IT Application Development - Assignment Example

IT Application Development Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Introduction In many organizations or business enterprises today, there are existences of increased stand-alone application systems that are used for day-to-day running of business operations. Stand-alone applications however have increase complications due to its complexity. It introduces redundancy of works and services as organizations experience growth and expansion. To achieve flexibility, many organizations are therefore moving towards adoption of web services in their operations. Web services Web service is computer technology in practice, which allows machine-to-machine (M2M) communications in business and organizational enterprises. It allows interaction over the network set up whether wired or wireless. Web services offer possibilities of usage in many areas in business. It allows the ability or update data in different locations from the working host, retrieve the same, validate or even authenticate certain information of interest (Austin et al., 2004). Web services allow the companies to have flexible operations on their work. The act of sharing and processing of information becomes simpler in the process. Web services introduce other advantages in the operations like allowing two applications to communicate with each other regardless of the operating system database or even programming language compatibility. Stand-alone systems have a great deal of incompatibility with different platforms, however. Web services therefore allow systems to be more adaptable and efficient in their service delivery. Web service furthermore give a business benefits in that young business can reap all the productivity benefits and still leverage the productivity gains provided by the same services as the business enterprise grow (Baeza-Yates, 1999). Web services allow usage of the same applications for a long time. Unlike stand-alone systems that at some point would need migration to new systems in time, web services will require one to just update it by developing custom tools and applications at a cheaper cost compared to the alternative. The adoption of web services in a business venture therefore brings down the cost associated with operations on stand-alone systems (Baeza-Yates, 1999). The ability for business to collaborate with associates in the delivery of their services is made possible by use of webs service. Amazon, for example, is working hard to offer these services to business partners who for a long time have had no way of collaborating with them. Big software vendors too are integrating XML into their software products in order to support online availability at any one time. As customers increase in any organization, it becomes hard to service all their requirements. Many customers need 24-hour/seven-day service. companies find it costly to offer these services; however, with the application of self-service portals based on XML technology, customers are able to get assistance at any time and further more save many companies lots of money. This is one of the advantages that can be seen as offered by web service applications based on XML. Examples of companies that have adopted these services are mostly in the transport and communication industry. Most airliners provide web services to their clients, as witnessed this has eased operations and improved company standings Web Service Discovery Mechanisms There are number of web service discovery mechanisms that include a series of registries, indexes, catalogues, agent based and peer-to-peer solutions. There is also a standard is dominating above all. This is the Universal Description Discovery and Integration-UDDI. Web service catalogues are technologies that are commonly used in webs service discovery mechanism. These are specialized repositories used by developers to implement as framework schema of interest. UDDI forms the platform that allows enterprises to discover services whether electronic or non-electronic that can be shared. Its registry service manages information in a web service about service providers, service implementation and service metadata. If a web services is to be discovered, much information must be gathered. Catalogues therefore offer a frame a platform through which these services can be gathered and as well defined. UDDI specifications therefore include SOAP, XML, WSDL, APIs definition of various technical models that are useful in identification of UDDI registrations. P2P based solutions also offer an opportunity to web service discovery mechanisms implementations. The network implementation in P2P architecture provide efficient infrastructure for data transmission and routing. It allows for location determination of data in a decentralized but organized environment. Each peer therefore acts as a router and as well as providing services to other peers. Some P2P systems include CAN, pastry and Chord. P2P therefore can be used for web discovery. In the case, service peer can be mapped to several machines arranged in a logical order with each machine maintaining necessary interfaces to draw the necessary desired web services in a P2P network. Web service storage and retrieval systems also make use of P2P infrastructure, with some nodes in the infrastructure assigned registries that perform different functions (Baeza-Yates 1999). Catalogues and P2P solutions therefore form the greatest and most widely used form/mechanisms for web service discovery. They are also used widely in the implementation of the same services. Key features and principles of service oriented architecture Many software developers develop systems based on their needs. There are however, some principles that need to be adhered in order to ensure success of each application. In the recent past, there has been an approach of breaking down big problem in to small problems that can be solved easily with each module having independency and addressing a specific problem (Hu, 2002). This approach has been adopted in object-oriented programming. Service orientation therefore can be seen from this angle of separation of components with each component autonomous but all pieces working together for the overall good. SOA principles therefore have been developed to ensure that the most out of web service are realized. Below is a brief description of each SOA principle: Services are autonomous Each service should be independent and not depend on another service, however the same can work together to achieve an overall objective. Each service works within its boundaries and should not allow any service to control or manipulate its services Services can composed In order to promote reusability, services can have the ability to compose other services. This leads to allowing logic to be used in the same composed services therefore leading to service abstraction layers. Standardized service contract Service contract define formal published metadata that services need to have. The same should be uniform and apply to all services. This will allow sharing of information between different services. Service reusability Services should be designed to support future potential reuse. This would reduce complexity and costs of developing new services. Services are stateless Each service should be designed in a manner as to ensure statelessness even if at the cost of differing state management to another location. Service abstraction Any logic defined not defined in the service metadata contract should be abstracted. They should be made invisible to the outside world. Service discovery Each service should be implemented in a way as to allow its understanding by users. They should allow their descriptions to be discovered and understood well by all, especially those that might need to make use of their logic. Loose coupling It should be strived to ensure that there is loose coupling between services. Interdependencies should be limited to what is defined in the service contract. Web services apply SOA in their applications. The best way to realize service-oriented architecture is by use of web services, which apply all the principles that apply to service oriented architecture (Booth 2005). Key features of SOAP, WSDL AND REST SOAP stands for simple object access protocol. SOAP provides specifications for binding of protocols and XML serialization schemes (Jackle, 2003). SOAP has feature like support for HTTP post and HTTP GET, which were included recently in version 1.2. It has its own URI as an additional feature from the original SOAP. SOAP uses heavyweight XML. By this, it means that it takes long to load. This heavyweight XML is entered along document passing. Another downside is that XML is very verbose though this can be used to the advantage of strict and close communication between parties. However, the same approach if used in web service can bring some advantage too (Jackle, 2003). It allows requests to be structured well; this includes responses too. In fact, the same can allow use of DTD. When using SOAP, one does not need to use protocols like HTTP since the same is transport-agnostic (Ouzzani, 2004). REST offers interesting features like client-side paste XML. It also comes with a VS menu, which allows one to use XML serializer with other REST services. In the recent version of REST, there is also a feature for specialized web content. This is the HTTP client, which is used for sending HTTP requests and receiving the same(Jackle, 2003). REST, unlike SOAP on the other hand is lightweight and majorly relies on HTTP protocol in its service delivery. The same can allow one to quickly create and have a web service running in a short duration. REST is easier to use because they are human-readable only and as well can be implemented with XML, HTML and other web based languages and scripting languages. Proprietary solutions One of the proprietary platforms for development of web services is the Tribilis’ SmarthPath. The platform allows for easy and fast web development of services that meet the client’s need. SmarthPath can be customized to meet a number of websites services. These services include Customized feature set, Screen size optimized graphics, Parsing of content by device, Web services integration, Video support, Text messaging integration, Widgets and lite applications, Polls and trivia, Voting, Feeds integration, Sweepstakes, Blogs and chat, Portals, Coupons, Registration and data collection, Access to proprietary reporting among others (TribilisMobile, 2011). SmarthPath platform is based on SaaS technology allowing web and wap publishing. User-friendly software allows development of high caliber web services especially for mobile technology. Smarthpath moreover allows in house development using the same; users can therefore develop applications for themselves by use of it after acquiring the necessary license (TribilisMobile, 2011). Another platform solution to web services is by NthDimenzions. They offer a rapid development framework that is coupled with expertise SOA to clients hence ensuring faster and rapid development and deployment of services. The proprietary solution offered by the company is the SME Business Mantra, which provides a unified stack based in software as a service (SaaS). The same software is useful to clients in addressing challenges such as managing multiple and various divergent platforms, costs of infrastructure and software maintenance among others (NthDimenzion 2011). SME Business Mantra has a wide range of capabilities. The application allows for a unified operational set up where all applications can be run in unison whether front end or back end applications. It also allows easy implementation of services in platforms like CRM, ERP and HR, while reducing or minimizing infrastructure management services. Another advantage offered by this software also is that it is easily scalable and can support any number of users. It also allows inclusion of third party portals that enables them to service themselves accordingly (NthDimenzion, 2011). Another application proprietary software also offered by the company is the EasyHRMS, which is used in the management of HR departments. The same software also is implemented in SOA principles. SME business Mantra is superior to Tribillis SmartPath since the applications and advantages offered by SME Business mantra are many. It is implemented in SOA, which makes it easier to implement as a web service based. SME also allows multiple users to use the system at the same time, without degradation of performance. Reference Austin, D, Barbir, A, Ferris, C, & Garg, S 2004, Web service Architecture Requirements.W3C workgroup Notes. Viewed 8th August 2011 from Baeza-Yates R, Ribeiro-Neto,B 1999, Modern information Retrieval, Addison-Wesley Booth,D,Hass,H,McCabe,F,Newcomer,E,Champion,M,Ferris,C,Orchard,D 2005, Web services Archtecture.W3C WG Note, Viewed 8th August 2011 from DAML-S Coalition: DAML-S: Web Service Description for the semantic Web, Proc. 1st Int’l semantic Web Conf.(ISWC 02) Hu, Z 2002, Using Ontology to Bind Web Service to the Data Model of Automation Systems, Revised Papers from NODe 2002 Web and Database-Related Workshops on Web, Web Service and Data Base systems pg. 154-168 Jackle, M, Zengler, B 2003, Active UDDI-an extension of UDDI for Dynamics and Fault-Tolerant Services Invocation, Revised Papers from NODe 2002 Web and Database-Related Workshops on Web, Web Service and Data Base systems pg.91-99 NthDimenzion, Viewed on 10th August 2011 from Ouzzani, M 2004, Efficient Delivery of Web services, PhD Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic TribilisMobile Viewed on 10th August 2011 from Read More