Update: Sorry this got a little long. In any case, these issues in way prevent me from solving problems with Web Services in their current state. They're very useful.

>But his statement reveals the level of frustration within Microsoft over sluggish industry acceptance for what some in the company saw as a can't-miss proposition.

There are several issues here that I see.

1. There is still confusion with standards, who's platform works, and how stable, secure, and reliable the standards are. There is a technology solution for this, and I think its only a temporary hurdle.

2. lack of vision. This, on the other has, does not have an ovbious technological solution. Take a service like the UniversalThread. It would be pretty simple to write a UT Web Service client in VFP and dock it in the VFP toolbar. In fact, I've done this. But what can I actually do with it? Anything interesting? Last I checked there was no way to actually post from a Web Service, which eleminates the possible Use Case of being able to ask support questions directly from the VFP Help menu, and read those replies all in the IDE. How about sharing classes and code? I'd like to be typing a way in a command window, think of a question, have the UT in my IDE, check out the UTFAQ and have snippets of code pasted in to my PRG.

How about this for a FoxCentral or UT Web Service: having your toolbars, window sizes and positions (command window, view windows, ect.), syntax coloring settings, and custom INtelliSense scripts stored in an account. That way, when I access my account, the IDE is setup to run like its in my office, whether I'm down the hall or in a library on the other side of the world.

Perhaps the vision is there, but the profit isn't. Or the time isn't. But people have the resources to create basic prototypes of Web Service consumers. But the applications being built are simple, and don't take Web Services to the level that Microsoft (well, at least I) envisioned.

3. Which leads me to the biggest problem with Web Services: how much control providors want over their content. Lets take something like CNN. Now what advantage woudl it be to CNN if I could read their headlines in the Windows Start menu, or on my bathroom mirror, or the display on my car stereo? If its free, what do they get out of it? Nothing. If they put Ads there, will I even want it? Nope.

Now, I could pay them, and then we'd both be happy, but there are some issues to overcome first. For example, how do I pay them, how much and when? Micropayments are a great idea, but with the current credit card structure it costs $.25 to do a half penny transaction. Thats definitly not right. So the hold Credit Card thing has numbered days. But the bigger problem is what if I want a story from BBC, 2 from IHT, 1 from MSNBC, and 2 from CNN? Do I really have to write out four checks? Do I need to manage these manually?

Currently, we would. However, a combination of technology solutions could change this. First of all, I see the ISP becoming the real cable company of the internet. I don't pay CNN to watch CNN or MTV to watch MTV. I pay a cable company and they take care of the details. If I paid my ISP to manage my Micropayments, now I see that as a decent investment. But more than likely, I see my ISP crediting me this stuff. For example, if I sign up for MSN a marketing campaign coudl give me a specified amount of free acces to MSNBC and Hotmail. AOL would offer CNN and its child companies services. And little ISPs could start the same movement.

4. Finally I come to the realization (IOW, most people will read this as conspiracy theory) that Web Services liberate internet users, which makes that undesirable to mega coprorations and teh advertising industry. And without advertising, how will our marketing centric population understand teh benefits of this new model?

So, we have some things to work through. The biggest question I have right now is, by the time we work through these, will Web Services be obsolete? We move back and forth from distributed and centralized computing all too often. Usually with a vengence. I can imagine, some time in the future where we move from the current state of Web Services to an environment where every computer has an operating system whose file system is really a database. So the way I store my Word Documents and manage the Checks I write are exactly the same as how my company stores information in a database about the customers we support. And that accessing the files on your home computer is functionallity identical to accessing the files on the computer you happen to be looking at. This open architecture would basically eleminate all the need for Web Services as we currently know them.