This debate over OPES appear sto have a blend of technology religion,
business interest, and even some hand-waving or other failures to
communicate at its core. I, too, can quibble with the proposed charter but
there is a need for a standard mechanism for calling services that operate
on http (and possibly rtp) messages at an [application-level] intermediary.
In general, the technical and industry requirements can be demonstrated by
the fact that there are emerging w3c standards and implementations for
constructing distributed applications by calling web services and,
specifically with respect to edge services, by the fact that there are
edge-of-network implementations that provide various transform services,
e.g., virus scan, language translation, and, yes, content adaptation based
on device and network capabilities. These aren't layer violations, some of
these applications are, however, aware of the protocol layers much the way a
management application can be layer-aware. These intermediaries exist and
they will continue to do so. The only question is are there standards.
The requirement for doing this at an application intermediary in a standard
way is the usual requirement for standards: the industry serves its
customers best when products interoperate. Standards for selecting the
services to be called (rules) and how to call them (service bindings and
protocols) will provide interoperability in constructing those distributed
applications. One of the areas for investigation in the working group
(assuming it gets chartered) is whether we need something unique to edge
services (a la icap) or whether something more general is appropriate (a la
soap).
I, personally, don't think the applications need to justify themselves
against a model; rather, models may provide insights in the presence of
reality. The problem is fundamentally one of scaling. How do we distribute
the work load, provide an improved user experience and do so with an
authenticated and authorized set of rules? If OPES can help answer those
questions, I'm not sure what the problem is. There may well be "better"
ways of building these distributed applications, but the market has chosen
these application intermediaries as an evolutionary step. It would be a
mistake for the IETF to abdicate its responsibility here.
Lee M. Rafalow
Voice: 1-919-254-4455, Fax: 1-919-254-6243
IBM Internet Technology Management
IBM Corporation
P.O. Box 12195, BRQA/502
RTP, NC 27709 USA
Alternate email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Personal email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
