Web Services Specifications Inch Forward

A new developer toolkit from Microsoft and a recent interoperability demonstration with IBM show that the IT giants are continuing to make progress on Web services protocols. Agreements on these protocols promise to simplify application integration across vendor platforms, and the security and reliability gaps in the initial versions of these protocols are gradually being filled. However, Web services protocols are still not complete, and companies using early versions of the protocols through Microsoft’s toolkits should be prepared for future compatibility problems.

Web Services Architecture Developing Slowly

Microsoft and IBM have demonstrated a set of Web services, built on both Microsoft Windows and IBM WebSphere, that successfully communicate using some advanced security and reliability capabilities. Although many vendors have successfully demonstrated interoperability via the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)—the basic Web services protocol—IBM and Microsoft demonstrated additional technologies that Microsoft now refers to as the Web Services Architecture (WSA). First introduced under the name Global XML Web Services Architecture but rechristened, WSA aims to make Web services a viable architecture that can be used to integrate applications across platforms and across the Internet. Both IBM and Microsoft agree that cross-platform, cross-organization integration requires the following capabilities (which are lacking in the minimal SOAP protocol):