RE: A priori requirement

Since you are asking for feedback, here's my two cents:

This seems like a pretty good idea to me -- if it really turns out to be
doable.  That is, I could imagine getting something really useful out of
this, and I can also imagine sinking into a swamp of ever increasing
complexity and dissension.  So I think it's worth giving this a shot, but it
seems to me that we should be alert to signs that it's not working out or
that we have reached the point of diminishing returns.  In other words,
let's not promise anything here.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org] 
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 9:50 AM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: 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 Friday, 17 May 2002 11:58:05 UTC