Written on 26 July 2005
Web services – and the firewall
If you read the IT trade press you will frequently see it asserted that ‘web services’ are going to transform the way in which we can do business. It is not always easy to understand either why they should or how it might make a difference to your business.
One reason is that web services can be used to avoid the problems of firewalls blocking the free flow of information. I like to think of it as a way of poking very specific pieces of data out through the fire wall so that specific users can come along and scoop them up.
The first application that we used was with a client that had Sonic Wall firewall on a Unix server that was incompatible with our Win 2002 server. We needed to pick up constantly changing information from their network for integration with their website on our hosting server and were frustrated by our inability to create a bridge. Having bashed our heads against a brick wall for some time we decided to try a different tack, and the web service solution was a revelation. It was a quick, easy and highly effective way to get the information we needed when we needed it. In fact we now have 3 services coming out from the client and two going back in.
I was particularly glad that we had adopted the web services solution, because shortly after we built the application the client’s security was breached and the finger of suspicion would otherwise have fallen on us. It is notoriously difficult to prove that you are NOT the cause of a security breech!
We increasingly want to share information, but we are rightly nervous of letting anybody passed our perimeter. Web services are a great way of getting the best of both worlds.
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