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

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

At 11:57 AM 4/16/01 -0700, XML Everywhere wrote:
>If you have XML messaging over http, why do you need
>anything else?

Mostly because there are people who need to make function calls over a 
network and don't want to know about the underlying details.

>   Here is the XML I expect, here's the
>XML I'm going to return, and here is the
>URL.

Sure.  That's the way I'd really like to see things work.

>I love how software engineers like to make
>tools instead of solve real problems.

If only I was a software engineer...

>   Are we expected
>to suspend disbelief and think these tools are bug-free
>and have no overhead?

Uh, no.  They're not bug-free and they have substantial overhead.  It's 
just a question of where you want your overhead. On the wire?  In training 
classes?  In programming time?

>You're going to save me time and make the world
>inter-operate.  Yeah right.  I didn't believe it when the
>CORBA and COM people said it and I don't
>believe it from the XML people either.

Who exactly are you trying to fight with?

>The world will always be chaos, get used to it.

Of course it will always be chaos.  Trying to explain that to people who 
don't like chaos is pretty difficult, though!


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