Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
good chemistry is complicated,
and a little bit messy -LW
 
PerlMonks  

comment on

( [id://3333]=superdoc: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

I guess I see this principally as a problem of marketing in at least the following senses:

First, what Microsoft is doing right now in pushing SOAP as an integral part of .NET, and with it Webservices, is wrapping up older techologies (i.e., XML-RPC, the JVM) under a single product (or product "namespace" for all its ambiguity), and by selling these once disparate technologies (by which I mean flexible and independent ;) together they ensure their hegemony for another decade because to buy into one you must buy into all.

Secondly, SOAP/.NET is touted as a way to build sophisticated Web applications quickly and without all the overhead of competing protocols like those named in the letter (and DCOM). On the surface of it, this is progress; after all, as robust as CORBA is, it's a pain in the ass to code because of all the machinery it employs to ensure cross-language/platform compatibility and security. It's a similar story but to a lesser degree with Java RMI because at least there you're dealing with the same language on both sides of the method invocation. SOAP reintroduces flexibility and ease of development at the cost of decoupling components in a distributed system and allowing you to bypass security checks. What this means is that Web apps built using the heavier-weight protocols will typically take longer to complete and will be more resistent to change than a comparable app (comparable in terms of functionality, not reliability or security) written with SOAP.

Unfortunately, it is clear at this point that what people expect most of the Web is continued flashiness, functionality, and ease of use. Emphasis on any one of these can reduce reliability and security, and taken together they result in disaster (MS Outlook being the premiere example). Until reliability and security are taken as valuable in and of themselves, we will continue to see software that looks nice but is rife with problems.

As I suggested before, I think this is principally a marketing issue; SOAP is being pushed based on the virtue of quick deployment, which is anathema to secure software. Since the marketplace values increasing functionality, aesthetics and ease of use primarily, there is cash to be made in allowing developers to create cooler things faster. But to quote tilly from the excellent thread blakem suggested, "If security is something people have to get right again and again, then mistakes will happen. Repeatedly. And people will turn out to (quite predictably) wind up making similar mistakes, making life quite convenient for crackers."


In reply to Re: (OT) Webservices - really progress? by djantzen
in thread (OT) Webservices – really progress? by Aristotle

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post; it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
    <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
  • Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
  • Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.
Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others chilling in the Monastery: (5)
As of 2024-03-29 08:00 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found