WebService

Surely shome mishtake, gripes KeithB

Seems as if the whole notion of a serivce reachable via the web as a solution has got fatally confused with the particular implementation of such a thing as an api made avilable via SOAP (over HTTP).

And comparing SOAP to REST serves as a very powerful exemplar of DickGabriel's "protocols and structured data are better than API's" argument.

"web serivce" should be a reasonable term for any facility published on the net, discoverable via a UDDI node (or similar) and described in a WSDL document (ditto). WSDL has a HTTP binding, so that should be fine. But for its XML clunkiness, WSDL is a stupendous opportunity, and an underdiscussed one. But SOAP gets all the column inches. Bah humbug.

OliBye agrees WSDL is far more interesting than SOAP, and would like to read RichardGabriels? argument, do you have a url for it?

I'll have a fish about. It's an idea he mentioned a couple of times at OT -- Keith