The Essential Guide to Web Services

Even when it comes to applicationintegration, Web services aren'talways a good choice. Let's say a company wants to link two softwareofferings developed by the same vendor. There may not be any reason touse Web services, Hein says, since those packages probably alreadyknow how to communicate with each other.

Likewise, Hein says, the Web services approach isn't necessary if acompany is able to dictate certain key parameters that software onboth ends of the transaction will use. In other words, if softwaredevelopers agree that both of the applications to be integrated speakFrench, there's no reason for them to speak Esperanto. And Hurwitz'sQuinn notes that if the applications in question have already beenintegrated in one way and "you have a new integration requirementbetween these applications, it would probably not make sense to useWeb services. After all, you already have the integration facility andexpertise in place."

Another drawback is that today, Web services standards just can'tdeliver the same guaranteed, high-level, bulletproof performance thatyou'd get from traditional business applications. Until they do, youwon't want to use Web services in a situation where transaction speed,reliability and security are of the essence. Vendors are working onnew specifications to address these weaknesses, but it could beanother 18 months before such specifications become standards and getmore broadly adopted, Hein says.

What is your role in planning a web servicesstrategy?

OK, if you're not a programmer, you'll probably never have to write alick of XML. But there are a few things you can do to help get yourcompany ready for Web services.