.NET My Services

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New technologies frequently create wholly new kinds of applications. Web services, for instance, a new way to expose functionality over the Internet, are bound to engender some innovative ideas. .NET My Services, a set of Internet-accessible Web services provided by Microsoft, provides one good example of this innovation.

Rather than store a copy of information such as your calendar and address book on each device, why not instead make this information available via an Internet-accessible Web service? This would allow access to the same information from your desktop computer at work, your home machine, your wireless PDA, and perhaps even your mobile phone. And if this kind of information can be made available as Web services, why not provide other services as well, such as a place to store documents or a way to access e-mail? And why not build in other services such as notifications that can find you and inform you immediately of some event? Providing these kinds of services is the goal of .NET My Services.

The .NET My Services technology provides access to information across the Internet

As Figure 1-7 shows, all of these services are accessed via the Internet, and both client and server applications can potentially use them. Along with these services, however, .NET My Services also provides a standard authentication service that allows clients to prove their identity. Based on Microsoft's Passport service, this authentication is required to ensure that only authorized users can access the information .NET My Services contains. The .NET My Services version of Passport will rely on Kerberos, a technology that in the last few years has become widely used to provide strong authentication.

Figure 1-7. .NET My Services can be accessed by users and applications on the Internet.

.NET My Services includes an authentication service

Once a user has been authenticated, he can access other services provided by .NET My Services. These include the following:

• .NET Alerts: Allows sending alert messages to a .NET My Services user

• .NET Calendar: Maintains a user's personal calendar

• .NET Contacts: Provides a list of names, addresses, and other contact information for a user

• .NET Inbox: Allows access to a user's e-mail

• .NET Documents: Provides Internet-accessible storage for a user

• .NET Wallet: Contains payment information such as a user's credit card number and shipping address

• .NET Lists: Contains lists such as a to-do list or a shopping list

• .NET Profile: Contains information about an individual such as her name, address, and photograph

• .NET Presence: Contains electronic presence information for a user, such as when and where that user is reachable via instant messaging

With the exception of Passport, which uses Kerberos, all the information stored in .NET My Services is accessed via SOAP and defined using XML. Unlike the browser-accessible services offered on the Internet today for e-mail, calendaring, and so on, .NET My Services is meant to be accessed by applications. In a very real sense, .NET My Services is a platform for application development. It will succeed only if developers build .NET My Services based applications that make their users' lives better.

.NET My Services is largely a group of SOAP-accessible Web services

Storing personal information on the Internet raises a number of issues, however. Can Microsoft keep this information secure? How can I control who is allowed to access information about me? And how can I keep Microsoft from selling this information once I've given it to them? Answering these questions in a way that pleases customers is an essential part of making .NET My Services succeed. For a more detailed look at the technology of .NET My Services and some of the larger issues it raises, see Chapter 8.

.NET My Services raises many security and privacy issues

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