.NET My Services Picture Getting Clearer

Microsoft has released preliminary specifications and announced a business pricing model for .NET My Services (formerly known as HailStorm), its proposed online storehouse for users’ personal data. Although the specifications are still in the early stage, and the .NET My Services SDK is not yet available to the general public, the announcements provide some insight into where Microsoft is heading with .NET My Services and how businesses can prepare to implement them.

Microsoft has also proposed extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an important technology for transmitting data to and from XML Web services such as .NET My Services. The SOAP extensions were proposed in part to meet new requirements for .NET My Services as they begin to take shape.

.NET My Services Revealed

Formerly known as HailStorm Foundation Services, .NET My Services will be a set of Internet-connected databases hosted by Microsoft and containing personal information entered by individual users, such as credit card numbers and calendar appointments. Desktop and Web server applications, if granted permission by the user, will retrieve information from these databases via SOAP messages sent over standard Internet protocols. The services are expected to go live in the third quarter of 2002.