Multiple standards keep customers from taking the Web services plunge. Office supply house Corporate Express should be a Web services poster child.
Trying to make Web services make sense
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I thought XML was supposed to take care of all of this? (See, they were right when they called the playing field “dizzying.”
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<rant>
I recently reviewed an high-level design document of a proposal for a large government project. The architect proposed all systems (applications) use web-services (specifically SOAP) as the communications/integration mechanism. When I asked why this decision had been made the only response I got was that web-services were the future. When I asked if any prototyping and testing had been done to identify potential security and performance issues I received blank stares. I was a little concerned since all inter-application communication on this large complex network would be done using SOAP. web-services, while useful, will suffer from the same problem as DCOM did. I.T. professionals pushing a technology because it’s the latest thing, and clueless programmers who have no concept of how a network actually works saturating the network with their crapware.
Any prudent architect/developer would wait until the standards have somewhat solidified. The problem is by that time web-services will be replaced by the next “innovation” that promises to be the panacea for all of your EBusiness ECommunication EProblems. I think I need a vacation…
</rant>
SOAP is not close enough to REST to be the One.