anyway, the open-source part of this article is the link to RM4GS, which is an open-source Java implementation of WS-Reliability, developed by the same companies that drafted the WS-Reliability specification. a thought that has been recurring in my mind is that open-source Web Services software may just be a bit redundant, or as I said before, the benefits of open-source and Web Services are not complimentary, but are mutually exclusive.
WS-Reliability is very useful to potentially everyone, regardless of programming language, because it enables distributed computing systems to be built using internet-based architecture. that's a fancy way of saying that a software program could potentially utilize any other software program on the internet.
RM4GS is very useful to a few people - Java programmers making web services that need reliable messaging. Java itself already has JMX, but RM4GS allows your Java program to reliably communicate with a .NET service and others.
But it's important to note that the .NET service will make no use of RM4GS. It will have to have its own implementation of WS-Reliability. and if the .NET service will interface with other services that do WS-ReliableMessaging, or some other standard that pops up, these advanced Web Services are starting to lose their shine of being a totally standardized, internet-based, written-once interactive systems. we will be back to having many different interfaces, and needing to code for each interface.
on the plus side, it means that programmers who understand the interfaces can pull in the dough, so that's good.
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