RE: "Uh, what do I need this for" (was RE: XML.COM: How I Learne d t o Love daBomb)

[David Orchard <orchard@pacificspirit.com>]

<mondo snip/>

You presume that transactions between web services is a good and possible 
thing.  Most people think of 2 phase commit when they think transactions, 
and I have serious doubts about that.  Satish Thatte wrote a good position 
paper referencing this, http://www.w3.org/2001/03/WSWS-popa/paper39.  One 
summary would be that 2PC doesn't for web services.

If you mean long-running or compensating transactions, then I agree that 
transaction support will be required.

Cheers,
Dave

>
> Note that we have a bigger problem which is the non-support of 
transactions
> by the current web services protocols. We use a kind of architectural
> workaround for now (based on the fact that we "only" implement an
> aggregation and presentation layers), but there is no doubt transaction
> support will be required one day.
>
> That's the reason why I am kind of skeptical about a transactional B2B 
use
> of web services with the current technologies. But as a distributed
> transaction relies basically on the propagation of the couple 
{transaction
> monitor ID,unique transaction ID} accross processes, I don't think this 
is
> something that can't be done with SOAP.
>
> Regards,
> Nicolas
>
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