WS-Transaction Version 1.1 Becomes an OASIS Standard

Members Approve Web Services Transaction as OASIS Standard

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

Boston, MA, USA. May 08, 2007.

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

Adobe

"The approval of WS-Transaction as an OASIS standard is critical to the future growth of Web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). WS-Transaction provides enterprises with the transactional integrity and interoperability across diverse assets to help develop and manage mission critical applications. This enables such applications to be successfully built and deployed using Web services, without sacrificing multi-vendor interoperability," said Charlton Barreto, Senior Computer Scientist and Architect at Adobe.

Hitachi

"Transactions are the core of business applications. WS-Transaction has constructed a normative and consistent way for Web Services to participate in these critical business processes. We at Hitachi expect that these new system building blocks will allow Web Services to move from the periphery to the center of new business applications. Hitachi highly appreciates the ratification of this new OASIS Standard," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi Ltd.

IBM

"WS-Transaction becoming an OASIS Standard brings important capability to customers who want to execute transactions in a mixed vendor environment. With this specification, all the steps of the process are either executed or canceled. For example, either the item is shipped and the credit card is charged - or neither of those actions are taken. This ability to provide consistency across multiple data services is important as customers move critical business processes to SOA. IBM products such as CICS and WebSphere Application Server have mature support for earlier drafts of the WS-Transaction specifications and will support this new OASIS Standard in forthcoming releases," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, IBM Software Standards.

IONA

"With a greater number of organizations turning to SOA as the foundation for interoperable and mission-critical business applications, the ability to reliably handle transactions is critical. This is a very important specification, and we're pleased to see its approval as an OASIS Standard," said Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA.

Microsoft

"Microsoft is pleased with the approval of Web Services Transaction 1.1 and with the benefits the specification delivers, including identifying a means to implement two different types of transactions in Web Services," said Chris Kurt, Group Program Manager in the Connected Division Systems at Microsoft.

Oracle

"The ability to build and manage transactional systems is key to the deployment of enterprise information systems. With Service Oriented Architecture becoming prevalent, Web Service transaction management will be vital to the success of SOA-based deployments. Oracle welcomes the standardization of the WS-Transaction family of specifications," said Jeff Mischkinsky, director, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Web Services Standards.

Red Hat

"Red Hat believes that this is a significant contribution to the emerging Web services architecture as well as transaction processing. Interoperability of transaction systems has always been an elusive goal and for the first time we have a standard that offers a low cost route to achieve that goal," said Mark Little, Director of Standards for Red Hat.

SOA Software

"The approval of WS-Transaction as an OASIS Standard represents a significant step in the evolution of SOA and Web services. WS-Transaction allows Web services to be used as part of mission critical business processes. It allows us to further extend the value of Mainframe Web services to the distributed enterprise," said James Crew, vice president of SOLA at SOA Software.

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.

Press Contact

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Tel: +1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
Tel: +1.941.284.0403 (mobile)

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

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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 Adobe "The approval of WS-Transaction as an OASIS standard is critical to the future growth of Web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). WS-Transaction provides enterprises with the transactional integrity and interoperability across diverse assets to help develop and manage mission critical applications. This enables such applications to be successfully built and deployed using Web services, without sacrificing multi-vendor interoperability," said Charlton Barreto, Senior Computer Scientist and Architect at Adobe. Hitachi "Transactions are the core of business applications. WS-Transaction has constructed a normative and consistent way for Web Services to participate in these critical business processes. We at Hitachi expect that these new system building blocks will allow Web Services to move from the periphery to the center of new business applications. Hitachi highly appreciates the ratification of this new OASIS Standard," said Takao Nakamura, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi Ltd. IBM "WS-Transaction becoming an OASIS Standard brings important capability to customers who want to execute transactions in a mixed vendor environment. With this specification, all the steps of the process are either executed or canceled. For example, either the item is shipped and the credit card is charged - or neither of those actions are taken. This ability to provide consistency across multiple data services is important as customers move critical business processes to SOA. IBM products such as CICS and WebSphere Application Server have mature support for earlier drafts of the WS-Transaction specifications and will support this new OASIS Standard in forthcoming releases," said Karla Norsworthy, vice president, IBM Software Standards. IONA "With a greater number of organizations turning to SOA as the foundation for interoperable and mission-critical business applications, the ability to reliably handle transactions is critical. This is a very important specification, and we're pleased to see its approval as an OASIS Standard," said Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA. Microsoft "Microsoft is pleased with the approval of Web Services Transaction 1.1 and with the benefits the specification delivers, including identifying a means to implement two different types of transactions in Web Services," said Chris Kurt, Group Program Manager in the Connected Division Systems at Microsoft. Oracle "The ability to build and manage transactional systems is key to the deployment of enterprise information systems. With Service Oriented Architecture becoming prevalent, Web Service transaction management will be vital to the success of SOA-based deployments. Oracle welcomes the standardization of the WS-Transaction family of specifications," said Jeff Mischkinsky, director, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Web Services Standards. Red Hat "Red Hat believes that this is a significant contribution to the emerging Web services architecture as well as transaction processing. Interoperability of transaction systems has always been an elusive goal and for the first time we have a standard that offers a low cost route to achieve that goal," said Mark Little, Director of Standards for Red Hat. SOA Software "The approval of WS-Transaction as an OASIS Standard represents a significant step in the evolution of SOA and Web services. WS-Transaction allows Web services to be used as part of mission critical business processes. It allows us to further extend the value of Mainframe Web services to the distributed enterprise," said James Crew, vice president of SOLA at SOA Software. 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. Press Contact Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org Tel: +1.978.667.5115 x209 (office) Tel: +1.941.284.0403 (mobile) Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.