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Re: What does SOAP really add?

• To: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Subject: Re: What does SOAP really add?
• From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
• Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 19:20:19 +0100
• Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@g...>, Didier PH Martin<martind@n...>, Bill de hÓra<dehora@e...>, xml-dev@l...
• References: <JIEGINCHMLABHJBIGKBCMEFNEHAA.julian.reschke@g...> <3CC577CE.5000702@r...> <3CC58C75.10306@t...>
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Tim Bray wrote:

> It
> seems to me profoundly profoundly silly to assert that the RPC model of
> fetching information using a service name and some name/value argument
> pairs is dead.  It also seems profoundly silly to assert that the RPC
> model is the be-all and end-all.

I'm not saying that the model is dead, just that the assumption that 
there is no serious requirement for query parameters that are too 
complex to be URL-encoded as a list of name-value pairs is no longer 
valid. I think I can see the advantages of  having these queries 
represented in a document-embeddable, idempotency-assumable form, but 
unless someone provides a solution which provides these characteristics 
for complex queries, then people will just use POST instead. Time will 
tell, but at this point I'd be willing to bet a nice bottle of wine on 
this outcome being apparent within the next six month

> The important difference is that that the RPC model, for safe/idempotent
> operations, can in principle be exposed as a URI.  In practice, it can
> be done cheaply and easily (see my proposal over in www-tag).   If it
> can be done, it should be done.  Those who fail to see the benefits of
> placing the maximum possible amount of information in URI space just
> Don't Get It and have apparently slept through the last decade. 

Your proposal is interesting and appears to me to provide roughly the 
same functionality as the existing GET support in WSDL.

But I'm interested in passing schema-valid XML blocks as query 
parameters, or representations thereof. Your proposal doesn't help much 
there.

Are you really comfortable asserting that there is and will be no 
substantial requirement for safe/idempotent operations which have 
parameters of  context-sensitive complexity rather than of FSM 
complexity, which I think is what it boils down to?

If not, why don't we try to come up with a solution which meets your 
requirements?

Francis.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: What does SOAP really add?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

• References:
  • RE: What does SOAP really add?
    • From: "Julian Reschke" <julian.reschke@g...>
  • Re: What does SOAP really add?
    • From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
  • Re: What does SOAP really add?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>

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