On 08/12/06, Steve Vinoski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > On Dec 8, 2006, at 10:22 AM, Steve Jones wrote: > > > On 08/12/06, Stuart Charlton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> REST isn't much different, except that such policies & descrptions > >> are often included as hypermedia associated links that are > >> associated with the machine-readable interface itself. > > > > No-one appears to be able to point me at the standard way of doing > > this in REST, paticularly the earlier publishing of the info to > > consumers. > > Note that there's no standard way of doing this in WS either.
Not for everything, but for the basics there is. > > One generally writes a WSDL to describe a WS-style web service, but > how do clients get that WSDL? Is there a standard for publishing > those WSDLs and allowing clients to retrieve them? You might say > UDDI, but only a few actually use that. Fact is, there is no widely- > used WS registry or naming service standard. Some kits support > tacking "?wsdl" onto the service URL to retrieve its WSDL, but unless > I've missed a new standard along the way, that's only a convention, > and again, only some kits support it (and it also requires a live > service). Email? I don't mean to be glib here but once I've got a WSDL I can email that document to someone and they can use that to create not only a client, but also (for testing) a stubbed out server side. REST has neither the standard on description (WSDL) or on discovery, given a choice between the two I'd take the former over the latter. > > So, Steve, when you write a WS-style web service, how *do* your > clients get the information they need to be able to properly call > your service? Do you post the WSDL on a web page where clients > retrieve it, or do you use the ?wsdl convention, or do you write a > Word doc and email it to your colleagues, or do you use UDDI or maybe > a vendor-specific or homegrown registry, or perhaps you use yet > another approach that I haven't mentioned? Most common way with 3rd parties (external) is to email the WSDL at the start of the project (before the implementation is complete) so both sides have visibility of the contract. This is then placed in the version control repository (probably in a directory something like ServiceName/wsdl) to enable any changes to that interface to be managed. For me the important bit is the description, there are (as you point out) loads of ways to get the information people, but the entry criteria is to have that information in a standard way. > > --steve >
