RE: Protocol independence

> It seems to 
> me that the
> proven strength of the Internet is that we can innovate freely at
> different layers in the stack, holding one layer (TCP) constant.

I disagree.  Innovation on the Internet has never been done "freely"
in that sense.  It has always been done with careful consideration of
the interaction with other layers and subsystems.  Well, at least all
*successful* innovation has (that I've studied - which is quite a bit).

IMO, Web services proponents have not, yet, spent nearly enough time
studying these interactions.  I have.  And my dislike of the current
approach to Web services is a result of it (surprise, it's not my
love of REST! 8-); "protocol independence" completely disregards the
application layer of the entire Internet, not just the Web, because
it treats all application protocols the same.  And that's not even
the reason I believe they will fail; consider that every other attempt
to deploy an architecture with unconstrained component interfaces on
the Internet, has failed.  There's a good *technical* reason for this.

MB

Received on Friday, 4 April 2003 14:42:07 UTC