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Bad date on my part. Jan 2002. The mention
HTTP, URIs, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, and XML Schemas.
I haven't finished reading all of it.
Cairo, Blackbird, whatever. Every company has a
history of product lines that didn't make the cut.
That is part of being a product maker over a
spec maker. No one remembers the IETF specs
that just sit there. Now that there are so
many W3C spec efforts, I figure a lot of them will
do the same but of course, we won't call those
"standards" and life will go on. Come to think
of it, in that sense, a successful spec becomes
a "standard" the same way "Stars Fell On Alabama"
and "Misty" became "standards.
MS built the browser that now dominates the Internet over
the libraries made available from the W3C et al.
They took those and did a better job with them
then their originators. MS signed on early for
XML and as much as anyone, drove the development.
They have done original smart and productivity
enhancing things with it. The numbers of people
and companies that were late to see the rise
of the Internet as a public medium far exceed
the numbers who did see it, and even then,
a much smaller minority agreed with the design
then and now. Once Gates understood it, from
a standing start he bested most of his competitors
in eighteen months. That's a good track record.
I have no problem being an MSThrall. It solves
a lot of problems and gets our company into
far more markets than any other alternative.
The question now is whether or not the base
web service specs as they stand today and
the code on the docks is ready for us to
work with and get something happening. That
is EXACTLY where HTML and HTTP started: not
perfect but good enough to start the conversation.
As to getting "googled", it cuts in all directions
including in the direction of the W3C if they
ponder too long. This isn't about Internet Time;
it is about distribution. A bad song that sells
platinum stays around longer than a good one
that sells a thousand copies to friends and relatives.
That is all "standard" means today in this market.
len
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@attbi.com]
Len,
>
> As to the Semantic Web, it is irrelevant to me at this time. Why
> do I say that? I am a Microsoft Thrall. From a purely
> practical perspective, what I need to do know comes from the
> MSDN. The Jan 2001 MSDN provides a set of baseline specifications
> and the specs proposed for the Global Web Services. RDF is
> never mentioned. RDDL is never mentioned.
As smart as the MSDN folks are, the Jan 2001 MSDN would have had to been
extremely psychic to mention RDDL (which was coined at the beginning of Jan
2001).
>
> REST may be great guys. I'm all for it. But the specs
> the WSIO has before them don't mention it.
I am as yet unsure whether REST is not a more detailed explanation of HTTP,
or perhaps a description of how best to use HTTP, or a theoretical model for
HTTP. Do the specs mention HTTP 1.1 ?
>
> Prove me wrong, please. Otherwise, "The Web" is also
> irrelevant. What we need from HTML and URIs, we already
> have. What we need from XML, the WSIO is standardizing.
>
Gag me if you really believe this.
Do you recall "Cairo"? Ever read any in depth discussions of COM "monikers"?
Cairo got derailed, perhaps as a result of the Web, perhaps it was just too
ambitious. COM monikers and URIs turn out to have alot in common. In any
case, the fact that Bill Gates was late to see the rise of the "Web" and the
consequent effort made to turn MS on a dime toward the Web is well known --
any really smart person or company is not afraid to admit when it has been
barking up the wrong tree. IBM seems to go wherever the flow takes it (and
is big enough to follow any and all streams at the same time). Moreover
there is nothing about .NET for example, that requires UDDI (as far as I can
tell). So what makes you think anyone is really betting the farm on these
particular collection of "Web Services" specifications?
The fact is that no matter how hard, or with how much money, you try to
mandate what the "Web" is, you are in serious danger of getting "Googled" --
which in this context does not mean getting indexed, rather it means what
happend to the commercial value of Altavista, et al.
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