OASIS has announced a new Web Services Reliable Messaging TC, formed with the goal of creating a generic and open model for ensuring reliable message delivery for Web services. "Reliable message delivery" in this context means the ability to guarantee message delivery to software applications, whether Web services or Web service client applications, with a chosen level of quality of service (QoS). The TC will address the following aspects of message delivery: "message persistence, message acknowledgement and resending, elimination of duplicate messages, ordered delivery of messages, and delivery status awareness for sender and receiver applications. The specification to be created will provide WSDL definitions for reliable messaging and the message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body content. The resulting specification must be programming language-neutral and platform-neutral. The TC hopes to establish: (1) a standard and interoperable way of achieving a known, acceptable, and defined level of reliability at the SOAP messaging level, and (2) a common vocabulary for describing reliable message exchange patterns. Key deliverables include a reliability requirements document (use cases for WS-RM in EAI, B2B, and wireless scenarios) and a WS-Reliability specification, including description of WS-Reliability bindings to transport protocol(s)." Technical specifications approved by the TC will be issued under royalty-free terms.

Companies sponsoring the new TC include Sun Microsystems, Commerce One, Sonic Software, Fujitsu, Oracle, NEC, Hitachi, IONA, See Beyond, WRQ, webMethods, and SAP. Initially, the TC will base its work upon the WS-Reliability specification published by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software and Sun Microsystems. See details in the 2003-01-09 news story "Web Services Vendors Publish Royalty-Free WS-Reliability Specification."

Relationship between WS-Reliability and ebXML messaging

"WS-Reliability is defined as SOAP header extensions and is independent of the underlying transport protocol. This specification contains a binding to HTTP."

"The WS-Reliability specification does not provide defined mappings for message envelope standards other than SOAP. However, its reliability model could be adopted for other message envelope standards, such as ebXML Message Service, AS2 or RosettaNet's RNIF." [supplied by OASIS]

Sun Microsystems' Statement on ebMS and WS-Reliability Synergy

"Sun believes that ebMS and WS-Reliability are synergistic specifications, and we will work to promote cooperation across the two OASIS TCs.

We see the WS-Reliability standard as providing a way of taking a subset of ebMS functionality that is currently used to ensure reliable B2B document exchanges and applying it to those cases where documents are being exchanged between applications within the same company. With this, one common reliability model will be established.

Sun believes that this compatibility benefits companies implementing both types of web services. It ensures a consistent framework in which a client application may reliably exchange business messages with a web service, whether that service is also running behind the corporate firewall, or whether it is deployed externally behind the firewall of a business partner and reachable only via the Internet.

Two very different types of web service connections, but one reliability model, providing for greater simplicity and ease of use."

Basis for Work and IPR Policy

As appropriate, this TC will use policy frameworks that are developed in open, recognized standards setting organizations and that meet the requirements of this TC for specifying quality of service levels.

In no event shall this Technical Committee finalize or approve any technical specification if it believes that the use, distribution, or implementation of such specification would necessarily require the unauthorized infringement of any third party rights known to the Technical Committee, and such third party has not agreed to provide necessary license rights on perpetual, royalty-free, non-discriminatory terms.

The WS-RM TC will accept as input the WS-Reliability specification published by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle, NEC, Sonic Software and Sun Microsystems on January 9, 2003. Other contributions in addition to WS-Reliability will be accepted for consideration without any prejudice or restrictions, and evaluated on their technical merit, as long as the contributions conform to [the TC's] charter.

Details from the Proposal

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging Technical Committee (WS-RM TC) has been proposed by the following members of OASIS: Doug Bunting, Sun Microsystems; David Burdett, Commerce One; David Chappell, Sonic Software; Colleen Evans, Sonic Software; Kazunori Iwasa, Fujitsu; Sunil Kunisetty, Oracle; Jeff Mischkinsky, Oracle; Katsutoshi Nihei, NEC; Eisaku Nishiyama, Hitachi; Sanjay Patil, IONA; Tom Rutt, Fujitsu; Alan J. Weissberger, NEC; Pete Wenzel, See Beyond; Scott Werden, WRQ; Nobuyuki Yamamoto, Hitachi; Prasad Yendluri, webMethods; and Sinisa Zimek, SAP.

The TC will focus on end-to-end reliable messaging. The TC will initially define reliable messaging requirements for Web services at the SOAP protocol level but can specify reliable messaging solutions that can be used with other messaging protocols.

Interoperability, ease of implementation, and ease of use will be fundamental characteristics for WS-RM. The TC's work should build upon similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted and align with other relevant standards. Alignment means any of the following: feature reuse, bindings, guidelines on how to jointly use the specification with other related ones, or addressing requirements from other related standards.

Composability is a critical aspect of Web Service specifications. The resulting specification must be non-overlapping with, and have demonstrated composability with other Web Service specifications that are being developed in open, recognized standards setting organizations. The WS-RM TC will collaborate with other relevant OASIS TCs, such as the ebXML Message Service and the WS-Security TCs, as appropriate. The WS-RM TC will also work to align with relevant efforts of other organizations, such as the W3C's Web Service Architecture Working Group.