Entries classified under opposition

I think Jonathon Schwartz (President/COO, Sun Microsystems) just joined the loyal WS opposition:

5. Web services may collapse under its own weight.

No one at the conference said this. Those are my words. I'm beginning to feel that all the disparate web service specs and fragmented standards activities are way out of control. Want proof? Ask one of your IT folks to define web services. Ask two others. They won't match. We asked folks around the room - it was pretty grim. It's either got to be simplified, or radically rethought.

As you know, I also believe simplicity and volume always win - and that today's web services initiatives are in danger of vastly overcomplicating a very simple (really simple) solution.

What's been apparent to those in the trenches for the past year or two is finally starting to find its way up the chain of command.

Bill de hÓra describes the integrator's dilemma (also known as, WS-* vs. REST).

If dirt simple equates to good growth and better profits, then the missed opportunity arises when simple and simplistic are conflated. When the WS contingent are looking at the REST and syndication crowd and saying more or less, 'here's a nickel kid', they may want to stop and take a second look at what the kid is doing with that nickel.

I thought that was great. I suggest reading the whole piece. Bill's super smart.

The WS-* vs. REST thing is starting to heat up again due largely to James Governer's SOAP is boring, wake up Big Vendors or get niched piece last week. This led to the discussion at the beginning of Bill's post on whether Microsoft is ignoring developer demand for REST tools. I have a sinister theory on this (but not MS in particular) that I've been hanging on to for a while so let's just have at it. Bill has provided the voice of reason and I don't have anything to add so I'll just follow up with some good old fashioned religious rambling.

These are blogs, right? The last time I read the blogger's handbook, we were encouraged to make unsubstantiated claims about the intentions of others (especially big companies and industry cartels) without any real evidence, so here we go...

Adam Bosworth, usually a staunch supporter of SOAP and the rest of WS-Mess, makes an interesting sidebar statement in the last paragraph of his recent post about PC's and Media Revamped:

I have a posted comment about just using XML over HTTP. Yes. I'm trying, right now to figure out if there is any real justification for the WS-* standards and even SOAP in the face of the complexity when XML over HTTP works so well. Reliable messaging would be such a justification, but it isn't there. Eventing might be such a justification, but it isn't there either and both specs are tied up in others in a sort of spec spaghetti. So, I'm kind of a skeptic of the value apart from the toolkits. They do deliver some value, (get a WSDL, instant code to talk to service), but what I'm really thinking about is whether there can't be a much simpler kindler way to do this.

If you've followed Bosworth before, you'll notice that this is a pretty big statement.