Finding speed, simplicity in 'modular' Web services

By Eric B. Parizo, News Editor 01 May 2003 | SearchWebServices.com

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One of the half-truths often propagated about Web services is that, by making integration easier, they make the development process easier as well. However, Carroll Pleasant vehemently disagrees with that.

Pleasant, an emerging-technology analyst with Kingsport, Tenn.-based Eastman Chemical Co., has been working with Web services since the late '90s, when SOAP's simple cousin, XML-RPC, ruled the industry landscape.

His company recently built a portal-like "management scorecard" application, in order to provide executives with a consolidated way to interact with line-of-business data from across the company.

It didn't take Pleasant long to learn that the most sensible way to combine data from SAP R/3 4.6g and other Java- and Microsoft-centric applications, as well as number of external sources, was with XML-based Web services. But, as Eastman's developers began to build the necessary Web services and combine the data from each, Pleasant realized that the development process wasn't as painless as he had hoped.

"We were doing a significant amount of coding, and we thought that should be more like plugging tasks together," said Pleasant.

He also said that, as more Web services were added, system lag became a problem. Eastman realized that the company needed to squeeze as much latency out of the application as possible. The only sure-fire way to build parallel execution of services, service caching and speedy register lookups was with the help of a third-party vendor.

After what Pleasant called a "fairly involved evaluation" of the Web services management space, Eastman chose Pleasanton, Calif.-based NextAxiom Technology Inc., not only because Pleasant was convinced it could help boost the management scorecard's performance, but also because the company promised that its Hyperservice Business Platform could ease all of Eastman's future development efforts.

The key to developing Web services applications more quickly, said NextAxiom CEO Arash Massoudi, is the HBP's Hyperservice Studio development workbench. It enables developers to create a service-based application by tying "modular" Web service components together in a drag-and-drop format.

"We have wizards that connect to databases, messaging systems and other systems using adaptors that use XML to connect to any legacy systems, and from there we can import their functions as services," Massoudi said. "We combine those services, and we expose them to the presentation layer for consumption."

Pleasant said that, with the help of NextAxiom and its development tools, his company was able to implement the HBP and complete development of the management scorecard in three days, even though it was originally expected to take more than a month to complete the manual coding that would have been required to link and manage 23 different Web services.

Plus, the visual nature of NextAxiom's environment allowed Eastman's business process analysts and executives to participate as well. Since those were the people for whom it was being designed, Pleasant said, their input made the application even more valuable. Moreover, he said, NextAxiom's platform will reduce the time spent on future Web services projects, helping the company move to a service-oriented architecture more quickly.

"It's the closest thing to a Powerpoint-to-VB compiler that you're ever going to see," Pleasant said. "We wrote zero code to assemble the scorecard application. We put the pieces together by drawing a picture of the application assembly in a GUI environment, and that's pretty cool."

Pleasant did note that NextAxiom's HBP does not include a presentation layer, but Eastman utilized user interface technology from New York-based Droplets Inc. That enabled the company to build a Web-based front end onto NextAxiom's server-side application, creating a familiar client-server look.

NextAxiom's Hyperservice Business Platform, which includes the Hyperservice Studio, the NextAxiom Server execution and management environment, and the Hyperservice Manager administration utility, is priced starting at $49,000.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Read Preston Gralla's column about how Web services really work

Learn why businesses are rushing to build Web services

Read more stories by News Editor Eric B. Parizo

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