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As someone who greatly enjoyed the rigidity of SOAP/xml, which made proper architectural planning and careful deprecation mandatory, I wonder where we went so w

As someone who greatly enjoyed the rigidity of SOAP/xml, which made proper architectural planning and careful deprecation mandatory, I wonder where we went so wrong. I feel like it's all connected to the impreciseness and typelessness of JavaScript. SOAP/xml to generate well defined client and server entry points in Java is how things should be done and SoapUI was a pleasure to use.

Devasta 3y ago
Honestly, I think a big reason is that Stack Overflow didn't exist at XMLs peak, so you had people generating XML by concatenation, to predictably disastrous results. One of the first XSLT transforms I was ever given to maintain generated XML by the same method. <xsl:text><PRICE></xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="PRICE"/><xsl:text></PRICE></xsl:text> and so on.
pjc50 3y ago
> made proper architectural planning and careful deprecation mandatory That's why it never caught on. The ability of JSON/Javascript to tape together kinda-working solutions before and instead of any kind of specification works is hugely powerful, because it allows iterating on the requirements by having actual users use the app.
- touisteur 3y ago
  I mean I've always found this enlightening, when hearing json is 'simple': https://seriot.ch/projects/parsing_json.html https://seriot.ch/projects/parsing_json.html
aidos 3y ago
The S stands for Simple http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/soap/simple http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/soap/simple
- PhilipRoman 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, somehow I missed this while reading cat-v. Definitely applicable to a couple of other technologies too...
- another2another 3y ago
  Oh that was a good read. I lived through all that, and can totally understand why people turned away in disgust and agreed on REST instead.
usrusr 3y ago
In my experience SOAP was near-universally used as an RPC encoding, where the schema was whatever types the exposed API defined and no-one gave the tiniest anything about the data representation on the wire. If you insisted on schema first SOAP, people looked at you as if you had fallen through a dimensional gate from an alternative history parallel universe full of Zeppelins and domesticated dinosaurs. JSON on the other hand came riding on that REST wave, where the data models on the wire were given more consideration than just an outcome of the serializion process best never looked at. Some people even considered idempotency more than just a funny sequence of letters. No, I'm not surprised at all the SOAP mindset disappeared. (But SoapUI was really a pleasure to use, spent an ungodly amount of hours staring at that thing, never in anger)

Devasta 3y ago

Honestly, I think a big reason is that Stack Overflow didn't exist at XMLs peak, so you had people generating XML by concatenation, to predictably disastrous results. One of the first XSLT transforms I was ever given to maintain generated XML by the same method. <xsl:text><PRICE></xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="PRICE"/><xsl:text></PRICE></xsl:text> and so on.

pjc50 3y ago

> made proper architectural planning and careful deprecation mandatory That's why it never caught on. The ability of JSON/Javascript to tape together kinda-working solutions before and instead of any kind of specification works is hugely powerful, because it allows iterating on the requirements by having actual users use the app.

touisteur 3y ago
I mean I've always found this enlightening, when hearing json is 'simple': https://seriot.ch/projects/parsing_json.html https://seriot.ch/projects/parsing_json.html

aidos 3y ago

The S stands for Simple http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/soap/simple http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/soap/simple

PhilipRoman 3y ago
Thanks for sharing this, somehow I missed this while reading cat-v. Definitely applicable to a couple of other technologies too...
another2another 3y ago
Oh that was a good read. I lived through all that, and can totally understand why people turned away in disgust and agreed on REST instead.

usrusr 3y ago

In my experience SOAP was near-universally used as an RPC encoding, where the schema was whatever types the exposed API defined and no-one gave the tiniest anything about the data representation on the wire. If you insisted on schema first SOAP, people looked at you as if you had fallen through a dimensional gate from an alternative history parallel universe full of Zeppelins and domesticated dinosaurs. JSON on the other hand came riding on that REST wave, where the data models on the wire were given more consideration than just an outcome of the serializion process best never looked at. Some people even considered idempotency more than just a funny sequence of letters. No, I'm not surprised at all the SOAP mindset disappeared. (But SoapUI was really a pleasure to use, spent an ungodly amount of hours staring at that thing, never in anger)