style="document" rulz!

[Stan Jordan <sk...@worldnet.att.net>]

And style="rpc" sucks!

To learn why, read this...
http://www.fawcette.com/xmlmag/2002_04/magazine/departments/endtag/

Re: style="document" rulz!

[Steve Loughran <st...@iseran.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "ajack" <aj...@openbiz.biz>
To: <ax...@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 5:40 PM
Subject: RE: style="document" rulz!


> Stan Jordan [mailto:skjordan@worldnet.att.net] wrote:
> > Subject: style="document" rulz!
> > And style="rpc" sucks!
> > To learn why, read this...
> > http://www.fawcette.com/xmlmag/2002_04/magazine/departments/endtag/
>
> The author presupposes that having two applications "work" when they get
out
> of synch is a good thing. I'd call that "silently failing". Personally,
I'll
> accept if my HTML is presented quite as the remote author intended, but
I'm
> not so sure I'd like my banking application (or insert any business use
> here) be so "tolerant" to miscommunication.

It's hard to see what will work out best over time. The whole 'ignore things
we dont understand' policy is sometimes good, sometimes distastrous.

>
> Also -- having spent the last N hours trying to get "document style" to
work
> I sure like the simplicity of explicit "tight" RPC. :-)

yeah, well, just cos the endpoint implements the same RPC binding as
yesterday, doesnt mean they havent broken your app by changing the
behaviour...

RE: style="document" rulz!

[ajack <aj...@openbiz.biz>]

Stan Jordan [mailto:skjordan@worldnet.att.net] wrote:
> Subject: style="document" rulz!
> And style="rpc" sucks!
> To learn why, read this...
> http://www.fawcette.com/xmlmag/2002_04/magazine/departments/endtag/

The author presupposes that having two applications "work" when they get out
of synch is a good thing. I'd call that "silently failing". Personally, I'll
accept if my HTML is presented quite as the remote author intended, but I'm
not so sure I'd like my banking application (or insert any business use
here) be so "tolerant" to miscommunication.

Since WSDL allows for explicit & communication of the new interface
(hopefully commented with version changes, but fat chance I know since WSDL
is typically computer generated) I'd rather things break and I get the
chance to re-evaluate. That -- and/or preserve the old interface, and allow
the new interface for new clients. XML is not some magic glue that
understands when things change. It might still allow a non-validating [or
even validating, if remote schema] parse, and XPath may still access
elements, but the application will not understand the change, and that could
be very bad.

Also -- having spent the last N hours trying to get "document style" to work
I sure like the simplicity of explicit "tight" RPC. :-)

regards,

Adam