 | Level: Advanced Contributors: IBM, BEA Systems, Microsoft, SAP AG, Sun Microsystems 30 Mar 2004
Updated 04 Oct 2007 The lastest version of WS-Addressing, a key part of the core Web services architecture, has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the standardization process as part of a longer-term effort to provide a standards-based foundation for the development of secure, transacted, asynchronous, and reliable Web services. Read the press release and find links to the submissions on W3C.
Press release SAN JOSE, Calif., ARMONK, N.Y., REDMOND, Wash., WALLDORF, Germany, and SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Aug, 10, 2004 -- BEA Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., SAP AG, and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced the submission of the latest version of a key Web services specification, Web Services Addressing (WS-Addressing), to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as input into the standardization process. WS-Addressing helps enable organizations to build reliable and interoperable Web services applications by defining a standard mechanism for identifying and exchanging Web services messages between multiple end points. With a standard way to express where a message should be delivered in a Web services network, developers are able to simplify Web services communication and development and avoid the need to develop costly, ad hoc solutions that are often difficult to interoperate across platforms. With today's acknowledgement by the W3C, the joint submission of WS-Addressing represents a milestone in the collaboration among BEA, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Sun to further advance Web services technology and enable customers to build interoperable Web services applications. Backed by significant industry support, the submission of WS-Addressing is also a part of a longer-term effort to provide a standards-based foundation for the development of secure, transacted, asynchronous, and reliable Web services. WS-Addressing is a key part of the core Web services architecture. In particular, the specification is designed to underlie other specifications, such as WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Federation and WS-AtomicTransaction, to provide a protocol independent, common way to locate Web Services in support of features such as transactions, security, reliable message delivery, and identity federation. The submission also further demonstrates all the co-authors' commitment to the development of open industry standards to drive widespread adoption of Web services. With the intent of easing adoption, the co-authors will not charge royalties in conjunction with WS-Addressing. The co-authors of this specification look forward to future collaboration in bringing together a cohesive Web services architecture.
Get the specification and related material
WS-Addressing provides transport-neutral mechanisms to address Web services and messages. Specifically, this specification defines XML elements to identify Web services endpoints and to secure end-to-end endpoint identification in messages. This specification enables messaging systems to support message transmission through networks that include processing nodes such as endpoint managers, firewalls, and gateways in a transport-neutral manner.
WS-Addressing defines two interoperable constructs that convey information that is typically provided by transport protocols and messaging systems. These constructs normalize this underlying information into a uniform format that can be processed independently of transport or application. The two constructs are endpoint references and message information headers.
A Web services endpoint is a (referenceable) entity, processor, or resource where Web services messages can be targeted. Endpoint references convey the information needed to identify/reference a Web services endpoint, and may be used in several different ways: endpoint references are suitable for conveying the information needed to access a Web services endpoint, but are also used to provide addresses for individual messages sent to and from Web services. To deal with this last usage case, this specification defines a family of message information headers that allows uniform addressing of messages independent of underlying transport. These message information headers convey end-to-end message characteristics including addressing for source and destination endpoints as well as message identity.
Both of these constructs are designed to be extensible and re-usable so that other specifications can build on and leverage endpoint references and message information headers.
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