Re: open transport protocol for aysnc web services?

Hi Nick,

Nick Nadgauda wrote:
> If I understand their products correctly, what KnowNow, Kenamea, and Bang
> Networks have basically done is build a tunnel over HTTP.  They've defined a
> new closed "protocol" -- in this case the protocol being "use 2 HTTP
> connections, one to send and one to receive, and keep the receive one
> constantly open".  This works great because they control both ends of the
> connection.  Unless other vendors (publishers and subscribers alike) adopt
> this "protocol", you won't have true inter-vendor interoperability the way
> you will with synchronous web services.  Kind of like I can't assume that
> everything speaks Tibco or Vitria.

I don't know much about Bang or Kenemea's technology, but happen to know
a lot about KnowNow's.  You're incorrect in your characterization of
them.

They are definitely not creating a new protocol.  There is no tunnelling
going on here.  At the server side, it's true that you're accessing URLs
maintained by their software.  This is a good and valid thing to do, as
their router provides a stateful service.  On the client side though, no
software (runtime or library) is required (though a library may be used,
and a runtime may also be used for persistent routing).  It's just GET
and POST, with some *optional* parameters for doing stuff that will
eventually be standardized.

The basic HTTP idiom that they're following is simple; an HTTP GET on a
router-provided URL implements the subscription, and an HTTP POST to
that node provides for delivery of the event notification.

MB

Received on Monday, 9 July 2001 10:40:09 UTC