Download Some Lessons from Successes and Failures of Electronic Trading

NBA 600: Session 25
IT and the General Manager
New Technologies: Web Services
22 April 2003
Daniel Huttenlocher
IT and Your Business
 What should a general manager today
know about information technology?
– IT investment has potential strategic as well as
operational value
– The best IT investments improve products or
services not just reduce costs
• Possible because of rapid IT improvements
• Applies to both internal projects and purchases
– Proposed costs and benefits need to make
business sense
• Takes effort both by IT and business experts
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What To Do
 An IT-aware general manager should
– Not necessarily be a technology expert
• If an expert, be sure to trust other experts and
to make business not IT motivated decisions
– Actively look for areas where IT could improve
products/services while lowering costs
• Also respond to and evaluate proposals from
others that meet these criteria
– Develop good working relationships with
trusted technology experts
• Partners not support roles
• Mutual education
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Emerging Technologies
 Investigate some new technologies
– In context of making effective general
management decisions
 Web services receiving a lot of attention
over the past couple years
–
–
–
–
–
–
Many companies racing to deploy
Lots of acronyms: XML, SOAP, …
Software platforms such as J2EE and .net
Pre-existing Web services
Business risks and benefits
Deployment costs
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What Web Services Are
 Definition of a Web service
– Paraphrased from W3C (w3.org)
• A software system, accessible via the Web, with
interfaces described using XML, accessed by
other software systems using XML-based
messages conveyed by internet protocols
XML response
Service
Requestor
IP Network
Service
Provider
Request
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Web Site vs. Web Service
 API (Application Programming Interface)
– To be used by other software not a person
– Separates the display/layout from content
• No need to change processing because layout
changes!
 HTML for expressing display of content
whereas XML for content only
HTML response
Client
(Browser)
Network
Server
HTTP request
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Business Case for Web Services
 Makes your business information
accessible for others to use on their sites
– E.g., Fedex or UPS tracking information on ecommerce Web site
– Can be governed by terms of use and require
authentication/authorization
• E.g., amazon.com only access their shipping info
 Enable your customers to place orders
from their systems
– E.g., large (corporate) customers
– Supply chain integration
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Risks of Web Services
 Making information accessible to those
outside the firm
– Careful consideration of what access to provide
and to/from whom
– Appropriate authentication and authorization
policies and implementations
 Maturity of underlying technology
– Risks of failure or errors in what become
critical systems
 Not acting and having your competitors
provide better services
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Some Web Services Offerings
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Ebay Web Services
 Automation of
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–
–
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Listing items
Monitoring auctions
Searching
Feedback
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Not a Specific Technology
 Web services simply refers to an
architecture in which
– Software systems communicate directly
– Communication uses XML-based messages
over internet protocols
• Can use regular HTTP (Web) server such as
Apache
 Does not require
– Use of higher level standards such as SOAP
and WSDL
– Use of particular implementations such as J2EE
or .net
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XML
 Simple, extensible text format for
exchange of data
– Intended to enable good description of data
– More of a framework than actual format
• Needs to have “tags” defined by a schema
 Extremely valuable for replacing many
non-standard data exchange formats
– Standard “parsers” convert text to computeraccessible format
– A simple idea that can make data interchange
work better – but not rocket science
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Basic XML Example
 A simple personnel record, with name,
address, employee number, salary
– “Fields” must be defined in a schema
<employee>
<name><first>Jane</first><last>Doe</last></name>
<address>
<number>14</number><street>Main Street</street>
<city>Ithaca</city><state>NY</state>
<zip>14850</zip>
</address>
<id_number>142996</id_number>
<salary>72,000</salary>
</employee>
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What XML Gets You
 Great; both systems use XML format
– Analogy: knowing the same language
(grammar, etc.) – saves a lot!
 Still need to know how the systems
communicate
– E.g., using HTTP, SOAP over IIOP, etc.
– Analogy: on the phone, internet, in person, etc.
 Still need to know the vocabulary
– Provided by Schema, but need to know how to
use the resulting data
– Analogy: meaning of special-purpose terms
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Full Web Services Architecture
Discovery
Agency
Find
(UDDI/WSDL)
Publish
(UDDI/WSDL)
IP Network
Service
Requestor
Interaction
(Using SOAP)
Service
Provider
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Full Web Services Stack
 Layers involved in full Web services
architecture
– Note the “business issues” from a general IT
architectural perspective
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SOAP
 An XML-based means of describing
communication between systems
– Works with various network protocols
• E.g., HTTP, SMTP, FTP, RMI/IIOP or proprietary
messaging protocols such as MQSeries
– SOAP intended to standardize description of
what is in a message sent between systems
• Can simply use network protocols directly but
not “self describing”
– Hype often ahead of value with SOAP
• More variation in data than in message format
so more important to use XML for data itself
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WSDL/UDDI
 XML-based means of describing and
discovering Web services
 Part of the Web services architecture is
that there should be service directories
– Services and descriptions can be looked up
• E.g., find me a package delivery service
– Description involves how to access service and
what messages can be sent
 Powerful vision, but still actively evolving
– Today known which systems will interact with
one another – not highly dynamic
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Web Services Software
 Two application development frameworks
make easier to deploy Web services
– J2EE from Sun, based on Java
• Also supported by IBM, Oracle and BEA
• Proprietary extensions from each vendor
– .net from Microsoft, based on CLR
• CLR: common language runtime
 Language independent but primarily new
language C# and Visual Basic
• Wide adoption in Microsoft developer community
 In practice, many are using both
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Recent Study
 Gartner survey from September ’02
– 44 consulting and systems integration firms
– Reported in Information Week, 2/5/03
 Top 3 platforms targeting for Web services
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–
–
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58% .net
40% IBM WebSphere (J2EE)
31% Oracle (J2EE)
Sun fourth place
 Survey of 140 companies similar results
– Smaller companies more likely to use .net
– Larger more likely to use J2EE or both
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What’s Meant by Web Services
 Most companies still using Web services
within the enterprise
– Some starting to offer services to outsiders
• Beyond technology leaders like FedEx, Google,
Amazon, Ebay
 Generally using XML for inter-system
communication over HTTP
 Usage of SOAP and WSDL still low
– In Feb. 2002 was “miniscule”
– Currently around 20% report using at least
one
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Full Web Services Architecture
Discovery
Agency
Find
(Using WSDL)
Publish
(Using WSDL)
IP Network
Service
Requestor
Interaction
(Using SOAP)
Service
Provider
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Today’s Web Services Architecture
IP Network
Service
Requestor
Interaction
(Using XML over HTTP)
Service
Provider
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Management Decisions
 Vendors and platforms
– Unix/Java or Microsoft shop (often both)
• J2EE or .net (or both)
– Currently using
• Other trends driving these choices within firm
 What are potential customers using and
how much influence over their choices
– Or compatibility across vendors
 How far up the Web services stack
– Is minimum for the business purpose
– Is desirable for future compatibility
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