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Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> "Web services" are not just CGIs, so I think Eric's definition is not
> really enough.
> The point about web services is that they provide some metadata that
> allows you to find or use them: for example, that they may advertise
> or have schemas.
Rick, I think you are missing Rick's point. In 1996 Alta Vista was
well-known to be a web service. It would have been common sense to say
it was a web service. It was a service. It ran on the Web. Therefore,
it was a web service. Many companies set up departments called "Web
Services."
Then some marketroid decided ot hijack the term and specialize it to
"XML artificats blah blah metadata blah blah blah". That was a stupid
decision. Almost everyone agrees that that was a stupid decision. The
question is whether the W3C should now ratify that decision so that
people like my wife and your cousin will be permanently confused about
what computer people mean by "Web Service" or whether the W3C should
invent a new term so that elite, cutting edge computer people can use
the term the same way everyone else has been using the term as common
sense since the mid 90s.
> So that some software can say "I want to find a certain service" or
> some other software can also say "tell me what format/schema is being
> used."
According to this definition, eBay, Google and Yahoo are not web
services. This will surprise literally millions of people. More people
than have ever heard of XML schema or WSDL.
Paul Prescod
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