Re: A priori requirement

I *really* want to get this requirement in, but I'm not getting much in
the way of feedback.  I've provided clarification to Krishna and Anne,
and had Suresh's support, but nobody else has chimed in.  Do folks not
understand what I'm asking?  If not, let me try again.

Currently, Web services interfaces are described at runtime.  This is
fine and wonderful, but there's a problem with it; without existing
knowledge of what the methods in the WSDL do, you don't know how to
interact with it.  For example, if I discovered a Web service and found
that I could invoke the "asdfasdf", "weriuweroi", and "erer" methods, I
wouldn't know which one(s) to use unless I had that knowledge built-in,
or had a human nearby to interpret their meaning (and even then ...).

If we were to define or identify a set of methods (and faults) that
*all* Web services could implement, then we could address this problem,
at least as far as the expressive power of those methods/faults allowed.

This would in no way prevent people from defining specific methods, and
continuing to use WSDL.

Perhaps we could talk about this briefly on the call today.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Thursday, 16 May 2002 10:41:29 UTC