WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

As I observe in my Clippings page, Alan Williamson refers to my comments at Web Services Edge East in his piece in JDJ. While I agree with his assertion that Java is only now coming alive, I disagree with Alan's analysis of my motives in trying to define a semantic framework for the term 'Web services'. I find I still need to propose a framework because it is used so diversely. I wasn't clarifying Sun's position; rather, I was clarifying the widely acknowledged fact in the industry that every vendor has a different position and using the term indiscriminately causes confusion.
In the context of most panel discussions, I believe the first thing a moderator should do is get the participants to explain their use of the term; do they mean the general concept of program-to-program communications using XML, as the W3C defines the term, or do they mean use of specific protocols from the set {SOAP,WSDL,UDDI,WSCI...}, or are they referring to a particular application template such as EAI, service publishing, portal integration, supply chain integration etc? Until we develop a richer phrasebook for this semantic landscape, it will continue to be necessary to define the terms if vendor bias is to be avoided.

posted at 3:41 PM (UK) | |