET and any other Web services in the enterprise all behave similarly and as expected at runtime.

"WS-Context is a critical missing piece in the Web services architecture and one which is being built upon by a number of different standards and specifications," said Mark Little, Chief Architect for Arjuna. "By demonstrating interoperability we've also shown how companies can work co-operatively in an open standards process to address the real problems facing users of Web services applications."

During a live demonstration conducted via the Internet, IONA, Arjuna and Oracle showed the viability of WS-Context. Servers located in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Newcastle, England ran a variation of the proven WS-I Internet Shopping Demo and successfully shared Web shopping cart context across three different Web sites.

"Transactional functions and network management are the next major challenges facing the SOA community," noted James Bryce Clark, director of standards development for OASIS. "We were very pleased to see WS-Context successfully demonstrated by Arjuna, IONA, and Oracle at XML 2004. WS-Context's approval as an OASIS Committee Draft specification marks the first in a planned set of freely-available standards that will provide basic transactional and choreography functions native to Web services."

About Arjuna Technologies

Arjuna Technologies is a leading independent supplier of standards-based middleware technology for reliable distributed systems. Arjuna offers transactioning and reliable messaging products for J2EE and Web services environments. Arjuna was created from the former Hewlett-Packard Arjuna Lab, HP's Centre of Excellence for transactioning, messaging and related technologies. Arjuna is privately owned and based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. For further information visit our Web site at http://www.arjuna.com.

About IONA

For more than a decade, IONA Technologies has been a world leader in delivering high-performance integration solutions for enterprise IT environments. IONA pioneered standards-based integration with its CORBA-based Orbix product family. The Artix product family, IONA's new generation of integration solutions, enables existing enterprise systems to be integrated with an organization's common infrastructure components. Customers use Artix to incorporate current IT assets into valuable new business applications through enterprise-class, standards-based connectivity.

With its partners, IONA can deliver NOW on the promise of service-oriented integration, making it possible for customers to achieve system longevity and agility at a significantly lower cost.

IONA's customers include Global 2000 companies in telecommunications, financial services, aerospace and manufacturing, including AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, Hong Kong Telecom, NTT, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Winterthur Insurance, Zurich Insurance and Boeing.

IONA is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts and offices worldwide. For additional information about IONA, visit our Web site at http://www.iona.com.

Contact

Beth Mittelman
Investor Relations
Tel: +1 (781) 902-8033
Email: beth.mittelman@iona.com

Rob Morton
Corporate Communications
Tel: +1 (781) 902-8139
Email: robert.morton@iona.com

Tara Humphreys
Corporate Communications
Tel: + (353) 1-637 2146
Email: tara.humphreys@iona.com

[Source: http://www.iona.com/pressroom/2004/20041213.htm]

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See also "Interoperability Demos for OASIS Standards at XML 2004." General references in OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee.

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IONA Technologies, a world leader in high-performance integration solutions for mission-critical IT environments, along with Arjuna and Oracle, today announced the recent successful public demonstration of WS-Context, an important Web services specification that has been approved by the OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee as a Committee Draft. "Web services, and by extension SOA, are all about turning enterprise diversity into an asset. Key to that process is making certain that the services customers build and deploy are executed consistently, independent of execution environment," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA. "By successfully demonstrating WS-Context's ability to do just that, we're one more step closer to advancing this crucial specification." Organizations are rapidly evolving beyond initial, exploratory Web services projects that are deployed in controlled environments. However, many of today's Web services standards do not provide the critical support for real-world, heterogeneous enterprise computing requirements. A number of Web service draft specifications currently under consideration, including WS-Context, are intended to bring these required enterprise qualities to Web services. WS-Context ensures that multiple Web services deployed in a variety of execution environments behave as if they are deployed in a single, consistent environment. For example, an organization's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) may require security information, conversational session information, database and file handles and process IDs, among other services, to be shared across multiple execution environments built on different platforms. In this situation, WS-Context helps to make certain that the Java, .NET and any other Web services in the enterprise all behave similarly and as expected at runtime. "WS-Context is a critical missing piece in the Web services architecture and one which is being built upon by a number of different standards and specifications," said Mark Little, Chief Architect for Arjuna. "By demonstrating interoperability we've also shown how companies can work co-operatively in an open standards process to address the real problems facing users of Web services applications." During a live demonstration conducted via the Internet, IONA, Arjuna and Oracle showed the viability of WS-Context. Servers located in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Newcastle, England ran a variation of the proven WS-I Internet Shopping Demo and successfully shared Web shopping cart context across three different Web sites. "Transactional functions and network management are the next major challenges facing the SOA community," noted James Bryce Clark, director of standards development for OASIS. "We were very pleased to see WS-Context successfully demonstrated by Arjuna, IONA, and Oracle at XML 2004. WS-Context's approval as an OASIS Committee Draft specification marks the first in a planned set of freely-available standards that will provide basic transactional and choreography functions native to Web services." About Arjuna Technologies Arjuna Technologies is a leading independent supplier of standards-based middleware technology for reliable distributed systems. Arjuna offers transactioning and reliable messaging products for J2EE and Web services environments. Arjuna was created from the former Hewlett-Packard Arjuna Lab, HP's Centre of Excellence for transactioning, messaging and related technologies. Arjuna is privately owned and based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. For further information visit our Web site at http://www.arjuna.com. About IONA For more than a decade, IONA Technologies has been a world leader in delivering high-performance integration solutions for enterprise IT environments. IONA pioneered standards-based integration with its CORBA-based Orbix product family. The Artix product family, IONA's new generation of integration solutions, enables existing enterprise systems to be integrated with an organization's common infrastructure components. Customers use Artix to incorporate current IT assets into valuable new business applications through enterprise-class, standards-based connectivity. With its partners, IONA can deliver NOW on the promise of service-oriented integration, making it possible for customers to achieve system longevity and agility at a significantly lower cost. IONA's customers include Global 2000 companies in telecommunications, financial services, aerospace and manufacturing, including AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, Hong Kong Telecom, NTT, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Winterthur Insurance, Zurich Insurance and Boeing. IONA is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts and offices worldwide. For additional information about IONA, visit our Web site at http://www.iona.com. Contact Beth Mittelman Investor Relations Tel: +1 (781) 902-8033 Email: beth.mittelman@iona.com Rob Morton Corporate Communications Tel: +1 (781) 902-8139 Email: robert.morton@iona.com Tara Humphreys Corporate Communications Tel: + (353) 1-637 2146 Email: tara.humphreys@iona.com [Source: http://www.iona.com/pressroom/2004/20041213.htm] Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See also "Interoperability Demos for OASIS Standards at XML 2004." General references in OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee.