Throughout this text, you've seen a variety of different web services and technologies for connecting to web services. At some point, this wide array of options will transition from the interesting to the onerous. As of this writing, SOAP and WSDL are enjoying broad adoptions (e.g., both eBay and PayPal have released SOAP/WSDL interfaces).
This chapter first describes some of the more futuristic web service technologies, including REST, UDDI, Rendezvous, and BPEL/BPEL4WS. Then, based on the information in the book, we'll look at the future of web service development, considering ease-of-use, the need for a business model, security, and finally a way to consider the consolidation of web services.