Web Services Management

by Tom Welsh

When Web services were first mooted, their overriding virtue was understood to be simplicity. There was to be just one specification, which would be short and trivially easy to implement. Anyone with a technical bent could quickly hack up some Web services to expose their peculiar stock in trade to the world at large. This idyll did not long outlast the initial encounter with Microsoft and its various technical departments. IBM's subsequent participation did more than hammer the last nail into the coffin of simplicity -- Big Blue approached the job gleefully, with a power screwdriver and several dozen chrome-plated bolts.