Some Web Services Predictions for 2003

I write a Q&A column for searchwebservices.com about XML. Some time ago they asked for some predictions about web services for 2003.
Here is where they ended up.

Its all in the wetware folks

A piece I wrote for XML Journal some time ago came my way again today. Basically, interoperability is tractable in terms of hardware and software (Hard but tractable. As the wise man once said "strive to make the impossible, very difficult.".) The intractable part is all to do with people. Industry standard schemas in the XML world show up the extent of the people problems very nicely.

It seems the whole idea of an industry standard schema may be simple, elegant and just plain wrong. :-(

An experiment in collaborative blogfiction

I've started a blog story. The starting date for the story is January 3 2003 but it is being written from 2030 by the narrator.

If you would like to contribute, please contact me (contact information in my blogroll). Its hosted on blogger which allows multiple authors so I can sign people up with contributor access easily. Also, I'll take contributions by e-mail (please put "BLOGSTORY:" into the subject line.

I'd like to have at least one entry a day added to the story. Lets see where it ends up!

xml-dev timewarp

xml-dev is still in 2002 today. Thank goodness for meaningful URLs from which we can deduce
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200301/maillist.html which does indeed work.

Crunchy, slightly salted WIFI

WIFI with a Pringles can. I simply must have one.

An important link for Irish visitors

Karlin Lillington's 'In defense of data privacy'.

Jython status report by Finn Bock

Jython status report from last years (2002) Europython conference. Roll on Jython 2.2. I firmly believe that high quality interpreted languages such as Jython represent the best hope for Java the platform.

Note to all Java-only programmers out there. Quit heaping abstraction on top of abstraction to work around the fact that your programming language of choice in caught in a

• static typing is necessary
  
• you must compile everything otherwise it will be fully of um, mistakes and um, slow
  
• you must know everything at compile time for a program to "work"
  
• you mist paramaterise throught declarative constructs exclusively
  
• scripting is for kiddies, right?
  
• one language fits all
  
• xml is just objects in disguise
  

time warp and get with the program . Support your local "on the Java VM" programming language. There are plenty to choose from! Jython would be a good choice in my opinion.