AS4 provides an on-ramp for using Web services as a transport to exchange B2B messages," said Makesh Rao of Cisco Systems, co-chair of the OASIS ebXML Messaging Services Technical Committee. "The Profile makes it easier to implement ebMS 3 by constraining and paring down the options for vendors, which lowers costs and increases interoperability."
AS4 is the modern successor of AS2 (IETF RFC 4130), a messaging protocol widely adopted in retail and other industries. AS4 maps AS2-like functional requirements onto the WS-* stack. AS4 uses Web Services standards championed by OASIS including the WS-I Basic Profile.
"The main benefits of AS4 are compatibility with Web services standards, message pulling capability, and a built-in Receipt mechanism," explained Sander Fieten, who also co-chairs the OASIS ebXML Messaging Services Technical Committee. "The Profile also expands ebMS 3 compression functionality and support for very large messages."