Summary

In this chapter, we completed the design and implementation of three different Web services consumers under different scenarios. Hopefully, you are somewhat surprised by the relative ease we had in integrating these Web services, especially given what they accomplished. We were able to bridge across platforms and technologies, and we did so with fairly simple tools and technologies for experienced developers.

It should be somewhat reassuring to you now that, if you build meaningful Web services, consumers will be capable of using them fairly quickly regardless of their choices of internal platform and technology. Web services workflows obviously take a little more effort than do Web services calls, especially in the design phase, but this should be offset somewhat by the realization of the potential of Web services workflows to expand our current horizons and capabilities in application integration and partner relationships.

Of course, we have only just started down this road. As more standards and technologies are developed, building and consuming Web services will become even easier. Thus, more people will be capable of doing so and adding to the growing volume of services available on the Web. This also means that we need to be careful in discerning the technologies and tools developed around Web services to ensure that we are staying true to the vision. Remember from Chapter 1:

The purpose of a Web service is to programmatically expose a process over a network through an open, standardized communication mechanism and format.

Next, we will take a look at where the industry is heading in this new development paradigm and perhaps determine if we are heading on the right path to enabling meaningful Web services.