Fielding on SOAP 1.2 in Infoworld

[Reza B'Far (eBuilt)]

In a hypothetical world.....

Wonder if these arguments would have existed if web services were RDF based
instead of XML based... After all the RDF spec reads, and I quote:

".... it provides interoperability between applications that exchange
machine-understandable information on the web..."

Reza

Guess:  A commercial reason for it that has nothing to do with what's the
best solution :-)


-----Original Message-----
From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com]On Behalf Of Rohit
Khare
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 1:37 PM
To: fork@xent.com
Cc: Adam Rifkin; frystyk@microsoft.com
Subject: Fielding on SOAP 1.2 in Infoworld


My, my, what a tempest in a teacup... peace, man, peace! -- RK

===================================

Debate foams over SOAP 1.2
By Tom Sullivan
May 10, 2002 1:01 pm PT

AS THE WORLD Wide Web Consortium (W3C) works to put the finishing
touches on SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.2, debate is heating
up over Web services interoperability and SOAP's future in the Web.

The concerns cut to the core of Web services' promise of delivering
seamless machine-to-machine communication, regardless of platform or
infrastructure differences. SOAP's capability of defining standard
methods of exchanging data has formed a linchpin in the development of
Web services environments such as Microsoft .Net, IBM WebSphere, and Sun
ONE (Open Network Environment).

The debate has emerged with the development work on SOAP 1.2 during the
past 18 months and coincides with its expected submission to the W3C for
approval next month, said Anne Thomas Manes, a member of the W3C's XML
Protocol Working Group -- which is developing SOAP -- and CTO of Web
services company Systinet in Cambridge, Mass.

"There are some significant issues associated with [SOAP] 1.1, basically
a bunch of vagaries that make the specification not quite concrete
enough. That is why we have so many interoperability issues with SOAP
1.1," Manes said.

Specifically, Manes said the W3C is working to better define the
encoding system -- a method used to represent various types of data such
as strains, integers, floats, and decibels -- and to more concretely
represent these data types in XML schema types. The W3C is also looking
at how to map these XML schema types to other languages.

But as SOAP 1.2 is readied, a faction of Web architects is questioning
the future of Web services. The group includes Roy Fielding, one of the
key architects of HTTP and a member of TAG (Technical Architecture
Group), which essentially defines the principles of Web architecture
inside the W3C.

"The issue is whether or not Web services, as about to be described by
the SOAP 1.2 protocol specification, has anything whatsoever to do with
the Web. There are fundamental architectural differences between
frameworks for remote procedure call, such as CORBA, DCOM [Distributed
Component Object Model], and SOAP 1.1, and how the Web was designed,"
Fielding said.

Fielding, who is also chief scientist at Day Software in Newport Beach,
Calif., and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, said that if
SOAP is going to remain a Web services protocol and become defined
within the W3C, it should adhere to the fundamental principles that made
the Web successful, such as addresses linking content using standard
HTML.

Indeed, some industry experts said SOAP has not yet lived up to vendors'
claims. "SOAP is largely falling short of the requirements [including
security]," said Bernhard Borges, managing director of the advanced
technology group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York.

"There has been some disappointment that two of the SOAP
implementations -- Microsoft [.Net] and Java -- are just not
compatible," added Deborah Hess, senior analyst at Gartner in Stamford,
Conn.

But Web services proponents such as Systinet's Manes argue that to say
Web services are not part of the Web is missing the point of SOAP and
Web services altogether.

"What we're doing is a form of distributed computing in which we are
taking advantage of Web protocols, but we're not necessarily using the
semantics of HTTP to do it. We are using HTTP simply as a transport,"
Manes said.

The kinks in SOAP most likely will be worked out, said Uttam Narsu, an
analyst at Giga Information Group in Cambridge, Mass. Narsu said it is
widely considered safe to use SOAP, although companies using Version 1.1
should plan to move to Version 1.2 when the specification is ready.
"With 1.2, the big change is making it an extensible protocol," he said.

Cleaning up SOAP

The W3C is looking to enhance SOAP in Version 1.2.
*	Better defined encoding system for representing various data types
*
More clearly represent data types in XML schema
*
Improved interoperability



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