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RE: Will Web Services Kill HTTP?

• To: 'xml-dev' <xml-dev@l...>,Bill de hÓra <dehora@e...>
• Subject: RE: Will Web Services Kill HTTP?
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 17:45:07 -0400
• In-reply-to: <001f01c1e25a$86e96020$887ba8c0@mitchum>

4/12/2002 3:44:56 PM, Bill de hÓra <dehora@e...> wrote:

> 
>
>
>Not really strange, people like Henrik Frystyk Nielsen have been
>aware of the tension between SOAP and HTTP for 'a while' now: 

Yes, and we're still arguing about it on xml-dist-app (well, until very recently 
anyway).


>If the things people want to do with SOAP are so compelling, but
>[expletive deleted] over HTTP, then yes people will move off HTTP. But not before
>trying to unmercilessly rubber hammer the two together; HTTP has
>the machinery mindshare at and the world doesn't seem to be in the
>mood to buy new kit at the moment.

I'm basically with the REST people on this issue -- the Web is the most successful 
distributed application ever built, and SOAP can't have it both ways: either 
leverage the architecture that makes the web work, or don't expect the "SOAP Web" 
to be as robust and scalable as the HTTP web is without a lot of thought, 
experimentation, investment, and time.  SOAP has the mindshare at the moment, but 
the Web has actual reality behind it.  I love this quote from THE MYTHICAL MAN-
MONTH: "The real tiger is never a match for the paper one, unless actual use is 
wanted. Then the virtues of reality have a satisfaction all their own." 

What I really find strange is the conjunction of this article and the one that 
Simon pointed to.  It does not take a totally pathological degree of paranoia to 
wonder if all this is being driven by folks who want to sell us all yet another 
shiny new networking infrastructure to replace the HTTP-based one that we all 
bought over the last 6-8 years ... That's nice, I'm all for stimulating the economy 
and getting our collective stock options back above water, but we must remember 
that the HTTP web was not a paper tiger created out of standards committees and 
marketing hype and visionary whitepapers, but a real tiger that came out of the 
wild and devoured those who stood in its way.

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