Re: Label for Top Node of "triangle diagram"

On Wednesday, October 2, 2002, at 08:31  AM, Cutler, Roger 
(RogerCutler) wrote:

> OK, I can buy the idea of looking toward the future.  Here are some 
> thoughts
> that use this diagram as a starting point.

I am happy to engage on this.

>
> 1 - I think that SOAP belongs in the right column, not the left, and 
> that it
> deserves another row.  I believe that row might be something like:

The motivation for the columns was the classical operations/data split. 
On that basis, SOAP can be interpreted both ways: as an on-the-wire 
format for messaging and as a way of denoting APIs. I leave it to 
others to decide which is the `real' view.

>
> Message Transmission    ........    SOAP, GET, Reliable Messaging

+1


>
> The next row up might then be
>
> Service Description     ........    WSDL, natural language

Perhaps Service Description (at the level of WSDL anyway) is a 
specification of an operational element and SOAP is a protocol.

>
> 2 - I think that the right column might more usefully be labelled
> "protocols" than "meta-data".  Perhaps the left row is "Service 
> Description"
> or "Service Category"?

There might be a place for an additional column, but descriptions and 
data formats are not the same thing as protocols. Data is transmitted, 
protocols are the rules of the game; this does get difficult to keep a 
hold of when the rules of the game require sending a string with HTTP 
1.0 GET at the front of it :-)

(Aside: another, more abstract/obscure kind of vertical line could be 
drawn as the object-level/meta-level distinction. This could be what is 
really going on; I need a little more time to consider that.)


>
> 3 - UDDI should appear somewhere in the right column, I'm not quite 
> sure
> where.  Possibly on the top row, which is very interesting because it 
> seems
> to indicate that there is a need for something, currently undefined, 
> between
> UDDI and choreography.  Actually, I think that this might be a pretty 
> useful
> insight.

UDDI is a mechanism and IMO belongs on the operational side: it is a 
means of publishing and discovering. Its real thrust (again IMO) is 
that it represents a mechanism whereby automatic parties can find each 
other. I too was somewhat surprised when I realized that UDDI was a 
top-row element: the lesson being that being `higher' up does not 
automatically require it to be more complex or `smarter'.

BTW I appreciate your engagement in this conversation; I do not pretend 
to have all the answers. (As I tell my 6 yr old son, no-one knows 
everything, not even everyone in the world altogether know everything.)

Frank