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4/12/2002 3:44:56 PM, Bill de hÓra <dehora@eircom.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>Not really strange, people like Henrik Frystyk Nielsen have been
>aware of the tension between SOAP and HTTP for 'a while' now:
Yes, and we're still arguing about it on xml-dist-app (well, until very recently
anyway).
>If the things people want to do with SOAP are so compelling, but
>suck over HTTP, then yes people will move off HTTP. But not before
>trying to unmercilessly rubber hammer the two together; HTTP has
>the machinery mindshare at and the world doesn't seem to be in the
>mood to buy new kit at the moment.
I'm basically with the REST people on this issue -- the Web is the most successful
distributed application ever built, and SOAP can't have it both ways: either
leverage the architecture that makes the web work, or don't expect the "SOAP Web"
to be as robust and scalable as the HTTP web is without a lot of thought,
experimentation, investment, and time. SOAP has the mindshare at the moment, but
the Web has actual reality behind it. I love this quote from THE MYTHICAL MAN-
MONTH: "The real tiger is never a match for the paper one, unless actual use is
wanted. Then the virtues of reality have a satisfaction all their own."
What I really find strange is the conjunction of this article and the one that
Simon pointed to. It does not take a totally pathological degree of paranoia to
wonder if all this is being driven by folks who want to sell us all yet another
shiny new networking infrastructure to replace the HTTP-based one that we all
bought over the last 6-8 years ... That's nice, I'm all for stimulating the economy
and getting our collective stock options back above water, but we must remember
that the HTTP web was not a paper tiger created out of standards committees and
marketing hype and visionary whitepapers, but a real tiger that came out of the
wild and devoured those who stood in its way.
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