- From: Walden Mathews <waldenm@optonline.net>
- Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 10:37:29 -0500
- To: "Newcomer, Eric" <Eric.Newcomer@iona.com>
- Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Eric, > Yes, I was trying to draw a distinction between the case where applications share semantic information totally out of band, and the case in which applications rely totally on automatic discovery mechansisms to share semantics. I think there's a middle ground that we sort of avoid when we polarize the discussion as "REST vs RPC/SOAP" or "specific interfaces vs generic" or whatever. I'd like to get clearer on what that middle ground is. Last summer I got involved in a project that had already decided to use XML in a "document" mode as opposed to a "RPC" mode, but the distinction was only skin deep, at least according to my analysis. The approach was still leading these developers in the direction of inventing a ton of new protocol, when very little new protocol was actually needed. In effect, they were doing the work that the RPC-framework tools do, so they were getting the worst of both worlds. I wonder if the WWW architecture will provide the guidance they would need for avoiding that pitfall. > > What I was trying to say is that XML tools can help reduce the custom coding effort, not eliminate it altogether. > Oh, I didn't realize this was about tools. Would it be feasible to have the discussion sans the mention of tools? Are tools really central to the problem of getting two applications to understand each other, or are they an optimization to apply deeper solutions to that problem? Does the inclusion/exclusion of tools affect your view of what that "middle ground" is? Walden
Received on Thursday, 2 January 2003 10:37:36 UTC