Three of Japan's largest IT companies have developed an open-source implementation of a standard from OASIS to ensure reliable messaging between Web services applications.

The software, released on Friday, was developed by Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC and is compatible with version 1.1 the Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) standard, which became an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard on Nov. 15.

WS-Reliability was developed to ensure messaging between Web services applications is done reliably. For example, it can help ensure a purchase order sent from one application to another is actually delivered, or ensure that only a single copy of the order is delivered.

The software was developed as part of the Japanese government's Business Grid Computing Project and can be downloaded from the Web site of the government's Information-technology Promotion Agency at http://businessgrid.ipa.go.jp/rm4gs/index-en.html.

In addition to the three Japanese companies, other backers of the WS-Reliability standard include Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Sonic Software. An alternative standard, called WS-ReliableMessaging, is being promoted by companies including IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems and Tibco Software.