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The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS; ) is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of
open standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...
for
cybersecurity Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...
, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management,
cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
, legal data exchange,
energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...
, content technologies, and other areas.


History

OASIS was founded under the name "SGML Open" in 1993. It began as a trade association of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) tool vendors to cooperatively promote the adoption of SGML through mainly educational activities, though some amount of technical activity was also pursued including an update of the CALS Table Model specification and specifications for fragment interchange and entity management. In 1998, with the movement of the industry to
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
, SGML Open changed its emphasis from SGML to XML, and changed its name to OASIS Open to be inclusive of XML and reflect an expanded scope of technical work and standards. The focus of the consortium's activities also moved from promoting adoption (as XML was getting much attention on its own) to developing technical specifications. In July 2000 a new technical committee process was approved. With the adoption of the process the manner in which technical committees were created, operated, and progressed their work was regularized. At the adoption of the process there were five technical committees; by 2004 there were nearly 70. During 1999, OASIS was approached by
UN/CEFACT UN/CEFACT is the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business. It was established as an intergovernmental body of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in 1996 and evolved from UNECE's long tradition of ...
, the committee of the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
dealing with standards for business, to jointly develop a new set of specifications for electronic business. The joint initiative, called "
ebXML Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language, commonly known as e-business XML, or ebXML (pronounced ee-bee-ex-em-el, 'bi,eks,em'el as it is typically referred to, is a family of XML based standards sponsored by OASIS and UN/CEFACT whose m ...
" and which first met in November 1999, was chartered for a three-year period. At the final meeting under the original charter, in Vienna, UN/CEFACT and OASIS agreed to divide the remaining work between the two organizations and to coordinate the completion of the work through a coordinating committee. In 2004 OASIS submitted its completed ebXML specifications to
ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...
TC154 where they were approved as ''ISO 15000''. The consortium has its headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, shared with other companies. On September 4, 2014, the consortium moved from 25 Corporate Drive Suite 103 to 35 Corporate Dr Suite 150, still on the same loop route.


Standards development

The following standards are under development or maintained by OASIS technical committees: *
AMQP The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware. The defining features of AMQP are message orientation, queuing, routing (including point-to-point and publish-and-su ...
— Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, an application layer protocol for
message-oriented middleware Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. MOM allows application modules to be distributed over heterogeneous platforms and reduces the comple ...
. * BCM — Business Centric-Methodology, BCM is a comprehensive approach and proven techniques that enable a
service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...
(SOA) and support enterprise agility and interoperability. *
CAM Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bin ...
— Content Assembly Mechanism, is a generalized assembly mechanism for using templates of XML business transaction content and the associated rules. CAM templates augment schema syntax and provide implementers with the means to specify interoperable interchange patterns. *
CAMP Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...
— Cloud Application Management for Platforms, is an API for managing public and private cloud applications. *
CAP A cap is a flat headgear, usually with a visor. Caps have crowns that fit very close to the head. They made their first appearance as early as 3200 BC. Caps typically have a visor, or no brim at all. They are popular in casual and informal se ...
— Common Alerting Protocol, is an XML-based data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting technologies. * CDP — Customer Data Platform, is a specification that aims to standardize the exchange of customer data across systems and silos by defining a web-based API using GraphQL. *
CMIS Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is an open standard that allows different content management systems to inter-operate over the Internet. Specifically, CMIS defines an abstraction layer for controlling diverse document manag ...
— Content Management Interoperability Services, is a domain model and Web services standard for working with Enterprise content management repositories and systems. * CIQ — Customer Information Quality, is an XML Specifications for defining, representing, interoperating and managing party information (e.g. name, address). *
DocBook DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of documentation. As a semantic languag ...
— DocBook, a markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for authoring technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation. * DITA — Darwin Information Typing Architecture, a modular and extensible XML-based language for topic-based information, such as for online help, documentation, and training. * EML — Election Markup Language, End to End information standards and processes for conducting democratic elections using XML-based information recording. * EDXL — Emergency Data Exchange Language, Suite of XML-based messaging standards that facilitate emergency information sharing between government entities and the full range of emergency-related organizations *
GeoXACML GeoXACML stands for ''Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language''. It defines a geo-specific extension to XACML Version 2.0, as it was ratified by OASIS standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards devel ...
— Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language, a geo-specific extension to
XACML XACML stands for "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language". The standard defines a declarative fine-grained, attribute-based access control policy language, an architecture, and a processing model describing how to evaluate access requests a ...
Version 2.0, mainly the geometric data-type ''urn:ogc:def:dataType:geoxacml:1.0:geometry'' and several geographic functions such as topological, bag, set, geometric and conversion functions. * KMIP — The Key Management Interoperability Protocol tries to establish a single, comprehensive protocol for the communication between enterprise key management systems and encryption systems. *
Legal XML Legal XML is a non-profit organization developing in the frame of the OASIS consortium open standards for legal documents, such as electronic court filing, court documents, legal citations, and transcripts, and related applications. The building bl ...
LegalDocumentML (
Akoma Ntoso Akoma Ntoso (''A''rchitecture for ''K''nowledge-''O''riented ''M''anagement of ''A''frican ''N''ormative ''T''exts using ''O''pen ''S''tandards and ''O''ntologies) is an international technical standard for representing executive, legislative and ...
), LegalRuleML, Electronic Court Filing, and eNotarization standards. *
MQTT MQTT (originally an initialism of MQ Telemetry Transport) is a lightweight, publish-subscribe, machine to machine network protocol for Message queue/Message queuing service. It is designed for connections with remote locations that have devices ...
— Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, a client-server, publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol. It is light weight, open, simple, and designed to be easy to implement. These characteristics make it ideal for use in many situations, including constrained environments such as for communication in
machine to machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate th ...
(M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) contexts where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium. *
oBIX oBIX (for Open Building Information Exchange) is a standard for RESTful Web Services-based interfaces to building control systems. oBIX is about reading and writing data over a network of devices using XML and URIs, within a framework specific ...
— open Building Information Exchange, an extensible XML specification for enterprise interaction with building-based (or other) control systems, including HVAC, Access Control, Intrusion Detection, and many others. * OData — Open Data Protocol (OData), ''Simplifying data sharing across disparate applications in enterprise, Cloud, and mobile devices.'' *
OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...
— OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, an open document file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentations. * OSLC — Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration, (OSLC) develops standards that make it easy and practical for software lifecycle tools to share data with one another. See the OSLC community web site (http://open-services.net) for more details. * PKCS #11 - PKCS #11 standard defines a platform-independent
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
to cryptographic tokens, such as
hardware security module A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages secrets (most importantly digital keys), performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other cryptogr ...
s (HSM) and
smart cards A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
, and names the API itself "Cryptoki" (from "cryptographic token interface" and pronounced as "crypto-key" - but "PKCS #11" is often used to refer to the API as well as the standard that defines it). *
SAML Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced ''SAM-el'', ) is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. SAML is an XML-based ...
— Security Assertion Markup Language, a standard
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based framework for the secure exchange of
authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...
and
authorization Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to access control in particular. More fo ...
information. * SARIF - Static Analysis Results Interchange Format, a standard JSON-based format for the output of
static analysis Static analysis, static projection, or static scoring is a simplified analysis wherein the effect of an immediate change to a system is calculated without regard to the longer-term response of the system to that change. If the short-term effect i ...
tools. * SDD — Solution Deployment Descriptor, a standard
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based schema defining a standardized way to express software installation characteristics required for lifecycle management in a multi-platform environment. *
SPML Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) is an XML-based framework, being developed by OASIS, for exchanging user, resource and service provisioning information between cooperating organizations. The Service Provisioning Markup language is th ...
— Service Provisioning Markup Language, a standard
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based protocol for the integration and interoperation of
service provisioning In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, ''"provisioning"'' equates to ...
requests. *
TOSCA ''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language drama ...
— Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications, a Standard to describe cloud services, the relationships between parts of the service, and the operational behavior of the services. * UBL — Universal Business Language, the international effort to define a royalty-free library of standard electronic business documents (purchase order, invoice, waybill, etc.) in XML. UBL 2.1 was approved a
ISO/IEC 19845:2015
UBL serves as the basis for numerous electronic commerce networks and implementations worldwide. *
UDDI Web Services Discovery provides access to software systems over the Internet using standard protocols. In the most basic scenario there is a ''Web Service Provider'' that publishes a service and a ''Web Service Consumer'' that uses this service. ...
— Universal Description Discovery and Integration, a
platform-independent In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
,
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based registry for companies and individuals to list Web Services.
VirtIO
— Virtual I/O, a standard for paravirtualized devices. * WebCGM — Web Computer Graphics Metafile, a profile of
Computer Graphics Metafile Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is a free and open international standard file format for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text, and is defined by ISO/ IEC 8632. Overview All graphical elements can be specified in a textual source ...
(CGM), which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. *
WS-BPEL The Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL), commonly known as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), is an OASIS standard executable language for specifying actions within business processes with web services. Proces ...
— Web Services Business Process Execution Language * WSDM — Web Services Distributed Management *
XACML XACML stands for "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language". The standard defines a declarative fine-grained, attribute-based access control policy language, an architecture, and a processing model describing how to evaluate access requests a ...
— eXtensible Access Control Markup Language, a standard
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based protocol for access control policies. * XDI — XRI Data Interchange, a standard for sharing, linking, and synchronizing data (" dataweb") across multiple domains and applications using
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
documents, eXtensible Resource Identifiers (XRIs), and a new method of distributed data control called a link contract. *
XLIFF XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF T ...
— XML Localization Interchange File Format, a
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-based format created to standardize
localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...
. * XRI — eXtensible Resource Identifier, a URI-compatible scheme and resolution protocol for abstract identifiers used to identify and share resources across domains and applications.


Members

Adhesion to the consortium requires some fees to be paid, which must be renewed annually, depending on the membership category adherents want to access. Among the adherents are members from
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...
,
Collabora Collabora is a global private company headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom, with offices in Cambridge and Montreal. It provides open-source consultancy, training and products to companies. Collabora's initial focus was instant messagin ...
, Dell, EclecticIQ, General Motors, IBM,
ISO/IEC ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and p ...
, KDE e.V.,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat,
The Document Foundation The Document Foundation (TDF) is a non-profit organization that promotes open-source document handling software. It was created by members of the OpenOffice.org community to manage and develop LibreOffice, a free and open-source office suite, a ...
, universities, government agencies, individuals and employees from other less-known companies.


Member sections

Member sections are special interest groups within the consortium that focus on specific topics. These sections keep their own distinguishable identity and have full autonomy to define their work programme and agenda. The integration of the member section in the standardization process is organized via the technical committees. Active member sections are for example: *
Legal XML Legal XML is a non-profit organization developing in the frame of the OASIS consortium open standards for legal documents, such as electronic court filing, court documents, legal citations, and transcripts, and related applications. The building bl ...
* IDTrust Member sections may be completed when they have achieved their objectives. The standards that they promoted are then maintained by the relevant technical committees directly within OASIS. For example: *
AMQP The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware. The defining features of AMQP are message orientation, queuing, routing (including point-to-point and publish-and-su ...
*
WS-I The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) was an industry consortium created in 2002 and chartered to promote interoperability amongst the stack of web services specifications. WS-I did not define standards for web services; rather, it ...


Patent disclosure controversy

Like many bodies producing
open standards An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definitio ...
e.g. ECMA, OASIS added a
Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing Reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, also known as fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, denote a voluntary licensing commitment that standards organizations often request from the owner of an intellectual property r ...
(RAND) clause to its policy in February 2005. That amendment required participants to disclose intent to apply for
software patent A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, u ...
s for technologies under consideration in the standard. Contrary to the
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
, which requires participants to offer royalty-free licenses to anyone using the resulting standard, OASIS offers a similar Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode, along with a Royalty Free on RAND Terms mode and a RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) mode for its committees. Compared to W3C, OASIS is less restrictive regarding obligation to companies to grant a royalty-free license to the patents they own. Controversy has rapidly arisen because this licensing was added silently and allows publication of standards which could require licensing fee payments to patent holders. This situation could effectively eliminate the possibility of free/ open source implementations of these standards. Further, contributors could initially offer royalty-free use of their patent, later imposing per-unit fees, after the standard has been accepted. On April 11, 2005, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' reported IBM committed for free, all of its patents to the OASIS group. Larry Rosen, a software law expert and the leader of the reaction which rose up when OASIS quietly included a RAND clause in its policy, welcomed the initiative and supposed OASIS will not continue using that policy as other companies involved would follow. History proved him wrong, as that RAND policy has still not been removed and other commercial companies have not published such a free statement towards OASIS. Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS from 2001 to 2008, minimized the risk that a company could take advantage of a standard to request royalties when it has been established: "If it's an option nobody uses, then what's the harm?". Sam Hiser, former marketing lead of the now defunct
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...
, explained that such patents towards an open standard are counterproductive and inappropriate. He also argued that IBM and
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
were shifting their standardization efforts from the
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
to OASIS, in a way to leverage probably their patents portfolio in the future. Hiser also attributed this RAND change to the OASIS policy to Microsoft. The RAND term could indeed theoretically allow any company involved to leverage their patent in the future. But that amendment was probably added in a way to attract more companies to the consortium, and encourage contributions from potential participants. Big actors like Microsoft could have indeed applied pressure and made a sine-qua-non condition to access the consortium, and possibly jeopardize/boycott the standard if such a clause was not present.


Criticism

Doug Mahugh — while working for Microsoft (a promoter of Office Open XML, a Microsoft document format competing with OASIS's ISO/IEC 26300, i.e. ODF v1.0) — claimed that "many countries have expressed frustration about the pace of OASIS's responses to defect reports that have been submitted on ISO/IEC 26300 and the inability for SC 34 members to participate in the maintenance of ODF." However, Rob Weir, co-chair of the OASIS
ODF The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...
Technical Committee noted that at the time, "the ODF TC had received zero defect reports from any ISO/IEC national body other than Japan". He added that the submitter of the original Japanese defect report, Murata Mokoto, was satisfied with the preparation of the errata. He also self-published a blog post blaming Microsoft of involving people to improve and modify the accuracy of ODF and OpenXML Wikipedia articles, trying to make ODF sound risky to adopt.


See also

*
UIMA UIMA ( ), short for Unstructured Information Management Architecture, is an OASIS standard for content analytics, originally developed at IBM. It provides a component software architecture for the development, discovery, composition, and deplo ...


References


External links

*
OASIS specifications



OASIS making it easier to use standards without fee worries
{{authority control Standards organizations in the United States Web services XML organizations Internet of things