1. They’re coming after you
with a big .Net
Web Services – Opportunities
and Changes for Publishers
David Ades
Director of Strategic Initiatives,
eMeta Corporation
dades@emeta.com
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

2. .Net is Microsoft’s Web Services Strategy
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

3. Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

4. Microsoft has recently signed agreements with
– The Gale group
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

5. Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

6. .Net is Microsoft’s Web Services Strategy
Microsoft has recently signed agreements with
– The Gale group
– Factiva
– And is making very sweet offers to other publishers
to make their content available through Web
Service to MS Office documents.
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

7. Agenda
What are Web Services
Web Services provide new opportunities to
publishers
Exploiting those opportunities
Changing the business of selling information
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

8. What are “Web Services”
No consensus on specific definition
– Computers & Applications seamlessly talking
to other Computers/Application
A general concept
– The first steps to a true semantic web
Many Standards, Protocols, and Vendors
The “language” of web services is XML
 Designed for incremental implementation
– Start small and work from there
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

9. The One Thing IT Agrees About
Microsoft – .Net web services
Sun – ONE (Open Network Environment)
IBM – WebSphere
HP/Compaq– Business Web Factory (BowStreet)
Oracle – Dynamic Services
BEA – WebLogic
eMeta – RightServices
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

10. Today
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

11. A New Set of Opportunities
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

12. A New Set of Opportunities
Live Data sets, equations, and computational
models
Real-time manuscript revision, editing, and
updating
Point-of-use context-correct content delivery
– Relevant literature in patient records
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

13. A New Set of Challenges
Supporting publishing platforms
Robust XML
Delivery beyond the PDF
Erosion of the Journal and article as unit of sale
Shift in sales channel from Library to IT
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

14. XML – The foundation
XML - (eXtensible Markup Language)
– An open standard for describing data
– XML defines what elements are contained
– XML allows tags to be defined by the developer.
• virtually any data items can be identified
– By providing a common method for identifying
data, XML supports business-to-business
exchange of information.
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

15. Making XML Active
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
– Think of it as way to allow communications between
Application over the web
It is a communications protocol (Universal
Translator between applications)
– Messaging protocols for XML objects that describe
what the object is, and what to do with it.
– Can use a variety of messaging protocols (SMTP/email,
FTP, TCP/IP, HTTP, Message Queues)
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

16. SOAP
How do the Vendor Specific Web Services
strategies differ
– Focus on their own applications
– Focus on their own API’s
– Try and set themselves as up as standards
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

17. Other acronyms
WSDL – Web Services Description Language
– An XML specification for describing web services,
what they do, and how to access them
UDDI – The Universal Description, Discovery,
and Integration specification
– Descriptive standard for documentation and how/where
to publish it in an automated fashion
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

18. Quick Wrap-up
HTML – Describes how to display information in
a browser
XML – Describes the information contained in a
digital object
SOAP – Describes what an application can do
with information, how to send and receive it
WSDL & UDDI – What web service applications
are available and how to use them
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

19. How This Changes Your
Business
– Content is freed from the browser
– Applications are available via the internet
One more step toward a service based business
– The Value-adds of a print publication are being
overshadowed
Publishers need to think again about the value
they add
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting

20. Some Additional Resources
A Short Overview :
– When Computers Learn to Talk: A Web Services
Primer (registration required),
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.asp?
ar=1162&L2=4&srid=69
An Excellent Book:
– Out of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today
& Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services
by John Hagel III & John Seely Brown, Harvard
Business School Press, 2002.
Society for Scholarly Publishing - 25th Annual Meeting