RE: Closing issue X

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 1:44 PM
> To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Closing issue X
> 
> 
> 
> In the interest of closing this issue so we can all get on with our
> lives, I'm going to take a stab at providing some closing text based
> on my best understanding of why Web services proponents believe that
> REST's uniform interface constraint isn't important to the problems
> they're trying to solve. 

Mark,

The WSA WG considered your suggestion at some length today.  We decided that
it would NOT be a responsible act on our part to close this issue in a
perfunctory manner. We will deliberate on how to address your original
suggestion as the WS architecture document evolves and as we consider each
of the issues that have been raised against it. So, we are NOT taking the
procedural cop-out that I suggested earlier, we are saying that this isssue
is too important to close without  carefully crafted reasoning that
references the WSA document. We believe that our time is now best spent on
refining that document so that we have a strong foundation on which to argue
our case if this issue ever gets to the TAG.

Speaking only for myself, I suspect that the TAG would have plenty of fodder
to chew on considering only the human-readable web as it actually exists,
assuming they choose to consider the role that the uniform interface
constraint might play in the Web architecture document.  If, hypothetically,
they choose to believe that this is an important principle of the Web
architecture, we can at some future point consider how it might apply to the
Web services architecture.  Also, recall that SOAP's Web method feature,
once supported in WSDL and widely deployed in actual tools and applications,
may take us considerably closer to the goal that many of us share to more
closely align Web services with the features of the Web as we know it.  That
will take time. 

Finally, to flog the Horse Tartare once more, I suspect it will be much
easier to get Web services developers to agree on the pragmatics of making
idempotent services GETable, and on the "best practice" of using the URI to
identify a specific Web service resource in great detail, than on the
theoretical principle of a "uniform resource constraint."  If you have them
by the wallet, their hearts and minds will follow :-)

regards,

Mike Champion

Received on Thursday, 12 December 2002 20:21:20 UTC