Comment Articles

Waking up from the Web services dream

David Berlind ZDNet.com

Published: 19 Jan 2004 16:15 GMT

What did you do for the holidays? Did you visit the relatives? How about skiing or snowboarding? Or maybe you raided your local retailers the day after Christmas. Not me. For a better part of my holidays, I sat glued to my notebook preparing my custom-developed, editorial constituent relationship management system for its next architectural revolution.

With my project, which I described in a previous column, I'm at the point that most projects reach where I'm trying keep my future technology options as open as possible. At the same time, I'm realistic about the fact that some decisions I'm about to make will lead me past the point of no return with some technologies, products or vendors.

Data, mobility and collaboration are the biggest sources of my angst. Ultimately, the most difficult challenge has to do with making sure that anyone (especially me) who wants access to the data not only has that access, but also has the most recent version, even when they're mobile.

In theory, Web services, which make it possible to integrate systems that previously had difficulty integrating with each other (such as a Java-based handheld with a .Net-wrapped SQL Server database), can underpin an anytime, anywhere, any device dream. That's in theory, however.

The more I sink my teeth into the architecture of my project, the more I realise that its greenfield nature has given me the luxury of minimising the amount of dissimilar system integration that's necessary. I should select technologies that are or will eventually be Web services-enabled to allow for interoperability down the road. For now, picking technologies that are designed to work together is the path of least resistance and more importantly, fewest headaches. Web services may serve as an insulation layer between systems that can't natively talk to each other, but they're also a layer of complexity I can do without for now.

Another problem with the Web services approach is the role that the network plays. When I first got excited about Web services, the architecture I had in mind was one central database that was accessible from multiple clients including handhelds and desktops via the Internet. There would be one copy of the data, and synchronisation wouldn't be an issue because all clients would be working with real-time data. When I woke up from that dream, I realised that I spent far too much time working with my notebook or my handhelds in places where there's no network, much less the Internet.