Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
I arrived at work this morning to find someone had generously sent me this link on how SOAP is no longer simple. Thanks to Pete Lacey for writing up his thoughts and sharing them so generously.
...I've recently been involved in design discussions for a potential new product which involves an interface between two disparate organisations. The developers are tooting the SOAP trumpet and I've thus far been a lone nay-sayer. I hope this blog entry gives them as much of a laugh as it did me :-)
Developer: Okay, where's the spec on this?
Soap Guy: Oh, there is no spec. This is just what Microsoft seems to be doing. Looked like a good idea, so now all the cool kids are doing it. However, there is this new thing. I think you're gonna like it. It's called the Web Services Interoperability Group, or the WS-I. What they're doing is trying to remove a lot of the ambiguity in the SOAP and WSDL specs. I know how you like specs.
Dev: So, in other words, the specs were so bad you need a standards body to standardize the standards. Lord. Well, will this solve my interoperability problems?
SG: Oh, yeah. So long as you use a WS-I compliant SOAP stack, avoid using 8/10ths of XML Schema, don't use any unusual data types, and don't count on working with WebSphere and Apache Axis.
Dev: And is wrapped-doc/lit explained in there?
SG: Ermm, no. But that's okay, you're tools understand it. Most of them, anyway.
Dev: Let me sum up. The definition of SOAP is in constant flux, SOAP is anything but simple, and it is no longer meant for accessing objects-even though that's what all the tools still do.
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