Microsoft Readies New Web Services Tools

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft is forging ahead on different fronts to bring its .NET Framework to fruition. On Monday, Microsoft announced a beta release of the Web Services Development Kit, a collection of APIs that allow Visual Studio.NET programmers to incorporate new Web services specifications developed by Microsoft, IBM, and others, into Web services applicationss. The Redmond, Washington, software giant is also readying the next release of its Visual Studio .NET development environment, code-named "Everett," for availability early next year.

With the Web Services Development Kit, Microsoft is giving programmers who use its Visual Studio.NET and .NET Framework development environments the tools and interfaces necessary to integrate the three new Web services specifications that Microsoft wants adopted as standards--WS-Security, WS-Routing, and WS-Attachments--into simple object access protocol (SOAP) messages and Web services applications served using the HTTP protocol.

WS-Security, which Microsoft developed with IBM and VeriSign and which has been submitted to Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for consideration as a true standard, Microsoft is helping programmers to enable secure passing of SOAP messages among disparate platforms. WS-Attachments, which has been sent to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), supports the capability to attach binary files to SOAP messages. WS-Routing, which has not as yet been submitted to any standards body, supports routing of XML Web services transparently among different Web servers.

And last week, Microsoft announced that the availability of the "Everett" release of its Visual Studio.NET development environment (or Visual Studio.NET version 1.1) will be timed to correspond with the forthcoming release of the Windows.NET Server operating system, which is code-named "Whistler" and which is expected to ship early next year (see Microsoft Puts Out .NET Framework SP2 for more information). Everett will be an incremental release for Visual Studio.NET, Microsoft says, with key new features including integration with "Whistler," new features requested by users, and improved support for hand-held computers. Check out Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET roadmap for a plethora of details about Everett.

Developers can download WSDK beta without charge from the Microsoft Development Network Web site. Microsoft said it will charge developers who do not have subscriptions to MSDN a fee of $29.

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