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Will 'Web Services' Take Off?
NoInfo writes: "You've heard a lot about XML, SOAP and the idea of Web services. All of which have been intriguing me a great deal lately. Sun, Big Blue, MS, Ariba and others have teamed up to create UDDI.org. The site describes a bit about their idea of companies publishing the electronic services they provide. They will also eventually let you search a registry of those businesses and their offered services, including any exposed 'Web services' they provide. With all these forces behind it, perhaps it's not even a question, but will UDDI and/or Web services 'fly'? Are there any Slashdotters aiming to provide Web services, despite its heavy backing by Microsoft?" If this lives up to its promise of platform independence, then may turn out to be something incredibly useful. Are there any readers involved in UDDI who can comment further on how things are progressing?
I'm no expert by any means. But if Nader can define GW as "A big corporation disguised as a person," then I feel I have every right to describe this so-called initiative as "A lot of buzzwords disguised as a web site."
-Omar
...it's if people want it
=
Personally, for the kinds of things I do (and with bandwidth as unplentiful as it is now, I don't want my applications coming across a pipe--I don't care how big or "reliable" it is.) I would much rather have the applications on my local machine running at insane speeds than have to depend on a connection from some provider.
How many people have not experienced SOME kind of connection outage in the last year? anyone??? Also, as a side bar, if apps are coming across a pipe, why would you need a powerful client? answer: you wouldn't. Do you really think the hardware companies are going to roll over for this one?
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You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
The above /. article is the most buzzword-compliant I've seen in weeks. I say just ignore it, and if whatever it is gets big, buy the O'Reilly book.
Are there any Slashdotters aiming to provide Web services despite its heavy backing by Microsoft?
Kinda like saying that programmers shouldn't program easy to use GUIs because MS or Apple do it that way
or the allies saying that we shouldn't incoporate jet and rocket technology because the Germans thought of it.
If its the right tool/idea for the job USE IT!
"Push&l t;/a>" anyone?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
When cross-platform really means cross-platform (anyone tried to write a standalone app in Java and get it to work on all UNIXes as well as MSFT systems?)
When everyone's willing to have all their data travelling across someone else's pipe, and stored on someone else's hard drive, and trusts that the remote server won't be cracked.
In short, investments in these companies are about as likely to pay off as investments in companies supplying enabling services (goggles and scarves) for the porcine segment of the aviation market.
I have a backup plan if this does not work:
Find on Internet where bussiness neq pRon and business model = legit GO!
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
All of these standards are just RPC in a text-printable XML form, that tunnels via HTTP/HTTPS. While they offer plafform independence, I would prefer a more compact and functional API to doc-based XML, such as JavaBeans and the like. These XML APIs will eventually become so confusing, that they'll require a layer above them! Not to mention, why do server to server communications need to be text readible? Isn't that wasteful?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Dubya had an abortion? I'm voting Nad for sure! He would have shown more responsibility.
My first experience with what we're now calling 'Web Services' was more than 4 years ago with WebMethods WIDL language and binding tools. They allowed you to create an interface definition for ANY web page (HTML based) and pull data from the HTML, pushing data via Query Parameters.
As XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, etc have evolved substantially, many people are crediting Microsoft with having thought up the whole Web Services thing, but I think the real credit belongs to a small company in Virginia who had enough sense 4 years ago to think of the Web as a set of services.
As always, Microsoft has jumped on to the wave after it already started, and are trying to take credit for the whole thing.
Fuckers!
thank you.
For me personally they'll never fly. Basic reason being data protection.
I wouldn't even dare to use a calender service and web-email is reduced to throwaway accounts.
But even the thought of storing my companys or private data on some, possibly badly secured server, gives me the jitters.
Hey, and I'm not only not paranoid, but wouldn't really give a shit if they're out there to get me.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Web services are flying. In an odd way the Web is a web service. It is a published service with an agreed upon set of tags (HTML). As for will people use other web services, I don't see them as everpresent as the web, but they will grab nitches.
I used to work for a company that processed claimes for different insurance companies. We had to load files from them every month to keep up with their user bases. This is the kind of marked where this would take hold. They would expose a member lookup service that would take place of ssl of course, and return an XML packet on the user.
So yes they will take off/have taken off. Joe web user will never know he is using them though.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
As a web developer in a Microsoft-affiliated company, I've been getting notices on this topic for over a year now. And I can really only come to one conclusion - It's bad news.
We've all been complaining for months about laws like the DMCA and UCITA which take away our right to fiddle, to reverse engineer, to "look under the hood", so to speak. Well, if everything starts moving towards web services you can kiss that whole issue goodbye. It's all going to be a moot point once MS has you using their software as a web service, because you'll never really even *have* a copy of the application to play with. Sure, you'll have your subscription to Office.net, and you'll never have to worry about installation or upgrades ever again. You'll just have to deal with Microsoft holding the fact that you don't "own" a copy of their software over your head. Your business doing something MS doesn't like? Well maybe your subscriptions to all the software you depend on for office work will suddenly run out. Or maybe some MS employee will accidentally peruse the E-mail you have stored on exchange.net, or check out when and where your important meetings are and stop by.
I hate this whole paradigm of software development. It's just one more way you're not going to have control over the software you use.
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
In the vein of BXXP and SOAP, have a look at something simpler, more true to XML and free (libre), Extensible Protocol.
I entered "Hello, jjohn" and got:
m String(System.String, System.Type)
m String(System.String, System.Type)
m eterReader.Read(System.Web.Services.Prot ocols.HttpServerValueCollection)
R ead(System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpSe rverRequest)
R eadParameters()
n voke()
o reProcessRequest()
System.Exception: Invalid value: Hello, jjohn ---> System.FormatException: The input string wasn't in a correct format.
at System.Number.ParseInt32(System.String, System.Globalization.NumberStyles, System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo)
at System.Int32.FromString(System.String)
at System.Convert.ToInt32(System.String)
at System.String.ToInt32()
at System.Convert.DefaultToType(System.IConvertible, System.Type)
at System.String.ToType(System.Type)
at System.Convert.ChangeType(System.Object, System.Type)
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.ScalarFormatter.Fro
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.ScalarFormatter.Fro
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.ValueCollectionPara
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.UrlParameterReader.
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpServerProtocol.
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandler.I
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebServiceHandler.C
Some of the comments seem to be implying that this is for people to do "Thin-client" computing for moving everything onto massive servers to offload the client. I haven't looked closely, but I think this is a bit off -- I'm under the impression that this initiative (if you can call it that) is about creating a mechanism whereby autonomous programs can locate and utilize each other. It has nothing to do with the end user, it's just like a mega-ORB/JINI/EJB system where you can index a worldwide database of components and use them as needed.
I've been developing Perl-based software for Web Services (see velocigen.com), and so far the best way to deal with all the changing standards (cough Microsoft cough) has been to damn the torpedoes and use modules like SOAP::Lite to hack together something that works now, with the intention of shoring it up when the standards change.
A perfect example is (bloody damn) WSDL. It's a great idea for a good standard, but it's a lousy specification thus far. I had to read between the lines a lot and select which parts of the standard I could reasonably implement. It worked, though; I have a working WSDL implementation, client and server; it may be the only one on the planet so far. :)
I should say that it is extremely cool once it works. We've been playing with it for a few weeks and we've done some amazing things. That alone makes it worthwhile.
Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
Servers and infrastructure. Ok, but that's still only a piece (large and tasty as it is, it remains a piece) of the IT pie.
What about high perfomance, mobile, business computing?
Streamlined operating systems like QNX are not even mentioned, but if you've downloaded that little demo, it can do a whole lot with very little.
I'm not using QNX, but I think the growing use of connected, online cell phones, pda's and, hopefully, web pads, will require solid, tiny OSs.
Again, there's no reason it can't be done with Linux either!
-Yoink!
For one, the computer industry has a hard time convincing the layperson who buy a OTC (over the counter) package of software that they don't own it, and they only have a liscences to use it. Do you really think you could get these people to except not having a copy on their machine?
You'd have to "log in" through the internet. If your internet is down because of phone/cable being out, you can't do anythign with your computer! Most of your programs you use as a service, and they don't reside on you hard drive.
Second, their are privacy concerns. What is to stop the "host" company from making copies of what you're doing. Even if your data is stored locally, they can still copy your data keep it in a database with everybody else's data and start analising your spending trends and other such things. You'd get more junk mail and spam.
What about Microsoft? What's to stop them from stealing the code for their competitors product? They'll obviously be one of the hosts. Visual Studio 7 is done that way. Let's say your working on a hot new word processor for the latest version of Microsoft's OS. What is to stop them from monitoring your progress, and stealing the best parts of your work? Let's face it. Companies, such as Microsoft, would abuse this "revolution".
Now, let's look at the cost. More than likely, it would be a per use cost for long period of time. So lets say all software use cost $.05 per minute because that's the best way to charge your customer and make the most profit inthe beginning. (Remember, right now Microsoft has the market share to force people to do things their way.) Let's say you use 240 minutes a month. 240*$.05 = $12 a month. Ok not bad, but consider 12 months * $12 = $144 a year. If the soft would cost $80 OTC, you just paid $64 more dollars than you would have if you bought the software. How many of us only use their computer for 4 hours a month?
The phone companies did a leasing scheme a long time ago. The allowed people who couldn't afford to buy a phone to lease one. I saw a show recently where they actually interview someone who was stuck in this type of a deal. It turns out, this person has spent a LOT more than if they would have just bought the phone.
Lastly, this ideas seems to be a step backwards to me. I keep think of the first days of computers when school (and the rich) who could afford a terminal (or terminals) who "rent" time from those that could actually afford to purchase a computer.
The only reason companies would go to this idea is because there is great potential for making money. You reduce you costs. You don't have to worry about piracy, and no more costs related to packaging and shipping the product. It also give them new sources of revenue if they store data on there end from the customer. They coudl do data mining and sell the results.
In the end, I think this is only good for the companies. It isn't very benificial to the end user, but on the good side, it might make people search alternative Operating Systems (and software) that are set up this way--particularly to Linux if we get our buts in gear and start making more progress.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
WARNING - This message may be biased as I am very Microsoft oriented.
I am looking VERY forward to web services. In general they make life easier. As a consultant at one of the largest XML integrators in the B2B markets, I learned the usefulness of Internet communication via XML early. Adopting web-based services along with WAP is a very exciting prospect. Imagine having your cell-phone/pda device accessing your personalized homepage that offer the services YOU subscribe to. This gives a hole new twist on web portals. Now, not only can I keep track of my doctors appointments, family functions, etc, I can actually make those appointments, schedule those functions etc just by using easy-to-implement web services that tie directly into the service suppliers system.
While it was a Microsoft biased example, MS Developer Days gave a good enactment of what the future of web-based services could provide. I'm hooked. Not just on the MS technologies, but on the whole concept of cross-internet communications.
With all that said, there is definately some danger in this. There is many a rumor and supporting documentation that shows the Government is planning on implementing services over the web also. This leaves the door wide open for espionage and general script-kiddie pranks. We've already proven time and time again that security is NOT where it needs to be for these services to be provided properly. However, technology is getting ahead of common sense and no one listens to reason. Until we can export encryption wherever we want and not have to worry about government intervention -- Until we can keep people from patenting business methods and simple-common-sense-ideas, web services are, IMHO, a disaster waiting to happen. Watch Dark Angel on Fox some time. That's where I see us heading if we don't deal with some of these issues before opening up systems across the country.
SL33ZE - Artificial Intelligence is No Match For Natural Stupidity -
The FAQ indicates there is already an open source implementation in the works.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uddi
-harry
O P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R
great comedy company.
Too many buzz words for my wittle brain.. But we've been doing what we call web-services or ASPing.
Basically we're trying to do a bunch of pseudo-open-source type projects around our name IronX (hehe, trying to do like MS did with DirectX). We're doing customized bug trackers, ToDo lists, inventory management, "requirements databases", customized organization, hardware connectivity matrixes, document control systems, etc. One of our goals is to truely make the paperless office for a certain set of clients / developers. Basically our current model is to have an organization pay us to build them a web site that we host (and can thus maintain). Most of our clients are regional (NJ area), and they're mostly trying to feel the waters with the web. The advantage is a write once, run anywhere with data-reliability (Postgres or Oracle, depending on how much money the organization has).
We've looked at various OpenSource pieces and took functional descriptions of them, and tried to write custom apps for our clients (and ourselves).. We've done 90% of it in perl, Apache, Postgres. We had some failed attempts at Servlets (the development time was not cost effective compared to that of perl).
We're one of the few ASP services that doesn't make use of advertisements, since we recoup our costs in the labor and the run 200% charging for the run-time cost.. So long as our clients don't require a lot of BW, we come out ahead (consolidating all servers and net connections). We're a small company (15 people total), with a specific niche of people that are old-style engineers and thus not able to handle the web on their own.
I don't know that this style is very profitable, but it's definately fun for us developers.. Working with all the latest buzz words, trying on different hats, OS's, etc.
-Michael
-Michael
XML and Web Services are the Enterprise Application Integrators God send. We have implemented our own version of a SOAP like system that will be converted to the SOAP standard, when finalized. Everyone hawks on M$ because of their platform dependance issues. However, SOAP is a formatting standard for XML packets to implement remote functions. You can (and we are) implementing this on various Unix boxes, main frames, as well as Win Nt and Win 2k boxes.
Eliminate the Spagetti Code associated with EAI implementation. Web Services, here we come. The world is much nicer. Want to use the Barnes and Noble book engine inside your site to offer book sales to your customers? They will order it from your site, but the backend will be Barnes and Noble. It only makes the web more integrated and rewarding.
Whether or not it happens through this set of standards or not, its going to happen. For a long time now, cgis and other dynamic web thingys--real technical term here---have been blurring the line between posting and retrieving information and full fledged applications. Look at the level of sophistication we take for granted on dynamic web sites. If it doesn't move and get exactly what we want when we want it, we don't use it. Already we have sites that track your finances--qfn.com--, numerous corporate calendaring and scheduling systems, and more stupid web tricks than you shake a button at. So, whether or not Web Services adheres to this standard or any other is moot, the demand is already there, and the first group to meet it is going to be a big player.
Close to the top of the page is this Q: Who "runs" UDDI? A: The UDDI project is not being "run" by any one company. Nor is it a standards body or a new company. Rather, UDDI is currently being guided by a group of industry leaders that are spearheading the early creation and design efforts. Over the next twelve to eighteen months, the UDDI specifications will be turned over to a standards organization, with the continued commitment of the cross industry team that initiated UDDI. We encourage other companies to join the UDDI project.
:)
Kinda strange, the companies they are talking about are Micro$oft IBM and [Ariba ?]. I dont really know what this means.
I also think someone else has implemented something like this.
I bet it won't live up to their Hype.
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slashDot me
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The Open Source Sloth returns from a brief posting hiatus and breaks his moderation imposed silence by asking the question on everyone's lips:
Hey Bob! What happened to the idea of going legit? I thought your goal was to actually go from -100 karma up to the +1 posting bonus. How are you going to do that if you keep doing this stupid-ass Bobabooey to you all shit?
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
Next time, on Geraldo...
With that out of the way, what this idea strikes me as, is a return to the mainframe days. The appications run an a server (mainframe), and you access the program via a web broswer (dumb terminal). Now this statement is an old one, as a few people over at Infoworld have been making this point for sometime.
I think the best way for this to fly is if a company has these 'app-dot-nets' running in side the company. I would not, and companies would not feel safe having a third party holding onto my data.
If this allows me to do my Excel spredsheet on a Linux box, Mac system, or even an OS/2 box, great, but if it ties into Windows then why bother?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
It's about making EVERYTHING available on the Internet for use by other services as well as by end users. This means API's for finding car parts, building pizzas, calculating taxes, everything...
Astute readers will notice that Internet != Web
I also work in the application service industry, and I'm not sure you completely grasp what's happening here.
The fact is that most businesses (especially small and medium-sized ones) have no idea what to do with "control over the software you use". Whether there's a "real" shortage of IT skill or not, it's simply not affordable for many companies to install, operate and maintain the kind of complex application infrastructure that will be necessary to compete. Especially a smaller company.
I'm not convinced that this stuff applies to apps like Office, and UDDI actually has very little to do with that kind of app. It's focused on the back-end communication between components of various apps. For example, rather than buying credit card authorization software for your e-commerce website or having to recode to the proprietary standards a web hosting service would require, you could do a directory lookup for appropriate services and download a complete XML description of the interface which is easy to plug into (and switch out for a competitive provider if the service sucks).
Also, there's nothing that says that the company that wrote the software is going to be the company running it. Sure, Microsoft will have office.net and exchange.net, but so will a ton of other companies. So what if you can't get your hands on the bits? This hasn't been an impediment to sites like Yahoo or Mapquest.
The real question is what will become of the GPL, which is based on the traditional "product" model of software and assumes that the primary commercial benefit to software comes from redistributing binaries. But that's a topic for another post.
If you ask Jon Udell, the web services are already here. The latest buzzword advances with XML, SOAP, XML-RPC, and friends are all just further refinement and evolution of the interface. Also, Udell's book, Practical Internet Groupware, talks extensively about adapting existing sites into web services. For example, a site like MetaCrawler demonstrates this in how it uses search engines' HTML "interface" to scoop up search results. Or, take the scripts that query news sites without the benefit of RDF or RSS, parsing HTML to scoop up and aggregate news headlines. These are all primitive web services.
And this is not to mention app servers such as Zope and Frontier, which are already built to offer web services natively. It just seems irresistable to use all of these simple building blocks to create neato keen distributed systems...
So, on the whole I think that web services are a good thing, but it seems to me that this will subtly undermine the intent of the GPL.
Think about it- the protections in the GPL are entirely founded on the idea that the primary potential commercial benefit from software comes from redistributing it in compiled form- shipping bits. The GPL provides protections so that "Free" (as in Freedom) code is not exploited in closed source programs (which traditionally are closed so that the company can sell them).
If the software is provided as a service and never leaves the company's doors, they can use and modify the Free code all they want in "closed source" programs without running afoul of the GPL. What formerly stopped software companies from doing this is that selling the software was the only way to make money off of it. But now, you can put up some servers in a datacenter, and make all the money you did before (even more!) and pilfer all the Free software you want to do it.
Am I wrong?
I'm currently setting up an online store using PHPShop (*excellent* package, BTW), which can optionally interface to an XML-based 'exposed web service' called Intershipper to calculate shipping charges.
The idea is great - a class module connects to a socket on Intershipper's server and passes XML containing the source and destination shipping addresses, number of packages, and weight of packages. Intershipper then pulls real-time shipping quotes from 7 major carriers, inc. FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc., and passes the quotes (again, in XML) back to the shopping cart so the shopper can choose the shipping they want.
The reality is that it is turning out to be quite problematic. Every once in a while the whole process will hose because the shopping cart can't get an answer from Intershipper's servers. I haven't determined yet whether its because their servers are down or because there is a routing problem between the two networks (My server is on 8 T3's to different providers, so I'm thinking its the former). Either way, I don't feel it's solid enough to depend on for an e-commerce application. Every time it hoses it means a lost sale and a pissed-off customer, and that's no way to do business.
It's a wonderful idea, but until it can guarantee at least 99.999% reliability, I'm switching back to flat USPS shipping rates.
I suspect we have a ways to go in terms of network and server reliability before exposed web services take off.
--
I've been investigating the uses of 'web services' in my push technology portal that is java driven using a real web usable 3D service that give ebusiness and B2B a really new start, using exciting thin client moron targetting buzzwords ( MTBs to the Silicon Valley elite, or 'press releases' to Microsoft ) I'll try and reinvent a old technology, the lying clueless business ( or con ) man, and bring it into the 21st century.
So, please give me your money.
Seriously though, is there a fasion / fad site that remembers all this crap i.e. new technology that is going to revolutionise the net and it's associated buzzwords, press releases and stuff.
I feel like an old man, I mean, who out there remembers 'PUSH' technology and how it was going to alter the web even ?
We should be trying to learn from past ( and current ) stupidity.
This is a 2nd generation EDI (Enterprise Data Interchange). EDI is a horrible, horrible mess. UDDI is supposed to take the incredible pain and suffering that the EDI specification has caused the ERP industry and make it go away.
UDDI is not about ASPing (although it will help those companies that do that), and its not about Web applications. It's about massive ERP systems talking to each other and coordinating with minimum human intervention. Say I am IT for XYZ MegaStores Inc. My business analysts have finalized an order of 1000 ABC Electronics Thingamagics that need to be shipped thru EFG Freight. Instead of me producing a flat text file with some massive scripting and e-mailing it or otherwise transmitting it to ABC and/or EFG (or actually trying to use EDI for that), UDDI would enable me to send that data into my ERP system's UDDI module which would then take care of the communication and translation process. It's all about B2B data interchange in a big scale...
Of course, this kind of freedom should enable other things, like on-the-fly auctions, just-in-time shipping (down to the hour or minute even) and other cool little supply chain optimization wonders. Of course, that's exactly what EDI was supposed to achieve in the first place...
BTW (shameless plug follows): if you think that the above description sounded cool or are otherwise into data-warehousing and massive data-mining and other real cool tech and looking for a job in Atlanta, e-mail me.
Which, if true, will be appropriate because around MicroSoft, you never want to drop the SOAP.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I'm wondering just which company's servers (ie Sun or MS or blue..) will actually serve the website. It would be funny to see how they would determine this type of thing. Obviously each company would be falling all over themselves to donate hardware and software, so it would come down to what they think will accomplish the job best...
-S
...MS spends a fortune on Sun servers.
I think the other big factor besides SOAP and XML is XML-Schema. Providing a rich constraint language for data, XML-Schema will move a lot of the integrity enforcement from separate islands of code to a declaration that travels with, or it linked to the data. XML-Schema is also descriptive enough to all for the possibility of generating a set of validating classes.
The combination of the three technologies (XML, SOAP, XML-Schema) have been dubbed "The Poor Man's CORBA by some people.
If you post it, they will read.
news from slashdot, freshmeat, linuxorg, or
have an alert system which fetches new books from Amazon about Perl or Python or XML. This kind of
connection of your web script with other's databases is SO MUCH EASIER if all sites have a standard way to communicate with each other.
If you ever tried to
collect information from several sites and present it on yours, and pray everyday, that people on these sites did not put a new web-design and screwed up all your intricate regexpressions, you know what I am talking about.
The need for a standard API which would help to get information from databases of different sites is huge.
Here's my perception, using a hypothetical situation:
I create some sort of business processing system, let's say a car parts inventory/sales system.
I want my customers to be able to purchase my products electronically, to improve speed and reduce overhead.
I create a web application that connects people, through our interface, to the underlying system. Thus allowing them to purchase our products.
But let's say that I also want them to have the ability to integrate a module, by their own means, into their own established interface that allows them to connect to our service and purchase products. No involvement at all on our part except to provide the necessary communication/transaction protocols so that their system can talk to our system.
Now what if I want to tell the whole world about this protocol so that anyone who wants to purchase our products can do so without ever having to go through our proprietary human-machine interface. I'd also have to tell everyone what sort of company provides this service and what sort of things you can do with it.
THAT is what UDDI and things like it are for. Central repositories of machine-machine interfaces and meta data about what the interfaces are for, where you can find them, and what you have to do in order to use them.
Am I wrong about that?
I deffinately do not think that they are talking about running MSWord over the net or some other silly story.
As an aside, can you imagine writing a machine driven search service that polls this "UDDI" (or whatever it will be) database for the required services and then sends the information back to the requestor, then the requesting system simply opens a connection to the returned service AUTOMATICALLY and performs the desired transaction.
And this does NOT have to be cash transactions, this could also be a way to create distributed computing networks with open protocols. Think about it.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
It won't. End of story. If you want clear and concrete examples of this, just look at todays trends. How many Slashdotters primary platform has a web browser that can access Dialpad? How many Slashdotters can access Apple's iTools. As a Mac user, I have run into a number cases where sites provide a service, that I cannot access because they use IE (for Windows)specific coding. Errors as basic as storing links in a page as http://www.????.com/mypage\index.html are more common than you think. Broken tables are very common, ever since the advent of CSS (along with the advent of WYSIWYG HTML coding apps, which convert layers to tables) and it's improper implementation (which renders fine in Windows).
If today you can't go to Dialpad and make your free phone call with MacOS, BeOS, or with Netscape (any platform) AND have both Newbies and "Paid Coders" made basic mistakes because IE for Windows doesn't care, it is reasonable to expect that tommorrow, Office is NOT going to run "properly" either, much less the "services" other companies offer.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Loopvs Maximvs
Certainly, I want to be able to access my addresses and notes and e-mail and everything else from wherever I am, but I don't want them stored on some far-away server. I want them stored on my machine, serving that data out to wherever I want to access it from, via the web.
Now, I know you will say that most users can't/don't want to do that, and you're right, but eventually (long term here guys), dedicated and fairly high-bandwidth connections are becomming more and more common, and hopefully usability will eventually increase as well. In the end, that's where I hope we can get.
Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Not litterally RPC of course. RPC is a thousand levels lower and considerably more complicated than some fancy XML schemas. However, by definition these "web services" are APIs brokered by App servers. Often, they are procedural and involve state. As you said, they're second gen EDI. I'd add DCOM and CORBA to the list. The only application I can see for these XML solutions is as translation layers, for multiple components that all speak different tounges. As you said, every time one of these things arrives on the scene, everybody claims it will universalize everything. Of course it won't universalize squat. All it will do is open the door to more developers, because XML is fair simpler than IDL.
Someone you trust is one of us.
That my personal and business data will be just as secure on MS servers as the source code for Windows!
I haven't had a lot of time to study the UDDI spec, but I have been pondering the topic of Open Services for quite some time and my feeling is they will. I like the term Open Services, as Tim O'Reilly calls them, over Web services because this concept is applicable beyond HTML and just the Web.
I think the biggest hurdle at the moment for this concept, is the perception that Microsoft invented this concept (therefore there must be something sinister and evil behind it!) and its tied to just their technology which is just plain off.
The idea of open services where around before SOAP. I haven't done an in-depth genealogy of the concept, but I can tell you Dave Winer at Userland has been evangelizing it for a couple of year now. There is also Allaire's WDDX and in a looser sense RSS and ICE.
Microsoft did initiate the SOAP spec, but have put they have opened it up and submitted to the W3C. They incorporated IBM's feedback which garnered IBM whole-hearted support. IBM released their Java implementation on AlphaWorks and then donated the code to Apache. Even Sun conceded it was a good idea and gave as much of an endorsement as they could stomach for something Microsoft had initiated.
I would even argue that IBM is excelling beyond Microsoft. Well... at least in the developer community. They've yet to release anything commercially or articulated a product strategy that utilizes it. (Typical them.) Microsoft does seem to be betting quite a bit on SOAP/Open Services and going from there.
What I love about this concept (and why I think it will succeed) is that its fairly easy and straight forward to work with. It also is a more concrete way to get all of these different platforms that are deployed to talk to each other. It will just makes developing easier, better and smarter.
The way I read it, UDDI is just a progression in making solutions built on this concept more robust.
For all of those interested in this topic, here are some good background links on the topic that aren't so Microsoft-rah-rah.
I don't really care if Microsoft backs it or not.
If it becomes a widely adopted standard, I will proabably use it.
Microsoft is involved in many of these types of organizations. It would be difficult to use many technologies that Microsoft and many other companies didn't have their hand in.
The fact that standards will be published changes nothing -- convoluted enough standards (most of XML-related standards are convoluted, and ALL standards made with Microsoft's involvement are extermely convoluted) can't be implemented properly, completely and with satisfactory interoperability unless resources involved are significantly larger than ones available.
So corner-cutting will be rampant (and no two implementations will work with each other because properly implemented subsets will differ), or data model involved will mirror internal data model of some proprietary system (COM is most likely candidate), leaving others with huge and painful work of shoehorning everything else into that model. Or both.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
SOAP is a way to allow remote computers to control yours, even though your computer is behind a firewall. Security measures always provoke circumvention mechanisms. SOAP is based on XML-RPC. It rides on HTTP, which is allowed to pass through most corporate firewalls. It is perfectly safe as long as no dangerous services are set up to talk SOAP. About 2 more weeks now.
Everytime I reply i feel like I should put some kind of "microsoft sucks, waaaah" in my response to get a higher rating.
Anyway, there is another use of web services that I wanted to point out. Lets say you want to implement an email service that developers can use to send and recieve mail within their applications, whether they be web based, wap(hope not), desktop client, whatever. You can create your own web service that would provide this to any app that supports SOAP. No longer would you have to go through a library, third party component, or any other method just to access a SMTP server. You could simply write your own this into any client that supports SOAP. If you wanted to you COULD use an outside service to provide this for you, like an ISP for instance, OR you could do it internally writing your own web service.
Honestly I'm really not concerned about MS's effort to put this forward because others are involved with just as much pull and an interest to keep it cross platform. it might not be the best solution when compared to CORBA, EJB, RMI, DCOM(hahaha) or any other binary based messaging but SOAP is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day we can create a place where all applications can talk with each other regardless of corporate bias, OS, machine type, etc.
Moderater please moderte this up!
/. readers and posters are technical folks, but please it's time to think about this as a "solution" for the average Joe that uses the computer.
.NET -- it is no different than what Sun and Oracle were tyring to do. What I fear is that M$ will success.
People, please!!!
I can see that most of
Run around your office and tell me how many people known what is a local or remote hard-drive? Only developers will understand it -- and tell you what, there are many developers don't konwn the difference either.
If your average Joe wants to write a letter/paper, why should s/he need to known about a word processer's instalation and setup? This is no difference to the average Joe wanting to drive from point A to point B -- in this case why would average Joe want to known what type of compresser the car has, what the batter spec is, etc. etc. -- the average Joe wants to get to point B and not have to wary about configuring his car to do so.
The same thing with what M$.Net M$ is targeting the remaning vast majority of non-computer users and those who are beginers.
This is the idea behind
-- George
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
This UDDI stuff is MS's attempt to get a piece of the service discovery market share. Well, there's not much of a market yet, but protocols for it are around for a long time (check SLP - RFC2608 etc). They're all much more advanced than some buzzword- and bizworld- compliant "MS.org".
In terms of research, have a look at what a friend of mine came up with: http://rens.cs.ucsb.edu and Dr. Katz' "Secure Service Discovery Service".
m.
Think about it--a published Napster server and Napster client, for example. Anyone can get the services and become either the client or the server. All you need is some powerful search capabilities.
The question remains: what is Amazon.com without the website? Just a software "service" running on somebody's machine? I wonder if in the future every business will be nothing but a piece of software (and a marketing team for the brand name, of course)...
Web Services are a different beast entirely from web applications. The typical example is that FedEx will expose an interface for package tracking, allowing John E. Retailer's website to wrap the service so it's seamless to the customer, rather than asking them to copy-paste their tracking number over to fedex.com.
Rather than being used for highly human-interactive applications such as word processing, this will be used for automated tasks, mainly involved with query and provision of information. Getting the status of a shipment, order, or service is one example, another would be decisions such as loan risk evaluation where the algorithms used are proprietary, and/or the data must remain centralized. These proprietary networks for various industries, like SABER and TicketMaster, already do this, but in a limited and very non-standardized way. XML and SOAP are going to open the door for any organization to create this type of service much more easily.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
You could say M$ didn't have a clue about the internet earlier in the 90's (that sounds weird). Yes, Netscape was huge and Microsoft was nowhere to be found. Look now!
What do you think the XBox is for? Games? This device is going to sneak into millions of homes under the radar, as a gaming platform. But in a couple years, the MSN gaming network is going to offer... other services. How convenient. Maybe start slowly, gently, with some basic utils. After all, you don't want to confuse people... you must take care not to spook the herd.
Taking this strategy into consideration is why I think the Indrema will eventually fly. They won't 'beat' Microsoft, but they're not really playing the same game. The Indremas greater flexibility will insure a small but stable niche that will only get bigger with time.
My company builds web-based transportation supply chain management & shipment tracking solutions. We started developing web services early on in their lifecycle; basically, as soon as we determined that XML as the Interprocess Communications Language appeared to be achieving the position of the defacto standard.
Web services, with or without MS are a great idea. They work, and they are platform independent if written to be since you write web services for your own host. The problem is the same as that of email -- finding someone who has published a service you're interested in using. This requires routing services like DNS.
BTW, the only real similarity between web services and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is that both communicate via electronic medium and target enterprise-to-enterprise communication, and potentially back-office integration (B2B).
We have production web services running on IBM's OS/400, Microsoft's Windows NT, OpenBSD and Red Hat Linux at present; language and platform are non-issues.
Using web services allows companies to develop services that connect and exchange data without having to know about who'll use those services now or in the future (excepting only secure information access restriction issues).
Web services are the only vehicle that I've seen that offers a plausible (i.e. acceptable) solution to implementing a distributed object model on a global scale that connects both known and, currently, unknown data requesters.
They're easy to implement and highly useful. Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Okay, 'nuff said!
Fancy that!
Seastead this.
Are there any Slashdotters aiming to provide Web services, despite its heavy backing by Microsoft?
If you view web services as the use of XML as a data format over Internet transfer protocols, then it seems largely irrelevant whether Microsoft backs them or not.
There is an awful lot you can do without buying into the whole Microsoft story:
Sure, Microsoft is involved with all the above. So are a lot of companies. So are a lot of opensource developers.
In direct answer to the question above, though. Yes, I'm planning on providing web services and helping to develop opensource tools to produce and consume them:
Currently I'm running the updates as a batch job, but I'm thinking of adding the ability to accept a ticker symbol on the web site and get back a death date prediction.
It's all written in PERL, including my SGML parser.
It appears that not everyone understands how web services work.
Basically it allows a website to behave like an object(s) with properties/methods/etc (if your into C++,java,etc.) or a library of functions (if your into C,etc.).
Most programmers who have worked with cgi are already familiar with the idea. You decide what a cgi program is going to do, what parameters it will accept and what it will return (just like a function call). The problem is every CGI program on every website is different.
Okay so what web services? Slashdot for example, is a news & discussion service. Lets say you wanted to write an application (platform & language of your choice) to check for new articles and do keyword searches, reformat the resulting articles for you email enabled cell phone and send them to you (or your customers). Okay, so the slashdot programmers publish the WSDL describing the interface specification (function call description) for the slashdot cgi programs. You can now write your program (user or server app, your choice) to access slashdot just like it was a library or DLL on your own machine.
How is that for open source and code reuse.
Okay, so what if slashdot changes the interface and breaks your app. Although possible, chances are if someone went through the bother to publish a WSDL file, they won't change it willy-nilly. Besides, it is only the interface spciifcation. Slashdot can change their code all they want, as long as the interface remains the same.
Worried about speed? Althogh a local app that resides entirely on your machine is faster, it is irrelevant, since chances are you don't have slashdot's article database on your machine and have to access it over the net anyway!
As with any new technology you can do just about anything with it. Doesn't mean they would all be worth while.
Does M$'s involvment turn you off? Consider that M$'s latest strategy appears to be to make all their products as standard as possible. Just because M$ put XML & ECMAScript in IE, doesn't mean I am going to stop using XML and javascript! If anything, the more the merrier!
Looks like a lot of marketing fluff, right? But find your way to the list of publications and spend some time browsing and come back here and tell me you're not impressed.
I think that somehow, Microsoft management must have come around to the view that they can't maintain their monopoly forever solely on the basis of dirty tricks. Not that I expect them to stop with the dirty tricks in the foreseeable future, scum that they are. But as far as I can tell, they are trying to build a research organization in the noble mold of Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, which, if successful, could help them to truly "innovate". (They have forever ruined that word for me, I can't say it without quotes.) If I'm right, then the universe is truly a strange and wonderful place. I rather expect that I'm wrong. But Microsoft's research efforts make me wonder if they haven't been looking at the history of IBM and getting ideas.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Having looked at Web Services as a delivery for a current Topic Map solution, using the .NET framework I'm totally sold on the idea.
For syndication and a lot of distributed KM type solutions they're perfect.
Syndication is a big thing, and Web Services are such a good fit for syndication I think their future is assured.
I think it kind of tiresome that for each new tech that comes out /. quickly fills up with "it's just tech x + tech y, so what", normally illustrating very clearly that the comment has issued from someone who as only quinted at teh technology in question from a great distance, through very dark sunglasses, and has assumed they have the concepts down cold.
Go produce a class in .NET, flag a couple of methods as a Web Methods (using C++, C#, JScript, VB or Python... with your favourite language likely to be there too within a few months), and watch the framework automagically put in the plumbing for it's delivery across the wire as XML, including dynamic production of a test harness... definately gets my vote as a Cool Thing(tm).