WS-RM or WS-R?

In an impressive display of cooperation, IBM and Microsoft, along with BEA Systems and TIBCO Software, just announced they will submit the latest version of the Web Services ReliableMessaging (WS-RM) specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for finalization as a Web services standard.

Reliable message-based communication includes the ability to ensure that a message exchange has been completed correctly with no messages lost or duplicated. For example, within an order processing system, it is critical for the application to know that all items have been received and none have been duplicated.  If a client using this application temporarily loses network connectivity during the course of order submission, reliable messaging ensures that the order is received once and only once. In some applications, it can also be important to know the correct sequencing of messages.

However, all this wonderful cooperation aside, its seems the vendor group has been working at odds with the standards group. As pointed out by CNET's Martin LaMonica in a recent article, an existing technical committee in OASIS has literally spent the last two years working on the same technology: the WS-R specification, which is designed for guaranteed delivery of XML data and was declared an OASIS standard last year. According to the report, the authors of WS-RM hope to gain the support of the people and companies working on WS-R.

Oh well.