SD West 2004, Monday Update
The first day of SD West 2004 has gone very well. I've spent the day in a couple of half day tutorials that cover the basics of Web Services (WS), primarily focusing on Java and .Net implementations. The changes to SOAP 1.2 and supporting elements in WSDL have made WS a much more compelling and complete implementation platform. A key thing to note is that SOAP 1.1 was focused on providing RPC methods, but SOAP 1.2 is is more geared toward messaging (RPC method calls vs. messaging documents).
The down side to WS is the HUGE number of WS-*** standards that can be required, depending upon what you are trying to do. Standards include: WS-Trust, WS-Privacy, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Federation, WS-Authorization, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Security, SAML, WS-SecurityPolicy, and those are just the security-related standards! Yikes! It's just important to remember that you don't have to use everything; it all depends on the context of the system you are creating.
This afternoon's session has shown a lot of security-related code examples using C# and .Net. I haven't worked with either of these technologies, but I have to say that the framework provides some very powerful objects for doing WS. Adding SOAP attachements, encryting/decrypting, signing, using certificates, and so on turn into one or two method calls in .Net. Very nice. I need to look into the corresponding Java tools to see how they compare. Also, some standards are dying or being replaced and new ones are being introduced, so it's important to keep an eye on which ones have momentum and get behind them.
Steve McConnell, author of "Code Complete", gave today's keynote speech in which he covered the content of his new book, "Code Complete 2nd Ed.", and gave an overview of how the software development industry has progressed in the 10 years since the first edition was published. It basically boiled down to: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Tonight's round-table is on the merging of SQL, XML, Web Services, and Grids.
6:06:13 PM 
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