A well-planned Web Service interoperability environment begins by clearly
defining who your Web Service consumers are now and in the future. There was
a time not so long ago when you could count on a fairly homogenous consumer
population. This was about the same time that you were happy just to be able
to get a Web Service running in the first place and finding a consumer who
could actually interact with your Web Service was cause for celebration.
Those days have changed however and Web Services interoperability, once a
"fancy" addition to your SOA design, is now a key and indispensable
requirement in most SOA scenarios.
Today, SOA architects must contend with complex scenarios that assume a
variety of Web Service consumers or in many cases are asked to create Web
Serv... (more)