Re: [RTF] AC019 proposal to WSA WG

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 08:42:58AM -0400, Champion, Mike wrote:
> > There's a cost to making it reliable.  If it isn't required, as with
> > idempotent methods such as GET and PUT, then that's an enormous cost.
> 
> Sure ... I can buy an unreliable car that will *probably* get me to work
> for $1000.  If it breaks down, I can simply buy another ....It's not
> REQUIRED to have a reliable car, but awfully inconvenient not to.
> 
> Or I can buy a reliable car for $10,000.  Which strategy do most people who
> can afford it take?   

I wish it were as easy as assigning a dollar figure!  No, what I meant
was that there's a cost in the brittleness of any system built to an
architecture that implements reliable messaging, due to the reasons
discussed in the Waldo paper.

> > Maybe you can answer me this; why is it important that HTTP GET or PUT
> > messages be reliably delivered? 
> 
> Because lots and lots of developers say that this is an issue, and many
> member companies proprietary web services architectures have or propose a
> solution to the reliability issue, and because if reliability isn't covered
> in the WSA the developers will use incompatible proprietary solutions, and
> the absence of a solution to a commonly cited problem in the WSA will
> seriously undermine its credibility in the industry.  

I agree with most of that, but you appear to be associating
"reliability" with "reliable messaging", so I can understand your
concern.  But I'm not ruling out reliability (that would be quite
daft!), I'm just saying that there are ways of addressing it that don't
invole requiring that every message arrive at its destination, and that
it is primarily a function of the architectural style in use as to which
solution is the most appropriate.

Thanks.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2002 10:23:31 UTC