Example of WS misinformation

I couldn't resist sharing this. I just came across an article on ADTmag titled "WSDL rolls along" (see [1]). The introduction says:

"Some players want to move away from the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), viewed as the other cornerstone of Web services".

So I thought, this is interesting, it presents the view of the "Web services == WSDL only" crowd. In fact, reading on, it says:

"the role of SOAP as one of the two cornerstones of Web services is now in question. A dogfight has now erupted over whether or not SOAP is necessary for WSDL interoperability".

The explanation of how you can have "WSDL interoperability" without SOAP? It comes a few lines below:

"The Web Services Interoperability Organization, WS-I, doesn't use SOAP encoding at all; they have the basic profile and have determined from real-world testing that, if you want to be maximally interoperable, you shouldn't use SOAP encoding".

In other words, nothing to do with SOAP not being necessary for "WSDL interoperability".

Another gem under the "WSDL and security" section:

"IBM and Microsoft have jointly proposed the WS-Security standard for WSDL and put it before the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)"

where the irony is that WSS' input document only talks about SOAP security and actually "forgot" to express security in WSDL constructs.


Ugo


[1] http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7735