RE: [ws-caf] [WSRF][Fwd: [OASIS members] Press Release to Announce OASIS

["Jim Webber" <Jim.Webber@newcastle.ac.uk>]

Hello Joe,

> Could you perhaps discuss how WSRF relates to the W3C Web 
> Services Architecture's (which is what I assume you mean by 
> "WSA") Resource-Oriented model?

Sure, if you look at Section 2.3.3 of WSA
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-arch-20040211/#resource_oriented_mode
l) it says, "In the context of Web services, the resources being
discovered are usually service descriptions." It also goes on to discuss
things from a REST-ish perspective.

This is a completely different interpretation of resources from what
WS-RF's proponents suggest (which are usually exemplified as physical
resources like disks).

> Also, what I read from your response was that WSRF is a poor 
> fit with what is currently going on in the Web Services 
> standards world - not that it is a bad idea in general. I 
> would be interested in your opinion apart from what is 
> currently going on in the Web Services standards world, 
> because WSRF may (hypotentically speaking) represent an area 
> that up to now has been a void.

I don't think it has been a void to be honest. There has always been the
URI, and now there are efforts like XDI to try to add metadata to URIs.
I don't see how an addressing scheme designed to expose back-end stuff
can be anything but unhelpful.

However if you are at the back end (i.e. you're in a data centre) then
sure it makes sense to address things. Just don't send those addresses
outside of your administrative domain or people will bind to them and
then get mad when you do something quite reasonable like replace bits of
your hardware with newer kit.

Note that the notification aspects have now been factored out of WS-RF
into their own spec, and I don't have a beef with them really (apart
from they use some WS-RF stuff). I understand the need for advanced MEPs
in some applications, and I agree that such MEPS might need third-party
protocol actors to work (i.e. the message broker). However, given the
bundling of WS-RF and WS-Notification, I'm inclined to support
WS-Eventing since it seems to have less baggage.

Jim
--
http://jim.webber.name