I think it's not so much the specs as the implementations, which have tended to be RPC oriented and closer to OO concepts than SO concepts, as a rule.
If you use document-style SOAP you are pretty close to REST - the only real difference seems to be whether or not you are using custom interfaces (vs. the fixed HTTP interfaces) and allow multiple communications protocols and data formats. By the way part of the HTTP argument (as I understand it) against custom interfaces is that they don't scale. Personally I don't think that's a big issue. If we could get away from associating WS-* with their current implementations, especially in many of the popular dev tool environments, I think we could get a lot closer to a good "smerge" between HTTP and Web services. Eric ----- Original Message ---- From: Jim Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, December 9, 2006 10:58:49 AM Subject: [service-orientated-architecture] Re: REST FAQ I'm still not entirely sure why WS-* gets lumped into this. Many current specs are based on SOAP/WSDL but conceptually there is no reason we couldn't generalize the specs to support REST based approach. I really see WS-* as addressing the message-oriented implementation of standardized declarative services. --- In service-orientated- architecture@ yahoogroups. com, Stefan Tilkov <stefan.tilkov@ ...> wrote: > > On Dec 9, 2006, at 11:24 AM, Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote: > > > On Fri, 2006-12-08 at 17:51 -0500, Steve Vinoski wrote: > > > > Its a bit surprising how such a simple architectural pattern > > > > requires so > > > > much of explanation eh? ;-) > > > > > > Umm, remind me again how many pages of WS-* specs are there? > > > > A lot- because WS-* has standardized a lot more stuff that REST has. > > However, my point was that even the teeny bit that REST has > > standardized > > is sooooo poorly understood as a platform for application integration. > > > > Don't believe that? Go read the thread on a RESTful lightbulb on this > > list and see how much it took to get some degree of consensus. And of > > course the current ROA/SOA thread. > > > It's poorly understood, at least by many. So what? In contrast to WS- > *, it is radically different from CORBA or DCOM or RPC. > > Neither is a silver bullet. I don't know of any WS-* folks who > > seriously > > think that WS-* is a silver bullet. Its *amazing* to me how many REST > > people (especially on this list) seem to really believe that REST > > is the > > silver bullet and that it has been a silver bullet for 15 years and > > people just have not known about it. Wow, it must be really comfy in > > that world .. are there even 70 virgins that come with getting it? ;-) > > > I find it amazing that most criticism of REST comes from people who > *don't* understand REST, while criticism of WS-* comes more often > than not comes from people who *do* understand WS-* (and sometimes > even have been involved in its standardization) . > > Many former WSDL/SOAP/WS- * proponents have discovered REST at some > point in time, and "switched" to believing this to be a better > approach. I'm not aware of a single instance of the inverse > happening ... > > Stefan > -- > Stefan Tilkov, http://www.innoq. com/blog/ st/ > > > > > Sanjiva. > > -- > > Sanjiva Weerawarana, Ph.D. > > Founder & Director; Lanka Software Foundation; http:// > > www.opensource. lk/ > > Founder, Chairman & CEO; WSO2, Inc.; http://www.wso2. com/ > > Director; Open Source Initiative; http://www.opensour ce.org/ > > Member; Apache Software Foundation; http://www.apache. org/ > > Visiting Lecturer; University of Moratuwa; http://www.cse. mrt.ac.lk/ > > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Cheap talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. http://voice.yahoo.com
