November 30th, 2006
The good, the bad, and the ugly: WS-splat standards rated
How have the bewildering array of WS-* specs been faring as of late? Does anybody care?
Steve Jones cares a lot, and didn't mince any words in his latest critique of the WS-splats, separating the good from the bad and ugly.
Steve said that some basic fundamentals, such as WSDL, WS-Addressing, and WS-Policy are all good ideas that are shown to be working within Web services/SOA implementations.
He also has kind words for WS-BPEL 2.0, which has been knocked around as of late, noting that the spec just needs some human workflow. (The debate over BPEL was covered here a couple of months back.)
Among the ideas that could break either way (good and dumb) are:
Semantic Web Services may not be deployable on a practical level, Steve said. Decent front-end tools may may these level of services a reality.
UDDI "never realised its grand vision," Steve points out. "Sure, its still going inside some decent products but it clearly isn't the standard it was cracked up to be."
WSRF - Resource management threatens to make "resource state into some complex beast."
Steve considers the following to be DOA, or Dead on Arrival:
WS-Choreography "sounded so good, but just doesn't seem to have the weight behind it."
Web Service Quality Model also "sounded good… but has it gone anywhere?"
WS-Reliability et al sas "killed off by the better WS-RM standards."
WS-Contract and WS-SLA are both "missing in action."
And finally, Steve labels these WS-splats as "dangerous Ideas":
WS-TX introduces two-phase commit via Web services, and as a result, "people will expose this via the Internet and then wonder why they are having massive performance problems. If something is so closely bound in that it needs two-phase commit, then build it tightly bound, not using Web services."
WS-BusinessActivity "shifts logic around into the ether."
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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