Sales of web services development tools slipped last year and won’t recover till 2004, according to a new report from Aberdeen Group. The report blames the slowdown on “over-hyped and under-performing products,” but that’s a little unfair on the vendors. In the first flush of enthusiasm for web services, developers were going to buy anything they could lay their hands on, fully aware that it was going to be roughly-hewn, unproven, first-generation technology. It was the market that was in a state of hype, not the products or the vendors.