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Re: Is XML-REST more scalable than SOAP?

• To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
• Subject: Re: Is XML-REST more scalable than SOAP?
• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 17:39:18 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: Message from "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...> of "Tue, 07 May 2002 14:37:30 EDT." <3CD81EEA.440953CB@m...>
• Sender: uche.ogbuji@f...

> Creating a Scalable, Machine-Processable Web Services Architecture
> 
> How can we make XML-REST scalable?  One solution would be to require
> every web site to serve up the same type of XML documents, i.e., have a
> universal Schema that all XML documents conform to.  Obviously this is
> not a very attractive solution.  The other solution is to have web sites
> serve up documents whose meaning can be dynamically "discovered".  I
> believe that RDF is the only XML technology that enables dynamic
> understanding of content.  Thus, the cornerstone for a scalable,
> machine-processable web services architecture is:
> 
> 1. The HTTP access methods - GET, POST, PUT, etc
> 2. A dynamically understandable vocabulary, such as RDF.

Wow.  I'm a fan of RDF, but I find this somewhat of a counter-intuitive idea.

I've always advocated RDF for closed systems and wondered about its scalability in open systems.  In the terms you put it, RDF might help the user agent understand the vocabulary more efficiently, as long as the agent has all the data it needs to fully process the RDF.  but if the agent does not, and thus has to hop over to another Web site to fill in a missing piece (maybe a site where an RDF schema or DAML ontology is stored), then has to hop over to yet another site to clarify some missing pieces there, and so on, couldn't this cause all sorts of network congestion, and notable delays in the agent's processing?

BTW, I do agree with your prima facie musings: the Web is scalable because it counts on the best computer we know for a lot of its processing: the human brain.

I wonder whether either Web services or the Semantic Web are scalable.  I suspect both technologies have a lot of proving to do in closed systems before they can realistically take on the wild wild Web.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston): http://www.xmlconference.com/
DAML Reference - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/05/01/damlref.html
RDF Query using Versa - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think10/index.html
XML, The Model Driven Architecture, and RDF @ XML Europe - http://www.xmleurope.com/2002/kttrack.asp#themodel

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