If you are a developer of enterprise software, you’ve no doubt heard of service-oriented architectures (SOAs). To some, an SOA implemented using Web services technology is the enterprise software integration panacea. This paper attempts to weave its way through the hype, and present practical support and limitations for implementing a business-ready SOA using some common Web services toolkits.

The main premise of this paper is the addition of nonfunctional attributes of services, such as transactions and security, using dynamic policies. It is the opinion of the authors that dynamic policies are required to ensure the adaptability of the SOA.

The paper does a fine job of providing a concrete example of using aspect-oriented programming (AOP) to implement dynamic policies for Web services using a collection of open source tools. The authors provide a thorough explanation of the problems of adaptability and interoperability, in the context of current Web services specifications and toolkits.

The main shortcoming of the paper is that the authors do not clearly define their target audience. While they provide an elegant solution, it is still far more complex than the typical business software developer will be able to manage.

Overall, the authors’ attempts to explain the gaps in current Web services-based middleware technologies are well done. They provide the groundwork for some of the final steps that mainstream Web services toolkits will require to truly bring SOA to the enterprise.