Monday, February 05, 2007

SOAP: The S Stands For "Simple"

Pete Lacey pretty much sums up the horror I have gone through during the last five years when it came to web service integration.

[...]

Developer: (Reads XML Schema spec). Saints preserve us! Alexander the Great couldn't unravel that.

SOAP Guy: Don’t worry about it. Your tools will create the schema for you. Really, its all about the tooling.

[...]

Developer: This is getting ugly. The WSDL my tools generated can't be consumed by the tools my partners use. Not only that, the schemas it generates are impenetrable and can't be reused. And no tool seems to have agreed on how best to handle the SOAPAction header.

SOAP Guy: Sorry to hear that, buddy. On the bright side, nobody uses the Doc/Lit style anymore. In order to get transport independence back we’re all using wrapped-doc/lit now. Doesn't that sound cool: wrapped-doc/lit?