Getting Started With Web Services — Breaking Through the Complexity

Research shows that increasing numbers of large companies are moving steadily toward the adoption of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) built on Web services as the basis of their next-generation application and integration environments. This whitepaper on getting started with Web Services shows how, before moving ahead full-bore with SOA implementations, these organizations are benefiting by deploying Web services first. By deploying Web services on an incremental basis, organizations can save themselves time and headaches – and ultimately simplify their migration path to SOA.

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Cost and Time-to-Market Benefits

Across the Global 2000, enterprise architects and SOA architecture committees are convening to study the requirements and future impact of SOA for their organizations. Concurrently, in these same organizations, application developers, project managers, and other departmental IT professionals are looking to Web services in the near-term as a means for cost-effective application or integration initiatives. Through small, targeted undertakings, these IT teams are realizing the cost and time-to-market benefits of Web services on a project scale.

Though they may seem contradictory, these two prongs of SOA adoption can, in fact, be complementary. The purpose of this document is to demonstrate that embarking on a service-oriented architecture for the delivery of successful Web services-based applications need not be a massive "all-or-nothing" undertaking. In fact, with a logical approach and the right set of enabling technologies, it is possible to deploy Web services in an incremental "step wise" fashion, providing powerful yet cost-effective solutions to today's tactical problems while laying the foundation for an overarching SOA roadmap for future growth.

Business Benefits of Web Services

The use of Web services offers significant business benefits for organizations of all sizes through their flexibility and ease of use, as well as the ability to freely reuse them once created. The power of Web services lies in their nature: the Web service interface is abstracted from its implementation. Simply put, the application requesting the Web service (i.e. the Web Service consumer) does not require any knowledge of that service's implementation; only the details of the interface are required. This enables the creation of loosely coupled applications that are defined only by the points at which they communicate.

In most organizations, a typical Web services initiative kicks off with one or two pilot programs, often point-to-point tactical implementations that are tightly focused on specific project goals. Inevitably, however, one pilot initiative is followed by another, and then another, the accelerated pace of development being a direct result of Web services ease of use. New systems are completed more quickly. Connections with customers (both internal and external), suppliers and partners are built and personalized with greater speed.

However, as Web services proliferate, so does the scope of managing all of the interactions that occur, from one end of the "service network" to the other (see diagram below) Web services dependencies can be direct, indirect or circular. Application modules will often both consume and provide Web services. Applications are assembled by leveraging services provided by modules that themselves may rely on services provided by other modules that themselves may rely on services provided by other modules… you get the picture

Web Services: Getting Started with Adoption. Shared services and applications are proliferating, enhanced and connected across the enterprise and across boundaries.

Web Services: Getting Started with Adoption. Shared services and applications are proliferating, enhanced and connected across the enterprise and across boundaries.

Complex: Web Services Touch Multiple Applications, Environments

Because Web services are designed to touch and connect multiple computing environments with great ease and efficiency, at some point these individual initiatives will start to overlap, creating new, unplanned relationships between services. If the intent is to allow a growing community of users (both internal and external) to share sets of services, one must take into account the varying needs related to their use of these services. For example, the way you provide an inventory level service to an internal department is likely to differ from the way you need to provide an inventory level service to business partners. Each will require different security contracts, different service level agreements (SLAs), and in many cases different sets of information. In fact, it's even possible that the information will come from two different locations, transparent to the interface. This simple illustration demonstrates the inevitable need to move beyond simple point-to-point connections and allow for services to be used in different ways by varying and disparate users. The flexibility that Web services allow introduces a significant element of complexity, and with complexity comes cost.

Web Services Management: Key to Realizing Returns

Many organizations now realize that Web services on their own will not deliver the anticipated ROI. In fact, the Gartner Group estimates that over 70 percent of all Web services projects fail to meet expectations. This failure rate is primarily due to the inability of Web services projects to achieve adequate cost and responsiveness benefits. Without taking the additional costs of managing growing sets of shared services into account, a Web Service project's anticipated return on investment can be greatly overstated and miscalculated. In fact, the cost of change- and operations-management can easily dwarf the cost of development, which can lead to falsely set expectations and, ultimately, project failure.

Conclusion: Incremental Expansion and Service "Recycling"

Progress Actional offers Web services management and SOA solutions that enable organizations to capture the benefits of a Web services architecture, beginning with small, simple deployments of individual components and supporting their recycling and expansion as the network of shared services grows to enterprise scale. Read on to learn more about getting started with Web services. This tutorial covers the following topics:

For More Information

Take the fast-track approach to getting starting with Web Services and SOA: read the free white paper, SOA Introduction: IT and Business Perspectives