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"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:
>
> Actually, making a COM-based Web Service interface
> to our current database is a button click operation
> today. Visual Foxpro supports it.
Is that really a Web Service? What are the security implications? How
will you handle authentication? How will you handle extensibility and
interface management? How well does the performance scale? What caching
policies does it support? Will your security team let it work across the
firewall? How will it integrate with other web services? How will they
integrate with it? What business processes does it fit into? What are
the legalities of the business documents you are processing.
If you're looking for a new wire syntax for COM then SOAP is just fine.
But we were told that web services were going to solve new problems. I
said myself. "CORBA? Sure it's fine. But we're solving new problems.
DCOM? Fine. But we're solving new problems. RMI? New problems. EDI? New
problems." Now we're touting our ability to solve the old problems as
evidence of progress.
After two years of, er, abuse of self, we can make network-accessible
interfaces for our existing, already network-accessible objects but we
are no closer to solving any business problems.
I still intend to make good on the promises and I intend to do so using
the strategy we touted before we got distracted by SOAP: *X* *M* *L*
business documents, tied together by hyperlinks, manipulated within
business processes using off the shelf protocols.
Paul Prescod
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