SOAP discussion continues

The discussion about SOAP performance has moved to here and I feel like I should interject again. And once again it's a case of agreeing with both sides up to a point.

I'd like to consider myself one of those distributed system's experts that Michi mentions, given that I've been building them in various flavours since the mid 1980's. With that in mind, I have to agree with Michi that as far as distributed systems go, SOAP and Web Services are poor. Ignoring other problems such as the fact that there's still a lack of an overall architecture and concentrating solely on performance, then it's no contest. Having to resort to hardware to improve performance is the best answer that a poor implementation can achieve and it's certainly not something to be lauded (and I'm fairly sure that's not what Savas is trying to do). Sun tried that many years ago with Java (anyone else remember the JavaStation ?) If I were building a distributed application and I controlled the entire infrastructure, or simply didn't have to worry about interacting with heterogeneous technologies, then I'd consider CORBA or maybe even ICE (I still haven't had time to try this yet Michi). SOAP (and probably even XML for anything other than configuration) wouldn't factor into my choices in this case.

However, as I've said before, if I need to worry about interoperability with other organisations, or even just between departments in large organisations, then I'd have second thoughts. It's certainly true to say that I'd prefer to use something like CORBA if I had my way (though even that has its deficiences compared to some of the stuff we did back in the 1980's). Unfortunately there are commercial realities that hit home pretty quick if you try to do this and SOAP is the only choice these days. Arguing against that is like trying to persuade the sea to stay put. SOAP (and Web Services) are for interoperability as well as for the Web and there is so much backing for this from the industry that it's getting easier and easier to achieve. Interoperability isn't something that's only recently come on the scene and trying to achieve it with technologies such as CORBA was always possible, but more difficult than it probably needed to be. However, being one of those distributed system experts doesn't mean that I have to like this current state of affairs, and it's been the subject of many good discussions I've had with the likes of Savas and Jim over the years. But pragmatic realities can't be shaken off.

Fortunately I'm certain that Web Services and SOAP are going have to improve: though how long it will take is something I'm not willing to take a stab at. A good analogy comes if you consider natural languages for instance. There may well be an argument that English isn't the best global language and perhaps something like French or German would be a better choice. For example, I've heard arguments that English isn't structured enough and has many illogical rules that make teaching it as a foreign language difficult. There are people who want to change, but that's another battle that can't be won. Due to historical events, English has become the language of commerce and a fairly global language too. However, what we speak today isn't the same as was spoken in the tenth century or even the eighteen century: it has evolved to take into account the changing needs of society (e.g., slang). This is how I see SOAP (and Web Services) evolving too. OK, it would be great if we could all agree now to adopt something that is more efficient and has a better architecture, but that isn't going to happen. But I do believe things will evolve and improve. Let's hope it doesn't take a couple of centuries though.

There's a separate discussion about RPC versus messaging, but that is irrespective of the underlying distributed system technology. We've had the same discussions in CORBA (e.g., this) , J2EE and other technologies going back as far as I can remember. This current discussion arose purely around the area of SOAP performance and I feel that it's starting to drift into other things.

In summary then: guys - you're not arguing about the same thing. I think that we can all agree that the performance of SOAP is poor compared to other platforms (and that there are a number of other problems with it). Pointing that out is fair enough and definitely shouldn't be ignored (how else does our industry progress than by peer review in one form or another?) If people were saying that SOAP should be static and not evolve and improve, then I think it would be incumbent on us all to point out the problems as much as we could. I don't think any of the discussions I've seen so far have implied that this is the case. But it isn't worth arguing that X has better performance than Y if X is meant for one problem domain and Y is meant for another; sometimes performance really is secondary for many customers.

I also don't think that this is a case of smart people defending bad ideas. I think it certainly would be if those smart people believed that the status quo was good enough. However, I didn't read that into Jim's original post.