[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vsaction

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vsaction-oriented
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 15:41:51 -0500
• Cc: costello@m...
• In-reply-to: <3C5EE4D1.BE45A528@m...>

2/4/2002 2:45:21 PM, "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...> wrote:

>
>Subject: Approaches to designing XML messages
>
>I have convinced myself that there are two fundamentally different
>approaches to designing Web service XML messages.  They are:
>
>1. The data-oriented approach
>
>2. The action-oriented approach
>
>I believe that which approach a person takes will have serious
>implications on the nature of Web services.

>a. Has someone already articulated the two approaches?

As I understand it, you are distinguishing "messaging" (data 
exchange) from "remote procedure calls" (the action oriented 
approach).  In SOAP terms, the envelope defines the fundamental 
message unit or "wire format" (including the identity of the service 
that the message is directed to), and RPC is one of a number of 
"message exchange patterns" that can be layered on top of SOAP.  SOAP 
1.1 allowed this, and SOAP 1.2 makes this much more explicit in the 
spec.


> b. What are the pros/cons of the two approaches

In SOAP-ese, this would be posed as "under what circumstances is one 
message exchange pattern more appropriate than another".  I haven't 
seen a lot of explicit discussion of this, although it comes up 
tangentially on xml-dist-app from time to time and we did have a 
discussion here a month ago that discussed messaging vs RPC; Leigh 
summarized it at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/01/16/deviant.html

> c. Intuitively, I think that the data-oriented approach
>  is the right approach.

Certainly in some situations, especially where "bulk" data transfers 
are happening, humans are involved in the processing, and probably 
more generally in loosely coupled application architectures.  In 
others, especially where you want to leverage programmers' more 
widespread familiarity with the synchronous RPC paradigm AND you have 
the network/security/processing infrastructure to support it, 
"actions" make lots of sense.

• References:
  • Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vs action-oriented
    • From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>

• Prev by Date: RE: XPointer crisis
• Next by Date: RE: Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vs action-oriented
• Previous by thread: Re: Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vs action-oriented
• Next by thread: Re: Categories of Web Service messages: data-oriented vs action-oriented
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread