RE: Late binding

Eric,

I very much agree with you: 

*** We indeed are trying to solve a different problem: it is no longer
about we use the web to let a user access a resource through a browser,
but how multiple applications talk to each other. Therefore it is not
about how a user agent access a resource but about how a developer
programs and automates a service. And I believe that this is why we are
attracted towards API and the early uses of Web Services look like RPC.

*** XML, XMLSchema, SOAP are very good first steps in promoting
interoperability.

But as we start to deploy some of service-oriented applications for our
customers, we start to realize that we need more: 2 of the most
important requirements are adaptability and reliability. 

I think that adapability is one area where the web is shining. The web
has an incredible ability to adapt to constant change. No other
architecture (mainframe, client/server, corba or J2EE) has this ability.
You might say that it is easier to build an adaptative system when one
end is a user (who can dynamically adapt to new page layout/content,
exception, etc.) but all the resources are still linked and there are
definitely lessons to be learned.

On the reliability side, asynchrony and messaging are key because they
compensate for heterogeneous performance and life cycle.

Together adaptability and a more messaging-driven linking abstraction
raise serious question regarding the current RPC mechanism that web
services expose to developers today. One other way to say that is that
if early toolkits make it easy for developers to use the web for RPC,
then there will be adoption because RPC is developer friendly but we
might end up hitting the wall because we will have applications that are
very fragile and very difficult to evolve.


Edwin

Received on Sunday, 30 June 2002 18:24:52 UTC