Remote Portlets Specification Approved as an OASIS Standard

Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Approved as OASIS Standard

BEA Systems, Citrix Systems, Factiva, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Vignette, and Other OASIS Members Standardize Integration of User-Facing Web Services

Boston, MA, USA. September 11, 2003.

The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSRP standardizes the consumption of Web services in portal front ends, as well as the way in which content providers write Web services for portals.

"WSRP defines how Web services plug into portals," explained Delphi President, Thomas Koulopoulos. "Once a WSRP service is published to a public directory, portal administrators are able to locate and dynamically integrate it with just a few mouse clicks. WSRP is a critical standard enabling distributed portals to share portlets as visual, user-facing Web services for integration with other portals."

WSRP eliminates the need for content aggregators to choose between locally hosting a content source or writing code specific to each remote content source. Instead, WSRP allows content to be hosted in the environment most suitable for its execution while still being easily accessed by content aggregators. The standard enables content producers to maintain control over the code that formats the presentation of their content. By reducing the cost for aggregators to access their content, WSRP increases the rate at which content sources may be easily integrated into pages for end-users.

"The OASIS WSRP Technical Committee was founded in early 2002 with the vision of providing a single interface standard for all interactive, presentation-oriented Web services. WSRP v1.0 succeeds in providing this platform neutral definition of an interface," said Rich Thompson of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. "Early vendor support for WSRP -- we've tracked eight implementations to date -- clearly demonstrates the need for this standardized means of accessing remote content."

"WSRP builds on foundational work from the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "WSRP uses WSDL to describe interfaces, and requires SOAP bindings for all conformant services. WSRP is an excellent example of how an open, standards-based approach will enable end-user interactive web services to be deployed in a lower cost, faster-to-implement, plug-and-play environment."

WSRP allows remote portlet Web services to be implemented in a variety of ways, including Java/J2EE and Microsoft's .NET platform.

WSRP is the result of a collaboration of 25 OASIS member companies including BEA Systems, Citrix Systems, Factiva, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, and Vignette. It joins a growing portfolio of OASIS Standards and specifications for Web services including Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration of Web Services (UDDI), Web Services Business Process Language (WSBPEL), Web Services for Distributed Management (WSDM), Web Services for Reliable Messaging (WSRM), WS-Security, and others. OASIS currently has more than 60 active technical committees.

Industry Support for WSRP

BEA Systems

"WSRP 1.0 is an important step forward in expanding the reach and ubiquity of portal technologies by providing standards that extend customer applications to support federated portals," said Shane Pearson, Group Product Manager, WebLogic Portal, BEA Systems, Inc (NASDAQ:BEAS). "The increase in available content and applications, combined with the ease of deployment and consistent APIs of the Java Portlet Specification, both of which are available to BEA developers today, will increase the return on investment and usefulness of portal solutions."

Computer Associates

"By providing a 'plug-n-play' standard that enables developers to capture portal content from compliant sources and make that content available to users in readily accessible portlets, WSRP unleashes the full potential power of Web services," said Dmitri Tcherevik, vice president and director of Web services at CA. "CA is committed to supporting WSRP in our CleverPath information delivery solutions, and providing the security and management support necessary to ensure that WSRP-based business solutions are safe, reliable and scalable."

Factiva

"WSRP approval is a significant milestone for OASIS and for our customers, especially as their enterprise portal deployments continue to grow," said Mike Menna, associate vice president of Applications and Integration of Products for Factiva. "For Factiva, the approval of WSRP further validates our integration strategy dating back to early 2000. Going forward, we will continue to work with our fellow OASIS WSRP Technical Committee members to provide the best business intelligence content at the point of decision."

IBM

"As a co-author and a leader of the WSRP and JSR 168 initiatives, IBM is very glad to see that WSRP has been approved by OASIS as a formal standard. IBM, through WebSphere Portal, will be enabled to integrate WSRP services offered by any WSRP-compliant producer and to publish portlets running on WebSphere Portal as WSRP services," said Larry Bowden, vice president of Portals and Lotus products for IBM. "To push for the quick adoption of the WSRP OASIS Standard by providers of content and application services, IBM provides a free, open source implementation of WSRP based on Tomcat and the Java Portlet API (JSR 168) Reference Implementation at the Apache Software Foundation - WSRP4J (http://ws.apache.org/wsrp4j/), thus enabling third parties to implement WSRP services by implementing JSR 168 portlets and making them available as WSRP services which will plug into all WSRP-compliant portals."

Plumtree

"Plumtree was the first vendor to release a WSRP product to customers and one of the only vendors whose WSRP software is built for use on many different application servers. We've also demonstrated interoperability with all WSRP test implementations including those offered by BEA, IBM, Oracle, and Citrix," said Plumtree CEO, John Kunze. "Plumtree will continue its role as an active participant in the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee and other standards bodies. We also hope to guide standards beyond just portlets to include other key elements for building rich applications, such as Web services for indexing content, importing user profiles and security, and for federating searches. Creating a world of standardized, interoperable portals is an ambitious vision -- the finalization of WSRP is an important first step."

Sun Microsystems

"We fully support the WSRP standard as it will be a key driver of Web services adoption in the portal marketplace," said David Bryant, director of marketing for the Sun ONE Portal Server, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is committed to helping our customers build federated portals that deliver easy access to services for their end-users through standards such as WSRP, Liberty, and JSR 168."

Vignette

"The WSRP OASIS Standard and its 'plug-and-play' structure for diverse user-facing Web applications, including portals, will help organizations rapidly assimilate information from across the enterprise to provide a better customer experience," said Ed Anuff, vice president of strategy at Vignette. "Vignette continues its long-standing push to define and promote open standards, in turn giving its customers maximum flexibility and the opportunity to reduce complexity while speeding deployment and time to benefit."

WebCollage

"As a leader in enabling companies to integrate interactive applications across Web systems, WebCollage is proud to have played a role in the development of the WSRP 1.0 specification, and we are pleased to see the support it has received," said Gil Tayar, Chief Technology Officer at WebCollage, Inc. "WSRP has the potential to do for interactive applications what SOAP did for the programmatic services, by making it easier and cost effective to integrate application functionality across a large number of portals. WebCollage customers benefit from the ability to repurpose existing Web applications as WSRP-enabled remote portlets."

About OASIS

http://www.oasis-open.org

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 2,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

For more information:

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Voice: +1.978.667.5115 x209

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See details in the news story "Web Services for Remote Portlets Specification Approved as OASIS Standard." General references in "Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)."

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	Remote Portlets Specification Approved as an OASIS Standard Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Approved as OASIS Standard BEA Systems, Citrix Systems, Factiva, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Vignette, and Other OASIS Members Standardize Integration of User-Facing Web Services Boston, MA, USA. September 11, 2003. The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSRP standardizes the consumption of Web services in portal front ends, as well as the way in which content providers write Web services for portals. "WSRP defines how Web services plug into portals," explained Delphi President, Thomas Koulopoulos. "Once a WSRP service is published to a public directory, portal administrators are able to locate and dynamically integrate it with just a few mouse clicks. WSRP is a critical standard enabling distributed portals to share portlets as visual, user-facing Web services for integration with other portals." WSRP eliminates the need for content aggregators to choose between locally hosting a content source or writing code specific to each remote content source. Instead, WSRP allows content to be hosted in the environment most suitable for its execution while still being easily accessed by content aggregators. The standard enables content producers to maintain control over the code that formats the presentation of their content. By reducing the cost for aggregators to access their content, WSRP increases the rate at which content sources may be easily integrated into pages for end-users. "The OASIS WSRP Technical Committee was founded in early 2002 with the vision of providing a single interface standard for all interactive, presentation-oriented Web services. WSRP v1.0 succeeds in providing this platform neutral definition of an interface," said Rich Thompson of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. "Early vendor support for WSRP -- we've tracked eight implementations to date -- clearly demonstrates the need for this standardized means of accessing remote content." "WSRP builds on foundational work from the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "WSRP uses WSDL to describe interfaces, and requires SOAP bindings for all conformant services. WSRP is an excellent example of how an open, standards-based approach will enable end-user interactive web services to be deployed in a lower cost, faster-to-implement, plug-and-play environment." WSRP allows remote portlet Web services to be implemented in a variety of ways, including Java/J2EE and Microsoft's .NET platform. WSRP is the result of a collaboration of 25 OASIS member companies including BEA Systems, Citrix Systems, Factiva, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Plumtree Software, Reed Elsevier, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, and Vignette. It joins a growing portfolio of OASIS Standards and specifications for Web services including Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration of Web Services (UDDI), Web Services Business Process Language (WSBPEL), Web Services for Distributed Management (WSDM), Web Services for Reliable Messaging (WSRM), WS-Security, and others. OASIS currently has more than 60 active technical committees. Industry Support for WSRP BEA Systems "WSRP 1.0 is an important step forward in expanding the reach and ubiquity of portal technologies by providing standards that extend customer applications to support federated portals," said Shane Pearson, Group Product Manager, WebLogic Portal, BEA Systems, Inc (NASDAQ:BEAS). "The increase in available content and applications, combined with the ease of deployment and consistent APIs of the Java Portlet Specification, both of which are available to BEA developers today, will increase the return on investment and usefulness of portal solutions." Computer Associates "By providing a 'plug-n-play' standard that enables developers to capture portal content from compliant sources and make that content available to users in readily accessible portlets, WSRP unleashes the full potential power of Web services," said Dmitri Tcherevik, vice president and director of Web services at CA. "CA is committed to supporting WSRP in our CleverPath information delivery solutions, and providing the security and management support necessary to ensure that WSRP-based business solutions are safe, reliable and scalable." Factiva "WSRP approval is a significant milestone for OASIS and for our customers, especially as their enterprise portal deployments continue to grow," said Mike Menna, associate vice president of Applications and Integration of Products for Factiva. "For Factiva, the approval of WSRP further validates our integration strategy dating back to early 2000. Going forward, we will continue to work with our fellow OASIS WSRP Technical Committee members to provide the best business intelligence content at the point of decision." IBM "As a co-author and a leader of the WSRP and JSR 168 initiatives, IBM is very glad to see that WSRP has been approved by OASIS as a formal standard. IBM, through WebSphere Portal, will be enabled to integrate WSRP services offered by any WSRP-compliant producer and to publish portlets running on WebSphere Portal as WSRP services," said Larry Bowden, vice president of Portals and Lotus products for IBM. "To push for the quick adoption of the WSRP OASIS Standard by providers of content and application services, IBM provides a free, open source implementation of WSRP based on Tomcat and the Java Portlet API (JSR 168) Reference Implementation at the Apache Software Foundation - WSRP4J (http://ws.apache.org/wsrp4j/), thus enabling third parties to implement WSRP services by implementing JSR 168 portlets and making them available as WSRP services which will plug into all WSRP-compliant portals." Plumtree "Plumtree was the first vendor to release a WSRP product to customers and one of the only vendors whose WSRP software is built for use on many different application servers. We've also demonstrated interoperability with all WSRP test implementations including those offered by BEA, IBM, Oracle, and Citrix," said Plumtree CEO, John Kunze. "Plumtree will continue its role as an active participant in the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee and other standards bodies. We also hope to guide standards beyond just portlets to include other key elements for building rich applications, such as Web services for indexing content, importing user profiles and security, and for federating searches. Creating a world of standardized, interoperable portals is an ambitious vision -- the finalization of WSRP is an important first step." Sun Microsystems "We fully support the WSRP standard as it will be a key driver of Web services adoption in the portal marketplace," said David Bryant, director of marketing for the Sun ONE Portal Server, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is committed to helping our customers build federated portals that deliver easy access to services for their end-users through standards such as WSRP, Liberty, and JSR 168." Vignette "The WSRP OASIS Standard and its 'plug-and-play' structure for diverse user-facing Web applications, including portals, will help organizations rapidly assimilate information from across the enterprise to provide a better customer experience," said Ed Anuff, vice president of strategy at Vignette. "Vignette continues its long-standing push to define and promote open standards, in turn giving its customers maximum flexibility and the opportunity to reduce complexity while speeding deployment and time to benefit." WebCollage "As a leader in enabling companies to integrate interactive applications across Web systems, WebCollage is proud to have played a role in the development of the WSRP 1.0 specification, and we are pleased to see the support it has received," said Gil Tayar, Chief Technology Officer at WebCollage, Inc. "WSRP has the potential to do for interactive applications what SOAP did for the programmatic services, by making it easier and cost effective to integrate application functionality across a large number of portals. WebCollage customers benefit from the ability to repurpose existing Web applications as WSRP-enabled remote portlets." About OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org 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 2,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. For more information: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org Voice: +1.978.667.5115 x209 Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See details in the news story "Web Services for Remote Portlets Specification Approved as OASIS Standard." General references in "Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)."