Microsoft previews Web services pack

Microsoft reports it has had approximately 15,000 downloads of an early version of its WSE (Web Services Enhancements) 3.0 package, which features turnkey security profiles and interoperability with the company’s upcoming Indigo Web services deployment technology.

A Community Technology Preview of WSE 3.0 was released last week as a precursor to a formal beta version due this summer and a general release due by the end of the year. “It allows people to get access to the bits early, to be able to see what is coming down the pipeline,” and provide feedback, said Rebecca Dias, Web services group product manager at Microsoft.

Serving as an add-on to the .Net Framework for application deployment on Windows, WSE is focused on providing security to Web services solutions, Dias said. Version 3.0 features turnkey security profiles for implementing security technologies such as Kerberos, X.509, and security context tokens, Dias said. The profiles save developers from hand-coding, she said.

“The most important thing about [the profiles] is you will be able to use them to communicate with Indigo,” Dias said. Web services built today will run on Indigo, according to Dias.

Indigo is due in the Longhorn client version of Windows in 2006 and in the Longhorn server release of the operating platform in 2007, according to Microsoft.

Also supported in WSE 3.0 is the ability to secure binary information and documents using the MTOM (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism) standard. “The importance of this is it provides a single model for how you secure messages being sent over the Web services communication infrastructure,” Dias said.

Performance also is improved in WSE 3.0 and a consistent object model in the release enables easier use of alternative transports for Web services. While Microsoft is providing support for TCP and HTTP, developers could extend WSE 3.0 to communicate via transports such as SMTP or MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) via the object model.