RE: Web Service Definition [Was "Some Thoughts ..."]

I am reluctantly coming to agree with your last point.  The reluctance comes
from my perception that it involves distinctions that are difficult to make,
but I'm beginning to think that it really is necessary.  I came up with a
fairly lengthy analysis of why my suggestions you were replying to (and
thanx for your helpful responses) are in fact not a good idea -- which I
won't bore you with -- but the bottom line was more or less that you can't
avoid the non-human issue.

About orchestrations, I don't think anybody disagrees that they are
important and that we should be considering them.  The point I'm making is
that it seems that most people want to define a "web service" in such a way
that orchestrations are not themselves web services but are composed of
them.  I could go either way on this -- I'm just trying to go with the
consensus here.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vinoski, Stephen [mailto:steve.vinoski@iona.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 6:50 PM
To: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Web Service Definition [Was "Some Thoughts ..."]

[ deleted portion ]

> Add that the web service is addressed by a
> URI and you
> eliminate a bunch of other things, like orchestrations, that 
> are not web
> services per se.

I disagree. I am a big fan of orchestrations as related to Web Services, and
thus would not promote a definition that disallows them. URIs do not
disallow orchestrations.

> It seems to me that then you would have a
> definition that
> it would be easy to use to answer the question: "Is XYZ a web 
> service?"
> without getting involved in difficult discussions like 
> whether the thing is
> intended for machines or people, or people interacting 
> through machines, or
> machines using people, or ... 

In web terms, a Web Service *is* defined by the fact that it evolves the Web
beyond browser/web server interactions to true application-to-application
interactions that do not directly involve humans. You can't define Web
Services without addressing this key element.

--steve

[ deleted portion ]

Received on Friday, 1 March 2002 11:51:48 UTC