REST Fanaticism. "The thing that annoys me most about the REST evangelists is that they can't explain what they're talking about in plain English." Julian Bond and I had a lively email exchange about REST and its proponents. I couldn't have said it better than Julian, who published his thoughts on Ecademy.
Posted Tuesday, June 04, 2002 2:31:23 PM   

Eric Newcomer's Book. The new Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI, is one of the best books I've found to date on web services. It sits half way between what I call the protocol books (you know: the O'Reilly sea-creature series) and strategy books such as the one I'm currently writing. What impressed me most was the book's thoroughness. Although it's clearly aimed at developers and includes a fair number of XML examples, the book contains few code listings. (When you're ready for that, you need the sea-creature books.) Instead, Understanding Web Services gives equal time to technology, standards, strategies and Eric's own perspectives on the offerings of the major vendors. (Eric is the CTO of IONA.) If you want to know what web services are all about, with an emphasis on the technologies, this is the place to start. I only wish this book had been available when I was ramping up.
Posted Saturday, June 01, 2002 12:06:52 AM   

The Elevator Pitch. Alan Kotok has written a five-paragraph introduction to web services for senior management. I'll have to buy a copy of his book on ebXML! [Source: Julian Bond at Ecademy.com]
Posted Monday, June 03, 2002 12:14:09 PM   

Video Intro to Web Services. Looking for another tool for explaining web services to your not-too-technical management? You might want to check out this 35-minute on-line multimedia presentation from ITworld.com. It's a video interview with Dana Gardner of the Aberdeen Group accompanied by 16 slides.
Posted Friday, May 31, 2002 6:04:29 AM   

Security. The May 27, 2002 issue of eWeek contains four articles on web-services security. This one by Timothy Dyck illustrates the issues by getting into the differences between the competing standards, SAML and WS-Security.
Posted Saturday, June 01, 2002 7:40:49 AM   

developerWorks Newsletter. "...from tools, to demos, from code to education, and from articles to white papers," IBM has re-organized their free newsletter, a good source of web-services info from many sources. Until they update the subscription page, you've got to select "Web Services Technologies Newsletter."
Posted Saturday, June 01, 2002 7:25:35 AM   

Integrated Service Environments. Shopping for an ISE (particularly in the J2EE world)? This Internet World article by Steve Benfield and Peter Fingar reviews the capabilities of ISEs and the criteria to use when selecting one. Caveat: Benfield is CTO of SilverStream, an ISE vendor.
Posted Friday, May 31, 2002 9:55:30 AM   

Craig Burton Back in the Game? He is according to Robert X. Cringely who wrote in his 5/13/02 InforWorld (hardcopy only) column that Craig, one of the co-founders of Novell, will become CEO of JanusLogix. The company is rumored to be developing XML routing and web-services mapping software due out later this year. Craig's weblog offers no clues, and what may become the JanusLogix website is nothing but an empty Manila page. Sure enough, the januslogix.com domain is registered to Craig and Judith Burton in Salt Lake City.
Posted Monday, June 03, 2002 10:09:42 PM   

Off-Net SLAs, one of my favorite topics, is covered in this Internet World case study. Aren't you tired of vendors who refuse to take responsibility for traffic beyond their own networks? What good is that? What percentage of your web-site visitors are directly connected to your web-hosting vendor's network?

Qwest has taken the first step by covering the performance of five of its competitors' backbones: AT&T, C&W, Genuity, Sprint and WorldCom/UUNet. Who will be the first vendor to cover all access networks? Think I'm crazy? No, it's easy. Like Qwest, you work with someone like Keynote Systems to track a composite measurement from many access points. The SLA only needs to guarantee the quality of connectivity relative to an industry average. (More on this in Chapter 10 of my book.)
Posted Monday, June 03, 2002 10:40:46 PM 

HostingTech is the best magazine covering the web-hosting industry. I recommend free subscriptions even for my clients who are web-hosting customers as well as vendors. You'll learn a lot, and the production of the magazine (paper, layout, etc.) is first rate.

Max Smetannikov, a top correspondents covering hosting, has a good article in the June 2002 issue entitled, "Get it right or get a lawyer; The not-so-fine line between bad hosting and fraud." Unfortunately it's not on line yet, but here's a marvelous quote:

Here is your apology. We are sorry that you are an impatient, sarcastic little worm. Let us know if there is anything else we can do to respond to your many character flaws.

That's an actual customer-service response from MatrixCubed Internet Services. And you thought your web-hosting service was bad!

Acquisitions Paying Off for Cable & Wireless. C&W, which accounted for less than 5% of the web-hosting market in 2000, is now battling with IBM Global Services for the top spot, analysts say. [Source: Network World Fusion]
Posted Sunday, June 02, 2002 11:48:57 PM   

Netcraft Web Server Survey. Mike Prettejohn has posted the results of his latest survey. Highllights:

• Micrsoft's IIS continues to gain on Apache.
• The acquisition of Dialtone Internet by Interland has created a company with over 141,000 IP addresses hosting web sites, placing it third behind Verio and Alabanza. Interland is the largest hoster of Windows 2000 sites on the Internet, while Dialtone emphasizes Linux.

The Commoditization Myth of Shared Web Hosting. At the Web Host Industry Review, guest analyst Shirley Siluk Gregory has eight tips for vendors of shared-server hosting to help them get above the noise level. "There are better ways to gain an edge, and to build staying power as hosting customers grow ever more savvy (read, hard to fool)."

They're also eight things to consider if you're in the market for shared-server hosting.
Posted Friday, May 31, 2002 2:57:33 PM   

I'll be giving two public presentations in San Francisco in June:

Keynote's Global Internet Performance Conference
June 11, 2002, San Francisco

Software Development Forum E-Business SIG
June 18, 2002, San Francisco

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