intertwingly

It’s just data

POX and SOAP


Leonard Richardson: The “POX” in HTTP+POX basically means “no SOAP”, but what specifically don’t HTTP+POX people like about SOAP? Is it the complexity of the SOAP message itself? Plain old XML can get pretty complex too. Or is it the fact that the SOAP message contains information (like the method name) that they think should go in the URI?

The closer you look, the less obvious the distinctions are.

How would you classify this?

Another way to look at this is to ask yourself whether the wire format is the interface, or is merely a serialization of a higher level abstraction?  In some carefully designed, document literal interfaces, the API can be viewed in both ways.

For an example of a popular higher level abstraction, look here, then here.  This model achieves simplicity by viewing the transport as a black box:

XML-RPC.

Developing this book in public is going to be fun.

Update: Sanjiva and Steve weigh in.