Friday, September 01, 2006

Web Services Issues

Andrew Ferrier links to an article by Andre Tost about Web Services issues.

I'm glad to see somebody senior (and credible) talk about this subject. If you're working on any project that is using web services today, you need to read this article.

It's all good but if you want to stand any chance of getting something working on a real project, I suggest you pay attention to points 1) and 3).

Firstly, not all web services are created equal and, while you don't need a mandatory corporate standard (e.g. "always use doc/lit wrapped"), you do need to know what kinds of web services you're using and how your tooling supports them.

Secondly, keep it simple: just because WSDL or XSD allows you to do something really obscure and cool, don't be tempted: the closer you stick to the mainstream, the greater the chance that your tools (no doubt provided by multiple different vendors) will be able to interoperate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I assume 'somebody senior and credible' is Andre, not me :)