RE: Let's play "interpret the charter"!

Mark,

You've got me baffled.  I'm saying that we have to have some notion of how
XML relates to web services in our definition of web services.

At some point, we are going to define a set of technologies.  The web
services activity is already defining 2 that are XML based, SOAP and WSDL.
In future, let's imagine we decide that there are going to be 3 wgs: 1 for
Core messaging elements (asynch/reliability/conversations/...), 1 for
definitions (workflow on top of wsdl), and 1 for discovery.  I picked 3
arbitrary bundles and some sample technologies, I know there are lots of
other things like quality of service, transactions, security, etc.

Poking at the first one, if we are going to define messaging constructs
technologies, these have to be XML based.  So we will define some XML
schemas and a protocol.  We'll probably define these as at least as SOAP
headers.  I'm not sure if we would define these for anything other than
SOAP....

I think the same holds true for the others - definitions extensions and
discovery would be XML based as well.

Certainly a lot of candidate technologies in these areas - ebXML, WS-*,
XLang, WSCL, UDDI, etc. - are all XML based.

Now my question is: If all the current working groups and all the future
working groups in the web services activity are based on XML, why can't we
mention XML in our definition of web services?

Maybe the point you are trying to make is that the definition of web
services should mention XML in a variety of ways, as in xml messages at run
time, xml based descriptions, xml based discovery?  Are you drawing the
distinction between the XML runtime view and the other aspects?  And are you
highlighting the cardinality of these different aspects?

Perhaps wording to the effect that "a web service is a web resource who's
aspects - runtime, description, discovery - are all xml based"?  Or is it "a
web service is a web resource that one of it's aspects - runtime,
description, discovery - is xml based"?  Interestingly, the OR definition
completely covers the SOAP, WSDL, UDDI edge cases.  Though I'm not sure that
html pages discoverable in UDDI is a very interesting web *service*.

Cheers,
Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
> Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 7:41 PM
> To: Austin Daniel
> Cc: 'David Orchard'; www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Let's play "interpret the charter"!
>
>
> I've just had a closer look at the charter and believe I can shed some
> light on this issue.
>
> The wording in the charter says that it is a goal that;
>
>   "The set of technologies identified must be based on XML."
>
> The context for "set of technologies identified" is listed in the
> previous goal;
>
>   "The architecture described must be modular: a set of technologies
>    will need to be described to address individual functionalities
>    identified by the architecture document."
>
> Putting those together, I take them to mean that as we define the
> architecture, we will identify certain required technologies.
>  Since we
> cannot build any technologies ourselves, all we can do is identify
> pre-existing ones, or identify the need for new ones to be created.
> Therefore, if we identify any existing technologies to be reused, they
> must be based on XML.  While I don't think that even this is a good
> idea, it's a far cry from what we've been discussing here.
>
> It doesn't appear as though the charter has *anything* to say
> about the
> definition of Web services with respect to the use of XML.
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
> Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@planetfred.com
> http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com
>

Received on Monday, 4 March 2002 23:03:48 UTC