Fingertip Computing: Smart world of web services

his month, in a surprisingly rare display of collaboration, three long-time, fierce technology big league rivals Microsoft, IBM and Verisign set aside bitter animosities and declared truce to work together to develop the next generation of bleeding edge Internet business services. The giants will work on a new security standard, WS-Security, for encoding and encrypting Web Services - the latest wave of innovation over the Internet. Unlike other buzzwords such as P2P snuffed out by the doctor doom, technologists are dead certain that web services have the staying power to bring about a complete turnaround in the way business is conducted on the Net and how people use the Internet. The service, tipped to be the next generator of demand in the IT marketplace is so significant that Gartner expects 75 per cent of all corporations, with more than $100 million, will use Web services internally by mid-2002.

Courtesy: McKinsey

Simply put, web services enable data exchange between network endpoints independent of underlying hardware operating systems, The most basic web services links servers over the Internet to exchange data and combine information in new ways. Instead of running on individual desktops these services run on Web-based servers, allowing end users to use them from any device that has internet access including cellular phones and handheld computing gadgets as well as desktop and notebook computers. Using a set of common protocols and standards, these applications permit disparate systems to speak to one another - without requiring human beings to translate the conversation. The result promises to be on the fly real time links among online processes of different companies and a user-friendly web for consumers. If the pieces fall in place, web services will dramatically alter online user experience through seamless integration of various service providers on the net The latest Sun Micro ad, for instance, recounts user experience in a fully evolved web services model. A traveller is late for her flight but her web agent has rebooked her airline, rescheduled her meetings, her car rentals and also announced the new arrival time to her hotel. While currently all this possible on the net, an internet user has to log on to various sites to avail each services. Web services hold the promise of seamlessly integrating these diverse services and delivering them on the user desktop or any other device, taking ubiquitous computing to new extremes.

The `technology is not fancy thinking. Neither is the idea new. For years, Sun Microsystems and Oracle have advocated this technology model, in which individual terminals have limited computing power and central servers store and deliver the software over a network. Hewlett-Packard was the first to champion Web services with its E-speak technology in mid-1999, but it went nowhere. Now, however, Microsoft has jumped on the web service bandwagon and aggressively promoting these services under the .Net umbrella; archrival Sun is campaigning for I-Planet and Novell is touting its One Net concept through aggressive ad campaigns. Also, the degree of serious cooperation between IBM and Microsoft and substantial investments by major vendors such as Oracle and SAP to upgrade software to support Web services are testimony that this new plug and play technology is not mere hype. The advantages it offers are manifold. Apart from bringing advantages of frictionless communication with various end users and service providers, web services will also help businesses to cut the amount of time and money needed for systems integration, the single biggest IT expense for most companies. Savings up to 20 per cent are possible through reductions in cost of developing interfaces among systems.

Jargon Buster
XML (Extensible Markup Language)	:	Language used to exchange data between computers over the Internet.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)	:	Describes how Web services communicate over the Internet.
WSDL (Web Services Description Language)	:	Describes Web services and how to access them.
UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)	:	Lets businesses register, advertise and find Web services in a directory.
Xlang (pronounced "slang")	:	Microsoft specification for XML-based language to describe business processes.
WSFL (Web Services Flow Language)	:	IBM's specification for describing how Web services work together to complete a business process.
XKMS (XML Key Management Specification)	:	Developed by Microsoft and VeriSign, it allows digital signatures and encryption in Web services programs.
SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)	:	Security and authentication spec created by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) group.
WSEL (Web Services Endpoint Language)	:	IBM-developed spec allows Web services to describe their features.
HTTP-R (Hypertext Transfer Protocol-Reliability)	:	Protocol proposed by IBM to ensure that messages sent across the Internet reach their intended targets.

For software applications, however, to talk to one another and deliver these services, a mature commonly accepted set of standards and protocols, which has industry wide support are critical. At the moment Web Services are based on four key standards: Extensible Markup Language (XML); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI); and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). XML, or Extensible Markup Language, the new lingua franca for web services, allows companies to exchange data more easily online. A versatile, descriptive language for writing structured data for storage and transport either into text files or directly over network protocols, it will replace HTML. The difference between the two being that HTML defines the elements of Web pages while XML describes the language used to define documents Unlike HTML which is limited to a finite set of tags to suit their needs, XML's ability to format data with flexible tags is extremely useful when data is exchanged between network endpoints. Last year, Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle and others put aside their competitive differences to agree on three Web standards related to XML. The standards are being submitted to Web standard bodies like Oasis and W3C. Interaction between various services will take place by using an open protocol SOAP. Initially Sun criticised it but has come around to accepting it. Microsoft, IBM and Ariba and Microsoft proposed a software development package called UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) to let businesses register in a web directory so that they can advertise their services and find each other easily. The search mechanism to find services in this directory will be Web Service Description Language.

The evolving agreement on standards could prove to be rather temporary. Sun, for instance, is staying out of the IBM, Microsoft and Verisign security alliance. Already software companies and industry groups are building a handful of competing standards to show how Web services work within and between businesses in specific areas such as credit cards and shipping. Microsoft and IBM have built competing languages called Xilang and Web Service Flow language respectively and industry groups such as Oasis and Business Process Management Initiatives are working on their own standards. Microsoft compares the effort to develop standard technologies to the history of railroad industry Whig started with competing railroad companies building trains that ran on different sized tracks. The standards that will eventually prevail will depend on the marketing muscle of the respective companies involved. Also, many of the deep vertical standards have a long way to finally establishing a common dialogue for the exchange of business to business communication.

The networked world present other challenges as well. Security standards are of prime importance since connecting to exposed web services interfaces over the Net will require new industry standards. To give users easy access to any number of web sites and services through a variety of devices and in a variety of roles, passwords and other user information will be stored in the form of Universal User Profile with a service provider such as Microsoft.Net Passport or AOL Magic carpet which obviously presents security challenges. Rival software and security companies, such as RSA Security, Entrust and VeriSign, are working on XML-based encryption and digital-signature standards through the W3C. Microsoft and VeriSign also have worked together to create XKMS, or the XML Key Management Specification--technology intended to help programmers easily add digital signatures and data encryption to their e-commerce applications. But these have a long way to go. Also whether users will be ready to pay for access of premium information services from any device remains a million-dollar question especially as in the past one year, mobile computing has lost much of its earlier sheen.

Despite the obvious roadblocks, web services promise to be a sunrise industry, as many of the standards and technologies involved are gradually falling into place. The basic infrastructure already exists and technologically its within the realm of the possible. Now, only if companies stop mutual bickering and infighting to deliver on the promise it holds!

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