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Web services turns four years old in 2004, and I think that most people who have been following the technology will agree that progress has been made at the fast rate once dubbed "Internet time." This should not be surprising, because Web services is the second generation of how we use the Web to connect things. This time, we"re not connecting you with Hypertext Markup Language Web pages; we"re connecting your business applications with those of your customers, partners and suppliers.
What this enables is distributed computing on a very wide scale.
It is also an important component of the architecture that allows an organization to respond quickly to customer demands and capitalize on new market opportunities in secure and reliable ways.
Still, the picture remains incomplete.
Since we"re starting a new year, here"s my wish list for what I"d like to see in Web services in the next 12 months:
Widespread adherence to the Web Services Interoperability Organization"s Basic Profile for Web services I often hear people talk about the significance of standards, but I don"t think that that"s the intended focus. Standards are critically important in this industry, but I think that what people are really after is interoperability, a by-product of standards support.
If I develop my Web service so that it complies with the Basic Profile, I will significantly increase the odds that you can talk to my Web service and it talks back to you in the way you expect.
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