OASIS have formed a new technical committee to develop an XML protocol for managing complex business transactions involving multiple parties.

To be chaired by Rocky Stewart of BEA Systems, the new TC will address the problem of long-lived transactions that span multiple organizations. Stewart commented in an OASIS press release:

By establishing an open XML specification to coordinate the workflows that drive this process, the OASIS Business Transactions Technical Committee will work to ensure that the outcome of a B2B transaction is reliable--regardless of how many players are involved or how long it takes to execute.

The OASIS TC intends to develop a protocol that works in conjunction with ebXML, as well as addressing issues in a problem domain larger than that of ebXML. The basis of the new work is BEA Systems' Business Transaction Protocol (BTP) specification.