Jeffrey Payne

The technology world is abuzz with talk of Web services. Code warriors and suits alike are touting it as the next big thing. The incorruptible Apache Software Foundation has spawned a whole top-level project dedicated to it. Yet, I'd venture a guess that relatively few of us completely understand the concept - and even fewer sense an immediate need to dive right in. Perhaps this is because Web services is pitched in fuzzy marketing language (from which it's difficult to extract anything concrete), most of which focuses on applying Web service technology in the consumer market and in B2B transactions. These are real applications and will likely become ubiquitous in the years ahead, but the immediate utility of Web services lies elsewhere. The most exciting concrete thing a... (more)