Article:		Kicking out the Cuckoo
Subject:		core issues
Date:		2002-05-13 17:13:39
From:		bob woodley
All these conspiracy theories about whether the WS-I is some dark entity out of Redmond are really tiresome. However, the core architectural issues are interesting and deserve consideration when making technology plans. SOAP has forced us to think about how to architect web services and just what a web service is. I'm not sure we would have understood REST so well if SOAP had not come into existence. But ultimately SOAP is a pragmatic solution, though it may be flawed from a purist point of view. The fact is, SOAP is very convenient for those cases where you want to attach an object-oriented API to an existing web site. Which is just what Google was doing, n'est-ce pas? SOAP is a useful tool for real-world problems encountered every day. Though it is certainly not as elegant or simple as the REST model, it is useful and well-supported. Bob Woodley

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