DoD has pilot tested its Web services architecture in a homeland defense simulation of command and control capabilities. In the pilot test U.S. forces detected a bio-terrorism attack, and used the Web services architecture to process and manage the response. With Web services, friendly forces described their needs in profiles using WSDL and posted them on the secure network using UDDI directories. Under various scenarios, the forces searched for and detected the appropriate services, exchanging messages in SOAP formats. The profiles, directories, and messages followed the basic Web services standards, but used the XML-MTF to speak the language of the military.
While Cherinka says the DoD's work with Web services still has a way to go, these early reports are encouraging. Not only has the technology appeared to meet requirements so far, DoD has been able to conduct this project with an eye on the budget. The architecture allows for reuse of the Web services components, thus making possible rapid development of Web services applications in DoD, rather than having to start from scratch each time. Cherinka also made use of off-the-shelf software by Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft, as well as an Apache open-source server.
Links ...
XML 2001 conference: http://www.xmlconference.org/
Mitre Corporation:http://www.mitre.org/
Web Services Revolution, Part 1 (parts 2 and 3 linked from this page): http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/we...
ebXML: http://www.ebxml.org/
