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

Re: SOAP and the Web

• To: "Mark Baker" <distobj@a...>
• Subject: Re: SOAP and the Web
• From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@n...>
• Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 16:10:42 -0400
• Cc: "Mark Baker" <distobj@a...>,"Bullard, Claude L Len\"" <clbullar@i...>,"'Andrew Dubinsky'" <andy@e...>,"'xml-dev'" <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B3CB@HQ5> <20020501125615.A16533@w...> <010201c1f141$00199790$6401a8c0@didierhome> <20020501153153.B16533@w...>

Hi Mark,

Mark said:
> The Web exhibited its infamous growth curve long before any money was
> behind it.
>
> http://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html

Didie replies:
Do not forget to taken into accounts the amounts of money the US government
invested in the web. Also, the fact that in the beginning years, a big chunk
of the backbone was subsidized by the government. It is later that the
private sector took the relay. The first application that became a killer
app among the academic and private sectors was the email. It wasn't until
1994/1995 that the HTTP/HTML technologies really reached the beach heads of
the masses, before the email was the major app used on the TCP/IP networks.
(even today, the main killer app of the TCP/IP networks is the email). Among
the first factors that brought people to the web was a lower cost to access
the network than was the ones of other alternative networks like CompuServe,
Prodigy  or AOL. The bootstrap momentum given by the government subsidiaries
had the effect to lower the network access cost (and moved from a per minute
access time fee base to a fixed cost per month in the US+canada). If we see
the same thing happening again in the US for broadband, expect that the same
dynamics to take bring the same results.

cheers
Didier PH Martin


> > Sorry to kill illusions with a such utilitarian approach.
>
> Nice try, but no cigar. 8-)
>
> There's simple, though non-obvious reasons why the common use of SOAP
> will never see this type of growth.  Primarily, it's because the a
> priori contract that is present between a SOAP sender and a SOAP
> receiver is insufficient to generate any network effects.  HTTP provides
> a much richer contract.  And for that matter, so does FTP, SMTP, and
> every other application protocol in existence.
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker, Chief Science Officer, Planetfred, Inc.
> Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.      mbaker@p...
> http://www.markbaker.ca   http://www.planetfred.com
>

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Benjamin Franz <snowhare@n...>

• References:
  • RE: SOAP and the Web
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Mark Baker <distobj@a...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@n...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Mark Baker <distobj@a...>

• Prev by Date: RE: SOAP and the Web
• Next by Date: Re: SOAP and the Web
• Previous by thread: Re: SOAP and the Web
• Next by thread: Re: SOAP and the Web
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread