Addressing

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.