Microsoft Web Services DevChannel Opens at FTPOnline

Fawcette Technical Publications recently added a new Microsoft Web Services DevChannel to the FTPOnline portals collection. The DevChannel consists of links to Microsoft white papers, artlcles from FTP print and online publications, video clips from FTP conferences and MSDN TV, plus related resources. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) gets the primary emphasis, as expected, but many articles include sample C# and VB .NET Web service code. My "Build Real-Time Web Images" article from the August 2004 issue of Visual Studio Magazine was the lead link for the initial DevChannel page. The article describes how to write VB. NET 2003 Windows form clients for Microsoft's SQL Server-driven TerraService and MapPoint Web services. TerraService is an example of a set of freely-accessible Web services that enable .NET developers to display tiled aerial/satellite photographic images of most of the earth, and USGS topographic map images of North America. MapPoint Web services render bitmaps from vector-based maps of the U.S. and many other countries. Using MapPoint Web services requires obtaining a commercial or developer license and executing a simple username/password authentication request prior to invoking the desired Web method.

Update 6/14/2005: InfoWorld's Jon Udell commented on developers use of GoogleMaps versus TerraServer:

"Years ago an early reviewer of Visual Basic 1.0 (Steve Gibson, I think) said that VB increased the software developer's leverage by an order of magnitude. That was true, but you can't keep going back to the same well. In a column on Google Maps I wrote:

Developers haven't flocked to TerraServer. What's Google's secret? Web DNA and no Windows tax. Responding in email, Jim Gray reminded me that TerraServer does offer SOAP interfaces [1, 2]. And yet those interfaces demonstrably have not inspired a flurry of innovation. Why not? Microsoft is obliged to portray the Web-based user experience as a dead end that can never be improved, and Windows as the only way forward. So it's going to be Visual Basic and client/server all over again: Windows applications will control the user experience; servers will dish out the data; developers will connect the dots."

For a preview of the TerraService and MapPoint Web service client projects, check out the illustrated online help page on the OakLeaf Web site.

Like OakLeaf's public CFR Web services, the TerraService and MapPoint Web services take full advantage of Visual Studio's Add Web Reference Wizard to autogenerate .NET 1.0+ C# or VB .NET Web service proxy classes. Simplified programming of data-driven Web services and the capability to autogenerate Web service client proxy classes were Microsoft's primary marketing topics for .NET 1.0. VS 2005's new built-in Web server simplifies development and publication of basic SQAP 1.1 and 1.2 Web services, but offers few other Web service enhancements. SQL Server 2005 boasts the capability to host native (in-process) SOAP Web services that substitute Windows Server 2003's and Windows XP's built-in HTTP.sys driver for IIS and VS-generated .asmx files. Promotion of the WS-Security and other WS-* specifications, Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0+, and the forthcoming Indigo message bus appears to have increased the FUD factor surrounding SOA in general and Web services in particular. This uncertainty has reduced IT management and developer interest in implementing basic .NET and Java Web services as the first step in demonstrating the practicality of enterprise-level SOA to corporate and line-of-business management. Perhaps the Web services developer community would be better served by more publicly accessible, data-intensive, real-world Web services and fully implemented client examples, such as the TerraService and MapPoint projects, rather than white papers that describe esoteric SOAP headers and emerging messaging "standards." RSS 2.0 and ATOM adhere to the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) principal, which is the secret to their current success in content syndication. --rj