Apache WSRF, Pubscribe, and Muse

By Ian Springer

September 26, 2005

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You may have heard about some new standards, or soon-to-be-standards, on the "WS-*" block—WS-ResourceFramework (WSRF), WS-Notification (WSN), and WS-DistributedManagement (WSDM). Although the alphabet soup of acronyms can be confusing, these specifications open up interesting potential applications: they define standard ways to use web services to expose stateful resources, publish and subscribe for notifications, and perform management functions.

In November 2004, HP contributed Java implementations of early drafts of WSRF, WSN, and WSDM to the Apache Software Foundation. At the same time, the Globus Alliance contributed the WSRF and WSN implementations that it had developed as the foundation for the next generation of the Globus Toolkit for building grid computers and applications. For both WSRF and WSN, HP and Globus agreed to combine the best of both of their implementations into one new and improved implementation. To host the donated code and the ongoing development efforts, three new subprojects were formed within the Apache incubator (a staging area for new projects to mature before becoming fully endorsed Apache projects). The projects were named Apollo, Hermes, and Muse. Apollo would implement the WSRF specifications, Hermes would extend Apollo to implement the WSN specifications, and Muse would extend both Apollo and Hermes to implement the WSDM MUWS specification.

WSRF, WSN, and WSDM

WSRF, WSN, and WSDM are sets of specifications being cultivated within the OASIS standards body and are driven by such industry leaders as IBM, HP, Oracle, and the Globus Alliance. OASIS is responsible for several popular web services standards, including UDDI, WS-Security, and WS-Reliability. WSDM 1.0 was ratified as an OASIS standard in March 2005. WSRF and WSN are on track to become standards sometime in late 2005; shortly thereafter, a new version of WSDM will be released that is based upon the standard versions of WSRF and WSN.

In addition to residing in OASIS, WSRF, WSN, and WSDM have much in common.

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