Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

[MCWebsite.Staff]

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
** This thread discusses the Content article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
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[J.Pluta]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
Just to add a counterpoint, my article in this very same issue has a somewhat less optimistic outlook for Web services. I'm not sure how well the link will work here, but I'll give it a shot: http://www.mcpressonline.com/mc?1@23...T.17@.6ae6296d My opinion is that while Web services may provide a pipe, it's trying to provide a pipe to application level data, and standardizing that information is likely to take a long time. Look at EDI; it was essentially the same concept: standardized messaging between companies. And yet, until some large players out there said basically, "Use EDI or lose our business", EDI was never more than a niche player. What makes Web services different, if anything? Time will tell. But if history is any guide, it's unlikely that Web services standards will gain acceptance outside of intra-company messaging or proprietary inter-company communications anytime soon. Joe

[David Abramowitz]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
Brian, I've just been given the responsibility of conforming my client to the "TREAD act". This means that the company must make comprehensive reports to the government. Outside of that, there is not a lot of information I've been able to garner, except that one web site states that the reports must be in XML format. There is no confirmation on this, but assuming that this is the case, will these new web services enable me to easily convert a native database to XML? . . . .Or provide me with themeans of doing so? Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
Hey Joe, I agree with you - Web services are just a pipe for data, and the industry-wide standardization on the form of that data may take quite a bit of time. But while reading that book, it struck me that one of the most interesting things about Web services is that they are relatively cheap and easy to implement incrementally, so it's easier to get the "win" of a successful project under your belt. And because they're being adopted fairly widely at the software tool vendor level, they're different than EDI in that there are fewer barriers to using them. To me, it's a bit like verbal language. Similar to Web services, words form the base level of communication, but how they are strung together is up to the communicating parties. Right now, secure interoperability can be done (link), which has been an issue up until fairly recently. So assuming the communication fundamentals are there (which is significant because they work over in-place architectures like IP, HTTP, etc...), any additional standards to me seem like icing on the cake. Web service coreography? Correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't that a bit like standardizing on something like MQ-Series industry-wide? While that may be useful, it's certainly not something that is a fundamental requirement, as there are many businesses that run just fine without products such as MQ. Industries are likely to settle on their own standards eventually, or use Web services to extend standards they already use. So what additional standards are missing at the global level? I also think of Web services as the extension of object-oriented coding concepts to the web. Just as object-oriented (or modular) coding concepts have been widely adopted and implemented (even if they're in different within different development environments), I would expect that to continue on to the next level, Web services, cuz of the benjamins. :-) My $.02. Brian

[Guest.Visitor]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
Hey Dave, That would depend on the environment. If you're building in environments from the "majors" (Microsoft's or the Java consortiums'), the answer is that it's surpisingly easy. For Java, one place to start is the Java Web Services Developer Pack. Check the tutorial to see how all the technologies go together. Basically, you can extend your objects' methods into Web services in a fairly straightforward manner. So since you can code database access into methods, you can return data from that access as XML. For Microsoft environments, .NET seems to be the way to go to get to Web Services. I've got an article coming out on it soon, but with both their free IDE (Web Matrix) and their paid one (VS.Net), creating a callable web service can be as simple as:

  Public Function Subtract(a As Integer, b As Integer) As Integer Return a - b End Function 

So in the method, you could grab your data and return it and the XML is automatically generated. Bamma-lamma. :-) HTH, Brian

[Guest.Visitor]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
IBM, MS streamrolling W3C and Web services?. Still, it's about the choregraphy and workflow specs, the lack of which, to me, is not a reason not to use web service technology.

[David Abramowitz]

Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution?

** This thread discusses the article: Is Your Company Ready for the Web Services Revolution? **
It is moot. NHTSA, the reporting agency requires that the data be placed in a multipage Excel workbook, which they provide, and has a particular signature which can not be changed. You can not format your own spreadsheet, and submit that. This is turning out to be a particularly nasty nightmare. bamma-lamma???? :-) Dave