Analysis: Web 2.0 Technologies

Few companies adopting Web 2.0 see themselves as living dangerously. But the reality is, Ajax, mashups and REST first appeared in the wilds of the Internet, where it's survival of the fittest and new technologies fight to stand out from the pack. Niceties like security might come later.

Web 2.0 and RIA (Rich Internet Applications) will dramatically change your infrastructure in terms of monitoring, management, deployment and availability. The load on both network and back-end servers could become crushing. Security is too often an afterthought, and two of IT's safety nets--standards and interoperability testing--are sorely lacking. You also may find yourself unable to analyze Web site usage by established methods.

Still, none of this seems to be hindering deployment. Close to half of developers answering Evans Data's Spring 2006 Web Services Development Survey say they're already working with Ajax, a key component of the Web 2.0 architecture, or plan to do so in the coming year. Use of REST (Representational State Transfer), a simple, URI-based service architectural model, is up as well: The Evans survey found a 37 percent increase in respondents implementing or considering REST, with one out of four seeing REST-based Web services as a simpler alternative to SOAP-based services.

Although Web 2.0 technologies can take advantage of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and your SOA infrastructure, most do not. Why? Because the developers who blazed the way rarely concerned themselves with details like management, security, scalability or support. They were in it for the thrill of the hunt.