While the promise of Web services may be elaborate e-business applications
running on the Internet, the reality of the XML-based technology implementations
remains much more mundane, according to Bob Potter, executive vice president of
business operations at Iona Technologies, Waltham, Mass.
Namespaces are an Achilles' heel that leaves Web services vulnerable to hackers, says Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO at security software provider KaVaDo Inc.
Lack of a unified XML standard for wireless Web services may be holding back growth in the consumer sector, says Ken Waln, CTO at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Edify Corp.
Web services needs a "killer app" to move beyond internal integration, argues Nelson Carbonell.
Using components as part of a Web services architecture is a much younger concept, and one that most shops are not yet employing on a mission-critical basis.
A single point of corporate access to structured and unstructured data appeals to cautious IT managers. This demand is attracting the attention of IBM, Sun and Microsoft developers.
It is time to move beyond the pre-Web services model for security systems, contends Kerry Champion, president of Westbridge Technology Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up builder of XML firewalls.
Seeking to bring Web services integration to 'last-mile' desktop applications such as expense reporting, Boston-based Nobilis Software Inc. has unveiled Nobilis Ci, described as a low-cost process manager for Microsoft Office
applications.
Analysts from Gartner Inc. say IT development groups should be implementing Web services pilot programs by 2003 despite the flagging economy.
IBM today moved to boost Web services security with the unveiling of a set of tools that officials said can secure applications built using multiple technologies.
Cape Clear Software wants to speed Web services development by offering corporate users a real graphical editor without charge.
Observers predict that UDDI will likely move forward now that the standard
has its own technical committee at OASIS.
In a research paper on Web services testing, Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with Boston-based ZapThink, concluded that Web services testing has a long way to go to achieve quality assurance.
Trusting your development team to do their jobs, speaking the same language as your team and backing up your team are key attributes for managing software development efforts, according to a panel discussion at the XML and Web Services One Conference held last week in Boston.
Now that a new silver bullet has appeared on the scene -- XML and its Web services cousin -- what's to become of CORBA?