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 COLUMN
Rampant confusion I'M GOING TO start this week's column by making a couple of hype-challenged statements: XML is inherently useless; and Web services, although it's the next big thing to nontechnical folks, has been chugging along quietly for a few years without much fanfare.
Business person: "We need to integrate data from Company X into our Web site." Me: "What format will the data be in?" Business person (smiling broadly): "XML; it's all XML." Me: "OK, I'll need to have an engineer look at how they structure their data so we can process it properly and integrate it into the site." Business person (smile weakening): "But it's in XML. ... " Me: "Great, I'm glad it's in XML format. We need some time to port the data into our database, do QA, and make sure we process the data feed properly as it comes in." Business person (frown developing): "But it's in XML. ... " At this point I start explaining that receiving an XML feed is the beginning of an integration process, not the end. To paraphrase from the XML FAQ, (see www.ucc.ie/xml): XML is a markup specification language and XML files are data: They just sit there until you run a program which displays them (like a browser), or does some work with them (like a converter which writes the data in another format, or a database which reads the data), or modifies them (like an editor). In other words, as much as we all love it, XML alone is more or less useless. Although XML can be wonderful for trading data among applications, applications do not magically appear around XML documents. XML does, however, function as a great point of leverage for applications, which leads us to Web services. First, guess when this sentence, heralding the release of a spec that now might fit into most Web services definitions, was written: "Instead of a hodgepodge of different wire protocols and payload formats, let's get something in place that can quickly be widely deployed everywhere" (see davenet.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$561 for the rest). The term Web services confuses many people, and what was supposed to make things easier is making things more difficult. But this is mainly due to lack of clarity in marketing, not shortcomings in what is essentially an extraordinarily simple and powerful concept. Ready for the answer? That sentence was written in July 1998 by Dave Winer, who was announcing the release of the spec for XML-RPC (XML-Remote Procedure Call), a simpler cousin of SOAP, of which Dave Winer is also an author. The XML-RPC spec (www.xmlrpc.com) checks in at slightly more than 1,500 words, winning my Concise Spec Award for Web services. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) runs about 11,000 words, and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) about 26,000. For the uninitiated or confused, the XML-RPC spec provides an easily grasped window into the technical promise of Web services, while also serving as a spirited manifesto for the then-new Web services world order. When I grow confused about what Web services means, I read the XML-RPC spec and it makes sense again. For many of us immersed in technology on a daily basis, Web services is our favorite old coffee shop that everyone else just discovered -- but the coffee is still pretty damn good. How are you leveraging Web services? Write to me at chad_dickerson@infoworld.com. Chad Dickerson is InfoWorld's CTO.  RELATED SUBJECTS  Web TechnologiesMORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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