Re: Counting noses on "is SOAP and/or WSDL intrinsic to the def inition of Web service"

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 12:16:58AM -0400, Champion, Mike wrote:
> > So I would hope that we can avoid using adjectives such as "basic", as
> > this suggests (to me, at least) that these types of services 
> > are somehow
> > less capable.  I don't see why we can't just present them as two
> > different ways of doing the same thing.
> 
> Isn't it accurate to say that they push the responsibility for all the stuff
> like reliability, security, correlation, choreography, etc.  [not late
> binding, that was put in the previous message wihthout thinking] onto the
> application rather than the infrastructure?

I wouldn't say that, no.  I know that some of the arguments *I've* been
making are to do that, as my experience tells me that, in many cases, this
is the best approach, all things considered.  But REST itself says nothing
about how extended capabilities must be achieved, except where those
extensions begin to infringe on existing constraints.

To use your example, I think it would be fine by REST to add a largely
transparent reliability layer, ala the solutions being considered for
Web services.  IMO, it just wouldn't be a good solution, as you'd have
some pretty serious latency issues, and still have to deal with delivery
failure anyhow.

> I'm happy to find a better adjective than "minimal" or "basic" but the fact
> remains that the HTTP infrastructure doesn't supply as many features as a
> SOAP-based infrastructure.  One can argue forever -- as we have :-) --
> whether these features are worthwhile, but they are clearly "more stuff"
> than the Web itself offers, no? Thus, "HTTP services" are more basic than
> "Web services".

But you're comparing "HTTP as deployed" to "SOAP+stuff as specified".
That's not fair, because not everything that's specified gets deployed.
If we just looked at what was deployed on the Internet today, it would
be "Web services" that'd get the "basic" moniker. 8-)

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Monday, 9 June 2003 12:19:42 UTC