The Tripping Point

  • Learn a dynamic language now

    Learn a dynamic language now. Why? Because you can do more with less code and get better quality too. How can you argue with that? Where does the benefit come from? First, the languages are less verbose more expressive, so you type less and say more....
  • ROA vs GET/POST

    Bill deHora has a great response to one of my (somewhat) recent REST posts . The timing is perfect, because I've been thinking a lot about what I said in those posts. I've also just finished reading the RESTful Web Services book, which is the most useful...
  • Don asked for input...

    I haven't been reading or writing much lately - too heads down getting to 1.0. But I did happen across Don's recent post about retiring the four tenets of SOA and asking for input on what we'd like to write when we implement services. Let me take these...
  • What's in a name?

    My recent posts are my attempt to describe how I think about the Web and how it can be leveraged to integrate systems independent of the browser. I got a ton of feedback in comments and email, which was all great. I’ve been away for a bit, so I...
  • Three reasons that REST is not RPC

    I've gotten several comments saying that, at the end of the day, REST is just RPC. That's wrong, for at least 3 very reasons: 1) Each unique state in your protocol state machine has its own URI. That's different from an RPC endpoint that maintains a black...
  • On programming models...

    Ittay commented on my REST post : the thing is, when you write software, you use an RPC model. what bothers me about REST is that it is not only an API. it enforces you to change your programming model. that is not to say i don't like it. i do, for its...
  • An example might help...

    I got a lot of great comments on last nights post, including a couple about REST being no different from xml-based RPC. I used to think so too, which is why my recent epiphany was so eye opening. Consider a protocol for finding and reserving a flight...
  • I finally get REST. Wow.

    Yeah, I'm alive. And I remember the password to my blog. I've been away for a bit, working on something very cool involving the TV. If all goes well, you'll hear about it in a big way. Anyway, I'm still having a ball out here in reality. Building something...
  • Are Excel Services the way to bring developers and business people together?

    I heard about Excel Services a while ago, but hadn't had any time to look at them even briefly until now. Basically, it's a server-side system that lets you access data and calculations in Excel spreadsheets via Web services. Think about how much business...
  • MSDN Content Web Services online...

    One of the last things I did before leaving the MSDN team was to prototype a Web service for retrieving content programmatically. It's been a while since then, but a production version is now live . Craig provides an excellent introduction here . The...
  • Two articles, one good and one bad...

    I ran into two Web service related articles recently. One really resonated with me: Enable the Service Oriented Enterprise , in the MS Architecture Journal. It presents the Enterprise Service Orientation Maturity Model, or ESOMM. Okay, I know what you...
  • Versioning and semantic changes

    I got an email a little while ago from someone who read about my preferred XSD versioning strategy . They felt I had glossed over the issue of introducing a change that effects semantics and might be ignored by a receiver. Consider this example: <element...
  • Attempting to address Rajesh's concerns about optionality...

    My last post on optional content triggered a conversation between Rajesh and Jon. Rajesh's main concern is that making almost everything in your schema optional may give you flexibility, but if occurence requirements aren't captured somewhere, then its...
  • Initial code for version-aware schema validation

    When I wrote my initial post on my new approach to XSD versioning , I promised that I'd post code. Here's the first cut: class Program { static void OriginalMain( string [] args) { FileStream xml = new FileStream (args[0], FileMode .Open); FileStream...
  • Slogging

    Now matter which way you tackle contract evolution, you need to have a system in place to notify your service consumers. I envision a system based on “service blogs”, or “slogs”. A slog conveys information about the state of a...
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