Serving Up SOAP

摘要

If you plan to implement Web services, you need two things: an environment in which to develop them, and a platform on which to deploy them. Choosing can be tricky―a lot more complicated than deciding between Sun Microsystems' J2EE (Java 2, Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft's .Net. On one side of the table are extensions to existing application servers from Apache, BEA Systems, IBM, Novell and Sun. On the other side are the platforms―products from Cape Clear Software, Iona Technologies and Systinet Corp. designed to stand on their own or reside on an existing J2EE-compliant application server. And sitting in the middle is Microsoft with its own flavor of Web services built into Windows Server 2003. Web services platforms tend to focus solely on providing Web services capabilities, which result in a more robust and complete implementation. Because they can all be deployed into existing J2EE application servers, the benefits of an application-server implementation of Web services―clustering, load bal- ancing, database connection pooling―also can be achieved. The disadvantage with this approach is one of administration and support. A single-vendor setup often is more desirable in a complex environment, but the flexibility offered by platforms may be too sweet to pass up. Microsoft's solution offers little flexibility―it's Redmond's way or the highway, of course―but it has ease of use and familiarity on its side, making it a hard act to follow.