This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Routing around the WS-* vendor stacks Feed Title: Loud Thinking Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by David Heinemeier Hansson Latest Posts From Loud Thinking

The gulf between Web Services™ and web services have been widening as of late. HTTP awareness is on the rise, atompub is shining a light for best-practice REST, and the complexity of the WS-* stack is reaching astronautical heights.

Opinions are being formed and decisions are being made. I remember thinking about whether or not to do a SOAP interface, complete with WSDLs and other fancy dressing, for Basecamp's API a good while back. Today that's not even a consideration. I couldn't dream of going down that path for any products we're working on at 37signals.

And I think that is significant because I'm hearing the same from others. For the web native, interest has turned to bafflement over HTTP over XML over HTTP (aka WS-Transfer) and other WS-* silliness coming out of the Microsoft and IBM lead "standards" committees.

Tim Bray, which I heard give the story of atom at etech, has a good dissection of the misnomers and misconceptions around the split between WS-whatever and XML/HTTP/REST. I particularly enjoyed his takedown of the notion that WS-* should be somehow more standards-based:

Well, excuse me, HTTP and XML, the things that REST-flavored lightweight services are based on, have been stable, ratified, international standards for a decade or so, while the legion of WS-* specs are still mostly unratified by anyone but their authors at IBM and Microsoft. There’s only one option available today that’s actually standards-based.

Naturally, Sun has enterprisy obligations and commitments that Tim can't quite unsay, so his conclusion ends up being that "sure Sun will partake in this funny business because we said so, but I'd personally really like if we spent our resources on XML/HTTP/REST".

So no doubt the intentions are there. And if the big vendors can't or won't take advantage of the simplicity that the core building blocks of the web are providing us, then rest (haha) assured that others will.

Indeed, WS-* appears to be yet another ivory tower going up in a place no sane native would want to live. The village of the web is already plenty strong to withstand the distraction. Complex lights, flickering buzzwords, and long roadmaps to nowhere notwithstanding.