On 12/11/06, Eric Newcomer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'd also like to point out that this recent discussion started with a > question about an alternative to WS-* and so far none has been presented.
Because much of it isn't needed. It's rare that requirements map one-to-one with specs, like we've seen with WS-*; need reliable messaging, here's WS-ReliableMessaging! How convenient! Need security; why, check out WS-Security! Need to transfer some metadata, you guessed it, WS-MetadataTransfer! In well architected systems it's never quite that easy. For one, messaging is unreliable, so a requirement for reliable messaging is simply not going to be met; messages *will* get lost. What matters is reliability as a property of the architecture as a whole, and applying constraints which induce it... like, for example, having both known safe and idempotent operations per Lamport, and/or being stateless so that the well known problems of partial failure are localized. And so it goes for security/securability, registries/repositories, etc... Fundamentally, Web components agree on a lot more when they're first put on a network than do Web services, and so you'd expect that things will be easier to coordinate by using that additional agreement. WS-* specs don't reuse that agreement, hence the solutions they suggest for problems are wildly different than Web based solutions. Imagine trying to explain microeconomic theory to somebody who speaks a different language; now, try to do it to somebody who speaks the same language. Each approach requires a fundamentally different approach, and the latter is obviously a lot simpler because of the additional agreement that existed prior to meeting this person. That's where the bulk of the Web's simplicity comes from; agreeing on more a priori. That's not to say that the Web, today, has everything the enterprise needs of course. It doesn't - it's not sufficient. But it is, effectively, necessary. I think I'll write this up as a paper for your workshop[1], Eric 8-) [1] http://www.w3.org/2006/10/wos-ec-cfp.html (oh, I thought the submission deadline was this Friday, but I see it's been moved to Jan 10) Mark.
