Re: [xml-dev] Web Service: SOAP or {HTML + Servlets}?

[Francis Norton <francis@redrice.com>]

Hi Roger,

"Roger L. Costello" wrote:
> 
> 
> My vision of next generation Web Services is an XML-document-based
> architecture, with a well-defined set of elements.  I envision the XML
> documents conforming to an XML Schema.  I envision schema validation of
> the documents.  I don't see any of this in SOAP.
> 
I agree with you preference for document-based transactions over
parameter-based transactions (in my darker moments I tend to mutter that
those who push parameter-based SOAP "just don't get it").

But I've been using SOAP with WSDL as part of Web Services
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861005091 if you'll forgive a
plug) and there's a lot of support - in .Net at least - for
document-oriented SOAP web services. You can generate an entire proxy
client complete with synchronous calls, async calls and XML <-> object
serializers and de-serializers from WSDL with an embedded schema, and an
abstract server class too, using Visual Studio.Net or the wsdl.exe
command line tool, and I imagine that other Web Services environments
have similar support.

But we have to keep raising the issue - I feel that Web Services will
reach out to a large constituency including many for whom code is
self-evidently more important than data, and some who understand the
primacy of data for productiity  but dislike the complexity of XML
Schema, and these may shift its focus.

Francis.