Re: Proposed issue; Visibility of Web services

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 04:57:42PM -0400, Mike Champion wrote:
> > ask any Web services proponent and
> > they'll tell you that they're enabling something which is currently not
> > enabled within the constraints of Web architecture; machine-to-machine
> > communication.  I'm personally content to consider this as a competition
> > between two architectural styles, but the WSA WG has explicitly rejected
> > the notion that Web architecture offers a solution to problems such as
> > automated airline ticket purchasing
> 
> I don't believe that's true, and would appreciate a pointer to any text in 
> the draft WSA document that might give a reader that impression.

Really?  Many *many* times I've heard WG members talk about how humans
are required to be involved in any reasonably complex process.  I can
dig up the messages if you like.  Is that statement really such a
surprise?  I think practically everybody in the Web services space
understands why Web services were created; to enable machine-to-machine
integration on the Web (or perhaps Internet, depending who you talk to).

The nearest thing I can find in the architecture document is this;

"The scope of "Web services" as that term is used by this working group is somewhat different. It encompasses not only the Web and REST Web services whose purpose is to create, retrieve, update, and delete information resources but extends the scope to consider services that perform an arbitrarily complex set of operations on resources that may not be "on the Web." Although the distrinctions here are murky and controversial, a "Web service" invocation may lead to services being performed by people, physical objects being moved around (e.g. books delivered)."
 -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-ws-arch-20030514/#id2617205

> Most WSA members would, IMHO, freely acknowledge that the Webarch provides 
> *a* framework in which to address the problems of machine-machine 
> interaction over the Web, but most resist the notion that "raw 
> URI+HTTP+XML" offers *the* solution to the problem.

Strawman; I've never suggested it's *the* solution, but I understand
that it's very easy to interpret my position that way.

> Most of the WSA WG, however, does not find the "raw URI+HTTP+XML" approach 
> optimal for situations in which (for example) multiple networks and 
> protocols are bridged; the actual identiy/address of the service that will 
> handle a request is not known to the requester; reliable message delivery, 
> choreography, transaction processing, industrial-strength security, etc. 
> requirements are critical, etc.  Again, it would be *possible* to develop 
> such solutions on the raw Webarch, but there are numerous advantages and 
> optimizations possible by standardizing on WSA-level (as opposed to 
> Webarch-level) technologies. That's the design space we're exploring 
> anyway.

We've been over all that.  I don't think it's worth bothering the TAG
with.

At this point, I'm not really sure where this discussion is going, so
I'll avoid responding until it's clear where the TAG wants to take this
(which could be to the dumper 8-).  I wanted to give Dan his "story",
and did that, but based on the feedback from Roy and Miles, perhaps I
need a new one that better illustrates my objection with the text that
says;

 "A fire- wall can look at the message traffic, and at the structure of
  the message, and make predictable and reasonable decisions about
  security."

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Wednesday, 16 July 2003 21:38:41 UTC