Friday May 25 2001

Web Services and IBM

Dynamic e-Business

Greg Flurry

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This article describes the principles and technologies underlying Web Services, why IBM believes Web Services provide value for e-business, and what IBM is doing to help companies leverage Web Services in their e-business solutions.

What are Web Services?

Within a broad context, a Web Service is any component that:

• is network-based, modular, self-contained, self-describing,
• offers platform and implementation neutral services,
• conforms to a set of open standards and specifications, and
• leverages a common infrastructure for description, discovery and invocation.

Web Services offer an evolution of the Internet-standards based distributed computing model, an evolution in the way of architecting, designing, implementing, and deploying e-business solutions. Web Services foster a change from tightly coupled, rigid, and static solutions that focus on implementation technologies, to loosely coupled, flexible, and dynamic solutions focusing on dynamic business models, enabling dynamic integration for both new and existing applications with decreased human interaction.

To understand Web Services, one must first appreciate what IBM feels is the key architectural principle underlying them: the service-oriented architecture (SOA). An SOA focuses on the message-based interactions of components in a network rather than the details of individual component implementation. An SOA (see diagram below) relates three component roles and three operations between the roles in support of dynamic, automated discovery and use of services.

• A service provider can publish the availability of its service(s) and respond to requests to use, or, alternatively it can bind to its service(s).
• A service broker allows service providers to publish (register and categorize) themselves and their services; a service broker also offers find mechanisms for business entities attempting to locate appropriate services for use in a solution.
• A service requester uses service brokers to find the services needed to construct a solution, or part of a solution, and then invokes (binds to) those services offered by service providers.

An SOA is an abstract concept. To support the use of Web Services in e-business, IBM, Microsoft and others are working to create a concrete Web Services 'stack' that defines how to construct Web Services based solutions. The following diagram shows the IBM view of the Web Services stack. It is populated with existing and emerging standards to foster widespread interoperability and availability.

The Web Services transport layer provides the basis for communicating between Web Services; Figure 2 shows that many different transport standards can be used, all leveraging existing Internet Protocol standards; the specific transport used for an interaction can be negotiated at higher layers in the stack. The service description layer, using an emerging XML-based standard called the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), supplies descriptions of Web Service interfaces, i.e., the messages and parameters that flow between interacting Web Services. The Web Services messaging layer provides a lightweight protocol for the exchange of messages between Web Services in a decentralized, distributed environment; the layer uses the XML-based Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for interactions between all service requesters and service providers. The publication and discovery layer enables the service broker role for Web Services; the layer leverages the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specifications that define XML-based service and business description formats and a SOAP-based API for a service broker.

In addition to the layers, the Web Services stack offers some 'verticals' that apply across all the layers. These verticals represent the fact that some aspects of a solution permeate all layers of the stack and thus may impact existing formats, protocols, and APIs, or require new ones. The security vertical denotes the serious commitment to security in Web Services; while not complete, work is well underway to enhance SOAP and UDDI with security mechanisms; examples include authentication and non-repudiation. The management vertical denotes the absolute need for building solutions that can be easily deployed, monitored, and upgraded. At this time the impact on the stack layers is unclear. The quality of service vertical refers to the increasing importance of guarantees regarding response time, cost, transactional characteristics, and other aspects of e-business interactions; work is just starting in this vertical.

Why are Web Services important?

The nature of e-business is changing. Companies are experiencing an explosion of interactions both internally and externally. This results in an increasing need for dynamic business relationships that drive companies to use reusable, flexible, adaptive software assets for the creation of their e-business solutions. IBM terms this environment dynamic e-business.

What benefits do Web Services offer dynamic e-business? From a technical standpoint, Web Services offer:

• easier development, service, and upgrade of solutions
• reuse of existing, proven assets
• reduced dependence on implementation specifics

From a business standpoint, Web Services allow business to:

• concentrate development efforts on computing assets that drive revenue
• out-source services that provide no business value-add
• evolve business models and relationships as necessary
• reduce costs of internal integration and of testing emerging market opportunities
• establish interactions with marketplaces more efficiently
• deliver business functions to a broader set of customers and partners, if appropriate

To summarize, Web Services decouple applications and infrastructure. This decoupling allows a business to quickly compose and deploy solutions based on reusable components from the lowest cost provider, no matter whether it is internal or external. Further, such solutions can change the target and even the nature of interactions based on changing business conditions. Thus a business can leverage flexible and dynamic business models, through just-in-time integration. As a result, dynamic e-businesses can maximize their reach to customers, partners, suppliers, and marketplaces, and minimize their costs and time to market.

What is IBM Doing for Web Services?

The business value of Web Services is still under debate by some. IBM, however, believes strongly in the promise of Web Services. Industry leaders such as IBM, Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft have publicly described aspects of their commitment to Web Services. IBM, through several overlapping efforts, is working hard to make the promise real. First, IBM contributes to many specifications for new infrastructure technologies; perhaps the two most important examples are SOAP and UDDI. IBM also develops sample implementations to help foster the adaptation of such technologies, making them available to the industry through several channels, including open source efforts like Apache and IBM's own alphaWorks web site (to be found at http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/). Some examples of this include SOAP implementations, UDDI4J (a Java-based means of accessing a UDDI-compliant service broker), the Web Services Toolkit (an environment for experimenting with Web Services and the upcoming Lotus Web Services Enablement Kit that will help software developers build Web Services applications for Lotus products). IBM offers product previews, indicating the direction of existing or future products; these are available through a variety of means. The best example is IBM's release of WebSphere(r) Technology for Developers, the first Java(tm) 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant application server with support for Web Service technologies such as UDDI, SOAP, and WSDL. IBM also provides a publicly accessible UDDI-compliant business registry available for businesses to use today.

Most important for companies wishing to conduct dynamic e-business are IBM's plans to provide a comprehensive portfolio of open middleware for Web Services. In May, IBM announced software and tools that enable businesses to create, publish, securely deploy, host, and manage Web Services applications. Some of the highlights of this announcements were:

• WebSphere Application Server, version 4.0 supports the open standards and technologies necessary to develop, publish, and deploy Web Services-based applications, including UDDI, SOAP, J2EE, WSDL, and the ability to interface with a public UDDI registry.
• WebSphere Studio Technology Preview for Web Services provides new tools that enable software developers to create, test, and deploy Web Services applications and connect them to existing business processes. The tools also enable businesses to publish Web Services via a UDDI registry.
• WebSphere Business Integrator enables businesses to integrate and manage the 'flow' of Web Services applications, so companies can manage diverse information and processes within and between enterprises. This software leverages the reliability and transactional characteristics of MQSeries to deliver SOAP messages from one Web Services application to another.
• DB2 Version 7.2 supports UDDI and SOAP and enables Web Services applications to access data stored in DB2, providing businesses with greater ease and efficiency in accessing, analyzing, and managing information across multiple computing systems, allowing businesses to more easily integrate their current business processes by sharing information with their partners.
• Tivoli Web Services Manager monitors the performance of the entire Web Services environment, and allows businesses to monitor Web Services transactions to ensure they are performing within specified thresholds.
• Lotus' software portfolio for enabling Web collaboration, knowledge management, and e-Learning. This will be enhanced to support Web Services applications. The enhancements encompass Domino Application Server, Domino Workflow, Knowledge Discovery System, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus LearningSpace. Details will be announced in early summer.

Summary

IBM believes the next generation of e-business (dynamic e-business) will be 'services-oriented' because of the increasing business need for the decoupling of applications and infrastructure to support rapid construction and deployment of flexible and dynamic e-business solutions. Standards-based Web Services open the door for dynamic e-business, supporting massive automation and integration of applications and business processes, and allowing rapid acceleration of the e-business innovation-integration cycle, all while reducing infrastructure costs and complexity. The underlying technology is still evolving, but through the efforts of IBM and others, companies can leverage Web Services to achieve business value today and be well positioned for tomorrow.

Greg Flurry is a Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM's Emerging Technologies group. His current responsibilities include enhancing IBM's Web Service infrastructure, particularly in the area of UDDI.

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