Greg Heidel

Web services has the potential to solve some of the most difficult technology and integration problems that have plagued IT departments for decades. Isolated systems, redundant code, extended development cycles, and vendor dependence have essentially been accepted as inherent side effects of enterprise computing. If Web services is to alleviate these problems, a complete, broadly accepted set of standards must be realized. In an earlier article (WSJ, Vol. 2, issue 1), I provided a broad look at the Web services standards landscape. At the time, XML and SOAP had reached fairly widespread acceptance and there was great optimism about the flurry of activity in other critical areas, such as service description and discovery. In this article we'll look at what changes have taken place in the major standards organizations. Then we'll take a peek at how far existing standar... (more)

Web Services Standards -Can There Be a Consensus?

Many far-reaching claims are being made with regards to Web services. Some in the industry suggest that Web services will make dynamic e-business a reality, will be the next distributed programming paradigm, and will enable the "Holy Grail" of fully distributed Web applications. Component and distributed computing evangelists made those claims before (think CORBA), but these goals remain elusive and unrealized. As industry observers and participants understand, Web services standards are a moving target. This article will use a layered depiction of the Web Services Stack to exam... (more)