Thursday, June 07, 2007

WADL - Or Maybe Not

I have changed my mind on thinking that WADL Gateway Drug.

Dare Obasanjo has a great post on it. It pushed me over the edge.

If it was the only way to convince someone to not go the WS-* route, I'd go for it. But too much madness can result from it and it is just much simpler to avoid this for now anyway.

Here was the clincher for me from Dare's post:

Another word that is often abused in the SOAP/WS-* world is contract. When I think of a contract, I think of some lengthy document drafted by a lawyer that spells out in excruciating detail how two parties interact and what their responsibilities are. When a SOAP/WS-* developer uses the word contract and WSDL interchangeably, this seems incorrect because a WSDL is simply the XML version of OMG IDL. And an IDL is simply a list of API signatures. It doesn't describe expected message exchange patterns, required authentication methods, message traffic limits, quality of service guarantees, or even pre and post conditions for the various method calls. You usually find this information in the documentation and/or in the actual business contract one signed with the Web service provider. A WADL document for the REST Web service will not change this fact.

No comments: