RE: Counting noses on "is SOAP and/or WSDL intrinsic to the defin ition of Web service"

A service the way I understand it does something useful. Before I use it 
I need to know about that. I know what my bank can do for me, I know 
what my lawyer can do for me, and I know what a fast-food restaurant or 
a megaplex would do for me. These are services. Incidentally by 
experience I also know what Amazon and eBay would do for me, but the 
majority of Web sites out there - I have no clue. They may be an HTTP 
service but I don't care much for HTTP responses. They may be Web 
servers but I have no clue what service they perform. I would not call 
them Web services.
<hh>Well said.  In a company environment or even cross-company situation,
people have detailed ideas about web applications they already have and
those to be built.  In those cases, they know exactly what they will get
from their HTTP responses. </hh>


A SOA starts with defining what the service does and how to go about 
using it, and does so using some set of technologies. IDL, Java 
interfaces and UML are all good. It also needs some way to encapsulate 
messages so you can use utility services like routing, RM, security, 
CORBA interceptors, etc. BTW this is my definition of what -5 is.

Plain XML over HTTP is a good way to build a lot of services, but it's 
missing the secret ingredient to be an SOA - the SOA doesn't care that 
you can use HTTP to retreive XML data, it cares that you can define, 
publish, discover and otherwise use services.

<hh>I think many of us agreed sometime ago that by exchanging design
documents among developers is also one form of publish and discovery. </hh>

Hao