Outlook 2001: Software Players Pin Hopes On Web Services

Software giants have seen the future. And it's defined by Web services. Whether it's an online marketplace for construction equipment, or a corporate portal that integrates a travel agent's online services, the next generation of business tools will continue to exploit the power (and the reach) of the Internet.

All that's missing? An enthusiastic customer base, and standards that will govern how disparate systems and applications will work together.

"People who've never thought of having something like a Web service before are not suddenly having this epiphany and deciding to get into it," said Mike Gilpin, an analyst at Giga Information Group, Cambridge, Mass.

And while development continues on a series of XML-based proprietary schemes--from UDDI and WSDL to XAML and SOAP--2001 may come and go before anything resembling a real standard emerges. That means the kind of tightly integrated, multi-platform Web services that vendors are promising could be even farther off.

As Giga analyst Uttam Narsu put it: "This stuff is all like sand at the moment."

At the moment. Narsu added that things are definitely taking shape. "Next year," he said, "you'll probably see a real solidification."

What's more, a host of new development tools that can leverage these developing standards are on the way. And that's bound to ease the job of programmers charged with creating the next generation of Web services.

So which players are at the forefront? Giga analyst Mike Gilpin tabbed IBM (stock: IBM) and Microsoft Corp. (stock: MSFT).

They "tend to be closest to what I would consider the true flame" of Web services, he said.

IBM is offering the Web Services Toolkit through its Website for a free 90-day trial. It works in a runtime environment and furnishes examples of how to design and execute Web services. The tools help move SOAP messages over MQSeries, IBM's messaging middleware. They can also be used to modify Enterprise JavaBeans, a component model for Java-based applications.

The toolkit will be incorporated in IBM's VisualAge development software in the first half of next year. That's also when IBM's WebSphere application server will support Web services.

Meanwhile, Microsoft served up its first public test version of Visual Studio.Net in November. The tools can be used to build Web-based apps and services on Windows. The test version is free, and the final release is expected in the second half of next year.

IBM and Microsoft aren't alone, but they are following emerging standards. Oracle Corp. (stock: ORCL) is following the beat of its own drummer.

The vendor's Oracle 9i Dynamic Services software, which is available now, helps developers build Web services on the company's 8i and 9i databases.

But it "really has no specific association with SOAP technology or any of the other acronyms," Gilpin said. Oracle is taking "more of a maverick approach, like they typically do," he said.

Still, if history is any indication, Oracle might very well embrace standards if there's customer demand, Gilpin said.

But customer demand seems tough to pin down. Right now, enterprises do not see a compelling reason to adopt new architectures, experts said.

To date, interest has been limited to companies like travel agencies, which would like to offer their services in a more standardized way over the Web. And to a certain extent they're already doing that with what Gilpin referred to as "other less standardized mechanisms."

One of those is UDDI (Universal Discovery Description and Integration). It defines how a service can be found on the Web. Another is WSDL (Web Services Description Language), which attempts to standardize how a service and its provider are described.

UDDI creators Microsoft, IBM, and Ariba Inc. (stock: ARBA) have deployed UDDI registries. Several dozen other companies, including Oracle, Sun Microsystems Inc. (stock: SUNW), and Hewlett-Packard Co. (stock: HWP), back UDDI and have joined in developing the specification, which is expected to be turned over to a standards body within a year.

IBM and Microsoft are also involved in WSDL, which is now under review by the UDDI consortium. It plans to submit the specification to a standards body as well.

Another Microsoft-IBM backed scheme is SOAP. It describes how to use XML-formatted messages to make a request from an application and to respond to that request. SOAP is platform-neutral, which means it doesn't matter whether the application is running on Microsoft's Windows 2000 or Sun's Solaris operating systems.

The Worldwide Web Consortium is evaluating SOAP in its XML Protocol Working Group. But officials said that while the spec is important to the working group, it's not guaranteed to emerge as a standard.

Some of the same big names are behind XAML (Transaction Authority Markup Language), including HP, IBM, Oracle, and Sun. XAML basically puts the brakes on transactions involving multiple Web services should one of the apps fail. This ensures that an incomplete transaction is not recorded in a corporate system.

The companies plan to have a specification ready for public review by mid-2001, at which time it will be turned over to a standards body.