About John's first article in print
John Bristowe did it: his first article is in print. Congrats! And of course it is all about XML Web Services - WS-Security & WSE in particular.
The fact that SOAP messages are represented in XML raises a number of concerns when transmitting sensitive data across the wire. While existing transport protocols like SSL/TLS can address some of these concerns, they do not provide a solution that will work beyond a point-to-point scenario. It is important to remember that SOAP messages can be routed through one or more intermediaries and over one or more different transports. Given the nature of SOAP, an end-to-end solution that can be expressed at the message level and that is independent of the underlying transport protocol is needed. Enter WS-Security.