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The State of Web Services, A.D. 2003: they''re ''a tool for the times,'' say the experts, ''and XML is key.'' What do you get if you cross an early 21st-century visionary CTO with a late 19th-century employee of the Edison Electric Light Company? Answer: a fantastic keynote address at Web Services Edge 2003 West, held in Santa Clara last month.

Article Excerpt
The visionary in question was Allan Vermeulen, coauthor of the codehead's classic The Elements of Java Style, and now CTO of the world's largest online retailer, Amazon.com. The Edison employee was Sam Unsell, whose contribution to the development of technology--Vermeulen explained--was to develop an economic model for electricity use in Chicago.

As with electricity then, so with Web services now. This, in Vermeulen's view, is the next shoe that needs to drop.

"Somebody has to be the Sam Unsell of Web services," he proclaimed, meaning that someone in the Web services space has to come up with a good idea for what kind of economic model is best suited to underpinning the technology.

Commercially available electricity, he explained, was only able to catch on and become pervasive because, with Unsell's help, the Edison Electric Light Company invented not just the first commercially practical incandescent lamp but a complete electrical distribution system for light and power--including generators, motors, light sockets with the Edison base, junction boxes, safety fuses, underground conductors, and other devices.

The comparison held the packed audience at the Santa Clara...