This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Christian Weyer. Original Post: Deja vue: trying to make Web services description easier Feed Title: Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET Feed URL: http://www.asp.net/err404.htm?aspxerrorpath=/cweyer/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Philosophizing about and criticizing the brave new world ... Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Christian Weyer Latest Posts From Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET

Rich Salz has a new article on XML.com: Really Simple Web Service Descriptions. He is talking about a possible replacement for WSDL which is much more simpler than the original spec. I can think of at least one person on this planet (there are a lot more, trust me) who might like his point of view (although they are not completely on the same track).

A service description has three parts:

1. a schema definition -- what messages look like
2. an interface definition -- what methods are provided
3. a location definition -- where to find the service

Let's define a container to hold these parts. This container can have a name, which is a URI, and each part can have an ID. The examples here all use rsws as the namespace prefix.

    <rsws:description name="http://example.com/rsws/">
        <rsws:schema id="mytypes">
            . . .
        </rsws:schema>
        <rsws:interface id="sample">
            . . .
        </rsws:interface>
        <rsws:location>
            . . .
        </rsws:location>
    </rsws:description>

[...]

I've sketched a brief example of an interface definition language for web services, motivated by a desire to avoid the excesses of WSDL and to obtain an interface language that does a better job of encouraging reuse and supporting the typeless or document style of schema definitions that will be seeing increasing use.