GXA Defines Framework for Web Services

Microsoft’s Global XML Web Services Architecture (GXA) has debuted in a new SDK the company has made available to developers. GXA is a set of technologies that aims to make Web services appropriate for application integration across platforms and over the Internet. GXA is in its formative stages; there is no definitive list of what problems it will address, and it’s not clear whether Microsoft and IBM (the other major Web services player) will agree on how to solve those problems. Nevertheless, software developers whose products must interoperate with Microsoft’s and companies who design IT solutions that depend on Microsoft’s platform will want to track GXA developments closely.

Microsoft’s first cut at GXA is available in a new prerelease toolkit, the Web Services Development Kit (WSDK). For more information on the WSDK, see the sidebar “Prerelease Toolkit Supports Security, Attachments“.

Origins and Goals of GXA

GXA is intended to enable Web services to integrate applications that cross organizational boundaries and involve different operating systems and infrastructures. A Web service is a piece of application logic (such as an inventory tracking system) that is accessible using standard Internet protocols (such as Simple Object Access Protocol [SOAP] and Hypertext Transfer Protocol [HTTP]).