Will Web services kill the browser….  

Web services have the potential to reduce the importance of the browser as a part of the technology stack. The browser has become a vehicle for delivering more and more complex applications due to its ubiquitous nature on the desktop. Unfortunately it is becoming harder and harder to develop browser based applications because the data is becoming richer and hence the demands on usability are rising.

Web services are unlocking more and richer data to be delivered to the user. This is putting pressure on the browser applications from two fronts, one is the richness of the data and the other being time to market. As web services make it easier to access data from the value chain the impendence mismatch in developing rich applications will grow. Developing sophisticated applications in the browser today is unnecessarily hard, mainly due to the fact the browser was not designed to be a rich applications environment.

Other approaches such as Java Applets require too much to be downloaded and installed. The platform of choice for the future will probably be Office. Office 2003 has full support for web services. This significantly reduces the impedance between the XML dataflow and visualization. Currently to get information from an application to the browser requires moving through several technology layers. This impedance has been significantly reduced by web services. There is only one step between the data and visualization now, whether the visualization is a form, a report, a graph or a spreadsheet. Office has the same degree of ubiquity as the IE and a much richer interface for data.

To be able to go from web services to a rich user interface using a single development paradigm (XML) and in a single step is going to dramatically simplify development. It might also reduce the application backlog in the enterprise and reduce the number of rogue applications.

As more information is offered, as a service that can be consumed by desktop applications the data should become better managed. The need for separate information silos will decrease, as the need to move data from the web to the desktop will be removed. The move to a service oriented architecture based on the flow of XML through the value chain will truly enable the real time enterprise.

posted by John McDowall | 2:43 PM