xml-dev - Re: XML over HTTP: SOAP and ...?

[Arjun Ray <aray@q2.net>]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, DuCharme, Robert wrote:

> While a heavily Microsoft-backed proposed standard often means
> that there's a non-Microsoft alternative out there, I didn't see
> any alternative to SOAP.

Good leads here:

  http://www.lwprotocols.org/

> I gather from http://www.develop.com/soap/soapfaq.htm#22 that
> xml-rpc cooperates with SOAP more than it competes with it,
> although I may have misunderstood this.

I believe the issue there is whether SOAP will interoperate with
XML-RPC (given that the latter has been used for some time, and the
former is um, gathering steam thanks to stoking by you-know-who) and
*continue* to do so.

The SOAP spec has "Microsoft crud" written all over it (as in,
overload it with as many features and complexities as it takes to
convince people that they really shouldn't bother trying to implement
it themselves but just get um, "authorized" software from um,
"official" sources.)  Alternatives like WDDX, XML-RPC, and LDO go a
long way to show that the "problem" isn't nearly as complicated as a
reading of the SOAP spec might lead one to believe.

The trouble is that the marketing machine is going to tout SOAP as
some sort of superset ("more general", "more flexible" - oops, gotta
use W3C speak, sorry - "more evolvable", etc.), so enough people just
might lose sight of the fact that a Light-Weight Protocol could
*really* be enough.


Arjun 


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