XML.com: Article Archive

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08/15/2005

By Joe Gregorio
Joe Gregorio describes how to implement a sparklines web service and web application, and also provides Python and Javascript code for both. Very Web 2.0! 06/22/2005

By Rich Salz
In his latest column, Rich Salz puts his money where his mouth is by showing how to use his style of WSDL and XML schema to build the client side of a geolocation web service. 05/18/2005

By Micah Dubinko
In this week's XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko reminds us that even playful messages to the XML-DEV mailing list have a serious footing. 04/13/2005

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz shows us how to create WSDL descriptions of web services simply and easily, using rather a lot of boilerplate. 03/30/2005

By Yakov Shafranovich
Using XSLT and UPS's Web services, Yakov Shafranovich builds a package tracking app with RSS. 03/16/2005

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz asks how the xml:id conundrum, and the interaction with XML Canonicalization, should be solved. 02/23/2005

By Eric Gropp
Eric Gropp describes the design of a REST web service for creating paper reports using XSLT and XSLFO. 02/16/2005

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz explains how and why the web services stack is ready now, and why we should leave good enough alone. 01/12/2005

By Paul Madsen
Paul Madsen reports on the developments in web services security, including a new major release of SAML, which provides the basis for building federated identity. 01/12/2005

By Joe Gregorio
In Joe Gregorio's latest Restful Web column, he explains that Amazon's Simple Queue Service, a web service offering a queue for reliable storage of transient messages, isn't as RESTful as it claims. 01/05/2005

By Jason Levitt
Jason Levitt offers a detailed introduction to Amazon's Simple Queue Service (SQS), as well as a sample chat room application using client-side Javascript and Amazon's SQS. 01/05/2005

By Bob DuCharme
Bob DuCharme shows how easily XSLT processors can retrieve and use data from RESTful web services. 12/01/2004

By Joe Gregorio
In his first installment of XML.com's new column, The Restful Web, Joe Gregorio, one of the people behind Atom, explains how to use REST to create an application protocol in four easy steps. 12/01/2004

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz returns to XML.com, after a long absence, to explain why WSDL 2 is so flawed. 11/17/2004

By Bilal Siddiqui
Bulding on previous Java Web Services Security columns, Bilal Siddiqui shows us how to implement XML signature support. 10/20/2004

By John E. Simpson
In John E. Simpson's latest XML Tourist column he explains how to use XML to survive yet another Florida hurricane. 09/29/2004

By Itamar Shtull-Trauring
In the fifth and final installment of his Designing Protocols series, Itamar Shtull-Trauring discusses issues relating to reliable and secure protocols, including TLS. 08/25/2004

By Edd Dumbill
A recent article by Mark Nottingham suggests that RDF may well be the answer to the difficulties inherent in specifying web services with W3C XML Schema. Edd Dumbill reports. 08/11/2004

By Hao He
Hao He offers guidelines and best practices for implementing REST web services. 08/11/2004

By Massimiliano Bigatti
The second part of our coverage of design patterns for web services arising from real-life implementation scenarios. 06/30/2004

By Massimiliano Bigatti
These design patterns for web services arose from real-life implementation scenarios, using web services in banking applications. 06/16/2004

By Bilal Siddiqui
Bilal Siddiqui continues his series on Java Web Services Security, covering signing XML messages with the IBM XSS4J toolkit. 06/02/2004

By Paul Madsen
How do interconnecting web services know who to trust? We examine the role of Security Token Services in mediating trust netweem services. 05/26/2004

By Mitch Gitman
Thanks to the use of W3C XML Schema in WSDL descriptions, data binding can be used to implement web services in Java. We examine some implementation strategies. 05/26/2004

By Arulazi Dhesiaseelan
A look at the changes to the W3C's Web Services Description Language in its upcoming second version. 05/20/2004

By Kendall Grant Clark
The recent News.com interview with Bob Glushko spawned a rash of debate among XML developers. The topic? Standards, of course! Kendall Clark offers his own views, and reports on the surrounding community debate. 05/12/2004

By Itamar Shtull-Trauring
The syntaxes used in protocols should be simple and consistent, says Itamar Shtull-Trauring. He examines the good, the bad, and the ugly. 04/21/2004

By Bilal Siddiqui
In the third of his series on Web Services Security for Java, Bilal Siddiqui joins together the pieces and adds XML encryption support to his WSS4J project. 04/21/2004

By Joe Gregorio
As an example of implementing the Atom content management API, we set up a Wiki that can be accessed via Atom. 04/14/2004

By Andy Oram
In the second and final part of Andy Oram's series he explains how web service researchers might learn valuable lessons from the P2P movement. 04/14/2004

By Andy Oram
Andy Oram presents a two-part series examining the utility of P2P technology in the Web Services space. 04/07/2004

By Rich Salz
In Rich Salz's latest column he examines the structure of XKMS messages in greater detail. 04/07/2004

By Edd Dumbill
Amazon.com's web services API has met with broad success. Jeff Barr, Amazon's web services evangelist, speaks to Edd Dumbill. 03/31/2004

By Jean-Luc David
Find out how to create XML-RPC, SOAP and REST web services using PHP, the most popular scripting language for web applications. 03/24/2004

By Jon Udell
Through his LibraryLookup project, Jon Udell finds that you don't need to understand what REST is in order to benefit from its use in a system. 03/17/2004

By Itamar Shtull-Trauring
Part three of our series on designing protocols looks at how network transfer speed can be maximized. 02/25/2004

By Joe Gregorio
The grassroots technology for weblog authoring, Atom, is undergoing rapid development. This article reviews the eighth revision of the specification for the Atom API. 02/03/2004

By Itamar Shtull-Trauring
In the second of his series on designing protocols, Itamar Shtull-Trauring discusses sessions, a way of grouping together messages. 01/20/2004

By Rich Salz
In Rich Salz's latest column he continues his implementation of XKMS by assembling a web services container server out of existing Python parts. 01/20/2004

By Faheem Khan
In the final part of his series on processing SOAP using W3C DOM, Faheem Khan covers Apache Xerces-J and explains when using DOM is appropriate. 01/06/2004

By Jon Udell
In this write-up of his keynote address to the XML 2003 conference, Jon Udell explains that the key thing about XML is the way anXML document can become a shared construct, a tangible thing that processes and people can pass around and interact with. 12/23/2003

By Rich Salz
In his latest column Rich Salz continues with the implementation of an XKMS web service; in this installment he focuses on the public key infrastructure. 12/09/2003

By Edd Dumbill
Jeff Barr, Amazon's web services evangelist, presented Tuesday at XML 2003, explaining the decisions involved in making Amazon's puiblic web services strategy a success. 12/09/2003

By Itamar Shtull-Trauring
In the first article of a new series on protocol design, Itamar Shtull-Trauring explores the different ways of indicating how many bytes are present in a protocol payload. 11/25/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
In the second part of his series on implementing web services security, Bilal Siddiqui introduces IBM alphaWorks' XML Security Suite for Java. 11/25/2003

By Rich Salz
In his latest column Rich Salz begins to discuss the implementation of a web service for doing key management with the W3C's X-KRSS standard. 11/25/2003

By Faheem Khan
This article shows how to use Microsoft's Document Object Model (DOM) implementation to create a user interface for a web service from a WSDL file, with examples both in Internet Explorer and using ASP.NET. It provides a gentle introduction to the programmatic use of the DOM. 11/11/2003

By Steve Loughran
VeriSign's recently Site Finder service, now temporarily suspended, caused many problems for internet users and web applications. Particularly at risk from the Site Finder changes are web services applications. This article examines the difficulties caused by Site Finder, and what users and developers of web services can do about it. 10/28/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
This first article in a new column by Bilal Siddiqui embarks upon deploying web services security. Siddiqui introduces the use cases for a Java web service security API, and begins its implementation. 10/28/2003

By Kendall Grant Clark
In the first of his reports from the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference, Kendall Clark discusses the path forward for successfully selling and developing Semantic Web technology into industry. 10/22/2003

By Faheem Khan
In this first part of a three-part series, Faheem Khan introduces the application of the W3C's Document Object Model in processing web services. He also gives an overview of the main two DOM processors in use, Apache Xerces and Microsoft's MSXML. 10/14/2003

By Rich Salz
In his newest column, Rich Salz outlines a proposal for an interface definition language, called RSWS, that's simpler than WSDL and tuned for document-style services. 10/14/2003

By Ivelin Ivanov
Though not yet a W3C Recommendation, XQuery has been around for a long time now. This article looks at the trends in its deployment, and predicts the big opportunity for XQuery in web services integration. 10/01/2003

By Hao He
Service-Oriented Architecture underpins most modern web services. It aims to achieve loose coupling between interacting software agents in order to preserve the benefits of reusability, extensibility and simplicity. 09/30/2003

By Will Provost
For all the magic that XML, SOAP, and WSDL offer in allowing businesses to interoperate, they do not solve the more traditional problems of integrating data models and message formats. This article shows how XSLT can be used to integrate data models across web services. 09/30/2003

By Mark Pilgrim
In this month's Dive Into XML column, Mark Pilgrim takes a look at Microsoft's new Microsoft.com web service, suggesting that it might be improved by becoming more like the Web itself. 09/24/2003

By Massimiliano Bigatti
There are many approaches to processing SOAP data, some more complex than others. One lightweight way is by using XPath to extract the items of interest. This article demonstrates a Java web service and client based around the Jaxen XPath API. 09/16/2003

By Anish Karmarkar
The WS-I Basic Profile is a set of guidelines on using web services specifications to maximize interoperability. This article from a WS-I BP working group member previews the changes to the Basic Profile being incorporated in the 1.1 revision of the specification. 09/16/2003

By Will Provost
The buzzword "interoperability" has grown to encompass a broad range of problems and is no longer a precise term. This article challenges several apparent interoperability problems in web services, many of which are really solved problems from other domains. 09/02/2003

By Rich Salz
Strange as it may seem, top thinkers in web services are moving away from strongly typed models of data into a more document-centric service oriented model. Rich Salz charts this change in thinking. 09/02/2003

By Nasseam Elkarra
Planning to deploy information services on mobile phones? This article gives an overview of the various technologies and routes available for mobile web service development. 08/19/2003

By Jeff McHugh
Using web services on low resource J2ME devices is possible through Enhydra.org's KSOAP classes. This article shows you how to create lightweight web service clients and servers. 08/19/2003

By Johan Peeters
This third and final part of WSDL Tales from the Trenches concentrates on the data aspects of web services. It discusses the type definitions and element declarations in the types element of a WSDL document. Such types and elements are used in the abstract messages in web service descriptions. 08/05/2003

By Will Provost
How can web services development be given a proper design process? Enter the Unified Modeling Language, or UML, which is the whiteboard notation for object-oriented analysis and design, and offers a natural fit to RPC-style service design. 08/05/2003

By Rich Salz
In his latest column Rich Salz discusses the grassroots weblog API, variously known as "Atom" and "Echo", and makes substantive suggestions for how it should be changed to use SOAP. 08/05/2003

By Sergey Beryozkin
Saving state in web services interactions is an important capability. This article reviews the various approaches to maintaining sessions in web services. 07/22/2003

By Will Provost
If you're serious about developing RPC-style Web services, you should know WSDL as well as you know W3C XML Schema, and be creating and editing descriptors frequently. Furthermore, your WSDL should be the starting point in your development process. 07/22/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
In this fourth and final part of our series on web services security, we put all the pieces together to demonstrate how the XML Signature, XML encryption, Web Services Security, and SAML specifications work together. 07/22/2003

By Kendall Grant Clark
Kendall Grant Clark discusses BPEL4WS, DAML-S, WS-Choreography, and the likelihood that BPEL4WS will be the only high-level way of describing composite web services. 07/08/2003

By Rich Salz
In Rich Salz's latest column, he examines the effort to redefine simply site syndication, claiming that it's already technically superior to RSS 2.0. 07/08/2003

By Massimiliano Bigatti
ZeroConf technology, also known as Rendezvous, is a winning combination with web services, says Max Bigatti. He demonstrates an example file sharing application that uses Java, SOAP and Rendezvous. 06/24/2003

By Johan Peeters
In the second part of his hands-on WSDL series, Johan Peeters clarifies good practice for writing WSDL, and also finds that WSDL itself is not yet mature enough. 06/24/2003

By Paul Madsen
WS-Trust is a proposal that enables security token interoperability by defining a request/response protocol for SOAP actors to request of some trusted authority that a particular security token be exchanged for another. Paul Madsen provides a detailed explanation of the WS-Trust technology. 06/24/2003

By Kendall Grant Clark
Kendall Clark digs into the latest draft of the W3C's Web Services Architecture document, finding both curious anomaly and commendable progress. 06/18/2003

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell further explores the benefits of preserving structure in web content, suggesting that the availability of structured search for content could motivate the creation of the structured content itself. 06/10/2003

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz returns to the Web Services columnist field by introducing us to SOAP 1.2, about which Rich is understandably optimistic. 06/10/2003

By Kendall Grant Clark
An introduction to the W3C's Web Services Architecture Working Group, and its role in defining a coherent architecture for the currently chaotic ecology of web services specifications. 05/28/2003

By Erik Benson
By consuming information from multiple web services and then exposing newly processed information in our own web services, we can begin to build complex applications with very few resources required up front. Erik Benson describes the workings of All Consuming. 05/27/2003

By Faheem Khan
In the third and final part of our series on web services transactions, Faheem Kham examines the WS-Transaction spec's Business Activities, a way of handling long lived collections of transactions. 05/27/2003

By Johan Peeters
In this first article in a new series about WSDL implementation experience, Johan Peeters describes some high level best practices for designing web services interfaces. 05/27/2003

By Uche Ogbuji, Simon St. Laurent
The annual XML Europe Conference took place in London, May 2003. This article collects together reports from XML.com writers Uche Ogbuji and Simon St.Laurent. 05/21/2003

By Ivelin Ivanov
The W3C's XQuery language can be used to create HTML front ends to web services. Ivelin Ivanov demonstrates by wrapping Amazon's ListMania interface. 05/14/2003

By Jon Udell
Ever had trouble finding a particular email? So did Jon Udell, so he put together Python, Jython and Lucene in order to create a local web service that indexed his Microsoft Outlook mail store. 05/13/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
This article discusses XML-based authentication and the sharing of authentication information across different applications, known as Single Sign-on. The Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) from OASIS provides expression in XML of authentication information. 05/13/2003

By Faheem Khan
In the second installment of our series on web service transactions, Faheem Khan examines in detail the operation of atomic transactions in an example enterprise application scenario, using the WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction specifications. 04/29/2003

By Ivelin Ivanov
Ivelin Ivanov shows how simple it is to syndicate functionality between web sites when using Apache Cocoon. 04/29/2003

By Jon Udell
One of XML's promises is fine-grained, specific searching, but this doesn't come without a lot of effort in data preparation. Jon Udell looks for the sweet spot that marries spontaneity and structure. 04/15/2003

By Faheem Khan
This first article in three part series describing transactional web services introduces the service oriented architecture, federation of web services, and the need for coordination and transactions. 04/15/2003

By Paul Madsen
As parts of our lives are increasingly managed via online applications, the resulting morass of different logon and profile information is becoming unmanageable. This is the problem the Liberty Alliance project sets out to solve. 04/01/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
In the second part of his series on web services security technology, Bilal Siddiqui discusses the role and function of digital signatures and encryption. 04/01/2003

By Pim van der Eijk
The ebXML Messaging Service specification (ebMS) extends the SOAP specification to provide the security and reliability features required by many production enterprise and e-business applications. 03/18/2003

By Steve Punte
This article introduces the XmlHttpTransformer component, which allows mid-pipeline Cocoon elements to operate as SOAP clients retrieving information from external services. 03/18/2003

By Edd Dumbill
WebServices.XML.com is a new sister site to XML.com, which will cover topics related to web services and Internet-wide computing. Managing Editor Edd Dumbill provides an introduction to the new site, and guidelines for potential authors. 03/04/2003

By Brian Buehling
Brian Buehling presents questions to ask yourself before commencing the planning and implementation of a web services strategy in your organization. 03/04/2003

By Bilal Siddiqui
The first in a four part series discussing major issues related to securing web services and covering the emerging XML-based security standards from the W3C and OASIS. 03/04/2003

By Rich Salz
Rich Salz introduces the Web Services Interoperability Organization, and its Basic Profile, in his first column for the new WebServices.XML.com site. 03/04/2003

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell puts together web services, XML, and Amazon to enhance Spring, a "concept-centric" visual organizer for Mac OS X. 03/04/2003

This white paper discusses the architectural issues encountered when using opaque non-XML data in XML applications, including (but not limited to) Web services and SOAP. 02/26/2003

By Edd Dumbill
To celebrate five years of XML, Edd Dumbill interviews a selection of XML old-timers and experts about their experiences of XML and hopes for the future. 02/12/2003

By Kendall Grant Clark
Kendall Clark examines recent debate as to whether the "web services stack" is a thing of fact or fiction, and also muses on the latest news in relation to web services patents. 02/12/2003

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell examines the recent hype over network-based approaches to organization. If, as Jon concludes, the network is not only the computer, but also the operating system and the software development environment, how might this impact your role as a software developer? 02/11/2003

By Ivelin Ivanov
Server side business logic is often invariant with respect to the client device. Ivelin Ivanov shows how the Cocoon XMLForm framework addresses the concern of separating the purpose from the presentation of a form, maximizing its reusability for a variety of client devices. 01/29/2003

By Rich Salz
In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz explains what security means in the context of web services, as well as explaining the signing and encrypting of SOAP messages. 01/15/2003

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell shows how Web services--such as Erik Benson's All Consuming book site, or his own project, LibraryLookup--which can express themselves in terms of links, are poised to create powerful affordances for use, for imitation, and for discovery. 01/13/2003

By Randy J. Ray
The initial reference to overloading in the WSDL 1.1 specification is limited, a situation that left many new users of WSDL unsure where to turn to for clarification. Randy Ray, coauthor of Programming Web Services with Perl sheds light on the issue by explaining how to express overloaded interfaces in WSDL. 01/08/2003

By Rich Salz
In this month's XML Endpoints column, Rich Salz offers guidance for migrating from XML-RPC to SOAP by creating a SOAP profile with which XML-RPC can interoperate. 12/18/2002

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell describes a proof-of-concept application using Groove Web Services, showing implementations in both Perl and C#. 12/09/2002

By Rich Salz
In his latest Endpoints column Rich Salz opines about the differences between XML specifications based on XML and those based on the XML infoset. 11/20/2002

By Timothy Appnel
Timothy Appnel says we must improve the effectiveness of RSS feeds. He offers recommendations for authoring more useful and effective feeds with an approach that is neutral, practical, and conservative. 11/19/2002

By Edd Dumbill
With the technology press taking a more measured view of web services, does this mean the party's over? Edd Dumbill argues that the future of web services and XML are closely linked, and that the fun's only just beginning 10/23/2002

By Bilal Siddiqui
In the second and final article of his series on XML Canonicalization, Bilal Siddiqui shows how to cope with documents that have CDATA sections, processing instructions, external entity references and comments. 10/09/2002

By Bilal Siddiqui
Bilal Siddiqui explains the process of canonicalizing XML documents, useful in determining the logical equivalence of documents in order to secure XML exchanges. 09/18/2002

By Rich Salz
In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz describes the DIME, a binary message format, and WS-Attachements specifications. 09/18/2002

By Jon Udell
In Jon Udell's latest column he explores interaction design--a methodology that produces software specifications by doing "ethnographic" research. 09/03/2002

By Rich Salz
In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz discusses the issue of transporting binary data in XML messaging, using the Soap with Attachments technique. 08/28/2002

By Jon Udell
Flash MX and the FlashComm server together deliver event-driven peer networking, streaming-media services, powerful components that embody the essential tools of collaboration, and a productive scripting environment that targets networked teams of people. 08/02/2002

By Rich Salz
In this month's XML Endpoints column, Rich Salz explains how to process SOAP headers and why you'd want to. Along the way he predicts the demise of SAX-based SOAP processors. 07/17/2002

By Kendall Grant Clark
Kendall Grant Clark investigates the DAML-Services ontology, which ties together web services with the semantic web and could well play a key part in the web of the future. 07/17/2002

By Kendall Grant Clark
Kendall Clark reports on best practices for web application design as discussed on the REST mailing list. 07/10/2002

By Jon Udell
In Jon Udell's latest column he discusses the Microsoft/Intel/AMD security scheme, Palladium, and why he advocates an alternative solution--digital certificate revocation. 07/09/2002

By Rich Salz
In Rich Salz's second XML Endpoints column, he uses Python to demonstrate generating SOAP code for talking to Google's web service. 06/12/2002

By Jon Udell
Software is catching up with what we know about social networks: the greater the reach of your array, the more effective an actor you can be within an organization. Jon Udell talks with two observers about software that maps social networks and the patterns revealed. 06/04/2002

By Rich Salz
The XML Endpoints column returns with Rich Salz's discussion of the state of WSDL, with particular reference to the new Google web services API. 05/15/2002

By Ethan Cerami
Ethan Cerami explores two bioinformatic Web Services you can try out today -- XEMBL and BQS -- and shows code examples of how the interfaces work. 05/14/2002

By Brian Jepson
Brian McConnell proposes an open source, peer-to-peer system for making connections among online dictionaries via a SOAP interface. 05/10/2002

By Rael Dornfest, Mike Loukides
WebLogic Workshop is the cornerstone of BEA's Web services strategy. We talk to BEA VP of enginnering Adam Bosworth about this product, Web services, and .NET. 05/10/2002

By Jon Udell
Backlinks are creating a new kind of feedback loop among blogger systems. Jon Udell looks to biology for a metaphor of how information loops spur the development of increasingly sophisticated systems in nature, and suggests that informational trails will have a similar effect online. 05/03/2002

By Rael Dornfest, Clay Shirky
A brief look at the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and its role as the de facto standard Web Services description format. 05/01/2002

By Paul Prescod
Paul Prescod explains why moving its API to use SOAP was a backward step for the popular search engine, and argues for a return to a pure HTTP and XML interface. 04/24/2002

By Edd Dumbill
Web services are a distraction from the true business of developing the Web, argues Edd Dumbill, and the W3C should stop wasting resources on their development. 04/24/2002

By Richard Koman
Web Services represent not just a new way to build Internet applications, says Clay Shirky in this interview, but the second stage of peer-to-peer, in which distinctions between clients and servers are all but eliminated. 04/23/2002

By Rael Dornfest, Clay Shirky
A brief look at the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and its role as the de facto standard Web Services messaging format. 04/16/2002

By Clay Shirky
This executive summary from O'Reilly Research's report, "Planning for Web Services," gives a high level overview of the promises and pitfalls of web services. 04/12/2002

By Jon Udell
Jon Udell says the new Instant Outlining feature of Radio UserLand 8.0 turns it into something he's been waiting years for: a tool that keeps messages and attachments in context, and helps us get out of the swamp of email. 04/01/2002

By Rael Dornfest
A brief look at WebDAV -- Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. 03/26/2002

By Rael Dornfest
A brief look at Sun's JXTA peer-to-peer networking framework. 03/12/2002

By Jon Udell
Radio Userland 8.0 brings together blogging, cross linking, RSS syndication, referrer logs, and FTP upstreaming to create a topic-oriented web of smart people. Jon Udell says it's the laboratory for online group-forming that he's been awaiting for years. 03/01/2002

By Rael Dornfest
A brief look at the state of the emerging identity, membership, and preferences fabric for the Internet. 02/27/2002

By Paul Prescod
Following on from his "Next Generation Web Services" article, Paul Prescod shows how the REST model for web services meets real world demands such as security, auditing and orchestration. 02/20/2002

By David Orchard
The web services vision of automated business sometimes sounds too good to be true. This article puts web services in the context of real business concerns, showing there's some way to go to achieve the vision. 02/13/2002

By Leigh Dodds
The XML-Deviant reports on the recent discussions about kinds of messaging patterns, as well as industry efforts to certify web services interoperability. 02/13/2002

By Andy Oram
New, networked file systems, scripting languages for devices, extensions to the seven-layer ISO networking model, and a new class of criminal offenses are all possible trends of the next few years. 02/12/2002

By Ethan Cerami
Ethan Cerami, author of Web Services Essentials answers ten of the most frequently asked questions about Web services, from what one is to how you can get started. 02/12/2002

By Paul Prescod
If SOAP and friends are the first generation of web services, what will the future look like? Paul Prescod explains how the basics of HTTP, XML and URIs will underlie second generation web services. 02/06/2002

By Jon Udell
If you've ever tried to map out a taxonomy for an existing or future body of content, you know it can be a frustrating exercise. Here's a strategy for creating a taxonomy from the bottom up rather than top down -- including the Perl script to run it. 02/04/2002

By Edd Dumbill
Commentary on the W3C's launch of a Web Services Activity, along with the usual sideways look at the world of XML. 01/30/2002

By Richard Koman
Brewster Kahle tells how he archives and indexes 100 terabytes of data with 400 PCs. 01/21/2002

By Pavel Kulchenko
The coauthor of Programming Web Services with SOAP presents a quick guide to the protocols and the specifications behind more than 20 acronyms related to Web services, from SOAP to XLANG, including a description of how they relate to each other and where each sits on the Web services landscape. 01/09/2002

By Timothy Ewald, Martin Gudgin
Our web services columnists reckon the WSDL interface language needs more work and try to engage the assistance of Santa Claus in their quest. 12/19/2001

By Madeline Schnapp
O'Reilly's Research Department compared sales of our tech books at Amazon.com against the NASDAQ. The close correlation suggests that tech book sales, like the stock market indices, may be a leading economic indicator. 11/16/2001

By Timothy Ewald, Martin Gudgin
This month's Endpoints column describes SOAP 1.1, its header extensibility mechanism, and possible changes in SOAP 1.2. 10/17/2001

By Clay Shirky
The web services hype machine promises us a "revolution" bringing another "paradigm-shift." Clay Shirky explores if, despite the overselling, there may just be something there -- or maybe not. 10/03/2001

By Timothy Ewald, Martin Gudgin
XML.com's newest column, XML Endpoints, which is devoted to exploring web services, debuts by asking what a web service really is and what it shouldn't be. 09/12/2001

By Edd Dumbill
In the first installment of his new XML.com column, Edd Dumbill takes a look at the latest incarnation of SOAP, and the ever-changing XML conference scene. 07/18/2001

By Alan Kotok
The final meeting of the Electronic Business XML initiative in Vienna marked the 18-month deadline set for the project, yet there is still plenty left to do. 05/16/2001

By Alan Kotok
Our report on the latest happenings in ebXML covers their adoption of SOAP, and takes stock as ebXML nears the end of its project. 04/04/2001

By Don Box
An insider's view of the last three years of SOAP's development, its relationship with W3C XML Schema, and an assessment of where XML protocols should go next. 04/04/2001

By Venu Vasudevan
A review of the emerging XML-based web services platform, examining the core components of SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. 04/04/2001

By Edd Dumbill
A report from XML DevCon Europe, London. On the first day of the conference, Henry Thompson spoke on XML Schemas and the XML Infoset, and David Orchard gave an overview of the world of web services. 02/21/2001

By Didier Martin
Our intrepid explorer of specifications, Didier Martin, investigates CC/PP, an RDF application for describing and exchanging device capabilities. 01/31/2001

By C.M. Sperberg-McQueen
This report from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on the development of XML-related specifications highlights the diverse paths that XML has taken since its invention a few years ago. 01/03/2001

By Leigh Dodds
Jon Bosak's comments at XML 2000 about the respective roles of ebXML and SOAP have sparked discussion on convergence between ebXML's transport, routing and packaging layer and the W3C's XML Protocol Activity. 12/20/2000

By Edd Dumbill, Simon St. Laurent
Collected coverage from XML.com of the XML DevCon Fall 2000 conference, held November in San Jose. 11/22/2000

By Edd Dumbill
Delivering a talk entitled "Web Services: Requirements, Challenges and Opportunities," Greg Hope laid down the future of web business as Microsoft sees it, and especially the role of XML technologies. 11/14/2000

By Edd Dumbill
A quick reference to the most important technologies and initiatives in the XML protocols area, with links to specifications, white papers, and developer communities. 11/01/2000

By Didier Martin
Ever written a "Hello World" program that talks back? Didier Martin has, and now he shares his experiences in order to show us around VoiceXML, a markup language for voice interactions. 09/06/2000

By Edd Dumbill
In this speech to the XML World 2000 conference in Boston, XML.com Editor Edd Dumbill gives an overview of the integrated future of XML and the Web, and the role that SOAP and RDF will play in that vision. 09/06/2000

By Alan Kotok
08/16/2000

By Alan Kotok
The fourth meeting of the Electronic Business XML working group sees the intiative make good progress. But will the group be able to meet its self-imposed 18-month deadline? 08/16/2000

By Alan Kotok
Since our first survey of XML business vocabularies in February this year, the number of entries in our tables has more than doubled, highlighting the large push forward in vertical and cross-industry standardization activity. 08/02/2000

By Edd Dumbill
XML has found many applications in the news industry for overcoming the challenges posed by the Web. This article examines the technologies, and looks at the future of news syndication with XML. 07/17/2000

By Leigh Dodds
The XML-DEV mailing list has seen a renewed vigor in discussion recently, with the spotlight being turned on the troubled issue of XML Schemas. 07/12/2000

By Edd Dumbill
David Orchard of Jamcracker spoke about the rise of XML/HTTP messaging on the final morning of XML DevCon 2000. 06/28/2000

By Edd Dumbill
In his closing keynote speech at XML Europe 2000, Edd Dumbill surveyed the state of XML, covering its past, its present, and its future in distributing data and applications around the Internet. 06/16/2000

By Alan Kotok
A recent meeting of the ebXML initiative was able to demonstrate proof-of-concept technology of some of its early specifications. A third of the way through its allotted 18-month timetable, ebXML has made definite progress, but still has a long way to go. 05/24/2000

By Edd Dumbill
Although the XML Protocols Shakedown Panel at WWW9 in Amsterdam last week clarified the positions of the various participants, the session did not result in any clear consensus. 05/24/2000

By Edd Dumbill
With the recent release of SOAP 1.1, XML protocols is a "hot" topic. Looking forward to the "XML Protocols Shakedown" at the WWW9 conference next week, we examine recent developments, and the vital importance of XML interoperability. 05/10/2000

By Edd Dumbill
10/27/1999

By Dale Dougherty
The ICE 1.0 specification describes a transaction protocol for syndicated content distribution. 10/29/1998

By Victor Votsch
Things have been busy in April for the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) consortium led by Vignette. 04/22/1998

By Victor Votsch
Syndicating content on the Web should become much easier from a production standpoint as a result of a new consortium of vendors and publishers. 03/10/1998

By Charles Allen
The problem of direct access to Web data from within business applications has until recently been largely ignored. The Web Interface Definition Language (WIDL) is an application of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) which allows the resources of the World Wide Web to be described as functional interfaces that can be accessed by remote systems over standard Web protocols. 10/02/1997