RE: Announce: A brief history of SOAP -- Schemas and Encodings

On Sat, 31 Mar 2001 10:04:18 -0800 Don Box wrote [1]:
>Without a machine-readable metadata format, there are too many opportunities
>for misinterpretation, especially when bridging to type systems that have a
>strict type system (e.g., Java, .NET, C++/COM, JDBC). This got hashed out on
>the SOAP list ages ago.
>
>> what have we missed?
>
>In a script-only world, probably nothing. However, for folks who aren't
>using Perl/Python/Tcl etc, the lack of metadata makes all of this XML stuff
>very stone-age.
>
>I firmly believe that within 12 months, schema compilers will render things
>like the DOM and SAX fairly obsolete except for low-level XML wonks. In the
>absence of metadata, this just can't happen.

In addition to wanting to express my agreement with Don (and say thanks for
"A Brief History of SOAP"!), I'd like to point out that I believe that the
thread in [2] is related -- one (my) interpretation of the thread is: 

"how much encoding should we 'bake in' to the XMLP specification, vs. how 
much should we rely on the ability of XML Schema (or other content 
description language) to solve many of the problems a specific encoding 
might address (including binding to programming language datatypes)".

I don't think there is yet widespread understanding of exactly how
schemas can help relieve interoperability problems.  (Anyone?)

Regards,
David Ezell

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Mar/0311.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Apr/0072.html

Received on Tuesday, 10 April 2001 10:33:59 UTC