Web services chugging along

Web services has had its ups and downs since its rise to prominence early in the decade.

Although the vendors backing Web services are confident they are properly addressing any kinks, Web services remains hobbled by issues such as standardization and WSDL complexity. To make matter worse, its impacts are growing, with both the .Net and Java development technologies focusing on Web services. Additionally, Web services is doing double duty as the lynchpin of the growing SOA trend.

RouteOne, a hosted service that processes credit applications for car loans, is a business built on Web services. The company started developing specifications for its business operations in September 2002 and was in a pilot phase by July 2003. It estimates it has since processed millions of transactions via Web services.

“We could not have done it in the timeframe in which we wanted to do it,” if not for Web services, said T.N. Subramaniam, director of technology and chief architect at RouteOne.

Corillian, which provides retail online banking, goes one better when asked about its level of Web services processing. “I think it’s probably incalculable,” said Scott Hanselman, chief architect at Corillian. “You’re talking billions [of Web services calls], I would say.”

“When I think about Web services, the way I typically talk about it is developers have been building distributed apps for a long time and what they want to do is get a long-term return on their short-term investments in this software. Web services allows them to do that,” by offering interoperability, said Microsoft’s Ari Bixhorn, director of Web services strategy at the company.

Microsoft cites the September 1999 unveiling of its Windows DNA 2000 program as marking the beginning of the company’s vision for XML-based Web services.

With Web services, integration can be easier and less costly than previous methods such as EDI. WSDL, however, one of the key components of a Web services solution, was called unworkable by a JavaOne attendee during an open-mike session at the JavaOne show in San Francisco last month. Further, the multitude of Web services specifications and standards efforts can be hard to follow even for experts in the field.

At the BMC Remedy User Group 2005 conference in San Jose last week, John Neels, a senior systems engineer and project manager at business process consulting firm Column Technologies, presented lists of Web services advantages and disadvantages to a packed room of approximately 100 attendees. Advantages included boosts in integrating legacy systems, lowering operational and development costs, faster system development and better integration with external business systems.

Disadvantages cited were Web server downtimes; immutable interfaces, in which changes can cause failure if a client is not updated; and lack of protocols for guaranteed execution and security. Neels also noted a performance issue in that HTTP requests that require a fresh connection with the server at each URL call. XML processing also is an issue, Neel said.

But vendors and even Neel himself presented possible solutions to these impediments, such as Neel’s suggestion that Web server farms be used to maintain Web server uptime.

Neel’s views on disadvantages drew sharp disagreements from vendors such as Sun Microsystems.

“I would think that a Web server is one of the single most reliable pieces of infrastructure that currently exists,” said Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun.