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   Re: [xml-dev] Elliotte Rusty Harold on Web Services

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Hey Rich,

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 11:57:43AM -0500, Rich Salz wrote:
> Oh, *that* piece.  Sometimes Bruce stretches to make his points, as in:
>     That's right. Those pesky firewalls prevent applications from
>     sending commands to each other, so SOAP lets vendors hide those
>     commands as HTTP so the firewall won't notice.
> 
> which is wrong.  SOAP over HTTP is architecturally no worse than HTTP 
> POST:  both are sending data and requesting that a server act upon it.

Bruce is right.  There's an important difference.

Consider these two examples;

POST some-uri HTTP/1.0
Content-Type: application/xml
[blank line]
<number>3<number>

and

POST some-uri HTTP/1.0
Content-Type: application/xml
[blank line]
<add>
<number>3<number>
</add>

In the former, the data that is sent is just data, not a request for
action.  POST is the action.  If it were sent with HTTP PUT, it would
mean something entirely different.

In the latter, the meaning of POST is discarded and replaced with "add".
If it were sent with HTTP PUT, the expectation would be that the same
thing would happen as if it were sent with POST.

HTTP messages only need one method.

And to Mike's question; I used to develop software in a Web-services
like manner, with DCE/CORBA/RMI/etc..  Then I learned a better way.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis




 

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