Web Services Strategies
Beyond the technology, IT strategies for implementation of Web services by Doug Kaye.
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The Elusive ebXML. Am I the only one having trouble getting my arms around ebXML? I have the feeling there's too much process-talk here, but I guess that's what it's all about. I spent most of a year (1973) working at the United Nations in New York, and I can almost taste the UN-style bureacracy that must be involved with UN/CEFACT's development of these standards.
As much as the ebXML proponents claim they're seeing widespread adoption, it's my impression that although IBM's Bob Sutor was involved with the original development of ebXML, IBM and Microsoft still aren't committed. In some ways, ebXML and some aspects of web services seem to be evolving in parallel rather than converging. For instance, there appear to be four competing business-process protocols: XLang (Microsoft), WSFL (IBM), BPML (Sun and BEA) and BPSS (ebXML).
Some resources:
- ebXML Primer. Sean Gallagher (Baseline) has put together one of the best summaries. Print the PDF file to get the whole thing.
- Eric Knorr (ZDNet) has written a few good articles including ebXML: A B2B Standard on Hold ("Sun is the only big technology company still pushing ebXML"), and Web Services Meet Process Management ("Rumor has it that IBM and Microsoft may be collaborating on a hybrid of XLang and WSFL.")
- In Overview of ebXML Specifications (from September, 2001), Sun's Lori Houston presents just that: a readable intro to the many elements of ebXML. But here's a clue: "Like any standards effort, ebXML is a work in progress."
- Dieter Jenz is perhaps the most prolific ebXML proponent. His article, "Where are we with ebXML? presents a somewhat different introductory perspective. Dieter, the eternal optimist, says, "Without any doubt, industry leaders such as IBM, Sun Microsystems and Oracle will follow."
- And then there's the ebXML specifications, and a good place for tracking ebXML progress.
One thing I've gleaned from these and other articles is that ebXML, having evolved from EDI, appears to be strictly a document-exchange concept. There don't seem to be any facilities for transactions or remote procedure calls. Am I right?
Posted Thursday, May 30, 2002 9:23:50 AM 
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App Servers Want to Be Free. "The market has been expecting the commoditisation of the application server space for some time. HP has been giving away its product for some months and now Sun is doing the same with its core capabilities. It can only be a short time before IBM follows suit but it is questionable whether BEA can afford to do the same." [The Register]
Posted Thursday, May 30, 2002 7:59:58 AM
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Application Firewalls. One advantage of using HTTP as the transport for web services is that IP ports 80 and 443 (for SSL) are often already "open" through corporate firewalls. But it's a two-way street, and web services hosted on these ports are, therefore, easy to reach (and hack) from the outside world. One solution is the development and deployment of application-layer firewalls: devices that look deeper into packets in order to determine their legitimacy. Two recent articles:
- eWeek: "Developers such as RSA Security Inc., Oblix Inc. and even networking manufacturer Cisco Systems Inc. are starting to take a more holistic approach to security with new products that address key Web services security matters."
- Gartner: "By 2004, 30 percent of all buffer overflow attacks will be carried over HTTP tunneling."
Posted Thursday, May 30, 2002 7:58:14 AM
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