IBM, Microsoft not behind spec yet OASIS will develop a generic model for ensuring reliable message delivery for Web services, but the initiative lacks the support thus far of industry stalwarts IBM and Microsoft.The newly formed OASIS Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM) Technical Committee plans to establish a standard, interoperable way of achieving reliability at the SOAP messaging level and potentially with other messaging protocols. OASIS announced the effort on Wednesday.The WS-Reliability specification, from Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Fujitsu and others, will be submitted as input for the WS-RM Technical Committee and other contributions are welcome, OASIS said. Microsoft and IBM, however, are declining to participate in the OASIS effort for the time being, which raises questions on how successful an industry standards effort can be without their participation.Microsoft and IBM Wednesday released prepared statements about OASIS’s announcement.“Microsoft continues to view the ongoing community work in the area of Web services as important, but has decided not to join this OASIS technical committee,” the company said, declining to elaborate on its reasons. IBM released a prepared statement attributed to Steve Holbrook, program director, IBM emerging e-business standards: “While IBM is not joining the effort at the beginning, we are confident that the industry will unite around a common standard, and we will be active participants. IBM was influential in many of the constructs of WS-Reliability based on our early work on ebXML.“History shows that many companies provide input to important standards, resulting in a functionally-rich specification that satisfies the industry. We think that the final standard for message reliability will be based partially on WS-Reliability, and we expect that this standard will evolve to correlate with several other Web services specifications underway.”Sun officials last week challenged IBM and Microsoft to adopt a royalty-free stance on emerging Web services standards. Sun intends to promote this stance as it seeks a seat on the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Board of Directors. Sun’s Mark Hapner, distinguished engineer and chief Web services strategist, would hold that seat. OASIS is taking a royalty-free stance on its Web services messaging effort.Interoperability, ease of implementation and ease of use are fundamental goals of the OASIS messaging effort, according to WS-RM Technical Committee chairman Tom Rutt, of Fujitsu, in a prepared statement.The OASIS Reliable Messaging specification will address message persistence, acknowledgement and resending, elimination of duplicate messages, ordered delivery and delivery status awareness for sender and receiver applications. WSDL definitions will be provided for reliable messaging. Message formats will be specified as SOAP headers and/or body content. OASIS WS-RM Technical Committee members include Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Iona, NEC, Oracle, SAP, See Beyond, Sonic Software, Sun, webMethods, WRQ and others. Software Development