Web Services, Are We There Yet?

Oct. 1, 2004 12:00 AM

We're all familiar with the Gartner "hype cycle," we've experienced the roller coaster ride it describes as we've worked to move a new technology towards becoming relevant. Web services has been evolving for approximately 36 months, and many already claim victory. However, while there's reason for optimism, much must be done before Web services become meaningfully successful.

Web services' value rests upon the simple but powerful concept that all Web services offer interfaces defined using a standard set of XML-based specifications. In the past developers integrating software needed to consider issues such as "what hardware are the services deployed on," "what middleware do they run on," "what languages are they written in," and even "what tools were used to develop them." Web services XML-based interfaces make these issues much less relevant; developers integrating Web services should be able to do their jobs more rapidly and with more confidence due to the use of common Web services standards to define the integration points for the services.

We've made great progress in the last 36 months. The following specifications have been developed and broadly adopted by the market (and so may be called standards), are broadly supported (so they may be used by application developers), and have proven their value through their use in application development:

XML Schema: Helps define the data passed between Web services and other software components that use them. (www.w3.org/XML/Schema)
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): Defines how messages sent to and received from Web services are formed. (www.w3.org/TR/soap/)
Web Service Description Language (WSDL): Defines how Web services interfaces are defined (www.w3.org/TR/wsdl/)
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI): Provides information concerning registries that discover Web services, (www.oasis-open.org/committees/uddi-spec/doc/tcspecs.htm)
Web Services Security (WSS): Defines mechanisms for securing Web services from various security threats, many of which cannot be addressed via HTTPS

Several issues remain:
We need to complete the standard set. Much work is under way; however, we can't yet declare that we have all the needed specifications or that they've matured into standards.

The specifications must be made usable: Web services interfaces that may be described using a single specification are few enough to exclude them from any practical discussion. Services interfaces are generally described using sets of specifications. We must identify broadly useful standards sets and refine them to clearly specify the characteristics of "conformant" interfaces. This work is underway in the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I). WS-I is nearly finished profiling the existing Web services standards set, and will include other standards that emerge in future profiles.

We need software that supports use of the specifications: The publication of specifications, including WS-I Profiles, isn't sufficient to realize Web services' potential. The delivery of supporting tools and middleware must follow. While many vendors support using some of these standards we have not yet reached a point where it may be assumed. This means that we're not yet able to implement e a Web service on an arbitrary platform with confidence that it may be integrated into an application. In addition, vendor implementation of emerging Web services specifications is unpredictable. We need to find a way to have vendors move forward in a more uniform manner, addressing a common set of specifications in a common order.

The specifications must be put to work: Web services become truly relevant as the pool of useful Web services grows, and as these services are integrated into a growing set of business solutions.

Much must be done if Web services are to deliver their "everybody wins" potential. And there's more. Service-oriented architecture (SOA), one of the buzzwords moving along the hype cycle this year, is an application architecture for integrating services together to form business solutions. SOA isn't particularly meaningful if we don't have a set of services available to integrate. Web services is the leading candidate for a serviceable (pardon the pun) technology foundation.

The bottom line is that we're not there yet, and more rides on our succeeding than ever before. I hope you'll all join in!

Published Oct. 1, 2004— Reads 9,646
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

About Tom Glover
Tom Glover is the president and chairman, Web Services Interoperability Organization and is the senior program manager of Web services standards for IBM Software Group. Prior to working with WS-I, Tom served as general program manager of UDDI.org and was responsible for guiding the organization as it developed the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Specification. He was also managing director of the UDDI Business Registry Operators' Council, which delivered and managed the first UDDI-based Business Registry in production on the Internet.

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