Axway, BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software, Red
Hat, SAIC, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO,  and Others Collaborate on Standards
to Simplify SOA Application Development

Boston, MA, USA; 9 August 2007 - OASIS, the international open standards
consortium, has formed six new technical committees to simplify SOA application
development by advancing the SCA family of specifications. SCA defines a
flexible model for creating business solutions using service components. The
work will be organized within the OASIS Open Composite Services Architecture
(Open CSA) Member Section, and the resulting specifications will be offered for
implementation on a royalty-free basis.

"SCA is based on the idea that business functions are provided as a series of
services that can be wired together to create solutions for particular business
needs. These composite applications can contain  new services created
specifically for the application and  reuse existing business functions from
existing systems," explained Anne Thomas Manes, Vice President and Research
Director for Burton Group. "SCA offers the potential to streamline the SOA
design process by enabling the delivery of easy-to-use tools developers need to
transform IT assets into reusable services."

"Each of the six new OASIS committees will address a different aspect of SCA.
This will allow smaller groups of members with specific expertise or interest
in one area to collaborate more effectively," noted  Jeff Mischkinsky of Oracle
who chairs the OASIS Open CSA Member Section Steering Committee, which will
handle overall coordination of the work.

The SCA model encompasses a wide range of technologies for service components,
access methods that connect them, and policy that provides declarative
qualities of service.  For components, this includes not only different
programming languages, but also frameworks and environments commonly used with
those languages. For access methods, SCA compositions allow for the use of
various communication and service access technologies in common use.  For
policy, this includes a framework for integrating commonly used policy
languages and quality of service expressions.

Mischkinsky will convene the OASIS SCA-Assembly Technical Committee (TC), which
will define the core composition model. The group will work closely with the
SCA-Policy TC, convened by Michael Rowley of BEA Systems, to define a policy
framework for SCA as well as specific  reliable messaging, security and
transactions policies.  

Mike Edwards of IBM will convene the SCA-Bindings TC, which will standardize
bindings for SCA services and references to various communication protocols,
technologies and frameworks. Edwards will also convene the SCA-BPEL TC, which
will specify how SCA component implementations can be written using the Web
Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) .

The OASIS SCA-C-C++ TC, convened by Pete Robbins of IBM, and the SCA-J TC,
convened by Henning Blohm of SAP, will develop specifications that standardize
the use of C and C++ and Java (tm) technologies, respectively, within an SCA
domain.  

The SCA Technical Committees have committed to developing a test plan, test
cases, and scenarios for each specification.

"These six OASIS SCA TCs plan to address the tough 'last mile' of SOA project
implementation," said James Bryce Clark, director of standards development at
OASIS. "If a group of software engineers want to compose two specific services
into an application using C and BPEL, for example, they'll face some
challenging design choices.  The SCA TCs plan to provide practical help, in the
form of language bindings, a policy framework, and code patterns."

Participation in these OASIS SCA TCs remains open to all companies, non-profit
groups, governments, academic institutions, and individuals. Archives of the
work will be accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS will offer a
mechanism for public comment.

Support for SCA

BEA Systems
"BEA is pleased to be sponsoring and participating in the SCA Technical
Committees at OASIS. SCA is quickly emerging as a centerpiece technology for
building next generation, service-oriented applications. OASIS provides the
ideal venue for the development of this important set of standards," said Ed
Cobb, Vice President, Emerging Technology and Standards at BEA Systems Inc.

Hitachi
"The SOA initiative at OASIS is promising to Hitachi's customers, since it
provides the potential for the normalized extension of their stable of
applications under a long-lived service-oriented paradigm. That extension
should deliver the benefits of well-managed transitional application stability
and economic advantage. We wish all of the new TCs harmonious and thoughtful
execution and ultimately a useful result," said Takao Nakamura, Executive
General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi Ltd.

IBM
"IBM is pleased to see the Service Component Architecture enter the more formal
standardization process. This is an indicator of both the maturity of the
specifications and their increasing  momentum in the industry. Our customers
today require SOA solutions that work with a variety of vendor platforms and
programming languages.  SCA offers application programmers and architects the
critical usability and flexibility features for building composite service
applications designed for SOA.  With broad industry support, this initiative is
very compelling and is of high interest to our customers," said Karla
Norsworthy, Vice President of Software Standards, IBM Software Group.

Oracle
"In our continued efforts to drive industry standards, Oracle is extremely
pleased at how rapidly the SCA work has moved from the incubator osoa.org
collaboration phase into the open standards process. We plan to play an active
role in the newly chartered technical committees and look forward to leveraging
the resulting standards throughout the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of
hot-pluggable middleware software," said Don Deutsch, vice president Standards
Strategy and Architecture, Oracle.  

Primeton Technologies
"SOA starts with components. The official establishment of OASIS SCA TCs has
paved the way for broad acceptance of component-oriented approach to SOA.
Primeton will fully support SCA/SDO standards in the coming release of our
flagship product, EOS," said Larry Huang, CTO of Primeton Technologies.

Red Hat
"Red Hat is pleased to see the various component specifications with SCA
becoming the core of new OASIS technical committees. A fully standardized SCA
is important for the industry, and we're glad to be an active participant,"
said Dr. Mark Little, Director of Standards for Red Hat.

SAIC
"The demand for robust systems that allow business analysts to interact with
Information Technology in an intuitive, user-centric manner led us to support
standards such as SCA.  We view SCA as an essential enabler providing a
concrete implementation 'blueprint' model for assembling components into
composite applications rapidly and flexibly," said Sam Chance, Science
Applications International Corp. (SAIC).

SAP
"SCA aims to standardize composition across heterogeneous platforms, and
enabling existing platforms such as Java EE with SCA capabilities is a
pragmatic step in that direction. As a founding member of the SCA
standardization initiative, we are excited to continue the standardization
effort under OASIS as a member of the steering committee for the Open CSA
Member Section and as a convener of the SCA-J TC," said Sanjay Patil, Standards
Architect, SAP AG.  

Sun Microsystems
"Sun is pleased that the OASIS membership has moved forward with the SCA
specifications through the formation of the Technical Committees. As more and
more applications are being built on an SOA, the challenge of composing
services is growing. Richer, standardized metadata supporting such composition
will benefit developers building applications on an SOA," said Mark Hapner,
distinguished engineer, Sun Microsystems.

TIBCO
"With active participation and contributions to almost all of the new SCA
Technical Committees, TIBCO is proud to be part of this formative milestone. We
will continue to support SCA and the OASIS Open CSA Member Section as a leading
standard for SOA," said Matt Quinn, vice president of Product Strategy, TIBCO.

Additional information:

OASIS Open CSA Member Section
http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/

OASIS SCA Technical Committees
http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/committees

About SCA
http://www.oasis-opencsa.org/sca/

Cover Pages: SCA Report
http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-07-06-a.html

About OASIS:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards),
drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for the
global information society. A not-for-profit consortium, OASIS advances
standards for SOA, security, Web services, documents, e-commerce, government
and law, localisation, supply chains, XML processing, and other areas of need
identified by its members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower
cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free
choice. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:
Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
+1.941.284.0403 (mobile)

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