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Re: What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?
• From: Mark Baker <distobj@a...>
• Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:32:29 -0500
• In-reply-to: <e3a5cb2c050331154820f84d70@m...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE07206D57@h...> <20050330230147.GB9251@m...> <e3a5cb2c0503301900428ee68d@m...> <e3a5cb2c050331154820f84d70@m...>
• User-agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 06:48:14PM -0500, Michael Champion wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:00:10 -0500, Michael Champion wrote
> 
> > I maintain  that there is no deep architectural principle here --
> > either approach exposes essentially the same order of complexity  from
> > the service provider to the service consumer.
> 
> As is often the case, David Megginson
> http://www.megginson.com/blogs/quoderat/archives/2005/03/31/rest-and-rss/
> makes  a similar point far more eloquently : "REST offloads complexity
> from the protocol (HTTP) to the content (XML). That makes REST look
> simple as long as you focus only on the protocol, but RESTafarians
> cannot get away forever with leaving the content format for data
> unspecified."

With all due respect to both of you, that simply isn't the case.  The
data is *identical* in the examples I gave, so there's no place for
that additional complexity to go.  It's *gone* because an architectural
tradeoff was made; simplicity for efficiency.  I might as well quote Roy
at this point;

  "By applying the software engineering principle of generality to the
   component interface, the overall system architecture is simplified
   [...] The trade-off, though, is that a uniform interface degrades
   efficiency, since information is transferred in a standardized form
   rather than one which is specific to an application's needs."
  -- http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_1_5

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

• References:
  • What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
  • Re: What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?
    • From: Mark Baker <distobj@a...>
  • Re: What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?
    • From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>
  • Re: What Does SOAP/WS Do that A REST System Can't?
    • From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>

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