Re: Visibility (was Re: Introducing the Service Oriented Architec tural style, and it's constraints and properties.

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 11:55:14AM -0500, Champion, Mike wrote:
> Hmmm .... I said:
> 
> > To the extent that Web intermediaries can make 
> > cacheing, routing, and filtering decisions based on IP address, TCP 
> > port number, or HTTP URIs, headers, and methods, they will be easier 
> > to implement and more robust across platforms or time, and can work 
> > even if the format of the message body is unknown or encrypted.
> 
> Dave said:
> 
> >  "The RESTful SOA has the advantage better visibility, as the 
> > firewall can
> >   simply examine the generic interface to determine the action being
> >   performed."
> 
> OK, Dave's is a bit less pedantic :-)  but don't they say more or less the
> same thing?

Hmm, I don't think so.  Dave's offers a comparison; REST is more
visible than WSA/SOA.  Yours seems to simply say "REST is visible".

> But overall, it sounds like we're within striking distance of wording that
> would be at least minimally acceptable to both the SOA and REST sides.
> That's good!

I hope so, but fear not.  I think what's missing from your proposal is
the most important part, even if I end up disagreeing with it.  IMO, the
architecture document needs to be able to need to be able to tell
developers one of these things;

- if getting over firewalls is important to you, REST is better than SOA
- if getting over firewalls is important to you, SOA is better than REST
- REST and SOA systems can both traverse firewalls without any trouble

Thanks.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis