(July 9, 2003) - BEA, IBM, Microsoft, RSA Security, and VeriSign have released a new Web Services Federation Language (WS-Federation) specification which defines mechanisms allowing and brokering trust of identities, attributes, and authentication between participating Web services . The specification extends the WS-Trust model to allow attributes and pseudonyms to be integrated into the token issuance mechanism to provide federated identity mapping mechanisms. The models defined in WS-Security, WS-Trust, and WS-Policy provide the basis for federation; WS-Federation extends this foundation by describing how these models are combined to enable richer trust realm mechanisms across and within federations.

BEA has long worked with customers, partners, and competitors to drive the development of open standards, which are critical for the robust, secure implementation of Web services. Whether authoring a standard or specification, or providing technical leadership in a standards body, BEA devotes significant resources to driving the standards that can ultimately enable customers to reduce the cost and complexity in their business initiatives.

For more information on WS-Federation, visit BEA's http://dev2dev.bea.com/technologies/webservices/WS_Federation.jsp ">dev2dev Web site.