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Wednesday April 24 2002 Web Services and Hype Is it true? Are they all just smoke and mirrors, or is there something worthwhile behind the media frenzy that seems to surround Web Services? There is no denying that Web Services will prove useful, but to whom and how? Rarely a day goes by, much less a week, when somebody doesn't complain about Web Services being less than they are made out to be. Guess what? They're right, Web Services are rarely as good as they're made out to be - but then what is? Will your new operating system really revolutionize the way you use your computer? Will your new application server really change the way you do business? Will low calorie mayonnaise make you lose weight? None of these things will work on their own - you have to understand at least some of how your new operating system works to really get the best out of it; you have to see how the benefits of your new application server can best be used; you have to exercise more, as well as eat more healthily, if you want to lose weight. It's the same with Web Services - they won't turn your world upside-down overnight, but they can help you get to some interesting places a lot quicker. Let's take some examples of what we are told Web Services are capable of. Making integration easier. Perhaps the most vaunted element of Web Services - integration - is also one of the largest slices of IT budgets. Will Web Services make integrating your disparate systems easier? To be fair to the technologies involved, as long as the parts you want to integrate can all understand and use XML, Web Services should help you to integrate your systems relatively smoothly. Don't be fooled by this, though - they're not for every situation. In some cases, integration will be possible using proprietary communication protocols; since these won't need to transform the requests into the wordy XML based SOAP, you should see a quicker and more efficient communication using proprietary methods. Web Services aren't the fastest means of communicating between systems, but speed may not be your need. Opening new markets with old code. Here's another old chestnut (already). Use Web Services to expose your legacy code to provide a new service to external consumers. All well and good, as long as you can guarantee your system is secure; plus you have to have a suitable component or object to expose. Web Services work best if they take simple input parameters and return either simple values, or an entire XML document. If you have a system component that fits the bill (say, a credit checking component), you should be able to expose it as a Web Service. There has to be a market for the services, though: you have to provide something that other people either can't do, or don't have the time to set up. Simply adding numbers together isn't a good enough enticement to use the services; taking perhaps a set of financial data and making complicated predictions based on past data, that's something that people could use. Create an application by pulling services together dynamically. What can we say about this that hasn't already been said?
Valid points all, which is perhaps why we don't hear much on the dynamic nature of Web Services. This doesn't mean that Web Services can't be dynamic. In a controlled environment, for example the corporate intranet, Web Services can be found dynamically (although there is some wonder about whether Web Services are the best technology for such a controlled environment). For non-mission critical systems, the dynamic promise of Web Services can still hold true. Take a look at Web Services brokerage SalCentral: they offer five SMS Web Services, five calculator Web Services, and seven email Web Services. The point here is that for non-critical systems, the dynamic nature of Web Services comes into prominence when one service fails - a replacement is easy to find, and since it's not a mission critical system, it hardly matters who is responsible for the service, as long as it works. For systems where, say, confidentiality is key, you would want to develop a trust relationship with the Web Service vendor before using their Web Services. Do Web Services live up to their hype? No, clearly not. More accurately, they don't live up to their hype at the moment. As the standards involved mature, along with vendor support through toolsets and platforms, Web Services will get closer to the hype, if not actually live up to it.
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