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

RE: SOAP and the Web

• To: 'Mike Deem' <mikedeem@m...>
• Subject: RE: SOAP and the Web
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 09:25:05 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>

Can you provide a list of the payoffs for using SOAP?

Someone earlier brought up the VHS vs BETAMAX story 
often used to illustrate how an inferior technology 
can lead to market lock-in.  I assume this fear of 
lock-in by the major vendors is one reason some fear 
SOAP, that SOAP and particularly, SOAP/RPC are the 
inferior technology.   In the article referenced here

http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/paths.html

the author argues that a detailed study of the actual 
history of the home recorder market reveals that this 
is an urban legend of sorts promoted in the literature. 
VHS had initially a technical advantage that for an 
extent of market time gave it an increasing returns advantage: 
a two hour, then quickly four hour, recording time. 
All other aspects were roughly equal.

Roy Fielding argues for "unforeseen advantages" to 
the REST architecture.  If one asserts that one 
should choose based on what one knows and not 
imperfect information ("unforeseen"), then one 
has to look at the payoffs to see if there is 
indeed a market requirement that would lead to 
one of these architectures being superior, that 
is, realistically leads to "foreseen" payoffs.

Is it simply that "all that matters is XML" is the 
source of the payoffs.  Doesn't REST also use XML?  
It may be that the programming model (procedural 
invocation of remote procedures) is given 
resistance to learning a new paradigm.  So 
far, the REST architecture would appear to be 
superior based on the reliability of the components 
for processing URIs, safe operations, scaling 
of simple methods over the confusion of every 
programmer rolling their own and each having 
to learn essentially, a new API for every service.

What are the payoffs for using SOAP?  

len


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Deem [mailto:mikedeem@m...]

I'll stop lurking and make a technical point in favor of SOAP. Yes, I
have read the e-mail threads and the referenced articles. :-) I'm one of
the program managers at Microsoft that delivered the Microsoft SOAP
Toolkit.

My technical argument is this: all that matters when using SOAP is XML
and all the power of XML can be leveraged when building applications
that use SOAP.

I can use the same programming model for doing simple "safe" things as I
do for doing complex "unsafe" things. That programming model allows me
to leverage Schema, XSLT, XQuery, XPath, etc.

Granted, this may not be what SOAP tends to be *today*. But SOAP, at
least, enables us get there someday.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
  • RE: SOAP and the Web
    • From: "Andrew Dubinsky" <andy@e...>

• Prev by Date: SV: New XSLT, XPath, and XQuery drafts - but still no update?
• Next by Date: Re: SV: New XSLT, XPath, and XQuery drafts - but still no update?
• Previous by thread: SV: New XSLT, XPath, and XQuery drafts - but still no update?
• Next by thread: RE: SOAP and the Web
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread