XML Web Services: Means to an End 27
An anonymous reader writes "For the second day in a row at the XML Web Services One conference here, a keynote speaker got up and signaled the impending end to the Web services era, at least on a standards level. Don Box, an architect in Microsoft Corp.'s developer division told an audience of Web services conference attendees Wednesday: 'The end of the XML Web services era is near. I predict two years from now we won't have this conference.'"
More precisely... (Score:5, Informative)
to quote:
Box said XML Web services are a means to an end. "We have to get the plumbing sorted out," he said. "We have a couple more years of plumbing work, but after that we move on to applications," he said. Box said the "protocol work is starting to wind down, the infrastructure is catching up with protocols and it's time to start thinking about applications."
and...? (Score:1, Funny)
That writeup looks awfully familiar... (Score:1)
But I digress.
The web services model looks like the Application Service Provider model of yesteryear. MS isn't stupid, but sometimes they are pointed in the wrong direction. The future isn't in remote computation (like Ellison's been trying to push since forever), but in more powerful personal computers and more computational power in every device and the technology to tie them all together. It's going to stop being the software makers that dictate the progress of technology and go back into the hardware makers' hands.
And who stands to benefit? Consulting shops that specialize in device integration.
Re:That writeup looks awfully familiar... (Score:1)
No, because the devices won't necessarily need the web to communicate. What with all the DRM crap that's going on now, it's possible that a largescale segregation of devices will happen resulting in mini networks of devices that only interact with devices from the same manufacturer. The future doesn't lean towards openness.
Thinking about applications (Score:3, Interesting)
This quote sums up Web Services for me. The infrastructure/concept is okay
A relative works for MS (partly promoting Web Services) and keeps telling me that we should consider creating Web Service applications and/or converting existing applications to Web Services. My standard answer is that we can't afford to run Microsoft products on remote servers, both practically and financially. But of course the real reason is that I don't want to
Re:Thinking about applications (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm also glad someone else noticed that the article isn't really predicting the end of web services, but rather the fact that it will be a fixed standard a few years from now, and developers won't even be thinking about it when they write their applications to run over the Internet. It's kind of like not having to have HTTP conventions these days, not that I'm aware of those ever happening before
Re:Thinking about applications (Score:1)
I didn't know it ever started (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, bring on the next over-hyped technology. I'll just keep developing Web apps the same way I always have
still seem pretty solid to me
Read between the lines... (Score:5, Funny)
Creating Apps Now (Score:1, Insightful)
The people who have to get disparate systems to speak are doing this now, sometimes without the aid of these standards.
To get single sign on to work for just one entity (one company) and tie applications hosted sometimes remotely, sometimes on the same box you have to start now, or you will be forever patching systems together in myriad different ways and protocols. XML does work.
How much do the SOAP standards and current XML parsers help when it comes to security? to formalizing a standard set of data types? to encapsulating query type data for different systems? not much...
I have found that using parsers from companies supposedly "moving awfully fast" in this arena is perilous at best, and at worst, simply impossible because they don't parse.
XML/SOAP is here to stay, and gaining ground as far as covering the necessary topics, but the business of getting work done will go on without the benefit of the standards.
I agree, web services is over (Score:4, Informative)
XWT [xwt.org] is the way to go these days. OS-agnostic, clear and simple separation of UI and business logic and totally, wholly extensible. I love this software.
Re:I agree, web services is over (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I agree, web services is over (Score:2)
[xwt] ?and slow as molasses.
I don't know what systems you're running it on but it's as fast as any win32 or linux app I run...
Re:I agree, web services is over (Score:1)
My Favorite Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My Favorite Quote (Score:1, Troll)
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Spin out of proportion (Score:2)
Forgive me, but isn't calling Web Services an "era" rather overstating their importance? Certain parties, not only MS, have been pushing this idea for a few years now, but it's never really caught on, and for a very good reason: much of the development world has no use for them, gains no benefit from them, and so couldn't care less about them.
One might reasonably argue that the use of COM-related technologies was an "era" in the Microsoft development world, since they gained reasonably widespread usage in the industry and lasted a while. And yet now, as MS pushes their latest and greatest, we have former COM proponents such as Don Box coming out and saying (not just in this article, but all over the place) that COM was never really any good. I think that makes it quite clear how important, or otherwise, "keynote" speeches by Microsoft spin doctors -- and the subjects they discuss -- really are.
Re:Spin out of proportion (Score:2)
Too bad I can't use my mod points on a thread I'm posting on; that was worth a (+1, Funny) any day. :-)
But seriously... I'd like to know exactly what Petzold says. After all, he was the API man, not really an MFC advocate, a la Kruglinski et al. And while MFC is a prime example of how not to do good OO, it has proven to be a good, pragmatic solution for many developers, as witnessed by the number of projects that have shipped based on it. I'm always a bit hesitant to criticise on theoretical grounds a tool that has proven to be useful in practice.