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OASIS looks to make peace in reliable-messaging standards battle

Martin LaMonica CNET News

Published: 11 May 2005 12:25 BST

Backers of two overlapping standards submissions for reliable messaging will seek to reconcile their specifications, a standards group said Tuesday.

OASIS said the vendors behind the two reliable-messaging specifications have agreed to "advance development" within the standards body. Several Web services specifications are being handled within OASIS.

Currently, there is an OASIS standard called WS-R that was created by several companies, including Oracle, Fujitsu and Hitachi Software.

Last month, another group of companies, led by IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems and Tibco Software, submitted a similar technical document to OASIS for consideration as a standard. That specification, WS-RX, is backed by companies with significantly more market share than the authors of WS-R.

Changes to the reliable messaging formats will be "considered and evaluated based on technical merit, business requirements of users and the committee's charter", according to a statement from OASIS.

"Until now, there have been two duplicative efforts... This has caused some end-user confusion and concern," Gartner analyst Charles Abrams said in a statement. "Now that both efforts are under the auspices of OASIS... end-user needs should be better served."