1. Web Services: Are We There Yet? Jim Farmer Sakai Community Liaison 1 st Annual Conference on Technology & Standards Postsecondary Education Standards Council 2 May 2004, Arlington, Virginia

2. Publisher’s Note Web Services is not within the current scope of the Sakai Project. Chief Architect Charles Severance expects the use of Web Services in Sakai software later this year. uPortal is a project of the JA-SIG Collaborative led by Carl Jacobson at the University of Delaware and funded, in part, from the Sakai Project. im+m has contributed to uPortal, and the Meteor and California Electronic Transcript Project prototypes referenced in this presentation. The author is Chairman of the Board of im+m and Sigma Systems Inc., contracted by the University of Michigan for the Sakai Educational Partners Program, and volunteers as uPortal Project Administrator.

3. The Promise, in 2002 …

4. Web services defined “Web services are a set of standards for how systems connect to each other, and communicate information. It’s an extension of a distributed computing framework, which provides an open standard that most software vendors support.” Chandra Vekatapath Market Manager, Web Services, IBM Corporation, TheBusiness Integrator, Second Quarter 2002, pp. 5-11

5. Value of Web services “[Web services] provides a facility for an application or a system to collaborate with another application or systems regardless of how the applications are implemented, regardless of where they are implemented, or on which platform they are implemented.” Chandra Vekatapath Market Manager, Web Services, IBM Corporation, TheBusiness Integrator, Second Quarter 2002, pp. 5-11

6. The business case Originally, the exchange of data with others. Now, integration between disparate application, disparate computer systems, disparate operating systems, disparate programming languages—the Enterprise Application Integration EAI bus. ___________________________________________ ”Getting access to stove-piped data is the primary reason for implementing Web services.” Uttam Nasrsu GIGA Information Group At the FSA CIO Update Conference Arlington, Virginia, May 8, 2002

7. Value of Web services technology Open standards Web service projects are taking one-fourth the time and costing one-fifth comparable projects using traditional technology. Performance is 2 to 10 times better than expected. –HFC Bank - IFX credit card application using XML, SOAP and XSLT –Deutsche Bank Bauspar - FixML security transaction integration using XML messages and XSL transformations –Hypo Vereinsbank - Integration Based on presentations at the XSLT [Invitational] Conference Oxford, University, April 8-9, 2001

8. “Best of Breed” strategy “With Web services, best of breed becomes more feasible.” “Web services will make best of breed more cost effective.” Rick Bergquist, CTO of PeopleSoft as quoted by Heather Harreld and Mark Jones in “Chasing suite success,” InfoWorld, Nr. 24, June 17, 2002.

9. The Reality, in 2004 …

10. Standards, then and now 20022004 MessageXML 1.0 Feb 1998 XML 1.1 Feb 2004 TransportSOAP 1.0 May 2000 SOAP 1.2 Jun 2003 AddressingWS-Addressing Mar 2004 SecurityWS-Security Apr 2004 SAML 1.1 Sep 2003 AttachmentWS-I Attachments 1.0 Dec 2003

11. Standards, then and now 20022004 Transaction Processing WS-Reliable Messaging Mar 2004 (IBM) Services Description WSDL 1.0 Sep 2000 WSDL 1.2 Jun 2003 Working draft only Directory Services DSML 1.0 Dec 1999 DSML 2.0 Oct 2002 DirectoryUDDI 2.0 Jul 2002 UDDI 3.0 Jul 2002 Digital Signature PDF/A Jul 2003; with PKI certificate, likely late 2004

12. Request, response model Organization A Service 1 Organization B Service 1 Organization A Service 2 Request Response Alternative response using WS-Addressing (e.g. errors requiring special handling)

13. Basic Web Services

14. Lesson learned – “simple”

15. Then …

16. Now…in higher education Digital library search and retrieval (WSRP: University of Hull) Transcripts (U.K. Further Education) Student Records (Denmark universities, National Student Clearinghouse) Student Aid (NCHELP Meteor) Security (Internet 2 Shibboleth) Portals (WSRP: Michigan Technological University for JA-SIG)

17. Are We There Yet?

18. Yes, Meteor financial aid data Since 2002, a system for exchanging data among the student loan industry in order to present a consolidated view to the student borrower. Now, a system that can be installed in the campus portal or Web page and may use local authentication

19. The Meteor model

20. Meteor demonstrated … XML document handling SOAP functionality, performance Federated authentication with dynamic Levels of Assurance Display via XML and XSL Transformations and used open source code

21. Gleason’s “Transitive Trust”

22. Yes, JA-SIG uPortal

23. WSRP works!

24. Possibly, Federal Student Aid March 4, 2003

25. Unlikely, California transcripts California community colleges unable to implement or support Web Services technology XML implementation of California-specific data

26. Why not? “[California Community Colleges consultant] Joseph Giroux said [lack of new staff] has a significant impact on new technology, such as the Linux/Apache/Tomcat implementations to support uPortal. He said most colleges would not be able to implement real-time electronic transcripts at their campus. He felt that a central service would be needed by many colleges, and separate installations—server and software— would be required to support electronic transcripts in others.” “Comments about the California Community Colleges: A Conversation with Tish McNamara and Joseph Giroux,” September 10, 2003

27. However, CCC demonstrated Bi-directional conversions between EDI and PESC XML Feasible use of PESC XML transcript using Notes fields Web Services prototype –Multi-page, role-specific displays

28. An observation … Web Services technology is available, tested, and cost effective. The market has confirmed acceptance of the technology. The use of Web Services now is a business decision.

29. The future … Someone is going to do Web Services and receive many of the benefits. Will you be a participant or observer? Collaboration makes it work, and everyone benefits. uPortal may have been the most successful; Sakai has the most potential. Facilitating the implementation of these technologies is PESC’s mission.

30. The end jim farmer jxf@immagic.com; jxf@UMich.edu +1-202-296-2807

31. Permissions Sakai and JA-SIG publications are in the public domain and can be freely reproduced. These presentations may contain material reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Users are requested to comply with any copyright restrictions and to appropriately reference any materials that are used in their own works.