Re: Web-friendly SOAP

Walden Mathews wrote:
> 
>....
> >but any node that can't
> > download data from
> > the Web using HTTP isn't really on the Web and should not expect to
> > share in the benefits OF the Web.
> 
> This just seems like defining "Web" in terms of HTTP, or is it saying
> something deeper?  I'll read the abstract before posing any more
> foolish questions.

No, nothing foolish about the question. I would say that one of the
defining characteristics of the Web is that it is a *web of links*. That
means that any document may refer to any other document with a URI and
there is some clear way to turn that URI into some information. So no,
I'm not defining the web in terms of HTTP. FTP also has that property.
news: also has that property. My point is that its all very well and
good for me to shoot a short XML document over some future HTTP on UDP
and not expect a response. But the recipient will often need to use the
old-fashioned HTTP request-response message exchange pattern in order to
retrieve information referenced by the XML I sent. Consider the simplest
case:

<foo>
 <xi:xinclude href="...."/>
</foo>

Of course some applications may choose to forgo the use of URIs (as it
seems, for instance, that ICE does) but those applications are giving up
the best part of the Web. Why use HTTP if you're not going to benefit
from the fact that the Web is a *web of links*?

 Paul Prescod

Received on Monday, 24 June 2002 01:05:13 UTC