Whither Web Services?

Web Services

This release does not contain any modules to support Web service standards. This is because we have concentrated our initial efforts on providing a uniquely powerful XML technology set.

Web services are a small sub-set of the possible application models for NetKernel. We will consider developing a Web service application component set that takes advantage of the infrastructural capabilities of NetKernel soon. In the short-term it is relatively straight-forward to integrate Apache Axis to provide a SOAP interface to NetKernel hosted applications.

PJR's SOAP-box

Whilst SOAP uses XML in the transport layer it seems to be common to hide the XML from the developer by making Remote Procedure Call object bindings. An idea first demonstrated by XML-RPC.

The RPC approach to managing the difficulty of procedural processing of XML is understandable and reasonable if all you have are low-level XML APIs. However it is only a small step from previous remote-object models such as Corba, JRMI, COM+ and as with these previous models cannot be regarded as the great technological panacea the technology industry would make out. Not least in that the major industry players have created countless "standards" for SOAP systems before user or application domain feedback could be used to drive requirements. But most importantly it fails to realise the power of processing information in XML formats.

We believe that existing Web Service standards are a precursor of true XML service oriented architectures (SOA) based upon more general XML/URI-interfaces and powered by declarative XML processing applications. Perhaps NetKernel brings this vision a little closer to reality.