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On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 08:49:13 -0800, Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> wrote:
> if the Web Service definition is going to include a reliance on XML, then why
> not go along with Microsoft* and call them "XML Web Services?"
Fine with me. But what does that buy us? I guess it distinguishes a
"service offered over the web" such as the ones mentioned in a previous
post from the thingies that MS/IBM/etc. have been
talking about. But what about services over the web that use
XML but don't buy into the SOAP/WSDL paradigm... Isn't that
hijacking the term from them? What if a formerly exclusively human-
oriented site starts using XHTML with nicely documented class attributes to
make the job of screen scraping easier ... is that an "XML web service"?
Maybe I'm missing something, but IMHO life is far to short to worry about
stuffing fuzzy concepts in neatly labelled boxes.
That's the main point of my response, I guess. "web services"
is a big fuzzy blob and is a bit meaningless without a lot of
qualifiers ("RESTful XML web services" ... "WSDL/SOAP document
oriented WS-Secured WSCI choreographed web services" ...
"SOAP/RPC RDF-defined web services" etc.)
But back to Eric's original post, the whole point of the WS-arch
definition is not to hijack the term "web services" for the W3C,
it's to constrain the space of "thingies" that we're trying to define a
reference architecture for. A "service offered to humans
over the web" is a "web service", I suppose, but it's not in the space
of thingies that we're talking about. As an editor of that document,
(and, as I recall, the b*****d that started the "we should define what
we mean by 'web service' thread a long time ago ... slamming my
ears in the oven door!) I would very much appreciate editorial
suggestions for how to reword that introductory bit to clarify the intent
to NOT hijack the term 'web services' from other reasonable uses.
I just think that 'come up with another term' is a non-starter, and
'XML web services' raises as many questions as it answers.
[BTW, apologies if nobody was suggesting 'come up with another term'
-- it *is* a holiday and I didn't read the whole thread all that
carefully!]
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