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SOAP and friends are still deeply entrenched in various "enterprise" settings (IBM and Oracle seem to still be on that bandwagon), but it's a long time since th

SOAP and friends are still deeply entrenched in various "enterprise" settings (IBM and Oracle seem to still be on that bandwagon), but it's a long time since that stuff peaked. It's definitely legacy tech. A few years ago I had to use some public API offered by the Norwegian government through a private-sector partner [1]. Looks like they're still completely SOAP/WSDL-based even today. (At the time I just needed to use a single endpoint, so I ended up just doing everything as plain XML, instead of generating an RPC client from WSDL; so much easier. Ugh, I'm glad I don't work for a company that is heavily invested in that crap.) I can't imagine anyone sane would do a greenfield project today using any of it. [1] http://ws.infotorg.no/ http://ws.infotorg.no/

tannhaeuser 10y ago
It's being used in large-scale projects because it can be used in tenders. Do you want government shell out your tax money for the latest JS fad instead? Imagine the outcry something goes south in such a project. I agree though that XML is overkill for describing payloads in most RPC scenarios. XML is for describing semistructured data rather than co-inductive data structures (arrays, records, etc.). JSON shines here precisely because it doesn't need a schema to be useful. However, once you have a need to communicate your API to others, or to develop in a large project/waterfall model, schemaless doesn't cut it. JSON Schema is doing it wrong IMHO. I think that since JSON is basically the object literal syntax of JavaScript, an RPC mechanism could use a JavaScript subset as IDL, in the style of "Logic Programs as Types of Logic Programs" ([1]). Note that WSDL can describe REST-like and other HTTP-based protocols, not just SOAP. [1]: http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pm/fileadmin/pm/home/fruehwirth/Papers/lics91p.pdf http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pm/fileadmin/pm/home/fruehw...

tannhaeuser 10y ago

It's being used in large-scale projects because it can be used in tenders. Do you want government shell out your tax money for the latest JS fad instead? Imagine the outcry something goes south in such a project. I agree though that XML is overkill for describing payloads in most RPC scenarios. XML is for describing semistructured data rather than co-inductive data structures (arrays, records, etc.). JSON shines here precisely because it doesn't need a schema to be useful. However, once you have a need to communicate your API to others, or to develop in a large project/waterfall model, schemaless doesn't cut it. JSON Schema is doing it wrong IMHO. I think that since JSON is basically the object literal syntax of JavaScript, an RPC mechanism could use a JavaScript subset as IDL, in the style of "Logic Programs as Types of Logic Programs" ([1]). Note that WSDL can describe REST-like and other HTTP-based protocols, not just SOAP. [1]: http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pm/fileadmin/pm/home/fruehwirth/Papers/lics91p.pdf http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pm/fileadmin/pm/home/fruehw...