Look Into the Future of VS.NET (Continued)
What Makes Web Services So Compelling?
PM: The Web service capabilities of VS.NET were highly touted by Microsoft when the tool was released, and Microsoft's support of the technology continues with the just announced GXA Web Services (WSE) extensions. However, it appears that many developers have either ignored or underutilized this technology in VS.NET. What is it about Web services that make them so compelling to Microsoft, and how does Microsoft help corporate enterprises and developers see their value?
ER: Web services is about the industry working together, about building on the success of the Internet. The market won't move forward without the vendors working together at standards bodies and at forums such as WS-I, and we at Microsoft have led the way by showing how Web services can be used in some applications. Not every application today is a Web service application, but I strongly believe that more and more code will connect to Web services.
Web services are great for enterprises because the developers don't have to rewrite all their code in Java to take advantage of the latest and greatest technology. Instead, they can take their existing assets, wrap them as Web services, and make them broadly available to a huge array of clients, whether the clients are smart Windows clients, PDAs, or mobile devices you reach through ASP.NET or HTML. Digital devices will become even more commonplace over time, and it will be increasingly common to have an information source that is exposed as a Web service to a variety of rich clients.
PM: So, a key win for those using Web services is that they can write applications that share data more easily with their customers or another part of their enterprise?
ER: Certainly. Today's keynote featured a case study on Bear Stearns, which is writing a Web service front end for its heritage AS400 system (which remains untouched), then taking that Web service front end out to traders and other financial professionals.
The customer value proposition for interoperability is strong, and I think Web services are delivering on the promise of making disparate systems interoperate more smoothly.
PM: It appears that the world has removed its Internet-era blinders to see that HTML is not a good vehicle for rich-client, productivity-enhancing software. Windows Forms over HTTP appears to be a viable approach. Why isn't the .NET team pushing this harder?
ER: I think that we're pushing it pretty hard. Our challenge in some ways is to bring together the best of Windows and the best of the Web. People love the zero-touch deployment aspect and the reduced administration required by this approach. We're going to release even more examples that show Windows Forms and VB.NET solutions talking to Web services. It's what we do at Microsoft, where our business is run on .NET.
For example, we recently upgraded our personnel management system. The application was an HTML application, and people were dissatisfied because they couldn't drag and drop or pivot the way they wanted to, nor did it have the desired response time. So, we moved to a Windows Forms-based approach, and people are much happier with that solution. People are learning the limits of HTML. Yes, it has benefits, but there are situations such as a call center that need sub-second response time. You don't have time to round-trip back and forth to the server. This is a case where Windows Forms can take over.
People like Office. People like speech, spell checkers, and using the Tablet PC to write on their forms. Increasingly, rich clients are going to win. It's our job, Microsoft's and magazines like yours, to teach developers what's possible with .NET, ensuring that there are good solutions and illustrations. The more that we lead the way, the more people will understand the value of rich clients talking to Web services.
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