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

[Al Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Michael Brennan wrote:

> Before programmers started using XML over HTTP to handle integrations across
> the internet, programmers were left with the choice between complex,
> inordinately expensive EDI technologies, or simply resorting to batch
> transfers of data files over FTP. With XML over HTTP, the bar has been
> lowered and distributed messaging is within the reach of those with even the
> tightest of budgets. In addition, they are able to forge integrations with
> far richer semantics than those relying upon the batch transfer of data
> files. Services can collaborate in real time over the Internet, and the
> technology is within the reach of even those with rather modest IT skills.

This isn't quite true, ONC-RPC has come with Unix machines for years
now... People usually didn't realise they had a nice reliable fast
portable RPC toolkit that came with their system, but that's because the
software industry is still very very *bad*. So few architects (for it is
architects who should choose stuff like protocols for interconnection)
actually bothered to find out what's out there. This is not the fault of
technology - it's a cultural problem in the software industry.

You don't get the people who build bridges reinventing the arch whenever
suspension bridges go out of fashion, they already know about it...

> This is not being driven by the "web for web's sake", but by these very
> practical concerns. Sure, as with every new thing that gets aggressively
> marketed and overhyped, there is some fetishism of the new trend that is
> happening. But there is also considerable real world benefit from all of
> this, and that is the real driver.

Writing code with ONC-RPC is easier than using SOAP (unless you're doing
.NET stuff where there's a lot of code that hides the complexity for you,
at which point it's about the same as ONC-RPC, I gather).

I refer the honourable reader to ISBN 0-937175-77-3

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software