Re: A viewpoint on harvesting REST

On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 10:54:53AM -0700, Ugo Corda wrote:
> >Soap WSDL should be able to provide a basic description of a URI, its 
> >support for GET, its GET 'query' and the MIME type it returns. Ditto for 
> >POST. Soap should provide a binding that allows web service endpoints to 
> >offer services at the HTTP level without requiring enclosing Soap wire 
> >enveloping on request or response. 
> 
> In fact, isn't this already addressed by WSDL 1.2, "HTTP GET and POST
> Binding"?

I'd say that SOAP already does this, simply by not getting in the way of
letting you do what Mark describes.  You're free to use HTTP and SOAP
together, side-by-side.  Invoking HTTP GET on a SOAP endpoint URI may be
done with a SOAP library, but can also easily be done with a regular
HTTP client library.

The big value-add of the Web Method feature in this respect, is that it
may lead to developers using SOAP libraries and HTTP libraries
together, at the same time, rather than just a SOAP library.  Because
I've always seen the Web Method feature's principle architectural
impact to basically dispel the notion of SOAP as a layer (which it
never was starting at SOAP 1.1, despite it being viewed this way), and
instead to encourage it to be treated as an extension of the underlying
protocol.

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, 31 July 2002 15:34:46 UTC