Re: REST wrap-up (was Re: Web Services Architecture Document

On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 05:07:10AM -0000, Jim Webber wrote:
> I don't necessarily think that Web Services will be used for Internet
> scale systems, at least not at the same Internet scale that the human
> web is at.

Well, I'd like to see the day when its possible for information systems
around the world to be able to be integrated ad-hoc.  Anything less than
that just isn't an Internet scale integration solution, IMO.

> However I do not believe that laying down a foundation that
> consists of messages (which are sent and received) is in any way
> detrimental to building such systems, after all I can build "your
> architecture" using those primatives, no?

Sure.  But consider NFS.  It's built on top of ONC RPC.  But do you see
NFS clients and servers interoperating with other ONC services?  Nope, you
just see them talking to other NFS clients and servers.

I could be wrong on this point, because my experience on this is fairly
limited.  But my current position, if you're interested, is that a
common messaging layer *is* detrimental from a performance POV.
Consider NFS again.  It would really be a much better protocol if it had
its own messaging layer which was optimized for the needs of distributed
file sharing, rather than one optimized for RPC.

A common messaging layer *does* save you some coding though, but it
seems to come at the cost of performance, and without the improvement in
interop that many might expect.  But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

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

Received on Monday, 9 February 2004 01:22:24 UTC