Open Up Web Services to Hundreds of ODBC and JDBC Compliant Applications

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The current architectural trend is to wrapper applications with Web Services in what is called a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This is done in hopes of creating an enterprise architecture that is flexible to the needs of various information consumers. A similar trend is at work for ASP and eCommerce sites like SalesForce, eBay, and Amazon. They want to enable customization and interoperability with their platforms through Web Services.

This means the functionality contained within these applications is now accessible to applications that can support Web Services requests. But most of the desktop applications used by business users run as Windows or UNIX applications that do not have built in support for accessing services through SOAP. There is a need to migrate to SOA but at the same time there is a demand from the users to maintain compatibility with the hundreds of applications they use for reporting and analysis.

The use of DataDirect® OpenAccess™ to implement a custom ODBC or JDBC driver with full SQL capability is the best solution for bridging the current applications and the Web Services worlds. Most of today’s reporting, analysis, and database applications have the ability to interface to data sources through ODBC or JDBC. With OpenAccess you can leverage this widespread feature to enable your Web Services compliant application to be accessed—without requiring clients to change their applications.