DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

Systems/Enterprise:

LEADERS RALLY BEHIND WS-MessageDelivery SPECIFICATION

Arjuna Technologies Ltd, Enigmatec Corp, Hitachi, IONA Technologies Inc, Nokia Corp, Oracle, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software and Sun Microsystems Inc announced support for the WS-MessageDelivery specification recently submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in accordance with the W3C's royalty-free licensing requirements.

WS-MessageDelivery will make it easier to build complex applications using Web services by standardizing the way Web service endpoints are referenced when multiple Web services are engaged in common message exchange patterns. Designed to facilitate the patterns outlined in Web Services Description Language (WSDL), this specification lays a foundation to achieve far more sophisticated message-based interactions without sacrificing the loosely coupled model that underlies Web services.

An example of a message exchange pattern enabled by WS-MessageDelivery is the "callback pattern" -- where one service sends a request to a second service, but instead of waiting idly for a reply, continues doing other work until notified that the second service has finished processing the request. Prior to WS-MessageDelivery, proprietary messaging constructs were needed to identify the callback service, limiting the development and interoperability of this key capability between vendors.

A fundamental tenet of WS-MessageDelivery is to reduce the complexity application developers encounter when implementing real world business applications composed of Web services. It does this by taking a WSDL-centric approach for referencing Web service endpoints building on existing structures. It is also designed to be extensible and composable so that other specifications can utilize its foundation.