Web Services for ETH

Thursday, December 16, 2004, 15:00 - 17:30, ETH Zentrum, HG D22

Motivation

ETH Zurich is providing and running a lot of application software. ETH staff and students can access these applications over a web interface. These application interfaces however support only the web browser to access the embedded algorithms. There is currently little or no support to access them from other applications.

With the event "Explore! Web Services" we want to discuss how the existing web applications can be made available as web services. With this application friendly interfaces

• it should be possible to access the functionality from other applications (e.g. myETH);
• new services can be offered by merging the functionality of existing applications (building blocks, Enterprise Application Integration)
• it should be possible for mobile code agents like crawlers, spiders or web bots to access the existing web applications.

Programm

15:00 Welcome and Introduction; Michele De Lorenzi, ETH World

15:10 Web Services in US Fortune-1000 Companies; Dan Decasper, Jibe Networks

"Since Microsoft, IBM, BEA and others put web services on the map in 2000, they have been going through a hype cycle typical for new technologies. Nothing ever happens quite as fast as technology vendors would like. However, web services are a matter of fact in many companies today. Over the last nine months, we have been engaging with more than 200 of the 1000 largest US enterprises. This talk will discuss what we learned: who is using web services and what for, what are the technical challenges, how are these challenges addressed, and how do enterprises see web services applications evolve over the next 3-5 years."

Jibe Networks

www.jibenetworks.com

15:45 uddi.ethz.ch, Marcel Baur; ETH World

"Towards a directory and onthology of ETH Web Services."

16:05 A Web Interface for ShaRef; Erik Wilde, ETH Zurich

"ShaRef aims at providing a solution for creating, managing, and sharing reference information on the web and offline. We show how we plan to add a Web Services interface to ShaRef."

16:30 Break

16:45 Web Services at EPF Lausanne: Lessons Learned; Pierre Crevoisier, EPF Lausanne

"EPF Lausanne introduced about one year ago a uddi services. But until now only three applications are registred. We will try to explain the current situation and what are the further steps we are planning."

17:10 A Web Service Interface for the ETH Course Catalogue; Armin Wittman and Reinhard Hess, ETH Zurich

"The ICT Services of ETH (Betriebsinformatik and TIM) will offer access to the ETH Course-Catalogue Data over a new Web Service. The service will be operational end of January 2005. The implementation is based on the SOAP-standard. Apache Axis interfaces a J2EE Application Server infrastructure on Bea Weblogic Server. Our presentation will include a live demo of the service. The technical and operational advantages and the limitations of our approach will also be discussed."

ETH Course-Catalogue

www.vorlesungsverzeichnis.ethz.ch

SOAP

www.w3.org/TR/soap/

Apache Axis

ws.apache.org/axis/

J2EE

java.sun.com/j2ee/

17:35 Discussion and reception

18:00 Farewell