Open Source Web Services Peer to Peer Networking and Canada’s Innovation Agenda Bill St. Arnaud CANARIE Inc

“We are moving away from a world of software applications to a world where users create applications made from software services”

Web Services (1) A web page today incorporates open source text, images and links from other web site Web services will extend the concept to incorporate “services” WSDL and SOAP make it easy to define new services and functionality without going through complex standards approval process WSDL and SOAP can be bound to traditional API calls to provide open interface to users With JXTA and J2EE applications can be built on a peer to peer basis

Web Services (2) Started with eBusiness and ASPs (Application Service Providers) Didn’t progress until the advent of P2P and Open Source In the past organizations used to build monolithic huge applications Web services allows them to breakdown application to linking publicly accessible services built on open source modules Akin to programming paradigm of sub-routines and run time libraries distributed over the network

Example University of California was looking to purchase monolithic universal box application –Integrating telephone, fax and Instead used web services to integrate existing telephone, fax and servers Web service tools use all open source software

Importance of Open Source At first open source was viewed as akin to 1960s free love communes –Nice idea but no practical economic reality But today open source is the foundation of web services e.g. Apache, Linux, Tomcat, Jakarta, etc etc –Revenue opportunity from services, NOT applications P2P and Internet allow thousands of entrepreneurs to offer services from word processing to customer owned optical networks –Significantly different than the centrally managed ASP model For economic fundamentals of open source see CA*net news list at –Recreation of the specialized guilds where the economic value is in knowledge – not proprietary product

Importance of WS and OS to Government of Canada Government of Canada has major eGovernment initiative Major challenge integrating thousands of existing mainframe systems Web services and open source may allow for rapid migration to eGovernment without developing new applications May also be a major stimulus to industry to develop necessary web services that augment and supplement government services Key issue is whether government content should be also open source

Importance of WS and OS to Canada’s Innovation Agenda Canada has always been a laggard in terms of software productivity and IT usage –Major component of national productivity Other than a few stars Canada has not been strong in software development But if the world is moving to WS, development of services will be more important than software Software may ultimately become “off the shelf” open source modules Developing strategies and leadership in web services and open source critical to Canada’s Innovation agenda

Some ideas A national “cyberinfrastructure” for R&E to support web services for R&E built on open source and open content Perhaps CA*Net 4 will be foundation for an “innovation commons” to encourage researchers, students and businesses to build web services using open source tools in a variety of fields: –Next gen distance education repositories for learning objects –eScience distributed computing and grids –Wireless and mobile applications and services –Next gen health and eBuiness services To make a world leader in next generation Internet using web services, open source and open content