Chapter 6. .NET, J2EE, and Beyond

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	XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution By Frank  P.  Coyle
	Table of Contents

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The Web services battle lines are shaping up along two fronts: Microsoft on one side with its .NET initiative centered around Microsoft server technology, and Sun on the other side with Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) architecture, backed by competing implementations from Sun, IBM, Oracle, HP, BEA, and others. To understand the dynamics of the industry, it's important to understand that while the key Web services protocols, including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI), and Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), provide transport, discovery, and connections, they do not address other critical requirements for the electronic enterprise: transactions, security, and identity. Transactions allow multiple interactions to be treated as a single atomic all-or-none operation, security enables privacy and authentication for those transactions, and identity provides a means for verifying who's who over the Internet.

In the following sections we look at Microsoft's .NET initiative as well as the Web services- related strategies of Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle, and BEA Systems. As the battle for developer mind share in the Web services market continues, each of the major software companies is attempting to play to its strength and deliver SOAP-based Web services products that deliver transactions, security, and identity while playing to their own particular corporate strengths.

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