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On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:39:41 -0400, Chiusano Joseph
<chiusano_joseph@bah.com> wrote:
>
> - Suppose a process based on GXA wants to interact with a process based
> on WS-CAF;
...
> Is this a concern for interoperability? It seems to me that some sort of
> middleware product that translates between the two frameworks might be
> required.
Sure, it's a concern for interoperability. The only
Recommendations/standard profiles in this space are SOAP 1.2 (which is not
widely deployed) and the WS-I interop profile (which is quite minimal).
Also, it's pretty clear that the major vendors are not "playing nicely" to
promote interoperability but are using the "standards"
process/organizations as venues in which to pursue the same competitions
that are going on in the courts, the analyst-for-hire industry, the trade
press, etc. (hmm, sounds like von Clausewitz -- "Standards are the
continuation of industry competition by other means.")
The competing stacks and ad-hoc consortia specs are fine *if* we think of
them as experimental explorations of the possibilities that are opened by a
common conception of what "service oriented architectures" are all about
and HTTP/XML and SOAP/WSDL offer as foundations. But it is extremely
dangerous to think of these things as "standards" on which interoperability
can be expected. That's the path to premature standardization of unproven
technologies, vendor lockin, and all sorts of other evils. It's important
for consumers to demand standards conformance, but equally important to
accept the principle that no "standard" should be promulgated before its
time.
The more sensible path IMHO is to treat GXA specs AND alternatives from
other vendors and consortia as quasi-proprietary technologies that may add
value in specific situations, but end users who value their ability to
evolve and choose different vendors will NOT deeply architect them into
their applications. If they prove their value to solve real business
problems in a conceptually efficient manner, then it's time to think about
standardization and interop. In the meantime, it's probably BETTER for
end-users to use a "kludgy" middleware / transformation pipeline solution
to achieve interop than to demand conformance to proprietary "standards" or
premature standardization by OASIS/W3C/whoever.
[Speaking only for myself, blah blah blah]
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