Sharepoint's web services have been around since version 2 (2003), but I never had much use for Sharepoint (except for Team Portals), unitl Sharepoint 2007 (aka MOSS 2007, aka v3). One of my clients had been going down the path of IBM Websphere, but once they saw what came with Sharepoint 2007, well, they decided that the future may be with Sharepoint. But, they already own all these WebSphere portals, and Sharepoint 2003 sites have been popping up, so they decided that they were going to try to use both, and use web services to interop. Well, on paper, that all looks great. Microsoft has been promoting interoperation this way. But, have these same people ever looked at the web services that they are producing? Sure, they have a WSDL, but that is where it stops. Most of the parameters are just strings or just take un-typed XML. WHERE’S THE XML SCHEMAS! And to make matters worse, the documentation for the web services is the pits. Since I have a background dealing with Microsoft I can use the documentation and try to figure out what is going on by using Sharepoint APIs as a reference (assuming that they just threw a thin veneer over it). But, if you truly want to interop with other frameworks (especially Java) you need to have good documentation, and that starts with good Schemas. Not all messages can be expressed in XML Schema, but at least do what you can. I know that Sharepoint 2007 is still beta, and so is the documentation, but 2003’s web service documentation is bad, too. And if you really want to interoperate, we need some examples of web service calls in Java.
I am no Ted Neward (my Java skills are close to non-existent), but if there are any Java folks out there that want in on the .Net craze, contact me, and maybe we can develop an open source framework to make it easier to call Sharepoint from Java. The writing is on the wall, Microsoft is betting a lot of money on Sharepoint and Office 2007, and if you want to hedge your bets, this might be a good way to make some serious cash, consulting on how to make these things interop.
Oh, and since I’m griping about the Sharepoint web services I might as well throw this in too. Please, add support for WS-Security. One more thing, since Sharepoint is all about WF (Workflow Foundation), when is WCF (Windows Communication Foundation, aka Indigo) coming for Sharepoint. If we can get WCF for Sharepoint, well that may help create better web services for Sharepoint.
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