RE: XML.COM: How I Learned to Love daBomb

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Good one, Dave.  Six.  We train ourselves not to 
see commonplace things (of).  (A hint for such puzzles: 
habit blinds you.  Read it bottom to top, right to 
left.)

The web service challenge is to figure out 
orders of events (orchestration).  The basic 
interop based on sending essentially documents 
back and forth has worked for non-digital systems 
for hundreds of years (maybe thousands).  The 
task is identification of the right service and 
coordination given a complex task.

Simple tools for simple tasks, but simple won't stay simple 
if it is all you know how to apply.   Most markup apps 
start simple, then the requirements pile up.  If the 
design is good, it grows gracefully.  Otherwise, it 
becomes kudzu and you rebuild at tremendous costs.  
Doubt it?  Gencoding is over 30 years old.  Why are 
we using XML?

Hypertext became commonplace because of the 
HTTP protocol and staying away from the requirements 
of complex layout apps the requirements of which 
were derived from 1000dpi print systems for 
military manuals.   The system limits drive the 
design.  The web designers weren't clever or 
enlightened.  BBN and 72dpi screens had made 
the hard choices.

Make sure the technology chosen is up to the 
challenge of the task and that the task 
is real.  Resist web for web's sake.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]

>The technology is no different, practically, to CORBA. Nothing will really
change, just a new set of tools will be sold, is all :-)

In practical terms, SOAP and XML-RPC are different from CORBA because the
technology is so bare-bones that it can be understood and deployed in a
couple of hours by anyone with a modest scripting background. That's why
it's catching on. Much the same way hypertext didn't become commonplace
until HTML came along and made it so that all you had to do was put a few
files in a folder and turn the server app on, and boom, you're on the net.
Drop a script in a folder, edit your server configuration, and you're
running networked apps. Want to tweak the code a bit? No problem, it's just
a script.

With all due respect, I think this list has missed the maturation of this
technology.

It's moving forward steadily.

Want a demo of how minds work when they only see what they're expecting to
see?

Try this little puzzle [1].

There's no trick. Ninety-nine in a hundred people can't count the F's.

Now go to this page [2], and follow the links and tell me a new network
isn't building now.

Dave

[1] http://davenet.userland.com/1997/03/03/DonsAmazingPuzzle
[2] http://plant.blogger.com/api/xmlrpc_newPost.html





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