Reality of web services a long way off

At least 200 interoperability issues need to be addressed before web services can become a reality, according to research conducted by industry body the Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I).

WS-I was set up in February by software and hardware suppliers including Microsoft, IBM, Intel and SAP to tackle web services interoperability issues.

Norbert Mikula, director of web services technology at Intel, and WS-I vice chairman, said: "We're looking at interoperability across the whole web services stack.

"That includes the Simple Object Access Protocol, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and XML. So far we have identified 200 interoperability issues with basic web services."

Although Mikula warned that many of the issues revolved around the interpretation of terms, standard definitions would be key to success.

By the end of the year, WS-I hopes to produce a basic profile for developers with instructions on how to implement web services in a way that makes them interoperable.

The group is also working on testing tools for interoperability and sample web services applications. "We want to make sure that everything gets driven by business requirements," Mikula stressed.

He explained that performance issues are also proving to be a stumbling block, particularly for high volume transactions, and said that security concerns are still holding many companies back from adoption.

Intel is also a founding member of security committee the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, which is working to develop security specification standards for web services.

Keith Uebele, a member of the web services strategy team at Intel, said: "By web services we mean applications communicating with other applications via web standards.

"What Intel can do across its entire range of processors is to encourage interoperability to give a new value for developers and users of web services.

"We have to stop focusing on hardware, and the software that runs on the hardware, and instead focus on the overall solution."