It happens again. Over at ebpml.org, JJ Dubray has a couple of related posts about the dark side of REST, and a proof that REST creates strong-coupling. I am not sure what to make of his style of writing, but like good citizen, let me try to make some sense here.

Sanjeeva Weerawarana of Axis-fame gave a candid and somewhat introspective talk on Web Services Middleware a few weeks ago at Google. The talk was mostly about the history behind SOAP and WSDL, about how Axis1 was designed, how Axis2 is radically different, and the grand scheme of things around Axis. A video of this talk is available at http://video.google.com. This is a talk worth listening to. Sanjeeva does a good job at summarizing things around SOAP, WSDL and Axs. Based on his overview, and my own limited experience, I think Axis2 is based on a good architecture, but it may have come late to the field, and with lots of bugs and compatibility problems.

Last week, at BEA World 2005, I had a chance to hear David Orchard talk about WS-* standards [1], and future-proofing XML schemas and web services [2]. I also had a chance to discuss a few things. Both his sessions were quite informative and insightful, and brought out a few key points. I would like to share my thoughts here.