For nearly 160 years, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) has been collecting and providing information and analysis on public and private companies worldwide. As a business information company, D&B relies heavily upon technology to support data that produces up-to-the-minute decisioning products. In fact, the D&B global database is updated more than 1 million times a day and D&B owns and maintains one of the world's largest privately-run computer networks. In addition to collecting and aggregating information on more than 63 million companies worldwide, D&B offers products and services that help to analyze and predict a businesses' behavior.

D&B information is available in a number of formats, languages, and levels of detail that allow you to obtain the data that you need. For example, if you're going to be performing services for a company, you may be concerned with how quickly it pays its bills. You may also be concerned with the financial status of a company and want to know what its reserves are before you commit a significant amount of resources to working with it. Or, you may want to know who your largest suppliers are so that you can negotiate volume or corporate discounts. Likewise, you may want to know what your most profitable customer segment looks like and then target your marketing efforts to similarly profiled companies.

D&B can provide the answers to these questions in a standardized format that ranks individual companies, and also ranks them within their industries. D&B tracks this information in 209 countries. When D&B was first incorporated, the company provided information via paper reports and later as faxed information. As the years progressed, D&B began to maintain and distribute its information via dedicated leased lines and private networks. The rise of the Internet, however, offered additional mechanisms for distributing the information. Information that 160 years ago took days or weeks to gather, can now be obtained via the Web from D&B's Internet site (www.dnb.com) by downloading the desired product or service.

Of course, visiting a Web site to download information is not really all that interesting in terms of Web services. What makes D&B interesting is that in addition to the Web site channel, many of the company's flagship products are now available via a Web service called the D&B Global Access Toolkit. WSJ recently met with executives from D&B, to investigate how Web services are viewed by them and how well the D&B Global Access Toolkit fits our definition of Web services.

"D&B has been a critical part of commerce for more than 160 years. Our customers needed a streamlined process for accessing D&B global data in real time. That's why we developed the D&B Global Access Toolkit" said Pat Winchester, Vice President of Global Products Management, D&B.

The D&B Global Access Toolkit provides the ability to easily integrate standardized, global data into existing applications and decision support systems while significantly reducing customers' development costs and time. Essentially a Web-based pipe to the D&B global database using XML standards, the Toolkit integrates D&B data with existing customer information, establishing D&B global data as core components of global or enterprise-wide decision making processes.

In today's "Internet time" economy, D&B information is required ASAP to verify a new business partner, make credit decisions, or evaluate a new supplier. Likewise, companies are working hard to reduce costs. "The D&B Global Access Toolkit allows us to offer our customers real-time access to D&B information, reducing development costs and business risks," noted Winchester, "providing our customers with better service is what Web services are about."

Since its release in May 2001, adoption of the Tookit has grown steadily. Although exact numbers were not available regarding adoption and usage, D&B is encouraged by current usage.

"The D&B Global Access Toolkit significantly expands D&B's online global data delivery capabilities, an important component of the company's aspiration to become a growth company with an important presence on the Web," said Cynthia Hamburger, the CTO of D&B.

The D&B Global Access Toolkit provides an interface to Java or COM developers for accessing the D&B global database. It utilizes XML for data provisioning and is built on the server side as a 100% Java application.

The Toolkit might not exactly resemble most people's impressions of a Web service. While it relies fully on XML, the COM and Java interfaces provide a simple programmatic API that converts the data into XML. Developers can create standalone applications in Java, VB, or C++ that can access the Web services. For example, online markets frequently need to qualify credit worthiness or new market participants. Using the Global Access Toolkit, such a marketplace could qualify a new applicant member company as part of the initial enrollment process. Rather than waiting weeks to be granted trading status, such status could be granted immediately upon receiving a positive rating from D&B. Commercial lending could also work the Toolkit into their applications, possibly enabling mobile professionals to grant small business loans instantly based upon real-time access to the rating information from D&B.

At the time the Toolkit was conceived, many of the emerging standards of Web services, such as SOAP and UDDI, were still in the specification phase. The D&B Global Access Toolkit was designed to be compliant with as many new and emerging standards as possible - it uses the OFX XML standard, for example. D&B is watching the newest standards closely, and the design is modular enough that it would be simple to add SOAP or UDDI to the Toolkit's next release within a matter of weeks.

The D&B Global Access Toolkit provides a typical example of how Web services exist now, and will grow and evolve as the standards progress. It is constructed with the basic building blocks of Web services, but lacks the discovery and introspection capabilities that will be part of all future Web services. D&B has already incorporated XML, Java parsing, EAI, and B2B technologies into the Toolkit. The design was based on the earliest concepts for Web services, namely providing a service with data-neutral technology. Service-based architectures are not a strikingly new concept - many different implementations already exist- but they form the basis of the Web services paradigm when augmented with discovery.

The D&B Global Access Toolkit runs on Windows NT servers and utilizes a SQL Server database to process requests for products. The database acts as a persistent cache for request information and analytics - the actual product data resides in distributed databases across the world. The Toolkit acts as a pipeline to the data residing within these various D&B servers.

The D&B Global Access Toolkit provides six basic services; authentication of the user, authorization for access to specific products, locating the data, building the product, charging the account for the product, and delivering the product. A product may be a wide range of information about companies in practically every country in the world, and in almost every language.

The Toolkit also provides the ability to gather raw data for further analysis. While the scoring and rating of company performance is a typical service, another service provides for the download of data for processing in another system, such as a spreadsheet or financial analysis tool.

The Toolkit's straightforward interface hides the powerful potential of the Toolkit itself. It was designed as a Web-based access and delivery system for D&B data products and services. The initial release provides access to global data products - that is, products that have the broadest customer base. As companies begin to integrate their supply chains via Web services, the need for up-to-date information is crucial in the decision-making process. The D&B Global Access Toolkit provides Web-based access to the D&B global database and is a classic example of how Web services can be deployed on a global scale.

D&B Global Access Toolkit is available for download at http://globalaccess.dnb.com.