RE: Issue 5 and "webarch"

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
> Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 7:51 PM
> To: Anne Thomas Manes
> Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Issue 5 and "webarch"

 
> But, independantly of whether you buy the argument that 
> GET-of-a-URI is
> a superior data retrieval mechanism than 
> getInvoice()-over-POST, I would
> like to point out that according to the TAG's latest Web architecture
> draft, to do things in a Web architecture compatible way 
> requires using
> the former (ala issue 5).
> 
> From the draft;
> 
> "All important resources should have a URI"
>  -- http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#pr-use-uri

My sense of the WSA WG is that we've been getting more and more comfortable
with what I think is a fundamental reality that your analysis seems to skip
over: "Web services" certainly intersect with "the Web" but goes beyond it.
[I mean the Web as we know it with universally dereferenceable URIs, not the
abstraction of anything that can be identified with some URI yet may or may
not actually "exist" in the sense of having a retrieveable representation].
There are plenty of "Web services" that operate over multiple protocols
(e.g. an HTTP gateway to a proprietary MOM system that triggers a  program
on a mainframe) or behind firewalls where arbitrary URIs can't be
referenced.  Like it or not, we have to consider the requirements of those
systems as well as the more REST-friendly cases of SOAP over HTTP on the
public Internet. As best I can tell from day job experience and reading the
trade press, these may well be the majority of Web services actually
deployed now.

I (personally) have no trouble with the principle that "all important
resources should have a URI."  I have a lot of trouble with the assumption
that all web services can dereference one of these URIs can get back a
meaningful representation of the resource it identifies in a sufficiently
fast and secure manner so as to be useful.

I feel confident that the W3C AC and membership have given us the latitude
to see the world this way, and I'm (speaking SOLELY for myself) confident
that the TAG will see the practicality of this perspective if and when they
choose to review our work.  In the meantime, I'm working on the assumption
that we will be explaining how the WSA intersects with the Webarch, not
working from the presupposition that the WSA is a subset of the Webarch.

Received on Saturday, 4 January 2003 20:06:31 UTC