Monday  2004-10-18   Web of Services

Historical social software

Like most Internet phenomena, the latest fad "social software" has been around for a while -- Christopher Allen presents a detailed timeline of social software.

 
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Wednesday  2004-06-09   Web of Services

Not Witty

There was nothing to laugh about Witty worm:

Witty represents a new generation of malcode: written by a motivated, skilled, and malicious individual. Witty's author is the first to combine both skill and substantial malice. The author had some motive which lead, for him, to desire a destructive effect. Witty was written by an expert and, unless caught, he could do it again.

Ironically, Witty was made possible due to a buffer overflow in a security product. Another step down the path of losing the Internet? [via Bruce Schneier and boingboing]

 
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Sunday  2004-01-18   Web of Services

Undemanded computing

Lately all the big firms of computer industry have taken up "on demand, seamless, ubiquitous, autonomous, utility, organic, real-time" computing made up with web services and grids computing. Problem is that none of it is true today and tomorrow and next year. Indeed, "it is tempting to conclude that the current marketing hype of the big computer firms is meant mostly to obscure the humdrum reality that overall tech spending will not regain the fizz of the bubble era any time soon."

 
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Sunday  2003-11-02   Web of Services

Data follows jobs

While David Lazarus' recent columns about outsourcing and privacy in San Francisco Chronicle below are not directly related to technology of web of services, they nevertheless illustrate privacy, consumer safety, intellectual property and trade relations problems that web of services faces as it becomes more tangled and widespread by technology.

• "A tough lesson on medical privacy - Pakistani transcriber threatens UCSF over back pay"
• "Privacy takes a backseat"
• "A politician who reads the papers"
• "BofA to send tech work, data to India"
• "SBC quietly spins off jobs to India"

 
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Thursday  2003-10-02   Web of Services

More than enough? More to come?

OASIS lists following specifications and standards activities related to coordination of messages/transactions, especially in the Web Services arena:

• Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)
• Business Transaction Protocol (BTP)
• OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol TC
• OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF) Technical Committee
• W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group
• Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI)
• Web Service Composite Applications Framework (WS-CAF)
  • Web Service Context (WS-CTX)
  • Web Service Coordination Framework (WS-CF)
  • Web Services Transaction Management (WS-TXM)
• Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL)
• Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL)
• Web Services Transaction Framework
  • Web Services Atomic Transaction (WS-AtomicTransaction) [replaces WS-Transaction-V1, Part I]
  • Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination) [Version 2]
  • Web Services Business Activity (WS-BusinessActivity) [to replace WS-Transaction-V1, Part II]
  • Web Services Transaction (WS-Transaction) [Version 1]
  • Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination) [Version 1]
• WS Choreography
• Related Work (not further abstracted or referenced):
  • Business Process Management Initiative Specifications (BPML, BPMN, BPQL)
  • Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS), including:
    • ebXML.org [ebBPSS] and Business Process Specification Schema v1.01
    • UN/CEFACT Business Process Specification Schema Project and UN/CEFACT's ebXML BPSS V1.09 Review Draft
  • OMG Business Process Definition
  • Workflow Standard XML Process Definition Language (XPDL)
  • Web Services Flow Language (WSFL)
  • XLANG

Jeff Schneider (from whom we found the list above) says "Ok, enough is enough."

Update: A summary of current state of various standards from W3 mailing list. [via Web Services Strategies]

 
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Sunday  2003-08-03   Web of Services

QoS

Internet2 folks like QoS. Dan Bricklin argues that the Internet does not need QoS.

 
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Wednesday  2003-07-30   Web of Services

UBF and streaming XML

Nobody can recall just how many times various people called for binary XML over the years. If waiting for w3.org's deliberation on this matter is not an option, consider the following alternatives:

• UBF(A) - Universal Binary Format for data transport.
• XML stream for effcient transport and processing of XML.

Or as many people have pointed out just use gzip.

 
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