Paul,

SOAP is very much alive, and I agree with your point that when
considering web services that are doing any type of real work, you
cannot simply assume away things like addressing and security.

Having said that, there is also a tendency, especially from platform and
toolkit builders, to assume that all of that expensive processing is
going to be done at the endpoint; in the software.

I would argue that, that particular view is... Limiting.

I personally am a firm believer in separating, to the greatest extent
possible, the business logic (the stuff that travels in the SOAP body)
from the infrastructure functionality (the stuff that travels in the
SOAP header). And current technology capabilities allow one to just
this. As an example, security processing of SOAP messages (digital
signatures, xml encryption/decryption etc.) is an expensive process that
I would normally outsource to something like a hardware box like an XML
Security Gateway which can do that processing at wire speed.

Which to a great extent reinforces the view that one needs to look at
performance engineering end to end and should seek to optimize where you
can get the biggest bang for the buck. And that very well may not be at
the SOAP layer, but in the business logic processing.

And taking away databinding does not in any way shape or form take away
from the usefulness of SOAP. I am coming more and more to the viewpoint
that moving away from databinding allows one to focus on the core of
what SOA and web services are about, the exchange of messages. And not
the issues dealing with the "object-ification" of XML.

Regards,

- Anil

:-
:- Anil John
:- http://www.aniltj.com/blog
:-




> -----Original Message-----
> From: soapbuilders@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:soapbuilders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul Downey
> Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 8:49 AM
> To: soapbuilders@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [soapbuilders] [ANN]JAX-WS 2.1 FCS released
>
> Dims
>
>
> > Use AXIOM, See even the REST guys are using it :)
> > http://blog.chanezon.com/articles/2006/05/31/apache-abdera-and-rome-
> > alea-jacta-est
> >
>
> Yup, I see no SOAP!
>
>
> > Just look at the performance numbers for processing a huge feed that
> > they posted. Yes, adding soap headers won't slow us (Axis2) down :)
> >
>
>
> unless you're mad enough to use Addressing and WSSec, apparently:
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/service-orientated-architecture/
> message/7316
>
> Sorry, when you remove databinding, and dismiss headers as being
> heavyweight, I wonder what I'm being asked to get excited about not
> being slow: <xsl:copy-of
> select="document()/soap:Envelope/soap:Body" /
> > ?
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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