OASIS Signs Off on New Web Specs

It’s a full month until the second annual Interoperability
Summit in Orlando, Fla., but Boston’s OASIS isn’t waiting to use that as a proving ground for its new developments.

The e-business standards consortium Wednesday put the finishing touches on three committee specifications: ebXML Registry Service (RS) v2, ebXML Registry Information Model (RIM) v2 and Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) v2 This means the specs have passed
muster through a detailed process, which includes approval by their respective technical committees, implementation by at least
three organizations, a 90-day review, and a final vote from the OASIS membership at-large.

In the spirit of electronic business Extensible Markup Language ebXML RS and ebXML RIM allow information to be
shared between parties through common registries. Members of the OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee include Boeing, Intel,
IONA, Logistics Management Institute, NIST, Sterling Commerce, Sun Microsystems, Vitria Technology, and others.

DSML , in this example, is a means of representing directory information in XML, enabling access to directory
information for XML applications, cell phones and PDAs. Members of the OASIS DSML Technical Committee include Access360, Novell, and
others.

Noting that, as the security framework of e-business continues to change, standard directory access grows more and more important
for provisioning events, Business Layers CTO Adrian Viego said: “Business Layers believes that Directory Services Markup Language
(DSML) will help companies leverage the use of directory information expressed as XML and in turn will help drive the efforts of
extending LDAP directories to XML-based applications. The combined benefits of both technologies will create a powerful open
infrastructure for greater interoperability in the enterprise.”

“Novell has long been an active supporter of open standards, because of the value of those standards in helping companies realize
Novell’s one Net vision — where intranets, extranets and the Internet work together as one,” said Gary Hein, Vice President of
Architecture and Strategy for Novell. “In that spirit, we’re very pleased to have been involved in the development of DSML v2, which
will help establish the role of directories in the emerging world of Web services.”