SOAP 1.2 spec takes next step

An analyst said SOAP 1.2 differs from Version 1.1 in that it is not steered primarily by only Microsoft and IBM. “Although SOAP 1.2 involves a lot more players, if it wasn’t for Microsoft and IBM, SOAP wouldn’t be on the radar,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Boston. A highlight of Version 1.2 is XML Schema support, Schmelzer said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

SOAP Poised for “Clean” Royalty-Free Bill of Health

“I don’t know if even webMethods knows what they want here,” Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at Zapthink, a web services consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass., told IDN.

“The question is really whether a company like web Methods can really obstruct SOAP 1.2. And, I think it’s a chess move, for the most part,” Bloomberg added. “There’s no question after more than a year working on this that the W3C would expect webMethods to play ball, and I have a feeling they’ll come around. The worst thing that may happen is that this will slow things down a bit. I don’t see a headline in March that says ‘SOAP Goes Down the Tubes,’” Bloomberg added.

Read more at: Integration Developer News

SOAP 1.2 Passage Snagged By IP Issues

Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm Zapthink, doesn’t think the companies are out to stymie the standard — just a little power posturing.

“In my opinion, any company in Epicentric’s and webMethod’s position would realize that asserting an IP claim on part of a proposed standard will prevent that particular IP from making its way into the standard. If that IP is critical to the development of the standard, then the standard might be stymied. If not, then the standards body would have to find another approach to solving the particular issue. In either case, nobody would pay that vendor any licensing fees so that they could use the standard. Since it’s not in the vendor’s best interests to stymie the standard, and there’s no revenue to be gained by deflecting the standard body, then why would a vendor actually take such an action? “

Read more at: Internetnews.com

What’s Hot with Web Services?

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ZapNote: Percussion

Rhythmyx offers a low total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise-class content management system by using XML, standards, Rhythmyx Accelerators, extensible "engines" for core system function, and Active Assembly and Dynamic Workflow to control how content is entered and used on Web pages.

ZapNote: Epicentric

Portals are being used to provide access to content sources or applications such as Siebel and SAP, and enable a common composite application that is accessible via a web browser-based interface. There is a strong intersection with this application-centric use of portals and what is going on with Web Services. Portals provide a compelling means for application delivery of Web Services in a familiar development and management environment. Epicentric has produced a number of advanced products and services to address this capability, and has championed the development of XML-based formats for specification of presentation-layer interfaces for Web Services.

Web Services Technologies & Trends

From its inception through 2002, the primary application for Web Services in the enterprise was to simplify point-to-point integration between systems, thereby reducing the cost of integration. This application of Web Services, however, only scratches the surface of the true potential of Web Services — enabling companies to build agile business processes and IT systems that can respond to change through the use of loosely coupled, standards-based Service-oriented architectures.

The business value of such architectures in terms of the business agility they provide is substantial, but as of early 2003, only a few early adopter enterprises have built such architectures, partly because few tools for building Service-oriented architectures are available on the market, and furthermore, there is little understanding of the best practices companies should follow to build such architectures. This report seeks to clarify the requirements for realizing the value of Web Services by providing a set of emerging best pra

Web Services Technologies and Trends

Web Services is the next evolution in distributed computing using XML as the means by which systems can expose and share computing functionality. The market for Web Services tools, comprised of Web Services Platforms, Application Development and Delivery Suites, and Operations Management is expected to grow to over $15.5 Billion by the end of 2005.