[service-orientated-architecture] Frye on Document-Centric vs. RPC-Centric WS

[Gervas Douglas \(gmail\)]

<<Edmund Smith, a software engineer at EMB, in Cambridge, England, recently co-authored a white paper, "Rethinking the Java SOAP Stack," with Steve Loughran, a scientist from HP Labs in Bristol, England. In the white paper, the authors make the argument that the Java application programming interface (API) for XML-based Remote Procedure Call (RPC), formerly known as JAX-RPC (now JAX-WS), is fundamentally flawed. Moreover, they claim that any SOAP API that relies on a perfect two-way mapping between XML data and native language objects is flawed. The authors have proposed an alternative SOAP stack for Java, dubbed Alpine, which takes a more document-centric approach to Web services development. Rather than mapping between XML and custom Java classes, Alpine will provide access to SOAP messages using modern XML support libraries. Alpine will require an understanding of XML, which the authors claim is needed to develop robust Web services, and they advocate that Web services developers should acquire that skill. What are the key advantages and drawbacks to a document-centric vs. an RPC-centric approach to Web services development? Edmund Smith: Document-centric development focuses upon on the exchange of messages, with significant emphasis on understanding and managing the messages themselves. When an RPC-centric viewpoint is applied to Web services, control of the messages is delegated to third-party components, and developers are encouraged to think only of the method invocations involved, and perhaps to think of service instances as remote objects. In encouraging developers to think of Web service development as no more than development of a Java class with annotations, an RPC-centric approach does not encourage good service architecture, nor is interface stability likely to be maintained. The lure of a familiar paradigm attracts developers down this route, but ultimately that familiarity is an illusion: A Web service is fundamentally not like an object instance that might throw RemoteExceptions every now and then.>> You can read this at: http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid26_gci1098415,00.html?track=NL-110&ad=530443   Gervas SPONSORED LINKS Service-oriented architecture Computer monitoring software Computer and internet software Free computer monitoring software YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS  Visit your group "service-orientated-architecture" on the web.    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.