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XML Web Services: Means to an End

Posted by michael on from the not-over-until-the-closing-tag-sings dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For the second day in a row at the XML Web Services One conference here, a keynote speaker got up and signaled the impending end to the Web services era, at least on a standards level. Don Box, an architect in Microsoft Corp.'s developer division told an audience of Web services conference attendees Wednesday: 'The end of the XML Web services era is near. I predict two years from now we won't have this conference.'"

3 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. I didn't know it ever started by msuzio · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, what they're saying is, they're giving up on the hype, because apparently none of us are falling for it?

    OK, bring on the next over-hyped technology. I'll just keep developing Web apps the same way I always have :-). Good old hand-rolled MVC style models
    still seem pretty solid to me :-).

    --
    It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
  2. Re:Thinking about applications by erasmus_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you need to do some more research on this issue. You don't have to run Microsoft products on remote servers in order to access web services running on local ones. The whole point of this initiative is interoperability, and using XML and SOAP to have a common way of running remote applications. That means that you can invoke and use your web service from any other language that supports these specifications. In that way, it's better than DCOM not just because it works through firewalls, but also because it allows standards other than COM to govern the app communication.

    I'm also glad someone else noticed that the article isn't really predicting the end of web services, but rather the fact that it will be a fixed standard a few years from now, and developers won't even be thinking about it when they write their applications to run over the Internet. It's kind of like not having to have HTTP conventions these days, not that I'm aware of those ever happening before :)

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  3. Creating Apps Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The people who have to get disparate systems to speak are doing this now, sometimes without the aid of these standards.

    To get single sign on to work for just one entity (one company) and tie applications hosted sometimes remotely, sometimes on the same box you have to start now, or you will be forever patching systems together in myriad different ways and protocols. XML does work.

    How much do the SOAP standards and current XML parsers help when it comes to security? to formalizing a standard set of data types? to encapsulating query type data for different systems? not much...

    I have found that using parsers from companies supposedly "moving awfully fast" in this arena is perilous at best, and at worst, simply impossible because they don't parse.

    XML/SOAP is here to stay, and gaining ground as far as covering the necessary topics, but the business of getting work done will go on without the benefit of the standards.