OASIS this week announced approval of the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) version 1.1 specification as an OASIS Standard. Proponents are billing the ratification as a boon to SOA. The status bestowed by OASIS signifies the organization’s highest level of ratification. WSDM enables management applications to be built using Web services and allows resources to be controlled by many managers through a single interface, OASIS said. Version 1.1 integrates standard versions of dependent specifications WS-Addressing, WS-Resource Framework and WS-Notification. WSDM itself consists of two specifications: Management Using Web Services (MUWS), which defines how to represent and access manageability interfaces of resources as Web services, and Management of Web Services (MOWS), which defines how to manage Web services as resources and how to describe and access that manageability via MUWS.Companies including as BMC Software, CA, Hitachi, SOA Software and Tibco are endorsing WSDM 1.1.“The release of WSDM 1.1 is a significant step towards the convergence of application and system management, providing a complete standards-based platform that meets the functional requirements for SOA,” said Matt Quinn, vice president of product management and strategy at Tibco, in a prepared statement released by OASIS. “The management of IT infrastructure is fast evolving to SOA as a means to integrate data from disparate resources as well as tools from a variety of vendors. BMC believes WSDM and related Web services standards will help foster this evolution,” said Vince Kowalski, chief Web services architect, BMC Software, also in a prepared statement from OASIS. Software Development