As Web services are deployed broadly across enterprise boundaries and for collaborative e-business and e-transaction scenarios, message reliability becomes a critical issue. This is because communication over the Internet (and Intranets) is inherently unreliable, as on transport protocol level like HTTP or SMTP, guaranteed or ordered message delivery cannot be assured. Reliable Web services messages guarantee that messages will be delivered to the receiver, even in the presence of component, system, or network failures. If a message can't be reliably delivered, then the sending system will be informed of the failure.
The Web services Reliable Messaging specification (WS-ReliableMessaging or WS-RM) addresses the need for reliable message exchange in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Implementing these applications using the reliable Service Oriented Architecture provides the benefits of interoperability, versioning, security, and transport independence.
WS-RM provides the protocol elements necessary for reliable message exchange. Based on the SOAP processing model, it is designed to compose seamlessly with application messages, creating efficient, reliable application protocols.
WS-Reliability supports:
Key features and benefits provided by WS Adapter include:
Technical Capabilities and Product Specifications
WS was designed with the following main characteristics as goals: