Which web service specifications (WS-*) actually make sense to implement?

Question

Hi,

I'm implementing an SOA at a large company, and I'm not sure which web service specifications (WS-*) actually make sense to implement. At a minimum, I'm looking at WS-Addressing, WS-Security, WS-Eventing, and WS-ReliableMessaging. However, there are several other standards that look interesting, but I don't know which ones are widely adapted. I don't want to implement a standard (and force all the developers to follow them) if they're not mature or necessary.

EDIT:

I'm asking this question not about a specific situation, but in general. There are quite a few WS-* standards that don't seem to have a lot of practical use (at least to me), so I'm really curious about which ones are widely used.

Thanks for your help!

KA

Answer 1

WS-Adressing is widely used, and quite useful. For WS-Security, consider the set of mechanisms you'll need (based on your usage scenarios).

Answer 2

There are two types of web services : REST and SOAP. They represent different protocols of sending data over the internet.

SOA is an acronym standing for Service Oriented Architecture. It is a way of architecturing your system using multiplet tiers (applications) one atop the other. Web services, mostly soap based are used to implement this archtecture, but they are not the only way.

Answer 3

Only SOAP is widely adopted. If you care about reach, going beyond WS-Security and WS-Addressing is asking for trouble (even WS-Security can be hard for a lot of people). If you are creating services for internal use in a large company, then I wouldn't worry as much. Something like WCF would allow you to provide endpoints with different bindings for a wide range of consumers without writing any additional code.

Answer 4

Kaiser Advisor, did you use ws-eventing already? I'm now on the same point as you did. Why use ws-eventing or why not? What are the (dis)advantages of it?

I like to hear your experiences.

Thnx in advance!