Web Services have unleashed a raft of technologies, but are any effective? A number of developers say no and suggest that the Web already offers everything you need to build a great Web Service. And more.
The Web is a vast information system that has significantly changed the way people use computers. But what about Web Services? How many Web Services do you depend upon daily? Have Web Services changed your life in any meaningful way? What can you do today that you couldn’t do yesterday?
While there’s no doubt that Web Services are helping some people build valuable systems, Web Services have failed (so far, at least) to become catalysts for Internet-wide applications like email or instant messaging.
A growing number of developers argue that Web Services are failing “in the large” because the underlying Web Services technologies — namely, XML-RPC and SOAP — ignore the hard-earned lessons of the Web. Systems like XML-RPC and SOAP, they say, are not extensible, lack support for “little tools” that can be combined in novel ways, and don’t build upon existing, pervasive Web infrastructure. Worst of all, they say, XML-RPC and SOAP have seemingly ignored the key feature that differentiates the Web from information systems that preceded it: the ubiquitous hyperlink, the shorthand that links one resource on one site to other resources on any other site.
Those same developers say that if we want Web Services to succeed broadly, we should adopt the important ideas of the Web. Instead of adopting a raft of new Web Services specifications, so the idea goes, simply re-use the principles and protocols of the Web, perhaps no more than HTTP and XML, to create robust Web Services….
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