Web services currently work over HTTP — the same protocol used to deliver web pages — because it’s well-understood, there are no firewall issues, and it works. However, HTTP isn’t an optimal protocol for web services, and there are several proposals for efficient alternatives that could eventually replace HTTP as the web services protocol of choice.
One proposal is called “Order-based Deadlock Prevention Protocol with Parallel Requests”, by Jonghun Park. As you may have guessed given its name, Mr. Park is a professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of Information Sciences and Technology.
Analyst Stephen O’Grady had an interesting comment when he was asked about the protocol:
Web services is currently held up — in my opinion — by things like security and reliability. Once those concerns are addressed, people will turn their attention to something like this protocol, which would offer incremental improvements in performance.
In other words, the lack of optimal protocols for web services isn’t a problem yet, because there are still some basic problems that need to be solved.