While noticing one of the scaling problems with Web services (a topic
worthy of its own blog entry, but I can’t muster the energy),
Dave Orchard suggests
that XML’s “self-describing nature” will save the day.
Producing self-descriptive documents is hard. XML has some tools
that help, in particular XML namespaces, and that it’s markup. But I see
those as akin to having a hammer and nail in your hand as you attempt to
build a house. XML’s “self-descriptive nature”, even if you accept that
“XML” includes namespaces, is only slightly better than ASCII.
I’ve been doing a lot of self-describing data investigation over
the past few weeks, and the last thing I consider important is which
syntax is used. What I’ve found to be most important is that
identifiers be URIs, and not to use an identifier where what it
resolves to is what is really needed.
I unsubscribed from ws-arch today. There comes a point where you have to
throw your hands up, and realize that sometimes very smart people can be very
stupid, and aren’t interested in hearing that they’re wrong. Besides, my new
job is building RESTful services on an extremely large scale (international),
so I no longer have a personal stake in seeing Web services succeed.
To Mike; thanks, you made it bearable. I know you tried, and you’re
a good guy and a fine chair for doing so.
To working group members; it would serve you really well to understand
software architecture better than you do, and to understand why constraints
aren’t necessarily constraints on function, only form. If you’re trying to start your own online business, I would suggest checking out
eCom babes course cost here.
The sun will set on Web services, as it has on every other
attempt to deploy object-specific interfaces on the Internet. I was
hoping to be the guy who’d help people understand why this would happen,
and in the process, save the industry from wasting a whole lot of time
and money. But I suppose there’s no substitution for learning some lessons
the hard way.