Re: how bad is soap?

[Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:

> People often argue that SOAP is somehow a bad complex thing ...

Which part of SOAP are you asking about?  SOAP consists of several parts -
the part that defines a (relatively) simple envelope for units of
communication, the part that defines a serialization into SML for data
types, or the part that defines an RPC.

I can see much value in the data serialization part of SOAP - it has clear
definitions how to encode things like floating point numbers and tabular
structures into XML.  That's good stuff.

Is SOAP being suggested as an alternative to BEEP or to be contained 
within BEEP?

If BEEP is used, then don't see much value for the SOAP envelope or RPC as 
they become redundant.

As for the XML is readible argument - with the proliferation of schemas, 
namespaces, UTF-8 non-roman text fields, and the generally increasing of 
highly arcane and esoteric terminology in XML documents, I don't agree 
that XML is necessarily readible by humans.

And SOAP, because it has options upon options, strikes me as something
that will eventually become an interoperability nightmare.  (My fear is
increased by experience - I have small faith in the ability of developers
to handle even "simple" protocols.  Even today the implementations of
"simple" SNMP contain huge numbers of interoperability problems.)

BEEP, too, is not simple.  But much of its complexity comes from the
binding to underlying transports and security mechanisms.  I don't see
that SOAP, in those cases where it has a similar mechanism, provides
alternatives to those mechanisms with anything that is necessarily better.

Perhaps it is creeping age, but when I dug through WSDL my brain fried.  
When I encounter at things like that I wonder at the kind of modeling
morass I'd get into by attempting to model even something as apparently
simple as the on/off button of my laptop (my laptop's on/off button does
far more than just controlling power.)

Count me in the "afraid of SOAP" camp.  To give some metric to that fear -
If I had to chose between SOAP and CMIP, I'd pick CMIP.

		--karl--






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