Re: Explaining visibility, take 54

On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 10:42:15AM -0400, Mike Champion wrote:
> > A.  A generic SOAP/XML intermediary
> > B.  An intermediary hardcoded to the WSDL document above
> > C.  An intermediary hardcoded to some other WSDL document
> >
> > I suggest that B has vastly superior visibility to A or C.
> 
> Uhh, OK, but what's the point?  An intermediary by definition is a "3rd 
> party" component that doesn't understand the application-specific data 
> format (such as that WSDL describes), so "B" and "C" are oxymorons.

Aha!!  No, that's not the case.

"Third party" just means a party distinct from the other two (e.g.
a cache between a client and server).  It doesn't suggest anything
about restricting what that intermediary can do.

It is possible for an intermediary to be written that has knowledge of
some application interface.  Those intermediaries have much higher
visibility into the interactions between components that are using the
same application interface, than they would if it were between
components using a different application interface.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis

Received on Friday, 9 May 2003 11:20:59 UTC