- From: Tom Bradford <tom@xqrl.com>
- Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 16:19:50 -0700
- To: "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@softwareag-usa.com>
- Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
On Friday, February 22, 2002, at 02:46 PM, Champion, Mike wrote: > OK, but if we *define* a "web service" as something that uses WSDL to > define > the contract, a lot of people are going to be unhappy! Also, there's > the > matter that WSDL is merely an industry consortium proposal and the W3C > working group is just getting underway. I've formulated my own slightly skewed definition of a web service: A Web Service is a CGI program that exposes some type of an interface contract. How that CGI program operates, the protocol that it uses, the interface language that it exposes, or who it hangs out with after school, are not the concern of a web services architecture. Any existing CGI could potentially qualify as a web service, including those programs that return content other than XML (like images, HTML pages, streaming media, or other binary content). As such, we should also not assume that the invoking context is going to be XML content... Typically, a query string will suffice. If you make a parameterized request, and are greeted with data that has been dynamically tailored to your request, you are, in effect, using a web service. -- Tom Bradford - http://www.tbradford.org Architect - XQRL (XQuery Engine) - http://www.xqrl.com Apache Xindice (Native XML Database) - http://xml.apache.org Project Labrador (Web Services Framework) - http://notdotnet.org
Received on Friday, 22 February 2002 18:19:56 UTC