RE: Machine-To-Machine

Hi,

Apologies, but I forgot to mention something. I actually do not think it's a good idea to try to describe the "intention" of Web services with regard to machines, applications, and humans.  It's just technology, and the intention of how it's used is a separate issue that should not be introduced into the definition since it confuses the issue of defining the technology itself.

The distinguishing characteristic of Web services compared to the Web is that they operate with "services" -- that's all we really need to state, not the negative of this (i.e. that they are not designed to work with humans).

Yes, Web servers are "agents" that render HTML for people, and Web services agents do not do that, what they do is render XML for execution by a program or object, optionally returning a result.

I don't think we need to get into machine-machine, application-application, or "not for humans" in the definition.

-----Original Message-----
From: Newcomer, Eric 
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 2:39 PM
To: Anne Thomas Manes; michael.mahan@nokia.com;
RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Machine-To-Machine



Ok, fair enough, but can we please just go back to David's proposal, which was based on a survey, and if anything needs modifying, let's please suggest modifications based on that rather than start a whole new thread.

I realize everyone has their favorite definitions, and I have mine as well, which is again different from David's and Paul's.  But we have been at this for more than a year now, and many many definitions have been reviewed and discussed.

If we can't focus on the proposal coming out of the survey, we are in danger of going another year.  At some point all of us are going to have to live with a definition that may be different than what we'd prefer if we were documenting our own view rather than trying to achieve consensus among the WG members.

Let's continue down the consensus path, please, and reassert David's proposal as the topic of discussion.

Thanks,

Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Thomas Manes [mailto:anne@manes.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:48 AM
To: michael.mahan@nokia.com; RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com;
www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Re: Machine-To-Machine



As a general description -- +1.

But I'm just wondering if this definition excludes Web services that support
WSRP and WSIA.

Anne

----- Original Message -----
From: <michael.mahan@nokia.com>
To: <RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com>; <www-ws-arch@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 9:42 PM
Subject: RE: Machine-To-Machine


>
> I think the intention of machine-machine and app-app verbiage is to
emphasis
> the absence of presentation data encoded into the message- things like
> <head> and <p> and <table><tr><td> .... hence the 'direct human' phrasing
>
> Tweaking Paul's definition, only changing the first line, I like the rest,
> for the reasons he described:
>
> <suggestion>
> A Web service is a distributed software system designed for the exchange
> of messages encoded with functional rather than presentation data. Web
> services use URIs for identifiers, and have interfaces described using XML
> (typically WSDL). Agents interact with the Web service in a manner
> prescribed by its description, using XML-based messages typically conveyed
> using HTTP, SOAP and other Web-related standards.
> </suggestion>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
[mailto:RogerCutler@chevrontexaco.com]
> Sent: July 26, 2003 05:45 PM
> To: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler); www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Machine-To-Machine
>
>
> One more thought.  I believe that if you think about it you will find that
the wordings that emphasize the absence of live human beings actually
exclude some rather important usage scenarios where the Web services are
being invoked from applications being used by people.  Since a number of the
member companies of the W3C are putting big bucks into devising and
marketing such implementations, this would seem to me to be ... unwise.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
> Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 4:28 PM
> To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Machine-To-Machine
>
>
> I am in favor of using the phrase machine-to-machine, possibly with a
footnote or glossary entry explaining more fully what we mean and reassuring
people that we do not intend to exclude implementations on one machine but
simply to point out the thrust of what Web services are intended for.  My
reasons are as follows:
> 1 - This was the phrase used by D Booth in his survey which formed the
basis of the recent discussion and move-forward on the subject.  That
phrasing found strong support and energy.  Nobody seemed to have trouble
understanding what it meant.  Why mess with success?
> 2 - The phrase, to my understanding, is commonly used to mean pretty much
exactly what we want to use it for.  Why mess with common usage?
> There are some reasonable alternatives that have been proposed.  I think
that they all have weaknesses.  Specifically:
> "Application-to-application":
> 1 - Somewhat embarrassingly, browsers and Web servers are applications.
> 2 - Some might think that this term unduly emphasizes the RPC style of Web
services.
> "interactions between agents (as defined by ws-arch definition of agent),
where the agents are not directly controlled by humans":
> 1 - Wordy and not oriented toward common usage of terms.
> 2 - "Not directly controlled by humans" might be interpreted completely
differently than intended.  "Directly" might reasonably be interpreted as
"without intermediary".  I think that the word David might have been
reaching for might have been "synchronously", but that word has problems
with us at the moment.  We are currently deprecating its use.  At any rate,
I think that this kind of detailed verbiage belongs in an explanation of
what we mean by "machine-to-machine", not up front.
> "designed to support interactions that do not require human involvement at
runtime
> between agents over a network"
> 1 - Grammatically fuzzy (antecedants are unclear), but I suppose it can be
cleaned up.  Is it "interaction between agents" or "involvement between
agents"?  I actually don't know.  Hmmm, probably interaction.  How about,
"designed to support interactions between agents over a network that do not
require human involvement at runtime"?   Ugh, that's a syntactic mess too.
Does "require" refer to "network"?
> 2 - Why not just "machine-to-machine".  This seems to be an attempt to
explain in a lot of words what that means.  Flesh it out into several
sentences so that what modifies what is clear and this seems like another
good start at a glossary entry for machine-to-machine.  But fleshed out into
several sentences is probably too much for the context in which we are
talking about using it.
>

Received on Sunday, 27 July 2003 14:59:26 UTC