Interoperability and Web Services

You never know when the interoperability requirements on your application are going to change dramatically. For example, when business groups, divisions, and even companies reorganize or merge, its not uncommon for applications to see requirements for interoperability shift overnight. Web services are the solution for interoperability in the .NET Framework. While the other distributed application technologies discussed in this book have specific benefits, the cost of interoperability must be carefully weighed when deciding to go with a solution that might not interoperate well with disparate systems. To achieve its vision for Web services, Microsoft is expected to advance the technology in the .NET Framework so that most applications will have no need to go beyond Web services for distributed application functionality.