Summary

The success of Web services is a story that has yet to be written. I personally believe that Web services have the potential to be the solution to long-standing issues in supporting partnerships and cooperation between organizations. Potential does not always manifest itself in reality, though, and we will have to see where we end up. At one point, "push technology" was going to be the next big thing, so just calling something a great solution and making it so are two different things.

What I have done in this chapter is identified the areas and activities that we need to keep an eye on if we want to find out where the industry will try to take Web services. There are gaps in our current capabilities, and there are potential solutions being discussed and developed. Standards need to be watched for and tools anticipated. Vendors are trying to contribute to the ideals of Web services, and some haven't yet communicated what their objectives are.

No matter which standards are adopted, no matter which vendors lead the market, and no matter which technology your company adopts, meaningful Web services can be developed only with careful thought and planning put into their architecture and model. This book emphasized that thought and provided you with some real-life solutions with which to model, design, and build your Web services.