Web Services News & Articles

Portals and content management systems are widely used in organizations today. For many, the desire to integrate them into a single collaborative environment is critical. But there's a lot to think about before moving forward. In this article we cover the basic considerations for integrating a CMS into an enterprise portal.

In an act that could possibly bring them up to par with some of the better known CDNs in the market, Amazon Web Services (news, site) has tossed cheap audio and video streaming support into the mix with CloudFront, their typically low-key service for content delivery.  

Amazon (news, site) Web Services is bursting at the seams with a raft of new features and services that will make it easier and more affordable to work in the cloud.

Danish company Forward gets funding from local venture companies to boost development of its Forward Search platform for regional territories.

Forward Search is an internet, intranet and ecommerce search tool that is making waves in its local territories. The company was founded in 2004 and has made steady progress with its software, currently at version 1.6. They have built partnerships and signed deals with the likes of Carlsberg and Lego, and particularly with Sitecore CMS customers.

Based on .NET and a Web Services architecture, Forward Search is compatible with all .NET Web CMS systems. Foward features multi-threaded crawling for fast indexing that can be done in real time or scheduled by the admin. The search box itself can be added into existing Web pages or Web Services API can be used for other integration.

Connectors are available for data resources in SharePoint, SQL, HTTP and Office.

Forward offers a business-like front end that supports a range of queries including natural language, boolean, fuzzy and custom fields.  It can search by meta data and by context, and can search up to a terabyte of unstructured data. The search engine is available for Danish, English (both U.S. and U.K.) and German languages, with Unicode support for others.

Available in in four editions; Standard, Pro, Corporate and Enterprise, there are limits on the number of domains and access up to the Enterprise version which offers unlimited access.

The investment will help drive development and sales expansion and sees a former HP Nordic director, Christian Nejstgaard, join the board.

More news on the interoperability front - at least for Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007. Microsoft has finally listened to its customers and released a WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) Toolkit designed to help them pull MOSS content into other portals.

The news that Amazon is now offering a low-cost CDN has likely excited many people. Aptly named CloudFront, this service is stirring up a lot of attention. In our overview of the new service, we outlined the basic steps to use CloudFront.

In this post, we thought we would give you a little more detail on those steps to help you get started sooner.

After releasing the industry’s first CMIS specification draft implementation in its Alfresco Labs 3 in September, Alfresco pours more effort into Content Management Interoperability Services promotion and support. This time — by releasing Alfresco CMIS Developer Toolbox.

EMC Documentum is a leading player in the enterprise content management space. That’s not news. What is, is the way the company has, with the release of Documentum v6 (D6), embraced Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a first-class principle in its core architecture.

Reporting live from Web Content 2007 here in Chicago, I attended (rock star and creative director of Duo Consulting) Yvonne Doll’s Designing Content for Usability session this morning. Yvonne stated her case clearly, reminding those on hand that all website projects succeed or fail for the same reason — communication.

The wait is finally over. After only three short months, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released their report from the Web of Services for Enterprise Computing Workshop.

5 years, 1 month, 17 days.

That’s how long it’s taken for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) specification version 2.0 to become a proposed recommendation.

Like the tree that falls alone in the forest, will anyone be there to hear when WSDL 2.0 becomes an approved standard?