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Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wa rs!

• To: "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...>
• Subject: Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wa rs!
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 10:38:17 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from "Karl Waclawek" <karl@w...> of "Sat, 19 Oct 2002 00:42:24 EDT." <001101c27729$eb7c1fa0$0207a8c0@karl>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Paul Prescod" <paul@p...>
> > In the standard modern architecture, you would use something like VFP to 
> > talk to the relational database on the server side and generate an XML 
> > view of the data. (XML+HTTP or XML+SOAP, depending on your tastes) Then 
> > the client neither knows nor cares that the data is stored relationally. 
> > And you can hook up dozens of different kinds of clients. A simple HTML 
> > form one for the lynx users, a DHTML one for the IE 6 users, a VB one 
> > for those willing to install a server app, a Java one for the Linux 
> > clients, etc. It isn't browser OR VFP. It's using each at what it excels at.
> 
> This works only when the information exchanged and the behaviour
> of the client is rather simple. As a corporate developer I have
> not come across a client yet that I could have implemented
> with a browser, not from a GUI capability point of view,
> nor from a user interaction standpoint.
> 
> And often - this is a heretic opinion here - I would prefer
> DCOM or CORBA over XML for client/middle tier interaction,
> simply because XML/SOAP imposes a rather simple communication
> model, unless one is willing to re-invent CORBA based on XML.

I think you'll find this is only heresy among the punditeratti.  I've been 
working tentatively with SOAP for a long time, and yet for real world tasks I 
am more likely to

1)  Use CORBA (If XML messages are required, simple XML text exchange over 
CORBA rules, and it's blazingly fast)
2) Use XML-RPC (mostly for quick hacks)
3) Roll my own (which I always *hate* doing, but sometimes you just can't get 
around highly specialized needs)

I haven't yet come across a class of situations for which I would generally 
tend to prefer SOAP.  I expect this will change as the infrastructure 
technologies and the WS stack mature.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Python&XML column: 2. Introducing PyXML - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/25/p
y.html
The Past, Present and Future of Web Services 1 - http://www.webservices.org/ind
ex.php/article/articleview/663/1/24/
The Past, Present and Future of Web Services 2 - 'http://www.webservices.org/in
dex.php/article/articleview/679/1/24/
Serenity through markup - http://adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6807
Tip: Using generators for XML processing - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerwork
s/xml/library/x-tipgenr.html

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