Loosely Coupled and Package Tracking with Web Services

My copy of Loosely Coupled has started its trek across the country.  Thus begins the tradition of stalking (er, tracking) of my shipment as it meanders about.

Every time I track a shipment from the UPS or FedEx website, I wish that there were an official SOAP or XML-RPC interface to the data.  An open-to-the-public interface directly to the data.  I found two SOAP interfaces from xmethods: FedEx Tracker [WSDL] and UPS Online Tracking Web Service [WSDL].  These are both third party implementations that no doubt take in your information, call out to the UPS/FedEx www tracking page, parse what comes back, and send it back to you.

I’d really like to point a client directly to some WSDL at either fedex.com or ups.com.  Until that happens, tracking packages via web services is just there for the “cool” factor.