The History of Web Services

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Eric Newcomer posted his take on the history of Web services and where it is going.

Eric was heavily involved in the early days of SOAP and so forth as IONA's representative in the various standards.

I found this piece quite interesting. I've now had the good fortune to hear a number of viewpoints on the making of Web services and the opinions and reflections on the various events from people involved in the process. Dave Winer had a post awhile back on the subject to which Don Box replied (before he was with MS) (if someone has links to these I would be happy to update this entry). I also was present at the Applied XML DevCon where Dave's keynote spoke quite a bit on the subject. Over a few bottles of wine at some conference (it must have been last year's TechEd) I was present when Keith Ballinger provided his take, unencombered by public scrutiny. This was by far the most entertaining version I've encountered to date.

My tiny, little part in this great history (beyond what I do today on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center) was that I was one of the 3 developers on the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit for Visual Studio which was some sample code MSDN put out and happened to be the first public SOAP implementation by Microsoft.

But what I really find compelling is the fact that this is obviously considered as the beginnings of something big by everyone involved. The fact that people feel compelled to communicate their reflections on the events reminds me of people reflecting on Pearl Harbor, or the formation of the Beatles, or some similarly great event. Granted, these are events that probably only the geekiest of geeks care about, but it will certainly influence a lot of lives. I find myself quite intrigued.

I'll be the first to pre-order the TIME/Life book on the subject (I'm willing to bet they could sell DOZENS of copies).

Can the made-for-TV movie be far behind?

The only two remaining questions:

 Now that Jerry Garcia is dead, who would play Don?

 Now that Jerry Garcia is dead, who would play Dave?