António,

I perused the link...interesting debate. It would be far more useful to have the discussion here, in a threaded environment. Quite frankly, all I see up on the Wiki is a bunch of "catty" in-fighting. It makes me wonder about that fat-free claim the wiki likes to make..< bg >....

We have had web services for quite some time. http, asp, etc... IMO, web services are about publishing data. Very cool stuff, but quite frankley, we have been able to do this stuff for a long time. Take IntraNets. We have had them for a long time. Remember when they were called LANS...


The words to describe it and the packaging are a bit different today. One must separate the marketing hype from the technology. I used to get flustered by it. Today, I take it as par for the course. The biggest problem I have with MS marketing is that very often, they insult the intelligence of the masses. i.e., they couch things from the perspective that what they are showing you is brand spanking new. The fact is, it is not new. The only thing new is the packaging. At a substantive level, much of the stuff is the same.

Take .Net for example. Having just sat through a 2-day developer training/seminar, I feel a bit more competent to comment on this stuff now. As far as web-apps go, I see the same old stuff, just in a new package. The real problems of web-based browser apps have not been solved. You are still constrained by the limitations of the browser. Therefore, I totally discount the browser-based capabilities of .Net - for one big reason - WINDOWS FORMS. IMO, Windows Forms is the compelling story with .Net. Nice OO model, and for the most part, you can use VB. It would be nice if .Net had VFP's local data engine! That however, is another issue that I won't get into here...

IMO, Windows Form's will, for the most part, obviate the need to rely on the browser. The distribution mech. go a lot easier!!

As far as Windows Services are concerned, I see it as one small piece in a very big puzzle. IMO, web services is simply another way of publishing data on the web. The cool thing, IMO, is XML/SOAP, the stuff that web services is built around. With that stuff, no need for DCOM and the related headaches. The ability to read data from/write data to is pretty cool, especially when you think of tying disparate systems together. Of course, many people are not writing systems like this today nor will many need to write systems like this tomorrow. That said, there is still a lot in .net that is worth looking at.

It is very early in the game. Now is the time to sit back, relax, and take stock of how this stuff can be made to work...That is where people like us come into play...








>>Wikiwatch: Steve is challenging people to find one compelling webservice.
>>http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VisualFoxProCodeNames
>
>Corrigendum:
>http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~WebServicesWishfulThinking