RE: [xml-dev] What does SOAP really add?

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

In hindsight this post seems rude so I'll expand on it. 

Hello Dave, I'd like to start of by saying that the people on this list
aren't stupid. Thus bandying about cute marketting friendly terms like
"interop" when asked by technical people what SOAP brings to the table
doesn't cut it. 

Any commonly agreed upon format can be used to guarantee interop. For
instance, there is nothing so fantastic about our beloved XML that
S-expressions or CSVs couldn't be made to do if there was as big a push
for standards and interoperability as there is for XML. 

For an example of exactly what kind of interop SOAP buys I suggest
reading Sam Ruby's "To infinity and beyond - the quest for SOAP
interoperability"[0] which highlights holes in the SOAP interoperability
story. Granted they are edge cases but they do indicate that simply
bandying the term interop around without a frame of reference does not
lead to clear-cut answers. 

There are political as well as technological reasons for the rise of
SOAP. What I (and I assume many others on this list) would like to hear
are the technological advantages of SOAP over what existed before,
currently exists, or could exist if SOAP was not the hot XML buzzword of
the week. 


So far SOAP and its associated technologies, seems like a reinvention of
several distributed computing wheels. So far we have a commonly agreed
upon IDL and a wire protocol. IBM, MSFT and others are working on adding
the layers above this. The one benefit is that now that we have the
entire industry backing this as opposed to MS vs. Sun vs. IBM vs. the
rest of the industry we can finally achieve true interop. 

However, this is political and I'm sure there must be some technical
pros to SOAP as well. What I'd like is to hear some well reasoned
techical arguments for SOAP. 

[0]
http://radio.weblogs.com/0101679/stories/2002/02/01/toInfinityAndBeyondT
heQuestForSoapInteroperability.html

-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
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everyone. 
 
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
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You assume all risk for your use. (c) 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dare Obasanjo [mailto:dareo@microsoft.com] 
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 10:58 AM
> To: Dave Winer; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What does SOAP really add?
> 
> 
> Uh, sure. Without reading your response I'd like to say 
> *cough* whatever
> *cough* 
> 
> -- 
> PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
> Your successes will happen in private and your failures in 
> full view of everyone. 
>  
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and 
> confers no rights. 
> You assume all risk for your use. (c) 2002 Microsoft 
> Corporation. All rights reserved.
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]
> > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 10:56 AM
> > To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> > Subject: Re: [xml-dev] What does SOAP really add?
> > 
> > 
> > Without having read most of the messages in this thread, I'd
> > like to try to answer the question it raises.
> > 
> > 1. Interop.
> > 
> > Dave
> > 
> > 
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