A Future That Includes Web Services
| This chapter demonstrates how happy desktop computer users can benefit from P2P technology for chat, messaging, and file sharing. Many of these applications provide an integrated experience. For example, many file sharing applications include chat and messaging. These applications show the enormous potential for building complex applications integrating data and functions from a variety of sources into one useful tool. Integration like this extends beyond P2P technology. The vision behind Web services is very compatible to P2P technology. Web services enable developers to build loosely coupled, self-describing, highly scalable systems that provide interoperability between software on different platforms. Sound familiar? Software developers working on traditional client/server and Web applications are challenged with the same issues: scalability, interoperability, performance, and maintenance. P2P technology is beginning to look very attractive as a tool for designing high performance, scalable, server-based systems. P2P applications provide an integration model for Web services that works alongside the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Even with the use of SOAP, Web applications are typically designed to include a Web server and a browser client. Web applications usually result in centralized data centers and spread-out populations of clients. Centralized repositories have their place, but so do decentralized implementations, where the services provided at the edge of the network power an application. Imagine a stock trading application in which the trades are handled by a centralized server using SOAP, and the stock charting and history functions come from a network of information sources using P2P. The software industry is headed toward larger interoperability, and P2P has already found a viable place. Device management, service monitoring, and resource management applications are being developed to support and complement current network management protocols, and e-commerce applications are being defined using P2P as a technology enabler, including the following:
Although this chapter presents a good starting point, there are issues that you will need to understand to determine the applicability of P2P in your system selection and development. Note Web services are discussed in more detail in Chapter 11, "Web Services Explained." |
