Vendors Partner to Extend SOA Technologies

OSOA, a group working on the SCA and SDO specifications intended to simplify the creation of Web services applications, announces successes and additional members.

With interest in service-oriented architectures continuing to grow, several leading technology vendors that have been working together to create the SCA (Service Component Architecture) and SDO (Service Data Objects) specifications have announced key achievements, including a significant increase in industry involvement and advancements in the development of SOA-related specifications and technologies.

The group, OSOA (Open Service Oriented Architecture), also launched a vendor-neutral Web site to serve as an information resource for access to draft specifications, white papers and other information.

OSOA, which started working together in November of 2005 to simplify SOA application development, was made up of BEA Systems, IBM, Iona, Oracle, SAP, Sybase, Xcalia and Zend Technologies. The group announced on July 26 that other companies such as Cape Clear, Interface21, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software, Red Hat, Rogue Wave Software, Software AG, Sun Microsystems and TIBCO Software have joined the fold.

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And the new members have helped to create new and updated draft specifications. The SCA specifications are designed to help simplify the creation and composition of business services, while the SDO specifications focus on uniform access to data residing in multiple locations and formats, a member of the group said.

Indeed, the groups work has already resulted in the development of new draft SCA specifications for a declarative policy framework; improved description of connectivity with bindings specifications for JMS (Java Message System), JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture) and Web services; and new BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and PHP authoring models. In addition, draft specifications for Service Assembly. Java and C++ service authoring, and SDO have been updated, the organization said.

"As early partners in this effort, its exciting to see our collaboration expanded with innovative companies that have also recognized the impact SCA and SDO specifications can have in moving forward SOA adoption and deployments," Ed Cobb, vice president of Architecture & Standards for BEA Systems, in San Jose, Calif., said in a statement. "Were also encouraged by the technical progress weve made since our original announcement late last year."

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Similarly, "IBM is very pleased on the progress made by the collaboration over the last eight months," Karla Norsworthy, vice president of software standards for IBM Software, in Somers, N.Y, said in a statement. "The enhancements to the SCA and SDO specifications in terms of ease of use, broadened technology applicability and enterprise quality of service characteristics are exactly what are customers are demanding in their SOA solutions. We are delighted also by the addition of the new collaboration partners who will bring broad marketplace expertise into the collaboration work."

Eric Newcomer, chief technology officer at Iona Technologies, in Waltham, Mass., and SCA Policy Working Group co-chair, also expressed satisfaction with the groups accomplishments thus far, saying in a statement, "We are making excellent progress in the advancement of the SCA and SDO specifications, including good alignment with the SOA Tooling Platform Project at Eclipse, mappings for JAX-WS [Java API for XML Web Services], and significant progress on the policy framework and protocol bindings, among many other areas."

And Rod Johnson, CEO of London-based Interface21, the maker of the open-source Spring Framework and a new member of the group, said in a statement, "We recognize the value that a service-oriented approach brings to enterprise architecture, and are delighted to be supporting the SCA initiative through the use of Spring as a first-class component implementation choice. Interface21 has been at the forefront of innovation in the enterprise programming model since 2003 and brings this expertise to the collaboration. We look forward to working with other leading vendors to make SCA easy and productive for developers to adopt."

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