[ebxml] XML Standards Converge at OASIS

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

XML Standards Converge at OASIS

Industry Groups Migrate XML Specification Development to
Interoperability Consortium


Boston, MA, USA; 19 December 2001--The trend to consolidate XML
standards development strengthened in 2001 as independent industry
groups and vendors alike chose to migrate their work to OASIS, the XML
interoperability consortium. Citing the need for wider adoption and
international participation, the groups and companies expressed
confidence that the open OASIS technical process offered the strongest
potential for advancing their specifications.

In Web services, independent efforts from WSUI.Org and WSXL from IBM
joined to advance the OASIS Web Services Component Model (WSCM)
specification. In the security space, AuthXML and S2ML combined their
efforts to produce one universally accepted OASIS standard, SAML. BEA
Systems chose to submit their XOCP specification to the consortium and
help start the OASIS Business Transaction Protocol (BTP) Technical
Committee. XML schema languages, TREX and RELAX, combined their work
into RELAX NG at OASIS. Commerce One submitted its xCBL XML business
document library to OASIS as a starting point for work on the Universal
Business Language. MSI Solutions contributed their CRML customer
relationship specification to the OASIS Customer Information Quality
Technical Committee. TopicMaps.Org moved development of its ISO standard
for navigating information to OASIS. The new OASIS Provisioning Services
Technical Committee is evaluating contributions from the XRPM Working
Group, the ADpr Initiative and developers of ITML.

"We realize it is difficult for most companies to track--let alone fund
participation--in all the relevant standards work that's happening,"
said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "By pursuing
convergence and offering a home for advancing standards created
externally, OASIS gives companies the opportunity to contribute to the
broadest possible range of significant work through one membership in
OASIS."

"By bringing specifications to OASIS, industry groups significantly
broaden global support for their work," added Colin Evans of Intel
Corporation, chair of the OASIS Board of Directors. "The real increase
in the breadth and depth of technical committees shows that OASIS is
rapidly becoming the central location for XML convergence planning."

Many developers choose to work within OASIS in order to take advantage
of close liaison activities with the consortium's other technical
committees. "Having separate groups for security information exchange
and for security policy definition allows the two distinct, but
overlapping communities of interest to focus their efforts on a
managable set of concerns," explained Carlisle Adams of Entrust and Hal
Lockhart of Entegrity, co-chairs of the OASIS eXtensible Access Control
Markup Language (XACML) Technical Committee. "Because both technical
committees are at OASIS, we are better able to coordinate our efforts,
employ common terminology and make use of each other's work."

OASIS' connection with other major standards bodies also attracts
developers. Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS Universal
Business Language Technical Committee and organizer of the working group
that created XML, said, "The OASIS technical process gives us the open
and democratic standards framework needed for credibility among
businesses large and small, and its close working relationship with
UN/CEFACT, maintainers of the international EDIFACT standard for EDI,
makes OASIS the obvious choice for UBL."

"One significant advantage of migrating development to OASIS is the
consortium's reputation and international standing. The OASIS technical
process is widely regarded as an open, reliable, proven method of
development in which everyone has a voice," said Ed Anuff of Epicentric,
a founder of WSUI.Org, which contributed its Web Services User Interface
standard to the OASIS WSCM Technical Committee. "A specification that
has been developed within OASIS has a much greater chance of achieving
widespread adoption."

In addition to accepting submissions of externally produced
specifications, OASIS offers other avenues of consortia cooperation,
including joint development, fast-tracked specification approval and
shared resources.


About OASIS
OASIS, a not-for-profit, global consortium, 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 is the home for XML conformance, Web services, security, business
transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and other
interoperability specifications development.

OASIS has more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100
countries around the world. OASIS and the United Nations jointly sponsor
ebXML, a global framework for e-business data exchange. OASIS operates
XML.org, a community clearinghouse for XML application schemas,
vocabularies and related documents. OASIS hosts The XML Cover Pages, an
online reference collection for interoperable markup language standards.


For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS www.oasis-open.org
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209