RE: Announce: A brief history of SOAP

Just to de lurk for a moment:

This discussion seems reminiscent of OO developers discussing the
addition of Run Time Time Information (RTTI, or Reflection to java types)
to an OO language.

Adding RTTI allows you to do a lot of neat things that you couldn't do
perform, and gives some new ways of doing things you could already do.

However this doesn't invalidate all the code you've already written that
doesn't use RTTI.

Programmers can read the docs to discover facilities. Applications can
inspect
code using RTTI.

Same goal, but for different audiences. No need to require one way or
another.
From what I've followed so far, all that has been suggested is that the
metadata (RTTI information) should be standardised.

I haven't seen anyone suggest that all programmer documentation for
Java now that it has a reflection package.

<lurk-mode/>

L.

--
Leigh Dodds, Systems Architect       | "Pluralitas non est ponenda
http://weblogs.userland.com/eclectic |    sine necessitate"
http://www.xml.com/pub/xmldeviant    |     -- William of Ockham

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xml-dist-app-request@w3.org [mailto:xml-dist-app-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Jake Savin
> Sent: 04 April 2001 11:38
> To: xml-dist-app XML Distributed Applications List
> Subject: Re: Announce: A brief history of SOAP
>
>
> Larry,
>
> I respectfully disagree. Requiring that metadata is in a standard format
> (like WSDL) raises the bar too high. I can do a hell of a lot
> with only the
> simple knowledge of what method to call at what endpoint, and with what
> parameter types (and names).
>
> I don't need WSDL (or any SDL) for that. Human-readable docs are more than
> enough.
>
> If you can parse a standard service description, and if that
> helps you, then
> more power to you, but requiring that I do the same isn't fair.
>
> -Jake
>
> ps. (I'd replied to this message yesterday, but accidentally only sent the
> reply directly to Larry, instead of to the list -- my apologies.)
>
> on 4/3/01 3:58 PM, Larry Cable at larry.cable@sfbay.sun.com wrote:
>
> > Andrew Layman wrote:
> >
> >> If I send you a message such as
> >>
> >> <Translate>
> >> <gamma>123.45</gamma>
> >> <epsilon>.67</epsilon>
> >> <pi>3.14159</pi>
> >> </Translate>
> >>
> >> then you presumably either have somehow got some idea what this message
> >> means and what its structure is etc., or you don't and cannot
> process it
> >> (except as generic XML).  However you got the knowledge, that was the
> >> metadata.
> >>
> >> In the case of the messages sent to the "SOAP Validator" at UserLand's
> >> site, the documentation describing the messages is the metadata.
> >>
> >> I don't think you can do much without some metadata.  The only issue is
> >> the form that the metadata takes, largely whether it is in a standard
> >> form or not.
> >
> > I concur, furthermore I would reinforce your assertion that a
> std mechanism
> > for describing such meta-data
> > is a "requirement" in order to enable both static and dynamic service
> > discovery and subsequent conversations.
> >
> > Rgds
> >
> > - Larry Cable.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]
> >> Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 3:31 PM
> >> To: xml-dist-app@w3.org
> >> Subject: Re: Announce: A brief history of SOAP
> >>
> >> Andrew I don't know enough about the kinds of environments you use, but
> >> I'm
> >> with Fredrik on this. We do just fine without any meta data. No
> >> "requires"
> >> here. Dave
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Andrew Layman" <andrewl@microsoft.com>
> >> To: <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 12:07 PM
> >> Subject: RE: Announce: A brief history of SOAP
> >>
> >>> I think that the point is that any exchange of messages via SOAP (or
> >>> otherwise) requires that the parties have mutual access to some sort
> >> of
> >>> metadata describing the types of the data being exchanged.  WSDL
> >>> provides such metadata in an implementation-neutral way that supports
> >>> and leverages the W3C specifications such as Schema.
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Fredrik Lundh [mailto:fredrik@pythonware.com]
> >>> Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 2:35 AM
> >>> To: Box, Don
> >>> Cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
> >>> Subject: Re: Announce: A brief history of SOAP
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> You can read it at http://www.develop.com/dbox/postsoap.html
> >>>
> >>> "Does SOAP/XML Messaging make sense without something like
> >>> WSDL? No way"
> >>>
> >>> huh?  I've got lots of users for my python soap implementation,
> >>> and now you're saying that what they do doesn't make sense?
> >>>
> >>> what have we missed?
> >>>
> >>> Cheers /F
> >>>
> >
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 April 2001 06:52:46 UTC