W3C Web Services Workshop

11-12 April, 2001
San Jose, CA

Giovanni Guardalben

HiT Software, Inc.
4020 Moorpark Avenue, Suite 100
San Jose, CA 95117 - USA


Position Paper

HiT Software is an independent software vendor that provides standards-based SQL database access middleware for IBM DB2 DBMS. Recently, leveraging on its data access experience, HiT Software has released software to seamlessly integrate XML and DBMS. 

In its current release, this software is meant to bridge XML and DBMS within the boundaries of a firewall or inside a virtual private network. Indeed, such integration is achieved using standard drivers that rely on private transport data protocols. In most instances such drivers connect to DBMS using private ports that are not enabled for Internet access. 

At HiT Software, we believe that integrating XML and DBMS over the Internet will be the natural transition for middleware software and we are in the process of making Web Services of our current middleware software.

The process of developing Web Services to provide seamless integration between XML and DBMS presents numeroues challenges. Here are just a few:

- remote configuration and management of data sources
- client software generation based on server data sources
- definition of efficient and effective client-side APIs
- data-caching 

I am looking forward to participating at the W3C Web Services Workshop to be an active participant and to improve our understanding of this fascinating new technology.