Re: Issue: Synch/Asynch Web services

Excellent analysis, Roger.  But I guess you'd expect me to say that, 
since I was
the one pushing for a definition of sync/async based on common clocks.
I'd forgotten the Lamport (not "Lamprey"!) paper, but I agree that it's
seminal - even more so than Waldo et al's "A Note on Distributed 
Computing".

I plead guilty, and unrepentantly so, to the "refusal to define". It was
born not out of fatigue but with a principled objection to the
idea of including language based on wholly irrelevant
implementation issues. Synchronous and asynchronous
interactions should not depend on whether processes are
running and ready or activated as needed: we don't make these
distinctions in the SOAP spec.

It's worth mentioning that in Lamport's paper a "process" is simply an
abstraction capable of emitting and receiving events. There are
no particular implementation characteristics implied.....

Received on Monday, 4 August 2003 11:02:57 UTC