ServersThe Web Services Value Chain Page 3

The Web Services Value Chain Page 3

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By Jean-Christophe Cimetiere of TechMetrix Research

These four technologies are closely linked, although on closer inspection we can highlight the two basic standards that have led to the Internet’s success: HTTP and XML.

Of the four standards, the least interesting is UDDI. Although it aspires to be the absolute, universal distributed repository for finding and using Web services, UDDI has little chance of actually becoming part of the game. Its ambitions are too broad, and certainly not appropriate for what enterprises are likely to need.

This does not mean there is no need for Web service repositories, but enterprises may need private and custom repositories to truly manage their relationship with partners.

A Web service is in fact just a resource, and hence it can be easily referenced, controlled, and secured using existing technologies such as LDAP directories. So UDDI is definitely not the key element here.

One technical initiative involving Web services that is worth keeping an eye on is XAML (http://www.xaml.org/). XAML is self-described as: “Transaction Authority Markup Language (XAML), a vendor-neutral standard that enables the coordination and processing of online transactions in the rapidly emerging world of XML Web services.”

Besides these technical standards, various industry-related initiatives such as ebXML, RosettaNet, and Biztalk.org are out there. Each one is different, but all share a common goal: to automate e-business transactions through a set of standard technologies (mainly XML). For now though, SOAP and WSDL are actual specifications that do the job, and numerous products already include implementations of these standards, creating a new category of products that we have labeled Web services servers.

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