About the only useful technology I use that was never over-hyped is perl!
Seriously, SOAP is getting a lot of hype and, from what I can tell from
these mail lists and professional contacts in my region, it is being
extensively misused. I like using SOAP for application integration where I
need synchronous messaging, have relatively low message rates, and need to
minimize my assumptions about the deployment environment. For example, I've
used SOAP to define an API for a CRM application I've helped develop. By
using SOAP, I feel that any client environment can access the API. We have
working examples using Java, C++, VB, VBScript, perl and python for
implementation languages, and Win32, Linux, AIX, FreeBSD, OS/390, QNX and
PalmOS as operating systems. Something I love is that I do not have to
supply any client code other than examples. Customers and partners can base
their work on the WSDL description of the interface. I've maintained a
subset of the previous API implemented as EJB or MTS/COM+, however, to cover
areas where I want distributed transactions. Depending on customer
requests, I may do SOAP extensions to support distributed transactions as
well.
At the same time, internal to the product I do not use SOAP. This is simply
a matter of good software architecture. The characteristics of SOAP make it
a nice technology for the API. Those same characteristics are not
appropriate for the internal requirements of the application.
Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: "Konstantin Gordiyenko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: SOAP Performance against RMI
> What's the point?
> 1. Make messages human readable. Though no human will ever read these
> messages.
> 2. Make messages self-describing. Though no computer will ever
> understand these descriptions.
> 3. Make RPC simple. Most other RPCs are simpler.
> 4. Make RPC cross-platform. CORBA already does it. And it does much,
> much more than SOAP in much, much more efficient way.
> 5. Communicate through firewalls. Nobody asks network administrators
> what they think about it.
>
> I stronlgy believe that SOAP is just another hype.
>
> Oleg Dulin wrote:
> >
> > So, I am just curious, what's the point of SOAP then ? Why can't we use
> > RMI, or CORBA for language independence ?
> >
> > On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Konstantin Gordiyenko wrote:
> >
> > > I've done some tests once. Compared to Sun RMI, SOAP
> > > serialization/deserialization is 50-200 times slower, requires 5-20
> > > (ten) times more memory and produces 5-20 (ten) times larger messages.
> > > These ratios are mostly depend on the data structure, and almost don't
> > > depend on the data size.
> > >
> > > Ralf Bierig wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > are there any performance measurement materials about
> > > > SOAP against RMI in Web? Did somebody made a
> > > > benchmarktest with SOAP (and maybe RMI)?
> > > >
> > > > I am looking for material to determine, if SOAP is
> > > > good enough to fullfil the requirements I need for a
> > > > project.
> > > >
> > > > Greetings
> > > > Ralf
> > > >
> > > > __________________________________________________
> > > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > > Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
> > > > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Oleg Dulin
> > http://www.olegdulin.com/
