Re: Integrating XP Into Web Infrastructure

I'd actually like to second this question. The obvious limitation of HTTP
queries seems to revolve around datatypes, but that to me seems to be more
an issue of system implementation -- in general, if you know the parameters
and their types to be passed, type becomes largely irrelevent (especially if
a mechanism exists for consistently converting a query string/POST request
into an XML structure on the server side with an established schema map
reference. To make an XML Server request through SOAP or similar mechanisms
I have to create an XML DOM, populate it, send it through a dedicated pipe
function, while sending an HTTP request with query string parameters can be
done through a generic POST or QS method call. It's also worth pointing out
that XSLT has no mechanism currently for sending XML to a URI (though it
will with XSLT1.1) but with a query string based web services interface you
could call a web service with a document function and incorporate the
results directly into the processor stream.

I worry that in our host to build RPC functionality through XML that we
overlook simple solutions that do not add significantly to infrastructure
overhead in favor of those that benefit companies with large and specialized
servers to sell.

-- Kurt Cagle
-- Author, XML Developer's Handbook

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Swartz" <aswartz@upclink.com>
To: <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 5:20 PM
Subject: Integrating XP Into Web Infrastructure


> I just finished reading the XP Reqs and I had a few questions about how XP
> would fit into the web infrastructure.
>
> It seems to be acknowledged a popular use of XP will be as a RPC
mechanism.
> However, other XML-based RPC protocols (XML-RPC, SOAP) have been
criticized
> because of their lack of URIs and misuse of HTTP. The major problem seems
to
> be that information only available through some sort of RPC request cannot
> be given a URI (and thus cannot do any of the things that result from
that).
> Additionally, such systems use a single HTTP method (generally POST) and
> thus muddy the semantic meaning behind an HTTP method.
>
> As an example, there is a SOAP stock price RPC where a SOAP envelope
> containing a ticker symbols in responded by an XML message containing the
> stock price. Many argue that such a simple system should be implemented
> using HTTP GET instead of SOAP.
>
> With that introduction, I have the following questions for the WG:
>
> 1) Do you feel that such RPC/HTTP services are "bad" and would you
recommend
> against their use with XP?
>
> 1a) If so, do you plan to structure XP in such a way that the negatives of
> such services are lessened?
>
> 2) Do you expect to preserve the semantics of HTTP requests (HEAD, GET,
> POST, PUT) with the HTTP binding?
>
> 3) Do you have plans to attach a URI of some sort to an XP message? (It
> seems that this would certainly ease use cases 805, 807 and 809 (Routing,
> Tracking and Caching).)
>
> Thanks for information you can provide on this subject,
>
> --
> Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>|           my.info
>   <http://www.aaronsw.com>   |   <http://my.theinfo.org>
> AIM: JediOfPi | ICQ: 33158237|  the future of news, today
>

Received on Monday, 8 January 2001 21:08:44 UTC