Joshua Fox

Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are a significant step forward in aligning information technology with business goals. But SOAs are insufficient when the Web services of which they are typically composed use inconsistent terminologies and present different understandings of the real-world environment that they are meant to support. Enterprises need transparency, a clear view of what is happening in the organization. They also need agility, which is the ability to respond quickly to changes in the internal and external environments. Finally, organizations require integration: the smooth interoperation of applications across organizational boundaries. Encoding business concepts in a formal semantic model helps to achieve these goals and also results in additional co... (more)

Semantic Discovery for Web Services

The Web services vision of loosely coupled interaction between components, programs, and applications is already beginning to create impressive efficiencies of scale in business integration. The notion of a Web service registry such as UDDI is helping to turn this vision into a reality. Despite this, however, the comprehensive adoption of a truly dynamic discovery of Web services may sti... (more)

Opaque Bodies, Transparent Envelopes

XML is often used to transmit messages. The tags indicate where the message should go and how it should be handled. The information transferred in the message can be XML as well. Just as modularity is necessary in coding programs, separating the messaging envelope from the data body is necessary in planning data structures. Keeping the layers from recognizing each other allows developers ... (more)

Building a Successful Wireless Web Site

So, you've just led the successful creation of a full-featured Web site with a three-tier back end, and you've now been asked to lead the company's new wireless Web site project. You wonder how your experience will carry over from the World Wide Web (W3) to the Wireless World Wide Web (W4). You have to hire the personnel, buy the hardware and software for the QA and integration labs, and ... (more)