I remember a number of years ago an effort by a group of well-meaning people who were out to solve the world's problems by creating a universal language that all of us on the planet would speak. It was called Esperanto. It was based on the idea that a super simple set of rules would govern spelling, grammar, and verb conjugation. Well, we all know how well that effort turned out.
While it might be admirable to talk about creating a common thread that will allow everyone to talk to everyone else regardless of data format and OS, the reality is that individual businesses will find themselves hamstrung by this on-size-fits-all strategy. Every business on this planet has its own way of handling its internal processes and has its own requirements in terms of data handling.
I would like to recount my efforts to provide a car dealership Web site solution for used car lots. I am a Web programmer with 20 years experience in the automotive industry as a mechanic. Having worked at a number of dealerships, I believe that I can consider myself an expert on how these businesses run and what they need for a decent Web site. The first system I created was a very nice one-size-fits-all set of codes that I sold to a lot of dealerships.
The problem with this approach was that I kept running into dealers who would ask for something different from what I was offering. Try as I might, I was not able to create a complete system that would make all my current and future customers happy. Well, I finally discarded that model and decided on something different.
What I did was to create a "core engine" that would handle the main required features common to all my Web sites but I did something unique with this. I developed it with the idea of being able to customize it on a per-dealership basis. What this means is that each dealership gets its own customized solution that is tweaked to their exact requirements.
My original system resided in one central location and was designed so that if I made a single change to it or added a new feature, all the dealerships received the benefit of this upgrade. My current system is setup so that it is installed individually for each dealership. While this means that upgrades and maintenance take more time, I am working on a set of tools that will automate this process for me.
The main advantage to what I am doing now (as opposed to every other car dealer system on the planet) is that my dealers can have a unique Web site and a totally customized set of tools that they can use to manage their site. I am not striving to get the business of every dealership on the planet. Instead, I am carving out a niche of dealers who care to have their site represent their exact requirements and service their customers according to their needs.
Why am I mentioning this? Even in a single industry such as used car lot Web sites, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. My recommendation to the people developing the Web services standard is that they create a core standard but to provide "hooks" to and from it where people can customize their own proprietary solutions. For the data that businesses wish to share, they will adhere to this standard as best they can, and hopefully all will be well. But, for their own specialized needs, these "hooks" will allow them to create a complete system that serves their own internal requirements.
Albert Dewey
CppSolutions
