What good is SOAP to HTTP?
Thursday, 6 April 2006
I’m a little confused by Mark Baker’s stance regarding SOAP; he seems to encourage the Web services world to use SOAP on top of HTTP in a fashion compatible with HTTP.
As I asked Chris Ferris recently, what’s the point?
UPDATE: Mark responds. While I agree that evangelising HTTP is good, and that teaching certainly brings benefits to the teacher as well, I’m concerned that people will only see HTTP through the imperfect, low-resolution lens of SOAP, not realising that they don’t need it. MSFT, IBM and everybody else are going to tremendous efforts to make SOAP usable for average developers, and ignoring their HTTP implementations; even if they “get it,” they’ll still build this stuff on top of SOAP.
As a result, we’ll end up with SOAP as some sort of vestigial organ. I personally have very little hope that the big vendors will a) get it, as well as b) follow through and actually make the world better (rather than just more profitable for themselves). Best to start fresh; a pig with lipstick and all that.
P.S. Mark, we wouldn’t have to talk like this if you allowed comments on your blog! ;)
3 Comments
Bill de hOra said:
Thursday, April 6 2006 at 1:52 AM
Mark Baker said:
Thursday, April 6 2006 at 7:54 AM
Hugh Winkler said:
Thursday, April 6 2006 at 10:07 AM