I wish I had the time to comment in detail on all the recent
goings-on viz a viz SOAP/SOA-vs-REST, but alas, I don’t (in fact,
you probably won’t be hearing very much from me until the summer).
I do wish though – and this comment is directed at both sides of
the debate – that folks would stick to technical arguments. Because
as much as
agnosticism
sounds like a reasonable position, it totally misses the point
that there exist
technical issues
that make SOA completely unsuitable as an Internet scale integration architectural style.
If you want to add transactions, reliability, asynchronicity, etc.. to the Web, you
don’t need to relax any of REST’s constraints as SOA does, you need
additional ones.
Carlos goes to town on Web services. Ouch!
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Steve Maine and Mark Baker discuss whether putting operation names in URIs is a RESTful (specifically, respects the uniform interface constraint) or not
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Spotted over in
service-orientated-architecture
, from
Jeff Schneider;
Personally, I believe that
inter-enterprise service catalog has been the biggest single failure of Web
services. Not too long ago, I dumped the data from the UBR and wrote a
program to test all of the services, 92% of all entries were fake or broken.
Quintessential eh?
So remind me again, is
404
a bug or a feature? 8-)
Another gorgeous Web app. This one aggregates Flickr data via their REST API. Take note Web services proponents; the future of large sclae, distributed, compositional computing is happening right under your noses.
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Via Tim,
a great
post
from
James Governor, a founder of
analyst firm Redmonk,
who’s apparently not afraid to call a spade a spade. Good on him.
Whats a web service? Still a great question. But anyone that defines a Web Service using SOAP in the definition is missing out on where the action is. Distinctions between enterprise and “consumer” are breaking down. REST is evidently where that convergence is being played out, not WS-I.
Even more interesting is that Joe McKendrick at ZDNet
picked it up.
Again, it’s a shame SOAP is getting caught up in this backlash,
since it’s not the spec that’s the problem, it’s how people are
(mis)using it. Oh well, it’s not like that’s much of a
surprise 8-) 8-(
As relayed
by
Nelson Minar,
author of two of the
Google APIs;
From my experience nothing interoperates well, even in the basic SOAP
stack. rpc/encoded used to work OK, within its limitations but now
that’s deprecated it’s not a realistic option for new services. So
you’re stuck with document/literal where practice isn’t great.
And remember, this is just
SOAP 1.1
a spec that is five years old, and which (apparently) requires
clarification
upon
clarification…
but still can’t seem to get it right.
Ouch. Even if you like the (presumed) architecture of Web services,
this would seem reason enough to give pause and to motivate consideration
of a Web based solution, no?
Update; based on some offline feedback, I should clarify that
the problem Nelson talks about with the doc/lit encoding isn’t specific to
Web services and could also be encountered in a Web based solution. But my
intent here is just to throw cold water on the general concept of “SOAP =
interoperability”, and to point out that the largest distributed application
ever created by mankind – the Web – got that way because it truly embraced
interop, and wasn’t just paying it lip service.
… has been posted.
In addition to my
DevDay
co-chairing duties, I’ll be part of a panel called – at least for
now – “Web services considered harmful?” 8-). You’ll recognize
all the participants, but I won’t name any yet since I’m not sure
who’s confirmed.
Rohit Khare
will be moderating.
James writes;
If you’re in Boston and interested in meeting up, let me know!
I’ll be seeing far too much of Boston over the next three weeks.
I’ll be there on the 17th and 18th (departing on the evening of the 18th),
as well as 27th through March 2nd (departing afternoon of the 3rd).
I’m currently only booked up on the evening of the 27th, though I
expect that one of the other evenings that week will be booked up too.
Gee, I can’t remember how long it’s been since I last saw James.
Just like they dropped their XML search capability (http://www.google.com/xml) a few months after deployment. Sigh.
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