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The Tripping Point » Savas tells me I misunderstood MEST

Savas tells me I misunderstood MEST

Savas commented on my MEST post and pointed out that I'd missed something because neither he nor Jim was arguing that WSDL portTypes contain a single ProcessMessage operation. Okay, I admit, I missed something.

He further explained that the point of MEST - I'll try to get it right this time - is to focus developers on message processing as the abstract operation all web services support and then on building more complex message patterns.

I still think that's already in place. We have the generic request/response and oneway patterns (ignoring the non-HTTP ones). When we write an interface we bind those to concrete messages. Each WSDL portType describes a node in a possibly more complex message pattern involving lots of messages and lots of nodes. If we describe that higher-level flow, we do it with BPEL or some other language. Seems obvious to me, but I'm not sure it needs a term unto itself. Isn't this just Web services? Am I just a closet MEST-ian? What am I missing?

Posted Feb 10 2005, 12:53 PM by tim-ewald

Comments

Dilip wrote re: Savas tells me I misunderstood MEST
on 02-10-2005 12:56 PM

Sometimes there is value in bottling up a concept that hasn't percolated itself among the masses in a shiny new terminology and throw it around. I am not saying this is what Savas & Jim are doing. Generally speaking it piques the curiosity of people.

You know its like old wine in a new bottle. Its all in the packaging -- if the packaging is attractive, the public will get to the contents automatically!
Jim Webber wrote re: Savas tells me I misunderstood MEST
on 02-10-2005 3:29 PM
Tim,

WSDL isn't the answer. Though this might sound a bit Mark Baker-ish, WSDL _is_ all about RPC. Whatever the best intentions of the people in the WSDL community, WSDL still boils down to parameters in, parameters out, and maybe some faults out too. This can be clothed in all the "we're doing SOAP documents" hyperbole in the world, but it is still RPC.

This is clearly not ideal. The set of MEPs supported in WSDL 2.0 are all distinctly RPC-ish and extending them seems painful and protracted. I want (and indeed MEST promotes) the notion of proper conversations with Web Services, not some disconnected set of, for want of a better phrase, method calls.

So not only is WSDL complex and far too generic from a SOAP-ite point of view, it is also far too constraining from an implementation point of view.

Savas and I have been playing with some ideas in this space. We'll report back to the community real soon now.

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