Enterprises frequently have to deal with part of their infrastructure that doesn't have the privilege of uninterrupted connectivity. Such system environments designed using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) need a way to manage uncertain connectivity. SOA as an architectural paradigm depends on a set of services providing business functionality. These services may be distributed over different domains or geographical boundaries. SOA, characterized by independent and self-sufficient services primarily needs to handle the issue of data inconsistency that may result from a disconnect in such environments.

BEA Systems has unveiled its plans for the BEA SOA 360º platform. The BEA SOA 360º platform is intended to deliver the industry's most unified Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform for business transformation and optimization, in order to help to improve cost structures and to grow new revenue streams. The BEA SOA 360º platform is uniquely architected with the newly unveiled BEA microService Architecture (mSA).

Like it or not, .NET is proving a powerful force in the software industry. As a ColdFusion developer, you'll probably need to interact with it at some point in time. One of the promises of .NET is that it can provide this interoperability through Web services.

Yesterday at CES 2005 in Las Vegas Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft, and Judy McGrath, CEO and chairman of MTV Networks, addressed conference attendees. Gates was talking at CES for the seventh successive year.

After publicly retracting the results of J2EE versus .NET benchmark tests it conducted back in 2002, The Middleware Company (TMC) bravely ventured recently to revisit this minefield. From IBM's point of view, according to an internal document obtained today by WebSphere Journal, TMC has managed to blow itself up all over again!

Microsoft is advancing an XML-based Web service that was boosted via an online demonstration by Cornell University's Computation Group Finance Group. This technology is part of Microsoft's power computing initiative. The company hopes this particular technology, and the use that Cornell made of it, would help solve difficult macro problems specific to finance.

This article describes recent work in a leading investment bank using Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2004 (BizTalk) as an integral component of a service-oriented architecture. I'll describe how BizTalk is used to implement lightweight workflow that builds new services from existing services and ties in tactical solutions to enable straight-through processing (STP) of service requests.

Marketing executives across the country love to know how well their business is doing, especially how much money it's making. This need has produced a number of solutions across the market in all ranges of complexity.

The growth of applications using the .NET platform has generated an increased emphasis on performance measurement and analysis. Distributed applications, while much more flexible and potentially more scalable than monolithic ones, have characteristics that make it more difficult to achieve these very goals.

You've heard the hype about .NET. You've read a couple of vague articles about dynamic discovery and invocation, service-oriented architecture, and how SOAP and a handful of other XML standards are forever changing the software industry. You want to explore the world of .NET, but are unable or unwilling to fork over a thousand bucks for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET product. This article is for you.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) has achieved critical mass as a platform for developing Web applications. Microsoft's .NET is also a strong contender in the Web world. Today both J2EE and .NET are evolving (via XML, Web services, etc.) from development-only platforms into development and integration platforms - a change that will transform enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business integration (B2B) as we know them today.

As XML Web services invade the technology forefront, I almost feel as if an understanding of the SOAP protocol is becoming an everyday essential for me as a .NET developer.

Another platform battle is brewing in the industry, or at least that's what the journals would have you believe. Will it be Microsoft's .NET platform, or J2EE supported by Sun, IBM, HP, and others? We don't know, but the more important question is: 'Who cares?' Presumably, Microsoft and Sun care, but for the rest of us, the battle of the Web services platforms misses the entire point of Web services.

Legions of distinguished commentators have already written a zillion words to explain that .NET is either 'awesomely easy to use' or 'monopolistic'; conversely, what seems like thousands of articles suggest that J2EE is 'the only proven scalable platform' or is 'dangerously fragmented.'

.NET Passport is a Microsoft-operated service that provides Internet authentication for Web sites, no matter what kind of devices they use for access. It provides reliable Internet authentication and allows users to sign in once to access a variety of .NET Passport-enabled Web sites. In addition, users can save time by using Passport data when registering at new Passport-enabled Web sites.

Martin Fowler, of Extreme Programming fame, states: 'Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

As the CTO of a technology integrator, I help customers derive tangible business value from technology solutions. Web services holds a lot of promise in this regard. After shedding some light on what's new about Web services, this article will present our view on the .NET versus J2EE debate and highlight areas where our customers are recognizing business value today with Web services technologies.

Carl Sagan once said, 'In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.' Although Carl wasn't especially known for witty quips, that one should strike a chord with developers creating applications for the Internet. Because that's the approach many developers are taking - creating a lot of ancillary (but necessary) programs in order to get to the apple pie - what they originally set out to do.

My first thought, when I heard about .NET, was 'Here we go again!' It sounded like yet another attempt on the part of Microsoft to revitalize what appeared to be a fading technology and vision. Increasingly, as a programmer and architect, I was getting the impression that the exciting stuff was happening in the Java universe. For example, there were innovative ideas coming out of the open source community, such as the Apache Struts and Cocoon projects.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) has not yet achieved critical mass as a Web application platform. Today, for example, over 10,000 customers are using BEA WebLogic, the J2EE application server market leader. However, it's a safe bet that J2EE will eventually reach critical mass.

One key area in which Microsoft must prove itself is in the security of the data stored by the .NET Services. Because Microsoft is a favorite target of hackers, and the personal, transactional, and payment data will be so valuable, this data store is sure to be plagued by people trying to break the security system. Passport has been shown to contain possible security vulnerabilities with cross-site scripting and automatic logins. In order to convince users and partners of the safety and privacy of their data, Microsoft will need to be vigilant against any possible threats.

If you weren't there, a couple of years from now you'll misremember and say you were. That's how big - how momentous - Web Services Edge 2001 West and XMLEdge were. Call that late October conference in Santa Clara the Woodstock of Web services because this is the one everyone wishes they had attended. The reason is simple: Web services have gone mainstream and suddenly, a concept that even proponents were admitting as recently as six months ago was spacey verging on vaporous, is now emerging as the next must-have by enterprise IT groups. Bottom line: Web services got sexy and it all happened in late October.

Referred to by some as the fourth wave of computing, Web services intend to standardize the way business applications communicate with each other, whether they are within an enterprise or communicating with external partners, customers, and suppliers. In this article we explore the key standards behind Web services, as well as the various tools and technologies that the upcoming Microsoft .NET provides for developing and deploying dynamic Web services. What is a Web Service? I like MSDN's (Microsoft Developer Network) definition of a Web service. A Web service is a unit of application logic providing data and services to other applications. Applications access Web services via ubiquitous Web protocols and data formats, such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP, with no need to worry about how each Web service is implemented.

Microsoft .NET is the key enabling technology for Microsoft's vision of software as a service. The .NET Framework is the overall infrastructure that provides developers with a platform to create programs that transcend device boundaries and fully harness the connectivity of the Internet. In this article, I'll illustrate how easy it is to build and use Web services using the .NET Framework SDK. I used the Beta 2 of the .NET Framework SDK and wrote all code samples using C#, Microsoft's new programming language for .NET. This article assumes you have some familiarity with Web services concepts and component-based programming.

Get ready, because soon the big knock will be at your door and your boss will be standing there with a single question for you: Should we go with .NET or J2EE for our Web services? Know a couple of things right off the bat. Big bucks will ride on your answer because, whichever direction your company takes, investment in a Web services platform will represent a substantial IT budget commitment.