Re: REST, Conversations and Reliability

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 07:06:56PM -0700, Burdett, David wrote:
> We must remember that the IT industry is building on SOAP and WSDL as the
> foundation for Web Services. If we ignore this and develop an architecture
> that is based on REST then, in my opinion, this group runs the risk of
> producing an architecture that will be, how can I say this, IGNORED.

> This would be a fundamental waste of time and effort particularly since I
> think SOAP can provide a perfectly good foundation.
> 
> Chris, as chair, is it possible for a vote to be taken to determine whether
> we base our architecture on SOAP or base it on REST?

This is most disconcerting.

The debate isn't REST vs. SOAP, it's REST vs. OMA (roughly).  SOAP can
be used with either, even though most people use it like they're using
the OMA, and without knowing any other way to use it (which apparently
explains your associating of "SOAP" with RPC/OMA).  So if we're going to
vote, let's at least make sure we're voting on the right issue.

Also, I'd point out that SOAP 1.2 is architecturally a *very* different
creature than SOAP 1.1 was (at least in a visible way), via its support
of HTTP GET.  If you read the SOAP 1.2 primer, and parts of the SOAP
1.2 spec (see Anne's primer review), you'll see that basically all SOAP
1.1 based Web services are not Web friendly because they don't use GET.

We are not here to rubber stamp current practice, because current
practice is poor practice.  We're here to help Web services succeed,
by leveraging those aspects of the Web that can help it succeed.  HTTP
GET is one such aspect.  There are others.  The sooner we start looking
for them, rather than pretending we're developing an architecture from
scratch, the better off we, and the industry, will be.

Thank you.

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, 17 July 2002 22:44:46 UTC