.NET: A guide for managers
Published: 02 May 2003 13:18 BST
Understanding the .NET protocols - a key to project success
When managing .NET projects, chances are that you're going to come across some specs or protocols, which I think are important to understand when working with your development team. They are:
- Disco: The Discovery (or Disco) protocol helps developers automatically determine what services and features are provided in a Web service. It defines both a discovery format based on XML and a protocol for retrieving that discovery document. The thing to remember is that Disco has to have a known URL to search for services.
- SOAP: The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is basically there for information exchange. Its specs define an extensible message format and binds to the HTTP protocol.
- WSDL: Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is an extensible service description language that is often used. It's really an XML-based contract language.
- UDDI: Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) was created specifically as a way to discover service providers, without knowing the URL.
- XML: This is the most basic of them all; it's the widely used standard for representing data over the Web and is the glue that secures the .NET Framework. Many Web services use XML in schemas to describe their data types.
Who's using .NET? Clients agree. There does seem to be a place for .NET and there are quite a few success stories. Sure, .NET is in transition and full implementation will take time, but take a look at what these clients did:
- Honeywell coded its solution in four weeks. It finished its project in 10 weeks, and came in under budget, thanks in part to Visual Studio .NET development and debugging tools, which shaved crucial hours off the final timeline.
- Telenor got eChannel up and running in three months using .NET, and the project came in under budget. The company figures alternative integration methods would have taken at least twice as long.
- The Central Bank of Costa Rica recently completed a successful migration of a turnkey payment system to .NET technologies. One of the keys to the success of this project is that it does not have to rebuild existing systems. The system is designed to benefit Costa Rica's money market, eliminating technological boundaries and enabling it to be more agile. They were able to migrate over 1.3 million lines of code from previous Microsoft COM-based technology to .NET. It's become one of the biggest .NET deployments of a core mission-critical application worldwide.
Early adopters of .NET have pushed out some initial project successes. My message to project managers right now is to start becoming familiar with .NET technologies because .NET seems here to stay.
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