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Build Plug-and-Play Web Portals
WSRP Chairman Thomas Schaeck talks about how Web services for remote portals will simplify Web development.
by Lee Thé
Technology Toolbox: VB.NET, XML
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Thomas Schaeck
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While the Web Services Interoperability Organization goes about its business, a complementary organization has been formed by the XML interoperability consortium, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP) technical committee is now developing an XML and Web services standard for—no surprise—remote portals. It will enable visual Web services to plug and play with portals and other Web apps.
This standard will allow you to provide content and apps that consuming portals and apps can use as-is. You'll publish your WSRP service to a public directory, then portal administrators can grab and use it with a few clicks. You'll build your service with SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL, using either VS.NET or Java. At least that's the theory. Visual Studio Magazine Executive Editor Lee Thé talked with WSRP Committee Chairman Thomas Schaeck to see what the reality is so far. Schaeck's day job is in Böblingen, Germany, where he's responsible for the architecture of the IBM WebSphere portal server component.
Lee Thé: Where does WSRP fit in the Web services big picture?
Thomas Schaeck: The assumption is that there is a Web service with data-oriented interfaces, but also a presentation, and WSRP aims at that. The scenario we envision is that you publish a service to a directory. Then others will find and bind to the service.
LT: Bind how?
TS: To achieve this plugability, several things are necessary. You need a common interface definition, and to achieve that the simplest way is to define a WSDL. This will let you formally describe Web interfaces. Then whoever would want to provide a WSRP-compliant service would use our WSDL definition.
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