Web Services

Tenets: SMALL, 1THING, PORT, FLAT, REUSE, filter, sum

Central concept: The Unix philosophy implemented on the network.

It was only a matter of time before everyone realized that Gordon Bell's statement that "the network becomes the system" is absolutely true.^[4] Sun Microsystems later popularized this notion with its "the network is the computer" marketing campaign. And while there were some interesting attempts along the way to realize that vision (e.g., CORBA, DCOM), none thus far had showed the promise of turning the network into a gestalt computer like Web services have done thus far.^[5]

Web services use a model consisting of a collection of small, networkbased components or tools. Simply described, the technology is the summation of HTTP as a transport and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as a messaging language on top of that transport. As you might suspect, its architecture has a lot in common with the Unix philosophy. In an ideal implementation, each Web service

• Does one thing well

• Acts as a filter between messages from the client to the server and vice versa

• Employs flat text in the form of XML for messages

• Is written in a portable language from reusable components

Is it any wonder that Web services are catching on in a big way? Both the open-source community with the DotGNU project^[6] and Microsoft with its .NET initiative^[7] are implementing frameworks around this technology. The potential that Web services hold for business applications is huge, and it could possibly be the start of the next tectonic shift in the computing world.

Although the Web services technology is inching along as a standard at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the opposing factions implementing that standard are gearing up for a long bloody brouhaha. If the rivalry between Linux and Windows is to be computer Armageddon, then the struggle for dominance in the Web services space will be guerilla warfare. Both sides understand the rules of engagement, and both are showing signs that they may be willing to subvert them.

One of the biggest points of contention in this struggle is and will continue to be security. The Microsoft Passport logon mechanism has already fallen under heavy fire by the research arm of AT&T Labs.^[8] Not surprisingly, Microsoft's approach to authentication is based on getting the necessary credentials from a single entity, namely Microsoft. This has raised the ire of the open-source community, which has claimed that no single entity should have the right to hold such credentials.

The issue once again boils down to a matter of trust. In this respect, the open-source advocates have the edge. One cannot completely trust a security mechanism produced by any human organization, entity, or government unless one can view the source code used to construct that mechanism. Anything else ultimately will lead to control of individuals and, ultimately, human slavery.

The monks in the cathedral respectfully disagree.

^[4]Gordon Bell et. al. "Why Digital Is Committed to Ethernet for the Fifth Generation." New York, February 10, 1982, at http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/Ethernet_announcement_820210c.pdf.

^[5]See http://www.w3.org/2002/ws. This URL may morph into http://www.w3.org/2003/ws at some point, so you may need to start with http://www.w3.org and look around from there.

^[6]See http://www.dotgnu.org.

^[7]See http://www.microsoft.com/net.

^[8]David P. Kormann and Aviel D. Rubin. "Risks of the Passport Single Signon Protocol," Computer Networks, Vol. 33, 2000: 51-58.