We did a
Web
Services announcement Friday, and while I’m not on
that team, I think it’s significant. Basically,
it says that we’re implementing enough of WS-* to interoperate with
Microsoft Indigo Windows Communications Foundation, and that the
implementations will be Open Source.
Let’s be blunt (and remember, I speak only for myself here): WS-* isn’t about
standards. It’s
about what Microsoft (there are partners, but it’s mostly Microsoft) chooses
to implement while
waving the WS-banner and retroactively shaking Standards Fairy Dust over the
process. Which is OK, as far as it goes; I get the impression that
Indigo WCF is actually some pretty neat software that will be useful to
a lot of Microsoft customers, and Sun has a stake in the ground saying we’re
going to interoperate with the Microsoft WS-stack. Do I think this stuff is
going to Change The World? No. Do I think that this is the real future of
Web Services? No. (I think the future looks like
Amazon Web Services or the
Atom
Publishing Protocol or even recent arrivals like the
Backpack API, even though Backpack
could be done with the Atom Protocol).
But I do think that WS-Microsoft-Interop is the right thing to do at the
moment. Oh, and by the way; if you’re one of the many many people grinding
away at one of the WS-inventions that hasn’t shown up already in this
interop story, well, there may be grounds for worry.
