RE: What are web services good for? (WAS: RE: Two new features o fthe Web)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Just to focus this a little more, where in the context of using 
web services do the differences between turnkey commercial systems 
and one-off or highly customized applications become evident?

If this question can't be answered succinctly, web services 
cannot be bid because the contracts manager will have no means 
to indicate exceptions.  If the impact of this is not understood, 
the bidder has little or no chance of winning business, thus 
investors are cautioned strongly to avoid their stock if their 
business plan indicates a market that is RFP-driven.

Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) 

What are web services good for?  What are they not good for?

Useful topics:  contract-based business (not the interface contract of the 
remote systems, but the contracts for services among the businesses), 
orchestration of processes to ensure compliant deliverables, hierarchical 
review and remote decision making (authority and delegation); how 
are QOS issues and defaults on contracts detected and handled?

I have this sense that some consider web services another technology in 
search of a problem to solve.   I have this sense that the simple solution 
advocated may promise but cannot deliver when the requirements become 
complex.  Are web services just a document management system writ large 
or can they enable a very wide distributed application that does more 
than post weblogs?

A crab moves but for the crab, sideways is forward.  When there 
are obstacles, that well may be so, so a survey of the terrain is in 
order to determine the path to a goal.  If the path has no goals 
that can be clearly expressed, then the direction is meaningless. 
This is as true for the web as for the crab.