RE: Massive Cross-Post: The State of XML-RPC, April 2001

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 01:56 PM 4/16/01 -0400, Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote:
>I'm not too good at accepting things as they are because I'm told to, 
>and  gave up all hope of living in an ideal world at about age 14.  Could 
>someone explain WHY the real world needs XML-RPC in addition to SOAP? And 
>WHY should "BigCos" support it? Isn't there some subset of SOAP that meets 
>the needs of indie developers (like the one described in the "Busy 
>Developer's Guide", maybe?).

I suppose you could do it with a subset, but why subset something huge when 
something small is already there?

XML-RPC is a one-trick pony (function calls), but it does that trick 
awfully well.  It's proven pretty stable, and it's available for a lot of 
platforms.

Personally, I'll take XML-RPC for the tasks it performs.  If I want 
something more sophisticated, I'll go straight to XML messaging over HTTP, 
and steer clear of SOAP entirely.


Simon St.Laurent - Associate Editor, O'Reilly and Associates
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books