CBDI Forum CBDI Web Services Roadmap. Guiding the transition to Web Services and SOA
 
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Web Services Roadmap for the On Demand Business cont'd

Components of Web Services Success

For IBM's customers, successful implementation of Web Services will likely revolve around three key areas

  • Web Service enabled products. Few new classes of products will be required to support Web Service delivery. However, upgrades to the latest releases or extensions are likely.

  • Application of Best Practices. Not only providing a quick start though patterns and frameworks, but also encapsulating the experience of IBM architects and consultants

  • Support of Professional Services. Providing additional resources, ready skilled in Web Services.

Software Products

As stated earlier, Web Services are core to IBM's software product strategy. The portfolio of products spans five brands which IBM is constantly upgrading to support the latest Web Service protocols and concepts. An overview of the current support for Web Services offered by IBM products is shown in Table 1 on page 5.

Brands and Key Products
Web Service Capabilities
DB2
DB2 Universal Database V8 XML Extender generates Web Services to query and update table data Publish stored procedures as Web Services
DB2 Information Integrator 8.1 Compose, transform and validate XML documents and data
Lotus - Provide collaborative Web Services
Lotus Domino 6 Subsumes WebSphere Application Server Web Services support Enable Web Service based collaboration in majority of IBM Lotus products including Notes, Domino, Workflow and Discovery Server.
Rational
Rational Rapid Developer Architected RAD based Web Service creation
Tivoli - Managing deployment and operation of Web Services
Tivoli Configuration Manager Installation and configuration of Web Services
Tivoli Access Manager Centralized policy management of Web Service applications
WebSphere - Develop, host, deploy and publish Web Services
WebSphere Application Server V5 Private UDDI Registry for publication
Web Service Gateway helps make internal Web Services available to a wider variety of consumers, both internal and external
Web Service Management (WSM) capabilities
Web Service Invocation Framework (WSIF) supports variety of transports
WS-Security support
Workflow with Web Services
WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition V5 Create Web Services from software assets such as JavaBeans and EJB, JCA adaptors, etc
Service Flow Editor
Workflow/Orchestration support
WebSphere Business Integration Web Service Connectors for WS Gateway, WSIF, process and message based WS connections
Web Services Application Adaptors
WebSphere Portal Support Remote Portlet Web Services (predecessor to OASIS WSRP)
WebSphere MQ 5.3 Assured delivery of Web Services using MQ transport
Provide and Consumer business processes activities as Web Services
WebSphere Commerce Subsumes WebSphere Application Server Web Services support
WebSphere SDK for Web Services 5 Self contained tools and deployment environment for Web Service environments
Support for latest Web Service protocols

Table 1 - Web Services Support from IBM Products

Alphaworks

Also of particular interest are the technology previews available via the IBM Alphaworks site that provide an early opportunity to examine a number of emerging tools, applications and frameworks that exploit Web Services protocols. Thought these cannot be used in production, we recommend looking at the technologies like those listed in Table 2 on page 6. These demonstrate that IBM is thinking beyond the basic Web Service platform provision and providing valuable functionality that enables the assembly of on demand infrastructure and applications.

Technology
Web Service Capabilities
Web Services Outsourcing Manager (WSOM) Framework that enables dynamic on demand composition of Web Service based business processes.
Emerging Technologies Toolkit (ETTK) Formally Web Services Toolkit Software development kit contains many utilities and tools for designing, developing, and executing Web services, as well as emerging autonomic and grid-related technologies.
Utility Web Services (in ETTK) For example, User Profile, Metering, Accounting, Contract, and Notification.
On Demand Service Grid (in ETTK) On Demand Service Grid: service broker that manages a heterogeneous group of service suppliers to provide services to multiple groups of consumers
Web Services Bus (in ETTK) Supports both the service requestor and service provider roles in a service oriented architecture. The Bus promotes separation of business logic from infrastructure, and provides format and protocol independent deployment and invocation of web services. This enables services exposed by a number of different component types to be used in a uniform manner.
Web Services Tool Kit for Mobile Devices Provides tools and run-time environments that allow development of applications that use Web Services on small mobile devices

Table 2 - Some Alphaworks Web Service Technologies for on demand

Delivering Best Practices

jStart

jStart is a team of IBM experts who help IBM's customers implement emerging technologies. The jStart program originated to support Java and now focused on Web Services. jStart commences activity early in the lifecycle of any new technology and often takes technology direct from the IBM labs and gives essential feedback to the labs on real world implementation. Consequently, both customers and IBM want to reduce risk and make sure their Web Service projects are successful. Partnership is seen as essential, and there must be mutual benefit to all.

Figure 1 - jStart Engagement Model (courtesy of IBM)

The program follows an engagement model illustrated in Figure 1. The jStart team work with business users and senior IT staff to stimulate thinking of how to use technology to benefit business and create opportunities where Web Services might best be applied. The jStart team seek to address real business problems - pure technology pilots are not of interest. The goal is to deliver success that is recognised by the business. In return, the business must agree to the publication of a reference case study.

At the end of phase III the decision to turn the project into reality must be made. At this point, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) will have been developed and 3 or 4 use cases that will be the basis of the Web Services are investigated in detail to scope out a pilot project. Working from the beginning to end, a typical project takes 45-60 days.

Today, jStart find that the typical project is focused on improving efficiency (as opposed to introducing new business ideas). In the current climate, projects to automate existing manual processes are popular for example.

IBM continues to improve the jStart program. For example they often find that on completion of the pilot due to its very nature the technology as already moved on. To address this they have now added a two day Web Service review workshop with the customer to consider the latest developments. At the time of writing that might mean considering WS-Security, BPEL, or the latest IBM tools. As well as increasing the focus on security during the rest of the year now that standards are stabilising, jStart are also working with customers to address Web Service provisioning. I.e., the delivery of commercial Web Services, Service Level Agreements, Web Service Management approaches, and other issues related to delivering Web Services on a commercial basis.

The jStart program certainly appears to be working, with an impressive number of Web Service case studies already published on the jStart site.

IBM Patterns for e-business

IBM has developed a number of patterns reflecting common e-business scenarios that provide an excellent starting point for IT architects. Many of the patterns have been documented in detail in the associated book, Patterns for e-business: A Strategy for Reuse, and in various Red Books available on-line.

IBM is now in the process of updating these patterns to reflect the use of Web Services where applicable. At this point no new patterns are envisaged but several existing ones, such as Extended Enterprise (B2B) or Application Integration, are being updated show where Web Services might be applied, and how they compare to alternative technologies that could be used. For example, they will provide guidance on delivering Service Level Agreements, Quality of Service, and security.

This is a useful first step in support of what we term "conversion" scenarios, i.e. applying Web Services to current application architectures. In future we would expect to see further patterns emerging to support "exploitation" scenarios, i.e. new on demand architectures that are only really feasible once the Web Service infrastructure is in place. For example, the dynamic discovery of new service providers, or support for autonomic computing.

Speed Start for Web Services

At the developer level, IBM has introduced the Speed Start for Web Services training and guidance program. This makes available to them trial versions of the latest IBM software development tools and middleware, online tutorials and articles, hands-on workshops and technical briefings, and an online forum moderated by IBM Web services experts.

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