What Are Web Services, One More Time

On the Internet, confusion reigns on the subject of Web Services.  Every time I read another article I find reporters, users, and vendors participating in Web Services double talk.

There is, after all, an “official definition” of Web Services.

We use this one:

Web Services are an approach to application development through the assembly of reusable components, which may be distributed across a network, including the Internet.  The services must be built to the Open Standards SOAP, UDDI, and WDSL. 

You may find an intelligent discussion of Web Services definitions in The Stencil Group’s newsletter at http://www.stencilgroup.com/ideas_scope_200106wsdefined.html.

The problems may be easy to understand but are no less annoying for the understanding.

1. The term “web service” was in use before it was appropriated to have the meaning of a new architecture.  It meant (and is still often used to mean) any service (not in the computer sense, but rather in the business or consumer sense –i.e., goods and services) delivered across the web.  Often both meanings are used in the same article.
   
   

2. Web Services (the new technology) has become a hot product area.  That means vendors are using the term attached to everything they ship.  Hardware becomes “Web Services Ready.”  Software becomes “Web Services Aware or Compatible” when it’s not yet “Native Web Services.”  Unfortunately, everyone can (and often does) mean something slightly different.  This will get better as interoperability standards begin to be released and mature “real” Web Services products supplant the place holders, but it’s pretty confusing.   
   
   
   Also, it leads journalists to write articles that say “Web Services are just a bunch of vaporware,” because the things they’ve looked at either aren’t really Web Services (see definition) or they’re announcements of future plans.  Emotions can run high in these exchanges.  You might want to see what we wrote in our Weblog recently.  See www.amywohl.weblogger.com for March 22 and March 26, 2002. 
   
    

3. Some vendors seem to think it’s a marketing strategy to say “What I am offering is really Web Services.  What the other guy is offering isn’t.”  This isn’t useful and customers and analysts tend to put a big question mark through these kinds of claims.

WS-I, customer/vendor interaction in the marketplace, and time will sort the Web Services definitions out.  In the meantime, we need to be careful in our reading to note just what the writer is actually talking about – and careful in our writing to make our intentions clear.

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