A group of vendors including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems said that it's working to develop a proposed XML-based standard for use by companies in coordinating and processing multiparty transactions via the Web.
The announcement of the proposed standard was led by Bowstreet Inc., a US-based vendor that provides XML infrastructure technology for automating e-commerce transactions. HP, IBM, Oracle and Sun signed on as participants in the new initiative, which plans to create an extension of XML that will support key transaction-processing capabilities.
The proposed standard, called Transaction Authority Markup Language (XAML), will be vendor-neutral and will provide specifications and protocols for online transaction processing, according to the group's announcement. That would let companies cancel entire transactions or seek alternative suppliers if one piece of a business deal between multiple parties failed to be completed, the group said.
The proposal will be submitted to one or more standards bodies at an unspecified time, said the group, which has set up a Web site with information about its plans.