The preceding chapter talked about "personalizable" Web services, consisting essentially of programs that can act on a user's behalf to carry out the user's bidding. An outstanding example of such a program can be found in Microsoft's .NET My Services family of products more specifically in the company's .NET Alerts implementation.
.NET My Services is a product category that houses (and will house) programs that can act on a user's behalf that also make use of Web services protocols and registries. .NET Alerts is one such program in the .NET My Services collection of programs. .NET Alerts is a program that computer users can use to receive requested alerts from authorized information providers. For instance, .NET Alerts can be used to send information to you from stock service at a particular time of day or even when a particular stock threshold has been met. When this information is received at the user's chosen e-mail address (in the form of a simple XML message), it can then be forwarded from the e-mail inbox to a desktop, handheld, PDA, or any Internet-ready device that the user chooses to assign. A program that acts on behalf of the user determines where the user is, whether the user has authorized this particular type of information to be sent, and then sends an e-mail notification that directs the user where to go to get the information he or she has requested. |
Because .NET Alerts can act on someone's behalf to carry out a sorting task that a person normally would have to do manually, .NET Alerts increase individual productivity. Notice that they also offer businesses an effective way to reach their customers and provide them with options to take particular "actions." Additionally, notice that .NET Alerts can stop businesses from spamming (sending unwanted information and e-mails) to consumers (because consumers can instruct their personal .NET Alert applications to send only the mail and messages that they request).
Microsoft's Web site indicates that .NET Alerts can be used for much more than just sending e-mail or Web-based content. For example, a business could alert its customers when:
Source: http://Microsoft.com/MYSERVICES/alerts/default.asp. Used by Permission. |
As has been the case in almost every previous example, .NET Alerts does not make heavy use of UDDI directories to provide Web services. But .NET Alerts does make heavy use of SOAP protocols to enable messages and information to be sent to multiple different device types. Also note: Microsoft's .NET My Services are currently being re-evaluated by Microsoft.