More HTTP-ness in your SOA-ness

I admit it’s been fun watching guys like Tim Bray, Sam Ruby, Steve Vinoski, and Pete Lacey wrestling with the whole REST/JSON/XML/POX/SOAP/WS-* thing.

My favorite quote out in blog-land was Udell’s quote from our own Chairman of the Board:

There is a little bit of tension between very interpretive, simple-to-create stuff, like REST or POX [plain old XML], and very structured, tight stuff like Web services. And if the industry is smart, we can get the best of both worlds, where things that are not very complex, you just want to go get a stock quote, a weather thing, fine. Use REST.

For what it’s worth, I happen to agree, as do many folks I talk to in the big house.

HTTP is a wonderful thing, and the world’s economy and social fabric (thanks Dave) relies on the killer combo of HTTP GET and POST (a.k.a., Lo-REST).  Heck, even this blog relies heavily on both GET (so you can read it) and POST (so I can edit and manage it).

What guys like BillG, Steve, Sam, and Pete are observing is that the “enterprise” world isn’t getting all the leverage it can out of HTTP and that there’s a huge opportunity here.

What fun times we live in.