The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or OASIS, standards consortium Tuesday announced the formation of a technical committee to facilitate distributed systems management over the Internet.
Called the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, the new group will seek ways to help businesses manage their own Web services and oversee their interaction with services offered by other companies, OASIS said.
The OASIS Management Protocol will be designed to manage desktops, services and networks across an enterprise or across the Internet.
OASIS officials said the organization is looking at several Web services standards and operations for potential use in the Management Protocol, including XML, the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Open Model Interface (OMI) and the Distributed Management Task Forces Common Information Model (CIM).
“The widespread need for the integration of systems and network management tools is causing the industry to take a more holistic approach to the management of networks–and Web services provide the ideal vehicle for making that happen,” Winston Bumpus, director of open technologies and standards at Novell Inc. and chair of the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, said in a statement. “Our work at OASIS will help level the playing field and allow companies to manage systems regardless of the platform they use.”
The Management Protocol joins several Web services standards currently being developed within OASIS, officials of the organization said. Other specifications include Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) for discovery, Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) for electronic business commerce, WS-Security for secure Web services, Web Services of Interactive Applications (WSIA) for interactive Web applications, Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) for remote portals and others, OASIS officials said.
Meanwhile, database vendor Sybase Inc. announced it has received ebXML Messaging Interoperability Certification for its Sybase Web Services Integrator technology.
The Dublin, Calif., company said the certification means Sybases Web Services Integrator complies with a common level of interoperability with other e-business software.
Sybase said it successfully completed the first ebXML Messaging 2.0 Interoperability Certification test sponsored by the Uniform Code Council Inc., of Dayton, Ohio, and facilitated by Drummond Group Inc., of Austin, Texas. Sybases Web Services Integrator 2.5 complies with a common level of interoperability, the company said.
“Sybase is one of the original four early adopters to undergo testing in the first ebXML Messaging interoperability test under the UCC Interoperability Program completed earlier this year,” said Beth Morrow, vice president of business development for DGI, in a statement. “DGI views ebXML Messaging as one of the key messaging tools supporting Web services.”
ebXML helps to automate the complexities of managing trading partners, securing message transport and handling multistep business transactions, Sybase said. The company said enterprises can leverage new protocols like ebXML to enhance their existing infrastructure without the need to replace existing data transformation systems.