The Event Driven Web...  

Doug Kaye Web Services Strategies references the current debate among Sam Ruby and Mark Baker on the REST versus SOAP redux debate.

I think everyone is getting to the point where we understand that the fundamental nature of the web is and should be event driven. Once you take out the human browser driven element what you have is many very efficient event driven listeners talking to one another over HTTP. The REST part is very simple and elegant - addressable entities with a few simple verbs that the listeners understand. The application logic behind the web servers should not intrude on the simplicity of the transport and the event driven listeners (HTTP Servers). We have spent many years making them very efficient processors of events for the browsing web now they can talk to one another in a pure event model equally as efficiently.

SOAP (the messaging part) introduces the ability to do more complex protocols such as guaranteed delivery or negative acks on one way messages etc. As SOAP headers are namespaced we can all play nice together and have evolvable protocols. While REST is elegant we need SOAP to enable more complex messaging protocols, and given the current mess we find ourselves in with WS-xxxx specifications the ability to namespace protocols is vital for at least a semblance of sanity.

To summarize the only way we are going to enable interoperability is through event driven applications, it is not going to happen through rpc style integration. It however needs the best of SOAP and REST built on the event driven web infrastructure.

posted by John McDowall | 10:02 PM