webMethods Integration World - San Diego

On Wednesday I attended webMethods Integration World in San Diego, where I spoke on a panel discussing Web Services interoperability. Joining me on the panel:

· Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems
· Ian White, Micro Focus
· Andy Astor, VP, webMethods

Audience participation was great (approx 150) and a varied set of questions kept the attrition rate low.

I showed a 15 minute demonstration of WSE 2.0 using WS-Security with Sun’s JWSDP 1.4. The demo showed implementations on both platforms and seemed to be really well received based on the number of people that approached me after lunch.

There were a couple of questions on WS-I Basic Profile compliance, namely around ensuring that generated WSDLs were compliant. Given the panel’s involvement with WS-I, this was handled well. The notion of contract first/schema first development also received a lot of airplay during the panel discussion. While it is widely recognized that this was the best way of achieving Web Services interoperability, there was recognition of the lack of tools and guidance from vendors.

Finally, a couple of attendees questioned the binding of HTTP to the Web Services stack. An overview of the custom transports available for WSE 2.0, as well as a SSL vs. WS-Security explanation seemed to go down well here.

One additional highlight of the trip was Tuesday evening’s organized event on the USS Midway. The size of the carrier was breathtaking (in all respects of the word – especially, after climbing up the steps to get to the flight deck!). After making the climb I was however able to spend some valuable time catching up on the latest from Graham.