Why Program-to-Program Communications Using Web Services Will Become the Industry Standard

Another way to compare past and present approaches is to consider the following:

• In the past, sharing data and information was difficult because various vendors used proprietary or dissimilar formats that prevented easy, effortless sharing of information. The industry now has a common "format" for presenting data called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and a new variant of this "markup language" used for presenting and manipulating data (XML).

• The industry now has a common way to network applications (the Internet). In the past, a plethora of communications protocols (SNA, Bisynch, Asynch, OSI, IPX/SPX, and others) essentially precluded applications from disparate communications environments from working together. Today, the Internet provides a common means for applications to reach each other using TCP/IP protocols. Vendors now have a common network path (the Internet) that is supported by almost every leading software vendor for sharing information over a network.

• Almost every leading vendor of hardware, software, and applications has now embraced (or strategically committed to) the use of three newly evolved Internet standards (UDDI, WSDL, and SOAP) that enable data and information to be manipulated and shared over the Internet. Application builders finally have vendor commitments to implement the protocols and directory services developers need to in order to build Web services applications that can work across disparate platforms.

• The industry has formed its own interoperability testing organization to ensure that Web services work.

Sidebar 2-1
The Web Services Interoperability Organization

In February 2002, Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. along with cofounders Fujitsu, SAP AG, and Accenture Ltd. announced that they had formed a consortium to make sure that the Web services products that each company develops will interoperate. This consortium, the Web Services Interoperabilty Organization, shows that IBM, Microsoft, cofounders, and fellow members such as Intel, BEA, Compaq Computer Corporation, Oracle, Toshiba, and Hewlett-Packard understand the importance of cross-platform interoperabilty and are willing to work together to achieve program-to-program communications across diverse systems platforms.

Also of interest, vendor organizations have been joined in this effort by early-adopter and leading-edge customers such as DaimlerChrysler AG, Ford Motor Company, Reed Elsevier Plc, and Reuters Group Plc. These user organizations are expected to help the consortium examine and emphasize business-related issues along with technology-related issues that pertain to how Web services are designed and deployed.

Without such a consortium there is a risk that vendors could interpret Web services standards differently, leading to incompatibilities between vendor implementations that would preclude interoperability. The consortium aims to provide a forum where vendors can work out issues that may lead to such incompatibilities.

Another role of the consortium is to provide education and guidance for adopters of Web services architecture.

At the time of this writing, Sun Microsystems had not agreed to join the consortium. But it is reasonable to expect that Sun will join the consortium at some point to ensure that its Web services implementation is consistent with those of other vendors. And it is reasonable to expect, too, that customers will demand that Sun join the consortium to ensure that their voices are heard as standards are refined and interoperability issues are addressed.

Because the industry has been able to overcome issues related to how to package and communicate data, and because every leading vendor has announced support for Web services standards, Web services stand a chance of succeeding where other previous architectures have not.