RE: Web services: Meet the new boss; same as the old boss ???

I think this is actually a pretty good article -- I can't imagine why
you think it is inflammatory.  Seems pretty accurate to me.

No, I personally don't see that this has much to do with the WSA
document, at least directly.  Note that when this article talks about
Web services architecture, which it does, I believe it means something
rather different from what the WSA-WG means.  Within a company like ours
Web service architecture has to do with stuff that at the W3C level
would be dismissed fairly casually as implementation detail and/or best
practices.  I think this guy is talking to us, not the WSAWG.

-----Original Message-----
From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com] 
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 4:19 PM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Web services: Meet the new boss; same as the old boss ???



This is a somewhat inflammatory article ... Anyone have thoughts on it?
Does is suggest anything that the WSA document should be looking at or
talking about more explicitly?
http://www.infoworld.com/infoworld/article/03/09/05/35FEws-soamain_1.htm
l

' "I think the whole notion of a Web service was intuitively appealing
because the original scope of Web services was using them as a simple
integration tool. [But] it painted a rather rosy and low-tech picture
compared to proprietary EAI products." 
... The promise remains compelling -- and most enterprise developers
have at least given Web services a whirl. But planning, deploying and
managing an enterprisewide Web services implementation can be dauntingly
complex. 

So guess who's ready to jump in and lend a hand? ... [the monster
consulting companies] ... Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. 

...

But wait a minute? Weren't Web services supposed to be a bottom-up
endeavor? The thinking was that IT could incrementally build Web
services components that could be linked as needed -- to add
functionality to enterprise portals, collect real-time business
intelligence, hook into business partner billing systems, and so on. To
be sure, these notions have been embraced by enterprise developers, many
of whom have applied the new technology for one-off projects. But
managing and tracking Web services across an enterprise and ensuring
interoperability, security, and performance require a new order of
architectural discipline.' 

[The rest of the article is basically about the challenges of
implementing SOA's in legacy environments where IT and business people
have to talk at high bandwidth]

Received on Monday, 8 September 2003 17:55:39 UTC