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Re: SOAP and the Web

• To: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: SOAP and the Web
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 05:00:34 -0700
• References: <A84507FC48EA7B4B86323F4E82483F7E024BA72A@r... t.com> <a05100305b8f600c9e974@[192.168.123.136]> <3CD06233.1239C9B5@p...> <a05100306b8f63a647195@[192.168.123.136]>

Rex Brooks wrote:
> 
> Actually, I was asking what the reasons are, i.e. those impedence mismatches.

http://www.prescod.net/rest/versus_soap.html

* HTTP has four main methods. SOAP only uses one of them. Rather it
"tunnels" other methods through POST. Tunnelling is a violation of REST
because (among other things) it confuses intermediaries. 

* The concept of address is central to the Web and optional in SOAP.
This means that SOAP users cannot depend on REST-compatibility being
available in a SOAP toolkit. 

* SOAP has no predefined method for "get the representation of a
resource". Every web service does it in a different manner, using its
own method name and its own addressing model. Of course the same goes
for "put the representation of a resource." This lack of standardization
is a violation of the REST constraint that interfaces should be generic
and standardized. 

* REST has a resource/representation/address model. SOAP has an
endpoint/message model. Were it not for the points above you might be
able to treat "resources" as "endpoints" and "representations" as
"messages" -- but at the very least you're stuck with a terminology
divergence. 

 * The SOAP spec encourages a component/method view of the world, rather
than a resource manipulation view. 

At a meta-level, SOAP is designed to be a technology for tunnelling
through the Web. Therefore its core parts rely on the web infrastructure
for as little as possible. That's a common excuse for why it doesn't use
HTTP properly.

 Paul Prescod

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: "Andrew Dubinsky" <andy@e...>

• References:
  • RE: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Rex Brooks <rexb@s...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Rex Brooks <rexb@s...>

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