[XML-SIG] WSDL library ?
The discussion seems to be heating up a bit, so I'm gonna start to slow
down in terms of posting. :) With this note I'll try to summarize some
things that seem to have been mis-undrestood. (01)
I never said IIOP is crappy; I said HTTP is crappy as a generic
application protocol. (02)
SOAP RPC Encoding can't transport arbitrary XML, agreed. But SOAP
itself can. That's a good thing. If I want to transmit legally binding
information over the Internet, then SOAP's ability to include an XML
DSIG (as either a header element, or using doc/literal style in the
body) is way cool; XML-RPC can't do that. (03)
The ability to transmit pointer-using data types (e.g, a balanced tree
in C/C++), to make changes on the server, and to send the new tree back
such that the client can reconstruct -- that can be important and
useful. Sure, Corba proves that you can solve real-world problems
without it, but that doesn't reduce its utility. The SOAP id/href
technique makes that possible. Server or client-side state has nothing
to do with it. (04)
It has been more than three years since I left the COM, Corba, DCE
middleware trenches, and I've gladly forgotten many details, but I don't
believe it's possible to use Corba IIOP without using the Corba object
model. Most of the distributed computing world does not use the Corba
object model. (05)
As for pointers, etc., I'd like to see the IIOP serialization of a
doubly-linked list. (06)
I don't believe it is totally fair to complain about the developing
world of SOAP interop. The spec is fairly new, most suppliers are on
their first generation of implementation, etc. It is particularly not
fair to compare it to Corba interop, which had was first defined nearly
five years ago, after nearly five years of deliberately avoiding the
issue. I am quite pleased by the state of SOAP interop; amazing progress
has been made in a few months, so much so that at the end of the month
there will be a two-day interop festival for early WSDL. (07)
In an earlier message I refered to XSD files at
http://www.zolera.com/schemas/2001/11/ ; unforunately our ISP (good ole
Win-chapter 11-Star) had problems, which seem to be fixed. They are
real, not contrived examples, used in our Tamarin product; a server that
does XML signatures and encryption. (08)
Pace.
/r$
--
Zolera Systems, http://www.zolera.com
Information Integrity, XML Security (09)