SOA melds design and runtime testing

Testing Web services by themselves, or software with a simple Web services wrapper, is straightforward, said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. “The challenges come when you start thinking about Web services in the context of a service-oriented architecture,” he said.

“In an SOA with multiple services, you look at meta data associated with those services — whether that’s a registry or a repository of services information — and you test the functionality not of the individual service, but whether you’re handling versioning properly, [for example].” “These runtime questions blur into design-time questions.”

Traditionally, the software world thinks of design as development-centric, and runtime as operation-centric, Bloomberg said. “With SOA that distinction blurs: You’re updating services on an ongoing basis, you have all the issues of operations testing and management, you’re still doing development work and now development work breaks into infrastructure stuff. You’re still doing component-based testing, but you have application development done at the process level, with composite applications built out of services.”

Bloomberg said: “[Ultimately,] design versus runtime [testing] is two sides of the same coin. You have to make sure the code is working, but you also have to make sure the services and operation are working, too.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Service Orientation Market Trends

While Web Services have been getting the attention through 2003, in 2004 the IT computing story will be focused squarely on Service Orientation. Offering an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that provides greater business agility while enabling companies to use heterogeneous resources more efficiently, Service Orientation, based on established Web Services standards, is set to fundamentally change many different IT markets as enterprises transition to Service-Oriented Architectures.

In particular, the markets of application security, security appliances, system management, application integration, data integration, and business process management are six key markets that will become transformed as vendors in those markets Service-enable their products. Furthermore, there is a window of opportunity for new entrants in each of these markets to build Service-oriented offerings. Those windows will soon close, however, as the established, incumbent vendors in each space consolidate their respective markets.

These consolidation trends will continue through the rest of the decade, as large vendors round out their suites of software that support Service Orientation, resulting in a combined market consisting of vendors offering a full-function SOA Implementation Framework. These frameworks will offer enterprises all the functionality they need to build, run, and manage SOAs. The market for SOA Implementation Frameworks is still nascent as of 2004, but will dominate the distributed computing arena by 2010.

Free Tools Speed Web-Services Security

“Vordel does appear to be first to market with a Web-services security testing tool,” said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass.

“There are a range of Web-services testing and monitoring tools on the market from such companies as Parasoft [Corp.], Westbridge Technology [Inc.], Service Integrity [Inc.], and Mindreef [Inc.], and IBM and Microsoft offer Web-services security development tools, but none of these offer Web-services security testing. So Vordel is definitely filling a need with this tool.

“Vordel is a company currently at a transition point, moving to a new, broader version of their software and finally looking to enter the U.S. market,” Bloomberg said. “This tool should definitely get them some international attention at just the right time.”

Read more at: eWeek

Parasoft Provides Sneak Preview of Enhanced Automated Error Prevention Tool for Web Services

According to ZapThink Research, “XML and Web Services are increasingly becoming part of the everyday architecture and framework for IT. Web Services and their resulting business process transformations will eventually break down many of the barriers among enterprises. This ‘seamlessness’ will gradually extend over multiple enterprises, finally merging with and describing the economy as a whole.”

Read more at: Web Services Edge

SOA Best Practices

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

SOA Tools and Best Practices

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 practices as well as an analysis of the tools that are currently available for building Service-oriented architectures.

SOA Tools

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

Consumer Products: When Software Bugs Bite

Several analyst firms–including Patricia Seybold Group, ZapThink, and Venture Development Corp.–blame the technology industry itself, which is loosely regulated and tends to rush products to market to try to gain market share.

Read more at: Baseline

Service-Oriented Management

Web Services management applications provide software that helps companies manage the systems and applications that underlie their Web Services implementations. The Web Services management products on the market today offer functionality in five basic categories: system management, lifecycle management, business management, security management, and the most important, Service-Oriented Architecture enablement.

The latter category is especially important because many Web Services management products provide the critical infrastructure necessary for companies to take their fine-grained, atomic Web Services and other data sources and encapsulate and compose them into coarse-grained business Services that make up a Service-Oriented Architecture. Such architectures offer far more long-term business value than the point-to-point applications of Web Services common today.

Service-Oriented Management Technology Landscape

Web Services management applications provide software that helps companies manage the systems and applications that underlie their Web Services implementations. The Web Services management products on the market today offer functionality in five basic categories: system management, lifecycle management, business management, security management, and the most important, Service-Oriented Architecture enablement.

The latter category is especially important because many Web Services management products provide the critical infrastructure necessary for companies to take their fine-grained, atomic Web Services and other data sources and encapsulate and compose them into coarse-grained business Services that make up a Service-Oriented Architecture. Such architectures offer far more long-term business value than the point-to-point applications of Web Services common today.