Dave writes;;
In the Web services vs REST debate, the sad part is that the communities are not coming closer together. There are things that could be done for Web services to integrate with REST but few people from either camp are jumping up and down.
Let me ask this, what’s the middle ground between a position which
says “Interface constraints are required for Internet scale distributed
systems”, and one which says “Service specific interfaces are required
for Internet scale distributed systems”?
IMO, there is none. “Support both”, which is how I’d characterize
Dave’s many well intentioned efforts to bridge the divide, is
not a middle ground, since supporting both requires rejecting
the interface constraint. Either that, or you’re talking about
supporting two distinct architectural styles, which is the aforementioned
divide.
Practically though – in terms of the many specs being developed, I think
the only middle ground is RESTful SOAP, which isn’t so much in the middle
from a REST POV (since it is REST), but is from a Web POV, in that SOAP
would be used to extend the Web rather than walk all over it. FWIW, that
position is what I’ve been fighting for since I joined the XMLP WG. I’m
really quite a moderate. 8-)
He ends;
[…]I call on technical people to engage in deeply technical debates and less on “marketing” campaigns.
Ouch! 8-O There’s
certainly been some “non” and poor technical arguments made on the REST side (as I
mentioned publicly, I didn’t care too much for one of Carlos’
posts on the topic),
but by and large the arguments have been entirely technical! I’ve certainly
primarily used technical arguments over the past five years.
It is to Dave’s (enormous) credit that he made the effort to
describe SOA as an architectural style,
but he’s been the only Web service proponent who’s even attempted to use the
language of
software architecture
to defend his position (even if I often disagree with him when he does).
But notice how his efforts never made it into the
Web Services Architecture document!
What does that say about the aggregate respect for software architecture by the
WG? Oodles, IMO.
The truth is that there’s already been a whole lot of technical debate, some
of it even fruitful. The camps have just agreed to disagree, insofar as
Web services proponents argue, in effect or actuality, that either a) the
architectural properties that SOA doesn’t have that REST does, aren’t important
to Internet based systems, or b) that SOA does not have less of some
architectural properties as REST proponents claim,
digital marketing services.
I’d also like to remind Dave how we got to this point. Web services were
created because it was felt that Web architecture wasn’t sufficient to
integrate disparate applications together over the Internet. Actually,
that’s not quite right. The explanation that seems to better reflect reality
is that the Web was
never considered as a platform suitable for
meeting the objectives of Web services, as can be demonstrated by the
numerous articles talking about how Web services evolved from the likes
of CORBA, DCOM, RMI, etc.., without
mentioning the Web!! The Web just didn’t resemble what folks knew a
distributed computing solution to look like, so it just never registered
in the heads to consider it. Well, the myth of the Web being unsuitable
has been largely dispelled by now. The big question then, I’d say, is
why haven’t the implications of this – that Web services exist – been
revised as a result?