Technology: Putting Web Services to Work - ' Fact Sheet '
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FACT SHEET
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Web Services Let Companies…
Link new and legacy systems to new applications
Conduct online transactions with less integration cost
Reduce time to market by decreasing development and testing time
Continually adapt applications to match new business processes
Advantages
Web services can speed application development and reduce costs to access data on disparate systems.
Dissimilar legacy systems can communicate without expensive translation applications.
Developers don't have to know anything about systems they're communicating with.
Users only have to install a translation process for their disparate systems once.
Disadvantages
Lack of agreement on a definition means confusion for users.
Standards are in flux, with more than a dozen competing schemes.
Services written to one standard will not work with Web sites supporting others without a translation service between.
Today, services created for one vendor's scheme won't necessarily work with another's standard (such as J2EE and .NET).
Components
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol allows information in XML to be exchanged and defines how applications execute Web services.
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration service helps applications find Web services elsewhere on the Internet.
WSDL Web Services Description Language lets Web services describe what they are, where they can be found and how they should be used.
Major Players
PLATFORM VENDORS
IBM: Offers Web services through its Tivoli application family.
Microsoft: BizTalk Server, built on XML-based .NET services, is becoming popular with Windows users.
BEA: WebLogic Server helps developers create Web services in Java.
INTEGRATION
Talking Blocks: Develops infrastructure software that lets companies develop and manage next-generation business applications.
TOOLKITS
The Mind Electric: GLUE, the company's Web services platform, is the leading independent implementation of SOAP.
Systinet: This firm's Web Applications and Services Platform (WASP) development tool helps users create, publish and use Web Services.
Resources
www.w3.org/2002/ws
The World Wide Web Consortium's documentation and working groups
www.xml.com
O'Reilly & Associates Inc. site with primers and instructions for developers
www.webservicesarchitect.com
Tech resources for CIOs and CTOs
www.webservices.org
A "community portal" for Web services developers
www.sys-con.com/webservices
Resources for developers from Web Services Journal
xml.coverpages.org/ebXML.html
Information about industry standardizing efforts from the Electronic Business XML Initiative
www.zapthink.com
Researcher covering the Web services market
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Enterprise Technology 
