Ok - I am fairly new to the REST vs SOAP debate. I hadn’t seen the SOAP stack in progress, but I have an instinct for simplicity and so I was definately rooting for the cause of the REST folks, even if I didn’t fully see what the big deal was about. Anyway, at my day job now I am working on a project which will need to expose a web service to an external vendor. Should be pretty interesting stuff.
We have some very smart people who run the infrastructure side of things where I work, and I thought we might be able to give REST a try for our service. They were sympathetic, but ultimately the security mechanisms we have in place support SOAP very well and while there was no reason REST couldn’t be used it was presented as “not trivial by any stretch of the imagination.”
So - SOAP it was. Document Literal. WSDL. Things I had only vague notions about. So I’m now on a mission to run the SOAP stack gauntlet. I’m actually happy to be doing so. I can feel my brain connecting new neurons. Plus, its good to actually dive deep into the muck to understand the real motivations for people’s aversion to SOAP. I think it is becoming a mantra to diss SOAP out of hand, and so many people are probably not even giving it a try, or understanding why (if?) it sucks so bad. At least at the end of this project I’ll have used it enough to form my own opinion.
Getting up to speed has been challenging, but in a good way - as I mentioned. According to recent studies learning new things exercises your brain and forges new pathways which can help offset alzheimers in old age and keep you sharp well into your 80s. Both good things and likely enough positive mojo to counter whatever frustrations SOAP has in store for me.
Today I am trying to write WSDL. I have decided to try the “Top Down” approach. Its amazing how much more I understand the structure and intent of the WSDL after writing one. Reading it engages an entirely different part of your brain. Its so much more passive than doing. Reading the WSDL spec and trying to slog through some of the documentation on Webservices Profiles was completely boring. I could tell nothing was sticking. There was no residual structure left after going through the stuff, no mental framework left behind at all. But doing is a completely different story. I’m forced to engage the concepts and try and implement them - making many many mistakes along the way. Each mistake involves more and deeper understanding to correct it. At the end I’ve got a fairly good, though by no means thorough, understanding of the WSDL structure.