Re: So what do SOAP and XML-RPC buy you? (was Re: Massive Cross-Post:The State of XML-RPC, April 2001)

[Matt Sergeant <matt@sergeant.org>]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Edd Dumbill wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 11:22:44PM +0100, Matt Sergeant wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, XML Everywhere wrote:
> > > If you have XML messaging over http, why do you need
> > > anything else? 
> > 
> [ .. ]
> > Though the final schedule isn't out yet, this is exactly the talk I'm
> > giving for O'Reilly's Open Source conference (albeit actually in the
> > mod_perl track). HTTP is a great applications protocol - it handles
> > errors, parameter passing, multiple result sets (via MIME), return type
> > negotiation, etc. I hope to open people's minds to other possibilities
> > (though I don't expect many attendees!).
> 
> Great marketing, Matt.

Marketing? Oh, you mean http://conferences.oreilly.com/ ? :-)

> Seriously, I'm interested in what the perceived buy is from the XML
> protocols over straight XML+HTTP.  My suspicion is that the main two
> reasons are the lack of perception of HTTP in this light, and the lack
> of friendly enough APIs (esp. on Microsoft platforms) to enable HTTP to
> be used between applications.

Exactly. CGI really isn't enough - it doesn't give you the control you
need over the server to implement this stuff, which is why it's going in
the mod_perl track (For the uninitiated, mod_perl just allows you to write
Apache modules in Perl). Servlets are probably too abstract (don't quote
me on that - I'm not a servlets programmer). So SOAP/XMLRPC layers
everything on top of simple HTTP GET/POST with only 200 return codes. Ick.

That's http://conferences.oreilly.com/, for anyone who wants to come to my
talk :-)

-- 
<Matt/>

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