Re: Summing up on visibility(?) (really, I mean it this time 8-)

On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 10:34:00AM -0700, Champion, Mike wrote:
> Is there some draft text that doesn't talk about cows or circles that you
> suggest we put in?

Yikes, sorry, I thought I suggested some.  My bad.

How about simply cutting and pasting from Roy's dissertation?

"Visibility [...] refers to the ability of a component to monitor or mediate the interaction between two other components. Visibility can enable improved performance via shared caching of interactions, scalability through layered services, reliability through reflective monitoring, and security by allowing the interactions to be inspected by mediators (e.g., network firewalls). The mobile agent style is an example where the lack of visibility may lead to security concerns.
 -- http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/net_app_arch.htm#sec_2_3_5

and then some comments about why this is desirable for WSA;

"Web services require the visibility property for at least one
important reason; to enable their messages to be inspected and
understood by firewalls so that some may be allowed to pass
through."

That can obviously be augmented later to talk about other desirable
features that are enabled by visibility and taken advantage of by
Web services.

I know we disagree about how visibility is enabled, but it sounds like
we agree that it's a desirable thing for Web services.

>  Where would you suggest putting it?

In an "Architectural properties" section.  I'm not sure where that
section would best fit though. 8-/

> Can you live with
> something like my summary above of the value of "visibility" and how
> XML-based technologies complement the HTTP-based technologies? [I didn't
> think so :-) ] 

Heh. 8-)  Yah, your characterization of the position of "REST advocates"
reflects my position pretty closely.  XML does improve visibility ever
so slightly, but I'd give it 1 "visibility point" out of 100, and SOAP
maybe 3.  I'd give the uniform interface 80 points.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis

Received on Saturday, 11 January 2003 22:04:19 UTC