Advertisment

Servicing the Web

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

Catering to the demand from potential customers,  some of the individual players in the Web services

domain decided to put their heads together and come out with a combined project. So it was that Web Services Interoperability Organization came into being, backed by some of the biggies in the industry. Their aim–to answer questions poased by those using Web services.

Advertisment

The organization is positioned to give a clear understanding of the direction in which Web services, as a technology should head. The group will teach solution providers how to use Web services across various operating environments. The group is being spearheaded by IBM and Microsoft, along with Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, SAP, Accenture, Compaq, and Intel. But Sun Microsystems, a major provider of web services and creator of the Java language is missing in this industrywide effort. 

The WS-I Charter

  • Provide implementation guidance and education to help customers with the adoption of Web services
  • Promote consistent and reliable Web services implementations across heterogeneous systems
  • Articulate and promote a common industry vision for Web services interoperability

WS-I Deliverables

Profiles: Sets of Web services specifications that work together to support specific types of solutions. For more information, read the short White Paper



Sample Implementation:
With the context of a profile, the teams will work to define a set of Web services that are implemented by multiple team members to identify where interoperability issues are present



Implementation Norms:
Recommendations for use of specs in ways that have been proven to be most interoperable. These guidelines also provide the set of test cases that the sniffer and analyzer tools detect for compliance verification

Sniffer: Tools to monitor and log interactions with a Web service. This tool generates a file that can later be processed by the analyzer. 



Analyzer:
Tools that processes sniffer logs and to verify that the Web service implementation is free from errors

The basic thrust of WS-I will be on developing best practices, Web services interoperability testing and sample applications around “basic” Web standards such as XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL. The consortium will promote existing and future standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis). Web services will allow software to be made available over the Internet to run identically on multiple devices, such as PCs and cell phones. 

Advertisment

Major software makers, including Sun Microsystems and Oracle, are developing a software that will allow companies to build their own Web services. Till date, anyone who subscribes to Web services is allowed to access only stock quotes from their cellphones. With this software, scheduling an air ticket using the Web service is not far from being true. This could also trigger a cascade of actions, which can help assemble different options like tieups with hotels, frequent flier programs, and other related services.

With confusion rampant among the users, this consortium emphasizes on clearing those doubts. Most questions stem from different technologies that are available for building Web services. While most software companies support the same set of established Web service standards, each advocates a different approach to building web services application. The technology companies have worked together to build standards that serve as underlying foundations for Web services. These include XML, single object access protocol (Soap), Web services description language, and universal description, discover and integration. But the different versions available in the market, for example, the different specifications of Soap, can lead to incompatible software and according to analysts compatibility is crucial for web services technology to succeed. 

According to Gartner Group, the consortium may have to face hurdles in dealing with various standards’ bodies. The study holds that if WS-I does not address this question adequately along with the present political challenges, the group could fade into obscurity by the end of 2003. However, if the group succeeds to gather enough support and membership, it could emerge as the de facto standards’ body for Web services. 

But even if the consortium fades into obscurity as a standards integrator, it will hasten web services adoption for the industry during its short innings!

Dhanya Krishnakumar In New Delhi

Advertisment