Re: [xml-dev] SOAP/SOA and REST/ROA ???

["Mark Baker" <mark@coactus.com>]

Hi Mike,

On 12/6/07, Michael Champion <mc@xegesis.org> wrote:
> I personally think that ROA is a subset of SOA that constrains the set of
> services to the HTTP verbs but opens up the types of data that the services
> can operate on to the very abstract notion of a resource. Others seem to
> think that SOA is the subset of ROA where the set of resources is
> constrained to be service endpoints. I've served my time in Hell trying to
> referee that debate (in the W3C Web Services Architecture WG) and don't want
> to participate anymore, but go to it if you want :-)

Well, I don't think it's particularly useful to argue who's sub and
who's super.  From an architectural POV it only matters which style
adopts the constraints which induce the architectural properties that
are needed for a particular system in a particular environment.

> But maybe it wouldn't be too much to hope that we could all just get along
> by understanding that when a system is best conceptualized as a set of
> services, service-oriented technologies make a lot of sense ... and when a
> system is best conceptualized as a hyperlinked web of resources, REST
> technologies make a lot of sense.

IMO, conceptualization has nothing to do with it.  What does is, as
above, the architectural properties.  So if you want scalability,
evolvability, visibility, simplicity, etc.. you're on your own with
SOA because it has no constraints (that everyone agrees upon at least)
and therefore no properties.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com