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R E V I E W

Serving Up SOAP

April 3, 2003
By Lori MacVittie

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	In this article
	Introduction
	Novell Extend Application Server 4.0
	Other Products Reviewed
	Defining Web Services Performance
	How We Tested Web Services
	Report Card

If you plan to implement Web services, you need two things: an environment in which to develop them, and a platform on which to deploy them. Choosing can be tricky--it's a lot more complicated than deciding between Sun Microsystems' J2EE (Java 2, Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft's .Net.

On one side of the table are extensions to existing application servers from Apache, BEA Systems, IBM, Novell and Sun. On the other side are the platforms--products from Cape Clear Software, Iona Technologies and Systinet Corp. designed to stand on their own or reside on an existing J2EE-compliant application server. And sitting in the middle is Microsoft with its own flavor of Web services built into Windows Server 2003.

Web services platforms tend to focus solely on providing Web services capabilities, which result in a more robust and complete implementation. Because they can all be deployed into existing J2EE application servers, the benefits of an application-server implementation of Web services--clustering, load balancing, database connection pooling--also can be achieved. The disadvantage with this approach is one of administration and support. A single-vendor setup often is more desirable in a complex environment, but the flexibility offered by platforms may be too sweet to pass up. Microsoft's solution offers little flexibility--it's Redmond's way or the highway, of course--but it has ease of use and familiarity on its side, making it a hard act to follow.

Taste Tests

We invited BEA, Cape Clear, IBM, Iona, Microsoft, MindElectric Co., Novell, Oracle, Systinet and Sun to our Green Bay, Wis., Real-World Labs® to see which of their secret sauces could withstand our rigorous testing. IBM passed, saying a forthcoming release would be a better fit, and Microsoft reluctantly declined as well, preferring to serve up Windows Server 2003 at a later date. MindElectric bowed out, citing resource issues, and though Oracle worked hard to meet our deadlines, resource issues also prevented its participation.

So we tossed, whipped, mixed and beat products from BEA, Cape Clear, Iona, Novell, Systinet and Sun with the frenetic energy of the Swedish Chef. All the products deserve a standing ovation for their interoperability--during our testing, a failure to interoperate with our clients, regardless of the operating system/ development language platform used to build each client was negligible, and total interoperability was achieved with minimal tweaks to product-generated WSDL (Web Services Definition Language).

Happy SOAPing

One of the beautiful things about Web services is the agnostic nature of the standards behind SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Because every existing Web services standard--from SOAP to WSDL to UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) to WS-Security--is based on XML, it really doesn't matter what underlying operating system the product resides on; to provide Web services functionality the Web service must process XML. That means that half of the Web services' secret sauce, regardless of whether it's served on a J2EE or Microsoft .Net plate, is the XML parser used by the product. The second half is the way in which a product handles marshaling and unmarshaling of arguments. Marshaling is the process of taking arguments from the submitted XML document, such as a purchase order or customer ID, and putting it in a format usable by the developer. Unmarshaling is the opposite process--taking a language-specific construct and turning it into XML. If either of these ingredients is substandard, it means poorer performance and a more difficult time for developers to create Web services of their own.

Vendors at a Glance

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The success of any such initiative is also dependent on the development environment and its support for building Web services. There's a multitude of new standards in play, and all the products we tested try to minimize the need for you to learn these standards, thus making your foray into the Web services world painless. The degree to which a development environment is seamlessly integrated with the target deployment platform is crucial, as is the product's ability to develop Web services rapidly--with minimal training. If a product can generate the framework and require only that the developer write business logic code and push a button to deploy, it has the chops to move your developers into the world of Web services.

As for security, we were disappointed in the general lack of support for XML-SIG and XML-Encryption in almost every product we tested. We understand the reluctance of most vendors to include support for

WS-Security--it's still under development--but XML-SIG, albeit still a work in progress, has been available since 1999, and XML-Encryption appeared in 2001. Both BEA and Sun have indicated that support for both standards will be available in their next product incarnations, while others are waiting for finalization of WS-Security before offering support.

Taking all this into consideration, we gave our Editor's Choice award to Novell's Extend 4.0. for its appearance, easy-to-follow Web services development and management, and broad range of features. BEA's WebLogic 7.0 was hot on Extend's trail, followed closely by Cape Clear's CapeConnect.