SOAP Positives

Python XML SIG <xml-sig@python.org>


What's good about SOAP?    (2146)

Handles statically typed languages    (2150)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Can resolve identity decodings    (2156)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Not adequately    (2167)

Don Box and Andrew Layman were designers    (2181)

Why is this a good thing?    (2187)

Shipping pointer-based objects in C/C++    (2199)

Supports intermediates    (2206)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

So does HTTP, SMTP (w/ extensions) and BEEP (w/o extensions)    (2446)

Valid?    (2578)

BEEP solves a different problem    (2583)

BEEP for rich message payloads is all that's needed    (2669)

CID scheme    (2210)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Not a good thing    (2455)

Ability to send XML    (2213)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Anything can send XML    (2464)

SOAP method is lexically brittle    (2471)

Valid?    (2599)

SOAP can transport arbitrary XML    (2604)

For example, SOAP can include an XML DSIG to transmit legally binding information. XML-RPC cannot do this.

SOAP provides messaging infrastructure for existing XML apps    (3334)

Valid?    (3357)

Lots of details you have to worry about    (3362)

Richer data types    (2216)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

CORBA also has rich datatypes    (2483)

Valid?    (2614)

CORBA doesn't support pointers    (2619)

SOAP doesn't support pointers either    (2691)

How would IIOP serialize a doubly linked list?    (2732)

An array    (2837)

Martin's code excerpt    (2854)

Doubly-linked list is just a vector    (3257)

Marshaling pointers could lead to problems    (3262)

Valid?    (3271)

Type-safe in CORBA    (3278)

Better than SOAP multi-reference approach    (3286)

href/id handles pointer aliasing    (2219)

Only if you're delivering the entire object anyway    (2492)

Internal pointers less useful than pointer from message back into data store    (2790)

Ability to transmit pointer-using data types    (2806)

Alternatives?    (2816)

Send RDF for complex graphs    (2823)

Transmit CORBA adjacency table    (2827)

Supported in CORBA since v2.3 (July 1999)    (2845)

SOAP RPC encoding rich enough to serialize DCE, DCOM, CORBA, etc.    (3293)

Where do you use pointer feature in a business app?    (2753)

Why should this be at the protocol rather than application layer?    (2777)

hrefs allow refs to network data    (2230)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

UDDI puts network data behind RPC interfaces that cannot be referenced    (2312)

Can do this with other mechanisms    (2504)

Valid?    (2627)

What's possible and what exists are two different things    (2632)

Extensible architecture    (2233)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Extensions can have hierarchical structure    (2511)

Although BEEP has the same feature.

Reasonable size to implement    (2236)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 13, 2002)

Spec is much bigger than XML-RPC    (2262)

Implementations prove otherwise    (2524)

Valid?    (2641)

DCE implementation much bigger    (2646)

Major vendors have agreed to use it    (2384)

References: rsalz@zolera.com (Feb 15, 2002)

Microsoft and everyone else finally agreed on something    (2392)

Closed world architecture won't work on the Internet    (2399)

Too expensive to use technology optimized for point-to-point (e.g. RPC) over technology optimized for creating a shared namespace and programmatic interface (e.g. REST). Loosely coupled systems work best with messages.