Tim Bray of Sun, co-inventor of XML, is complaining about the complexity of the emerging WSA standards. The two quick comment I have to this are:
- Are the W3C specs better? No they're much less cohesive and verbose. Thank goodness for Microsoft, IBM, et al., for their foresight.
- Since he's complaining about complexity, what “simpler” specs does he have to offer to provide uniform reliability, third-party authentication, security policy negotiation, etc.? If they're not needed, then at least give a scenario using REST or any other protocol that handles these use cases. Bet you can't!
More seriously, however, the simple fact is Tim is just voicing sour-grapes on a completely moot point. You don't want to use WSA. Fine, don't use it. However the major tools vendors will use it to great effect and 89% of the developers will just use what given to them rather than roll their own. Admittedly, WSE2 is not necessarily friendly. However, Indigo and IBM's future offerings will provide so much power relative to their tool and training costs that the ROI is obvious. As Dare Obasanjo points out, tools vendors have to standardize one way or another if they want to interoperate. We could build any tool we want with a simple NAND gate too, we just don't live at that level. Similarly, most developers want to do XML shredding. As Don Box says, “Leave it to the plumbers.”
On a more humorous note...