Web Services Built on Cooperation and Competition

The initial jockeying over Web services standards is almost over, paving the way for widespread adoption of Web services, which provide a way for applications to share components over the Internet. The acceptance of these key standards, together with IBM’s release of new WebSphere products and tools, is likely to make Web services the next big marketing push in the Internet space.

A Web service, working much like a distributed COM component, allows a Web application to obtain services from other Web sites, even when those services are provided by unaffiliated entities and hosted on completely different underlying platform software. For example, a financial application on one Web site could call a money converter Web service at a foreign bank across the Internet to supply an up-to-the-minute exchange conversion calculation; the entire exchange of information would be transparent and hidden from the user. Web services will change the nature of the Internet, expanding it from a set of loosely connected browser pages to also include a shared set of interoperable program components. Java programs, for example, will be able to use .NET components, and vice versa. (For more details about Web services and their architecture, see “New Toolkits Power Web Services Now” on page 7 of the Mar. 2001 Update.) However, before Web services run heavyweight e-commerce applications, the major players will have to resolve transaction handling and security issues.