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January 8, 2001

Microsoft's .Net vision took a couple of steps closer to becoming a live reality this week Just in the nick of time, too: not only has Oracle launched a rival framework — see Dec 16th 2000: Weekly Review — now Sun is limbering up to announce its plans in a month's time. The competition to master the underlying architecture of Internet computing is hotting up.

The Microsoft advances arrived in the shape of two new programming tools that play a vital part in the creation of .Net applications. They became available as free downloads on Wednesday — see related ASP News story on internetnews.com, Microsoft Updates Web Services Tools, Jan 3rd 2000.

The key aspect of true Internet-based applications that's enabled by .Net — and indeed by any of the rival architectures — is that they are created out of many different individual components that can be scattered across multiple servers and locations. Microsoft calls these components 'web services', and the primary purpose of .Net is to provide an architecture that allows them to link up.

One of Wednesday's two deliverables was a new version of Microsoft's SOAP toolkit for its Visual Studio application builder. Although still in beta, Microsoft said that the version 2.0 toolkit is now suitable for use in building production-ready applications using web services, which represents a substantive step towards practical deployment of .Net applications. It supports the latest versions of Internet architecture standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), all of which help smooth the process of assembling multiple online component services into a finished application.

The second item was much smaller in scope, yet with perhaps far-reaching implications. The obscurely-named Web Services Behavior for Microsoft Internet Explorer fulfils a very simple yet powerful function. It allows a developer to use remote web services to dynamically update information on a web page without having to regenerate the entire page.

It is implemented as a piece of downloadable DHTML (Dynamic HTML) code that uses SOAP to access the remote functionality. The developer can simply call it as part of a script, and it will fetch and disply results from one or more remote web services within their own areas of the web page. The remote services could be database-driven applications, live content feeds or collaborative services.

Windows supplanted

This marks the first time web services capabilities have been implemented directly in the browser, and is thus the first step down a road that will ultimately see the browser supplant Windows as the primary working environment for users. Microsoft's ultimate ideal is something it calls 'Universal Canvas', which merges document, desktop, browser and portal concepts into an all-singing, all-dancing professional user interface. It's doubtful whether Microsoft will ever fully deliver on that vision. But the Web Services Behavior is a vital initial step.

Whatever Microsoft's long-term objectives, in the more immediate future the tool allows developers to create richer online applications that combine multiple live functions, or to build portals that combine multiple applications. A word that's in increasing use by Microsoft insiders these days when talking about web development is "pagelet", denoting a small reusable HTML or scripting component that can be combined with others to assemble complete pages. This concept is very similar to Oracle's "portlet", used in the context of bringing multiple web services together in its enterprise portal framework. Everyone seems to be on the same wavelength here.

Early next month, we'll discover how far Sun has advanced along this path. It is due to announce its own software tool kit for building and assembling web services, codenamed Brazil, along with a roadmap for delivering an Internet computing architecture. One point to watch will be how far it has moved away from standardising on Java as the foundation for online computing. While Java plays a vital role as the basis of many application server platforms, XML is the key to linking between multiple servers and applications. Sun has been notably slow to bring XML into its overall vision, but unless it embraces XML-based messaging standards such as SOAP, it runs the risk of appearing less open than Microsoft — a distinction that it will not sit comfortably with.

This review of the week's news highlights is by ASPnews.com founder and managing editor Phil Wainewright. A comprehensive news digest is published every month in the ASP News Review newsletter, available exclusively to subscribers.

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