Comment We've built multi-platform web services (Score 2) 124
My company builds web-based transportation supply chain management & shipment tracking solutions. We started developing web services early on in their lifecycle; basically, as soon as we determined that XML as the Interprocess Communications Language appeared to be achieving the position of the defacto standard.
Web services, with or without MS are a great idea. They work, and they are platform independent if written to be since you write web services for your own host. The problem is the same as that of email -- finding someone who has published a service you're interested in using. This requires routing services like DNS.
BTW, the only real similarity between web services and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is that both communicate via electronic medium and target enterprise-to-enterprise communication, and potentially back-office integration (B2B).
We have production web services running on IBM's OS/400, Microsoft's Windows NT, OpenBSD and Red Hat Linux at present; language and platform are non-issues.
Using web services allows companies to develop services that connect and exchange data without having to know about who'll use those services now or in the future (excepting only secure information access restriction issues).
Web services are the only vehicle that I've seen that offers a plausible (i.e. acceptable) solution to implementing a distributed object model on a global scale that connects both known and, currently, unknown data requesters.
They're easy to implement and highly useful. Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Okay, 'nuff said!
Web services, with or without MS are a great idea. They work, and they are platform independent if written to be since you write web services for your own host. The problem is the same as that of email -- finding someone who has published a service you're interested in using. This requires routing services like DNS.
BTW, the only real similarity between web services and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is that both communicate via electronic medium and target enterprise-to-enterprise communication, and potentially back-office integration (B2B).
We have production web services running on IBM's OS/400, Microsoft's Windows NT, OpenBSD and Red Hat Linux at present; language and platform are non-issues.
Using web services allows companies to develop services that connect and exchange data without having to know about who'll use those services now or in the future (excepting only secure information access restriction issues).
Web services are the only vehicle that I've seen that offers a plausible (i.e. acceptable) solution to implementing a distributed object model on a global scale that connects both known and, currently, unknown data requesters.
They're easy to implement and highly useful. Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Okay, 'nuff said!
