Web Things, by Mark Baker

Nice. mod-pubsub anyone?
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Ouch!
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“Using this binding, you can do correlated request/response over mail” Ouch! SMTP is one-way for a reason. Firewall admins, ready … set … filter!
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I found this example of the old Google XML search API at work, before the SOAP API. View the source. Bring it back!
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Tony hits the nail on the head

What is SOAP? It’s an HTTP POST containing XML, and an HTTP response containing XML. You can make an echo server by – here it is – simply serving a static XML file. That’s it. Just put an XML file on your http server and you’re done.

Indeed.

Alternately, if you feel the need, you can POST the content to the echo service. If you want to wrap it in SOAP too, even that’d be fine. Just watch that immediate child of soapenv:Body, because what you ABSOLUTELY do not need, is an “echo operation“. You just need the content to be echoed, and the address of the service; document in, document out.

That’s document exchange. That’s REST.

Can we get some real work done now, please?

Via Jef Newsom, Clemens Vasters describes his current, very cool project. He writes;

In fact, the entire server will likely not put a single plain-text, XML 1.0 encoded SOAP envelope onto the wire, but will be rather REST-ish and POX-ish.

Who knew?! 8-)

Two back-to-back messages received on a popular mailing list;

Hi Everyone, I am new and haven’t done soaps yet. Will be doing first cp this weekend. My question is this can I use those rubbermaid plastic containers they sell everywhere for cp soaps and do I have to line it with something if I do use it? Also I bought some cultured buttermilk blend in the baking section of food store. Can I use this along with or make own recipe. Also getting lard is very hard here in Baltimore as they don’t seem to have it anymore. I don’t want to use talon but would prefer lard. Does anyone know where I could get it without going to a pig farm. thanks, Karen in BMore

Followed three minutes later by this;

Hi, I am sorry that this maybe a group that doesn’t make soaps. If it is I am sorry because my questions were in reference to making soaps. Thanks anyway. Karen in BMore

The mailing list? You guessed it, soapbuilders. 8-)

I’d forgotten about this excellent piece by Paul Prescod.
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The more that two parties agree upon, the more that can be accomplished between them without additional coordination.

Additional coordination is expensive. It not uncommonly requires years of standardization and years more to deploy the new software to support it. Therefore, if we can leverage existing deployed agreement, that’s always best…

If two parties agree to communicate via TCP/IP, on some specific port, ad-hoc integration capabilities are limited to sending and receiving bits reliably between two points. Want to exchange data? Want to invoke a method? Sorry, additional agreement is required.

If two parties agree to communicate via the common use of SOAP-over-HTTP, ad-hoc integration capabilities are limited to remote method invocation with standardized faults in response. Want to invoke a method? No problem! Want to exchange data? Sorry, that requires additional agreement on a set of methods that facilitate data exchange.

If two parties agree to communicate via HTTP (or other transfer protocols), ad-hoc integration capabilities include data exchange.

… and so on, and so on, up the stack.

I’ve found that placing new technologies in the context of this coordination-centric view of the world as an excellent litmus test for the potential success of those technologies.

It also helps me to evaluate some design choices in large scale systems where an existing system is being “reused”. For instance, I consider the Web services notion of “protocol independence” to be prima facie a bad idea because it knocks us down a notch in terms of what can be coordinated a priori; whereas without tunneling we can use HTTP for data exchange, with tunneling we can only use it for method invocation.

It’s about time.

Web services were under attack (principled, of course) at today’s TAG call. Better late than never, I suppose…

Roy: The situation I run into is that if they don't solve the problem,
we shouldn't recommend a technology. ... WSaddressing may not be useful.

[…]

<Roy> what I said was that the WSA folks are roughly the same as the WSDL
folks and the WS* folks in general, and we have regularly described problems
with WS that need to be resolved in order to fit in with the Web, and they have
regularly refused to do so in a meaningful way. At some point, we have to say
that this technology should not be recommended to W3C members.

(emphasis mine)

[…]

<Roy> I don't find any technology that doesn't use the Web to be a useful product of the W3C.

[…]

<noah> Though, to be fair, the work required to process such a header would be a
structural change to most deployed SOAP software.
<DanC> so... the folks who made up that software dug that hole. they can dig
themselves out, no?

It’s a real shame. This would all just go away if only Web services advocates realized that the Web provides what they need for distributed, document oriented computing. You wonder why Dan, Tim, and Roy (and maybe Henry – I don’t know him very well) are pushing as they are? It’s because they understand that the Web is necessary, and that after you slash away all that makes the Web the Web, what’s left isn’t anything of any particular value to anyone, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

I’m not holding my breath that anything other than a toothless compromise will result from this exchange, but still, it’s nice to see the pushback; misery loves company, as they say 8-)