Chris's Rants

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Dealing with the root cause

Maureen Dowd writes in today's op-ed peice:
As Bob Kerrey, a frustrated member of the 9/11 commission, told Chris Matthews, the U.S. should have declared war on Osama as soon as it became apparent that he had an army with a "tremendous, sophisticated capability" and an ideology that dictated killing Americans.
"To declare war on terrorism, it seems to me to have the target wrong," he said. "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. . . . Terrorism is a tactic."
A Bush 41 official agreed: "You can't fight terrorism conventionally like a war. Any 16-year-old kid can strap on dynamite and take down any building. It must be fought clandestinely, dealing with the underlying causes and taking security measures in our own country."
For that matter, any sixteen year-old should be able to recognize when they're being scammed by the administration.

Ask yourself this; can the "war on terrorism" ever be won? Will it ever be over? How will we know?
"If we find our government in all its branches rushing headlong... into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the freedom of opinion, civil or religious, or opening on our peace of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are to be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the nation to its tents. But while our functionaries are wise, and honest, and vigilant, let us move compactly under their guidance, and we have nothing to fear. Things may here and there go a little wrong. It is not in their power to prevent it. But all will be right in the end, though not perhaps by the shortest means." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811. ME 13:29
Definition: The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation -- Jefferson

Think about it...

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Saturday, February 28, 2004

What's wrong with this picture?

This NYT article says that One Producer of U.S. Beef Wants to Test All Its Cattle, yet the USDA and other beef producers won't let them.

The US company that makes the testing equipment can sell it to the Japanese, who routinely test all their beef for BSE (Mad Cow disease), but would be violating a federal law if they sold the same equipment to a US beef producer.

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Cha... ching! How much is enough?

(background music, Pink Floyd's Money) This NYT Editorial points out that this years Forbes annual list of billionaires has grown by more than 25% (111) over last year. A total of 55 of the new billionaires are U.S. citizens, pretty much in keeping with the overall percent increase (24% and change).

Whoa. That must have been some tax break!

The combined net worth of these people is around $1.9 trillion (with a tee). According to the World Bank, the 2002 Gross Domestic Product of Germany (number 3 on the list) was 1.9 trillion (with a tee).

Holy bank account, Batman!

These 587 people have a combined net worth that is about as large as the GDP third richest nation on the planet.

That just blows my mind.

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Thursday, February 26, 2004

Orkut and LinkedIn

I was invited into Orkut and LinkedIn over the past coupla days. So, I tried out both. LinkedIn is much more geared towards professional networking. It's a bit clunky IMO. You have to know a person's email, even if they have already joined to contact them which seems odd. It isn't clear to me what value LinkedIn has really. Sure, you can peruse someone's bio and testimonials from others... I guess that's useful. I don't know that I would find it useful. I suppose if I were looking for employment it might be very useful.

Orkut is a little more oriented towards personal networking it would seem. It's a lot more of a community than LinkedIn which seems little more than some big rolodex in the sky. I certainly found Orkut a lot easier to make connections... just click on a link and away you go!

To be honest, both suffer from usability issues... Orkut's navigation is kinda clunky but still much better than LinkedIn. Maybe it just takes a little getting used to...

I'm not sure how effective the communities will prove... too bad you can't get RSS/Atom feeds for the various communities (or maybe you can, but it was well hidden if so) and use a blog post to contribute to the "discussion". That might be a way of integrating it with tools you're already using.

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IBM sez "let Java go!"

More on the continuing saga ... now, IBM urges Sun to make Java open source.

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Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Let Java go!

Linux Today has an interesting article entitled - Community: Beyond an Open Source Java.

Ahem... Scott, are you listening?

Being a former Sun employee, who had argued for this since OAK was renamed Java (well, just about;-), I couldn't agree more with the arguments expressed in the article especially the ones about J2EE complexity and dumping SunONE. Actually, it surprises me to see the arguments about profit from Java... Java has pretty much always been a loss-leader at Sun.

Bottom-line, definitely worth a read.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Web Services and Proprietary Standards

Sean McGrath writes about Web Services and Proprietary Standards, building off of the thread started by Jon Udell and picked up by Steve Vinoski. All of them make valid points.

Sean makes a really important point, quite similar to one I've been making with customers for a while now. Interoperability is an unnatural act for a vendor. If they (the customer) want/need interoperability, they need to demand it. They simply cannot assume that the vendors will deliver interoperable solutions out of some altruistic motivation. The vendors are primarily motivated by profit, not good will. However, most vendors do listen to their customers. When a majority of them seem to be saying the same thing, that's usually when things start to get noticed.

The customer needs to make their requirements for interoperability known. I think that in the context of Web services, that the best, and most appropriate forum for doing so is WS-I.

In reality, this is much like a democracy where you need to be involved, you need to voice your opinion through the ballot-box or you have no business complaining.

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Monday, February 23, 2004

Cool URI's don't change redux

In a previous missive, I ranted about the W3C changing the resource behind the http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/ URI. I had to look something up in the SOAP1.2 spec today and lo and behold, it seems now that they have rectified the situation by adopting the proposal I outlined in my blog.

Kewl:-)

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NYT editorial pretty much sums it up

Today's NY Times editorial: Ralph Nader Does It Again pretty much sums it up for me, especially the last paragraph.

Ralph Nader has every right to choose to run for President. It is we, the voters, who need to make the correct choice.

The adage that "every vote counts" was never more succinctly borne out than in the 2000 election. There's no such thing as a "throw-away" vote. Electability does matter in this election, and that fact needs to be factored into the choice we make going into the voting booth this year.

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more on Adam Bosworth interview

Sean McGrath adds an "Amen." to an exerpt from the Adam Bosworth interview I mentioned in my previous post.

I second that emotion.

Web services (well, certainly SOAP-the-protocol anyway) was designed to support asynchronous messaging. From section 2 of the SOAP1.1 spec:
SOAP messages are fundamentally one-way transmissions from a sender to a receiver, but as illustrated above, SOAP messages are often combined to implement patterns such as request/response.

The problem lies in the SOAP stack implementations and the predominant use of Web services which, much to my chagrin, has been to put pointy brackets around RPCs.

One can only hope.

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Sunday, February 22, 2004

Interesting interview ...

... with Adam Bosworth. Definitely, a worthwhile read.

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More CSS madness

As you can see, I've been noodling on my blog template and playing with CSS. I think that this is a bit nicer. It leaves more of the spectacular background unobscured.

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How the Government Measures Unemployment

Did you ever wonder How the Government Measures Unemployment?

It's absolutely fascinating (okay, it is statistics, but still, when you understand who the government considers to be unemployed, you may be very surprised).

The government doesn't consider the guy sitting on a stoop in the ghetto unemployed unless he (or she) has actively (not passively) been looking for a job. Quoting from the referenced government document (highlighting is mine):

Who is counted as unemployed?

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. Actively looking for work may consist of any of the following activities:
  • Contacting:
    • An employer directly or having a job interview;
    • A public or private employment agency;
    • Friends or relatives;
    • A school or university employment center;
  • Sending out resumes or filling out applications;
  • Placing or answering advertisements;
  • Checking union or professional registers; or
  • Some other means of active job search.

Passive methods of jobsearch do not result in jobseekers actually contacting potential employers, and therefore are not acceptable for classifying persons as unemployed. These would include such things as attending a job training program or course or merely reading the want ads.

Workers expecting to be recalled from layoff are counted as unemployed, whether or not they have engaged in a specific jobseeking activity. But, in all other cases, the individual must be actively engaged in some job search activity and available for work (except for temporary illness).


Interesting... if a person is laid off, their unemployment insurance runs out, and they then do exactly what the government says they should do (seek job training for a new, more employable skill), they are not counted as being in the labor force.

People who have given up in despair are not counted. Of course, they probably don't vote either, so the government could care less about them.

The problem is that they are the problem, as much if not more so than the poor sap who is collecting or who is still actively engaged in looking for work.

If someone doesn't have a regular job, one that they can count on for an extended period of time, they might just as well be considered unemployed, IMO. If someone is unemployed, and manages to get their neighbor to give them $20 to cut his lawn, they are counted as having been employed that week. Does this seem right to you?

Interestingly, as the paper points out, the statistics are derived by a sample that may in and of itself be somewhat contrived (see no evil). Take a careful look at how the survey is constructed. I wonder if they actually survey people in Roxbury, Ma. or the ghettos of Detroit, Mi. Do they change the survey periodically? I wonder if they turn a blind eye on specific areas effected by severe unemployment. Given the Bushies tendancy of distorting the facts, it wouldn't surprise me... Yet, they still can't make the numbers look good, so they resort to hand wavy characterizations that attempt to put bad news in a better light.

The facts are that the situation is not good... There's nothing positive that can be said about it.

The lady, er man, in the bog expresses my opinion best.

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Saturday, February 21, 2004

Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts

What a surprise! I'm shocked! ... NOT!

You can learn more, and send email to your elected representatives at the Union of Concerned Scientists web site.

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Sunday, February 15, 2004

More CSS tweaks

Even more tweaking... I had my son help me with Photoshop to create the faded version of the background image (Dumbbell Nebula) so that I could get the text to be more prominent.

It really does render better in FireFox than IE! I still have a bit of work to do though... I'm not happy that the images are tiled, especially on hires monitors.

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New Look

I've been playing around with CSS to customize my template. I find that FireFox is superior to MSIE6.x in rendering this page.

Code looks like this:
<ns:root xmlns:ns="http://example.com">

<ns:child attribute="somevalue"/>
<ns:root>

Links look like this.

Quotes look like this:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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Ad nauseum

Mark responds:
I see the disconnect. I'm referring to any/all XML document(s). No fair saying that some specific kinds of XML documents are partially understandable, because clearly you can design one to be, and SOAP, as an envelope, is one as you correctly point out.

No fair?! Why not? Let's see... what other types of XML vocabularies can be similarly classified.
  • XHTML
  • XML Schema
  • WSDL
  • XSL
  • RDF
  • SVG
  • P3P
  • ...

He continues:
So, consider this XML document;

<iwoejaf xmlns="http://example.org/oijerwer">
  <ijrwer>inm4jvxc</ijrwer>
</iwoejaf>

That's the kind of document I'm talking about. Wouldn't you say that understanding that document is all or nothing? You either recognize the namespace or you don't, right?

And you either recognize this:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"/>

or you don't. In all cases, you need to read the specs.

As for RDF serialized as XML, if there were a canonical form, it might just be usable (although we'd still be needing an inference engine... gee, can I cram one of those in a cell phone yet?). Until such time, we're left with an interesting model and a lousy way (or, should I say ways) of serializing it in XML.

RDF is not a panacea. Until it gets grounded in practicality, it isn't likely to gain a foothold beyond academia.

Business doesn't run on partial understanding. Neither does a nuclear reactor. I bet you'd be quite disappointed if you made a deposit to your bank account and the application that processes deposits only partially understood the transaction and simply didn't understand (and hence ignored) the amount element!

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Saturday, February 14, 2004

Here we go again!

Mark Baker still doesn't get it.

He writes:
XML is fine and dandy, and I use it whenever I can, but it's just a syntax. As such, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the issue that understanding an XML document is an all-or-nothing proposition. That's why when I use XML, I almost always use RDF. It enables a machine to extract triples from an arbitrary RDF/XML document, and triples are much finer grained pieces of information than a whole document. It allows me to process the triples I understand, and ignore the ones I don't, which
another way of saying that it provides a self-descriptive extensibility model. ...

I don't see it that way. Understanding an XML document is not an all-or-nothing proposition by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, I can have a generic SOAP processor that understands the SOAP namespace but is oblivious to the content of the soap:Body element (amongst other things such as certain SOAP headers). I can write a SOAP header handler that is designed to understand only the header(s) from a specific namespace... It can be oblivious of SOAP headers from other namespaces and need not understand the content of the soap:Body element. Certainly doesn't seem like an all-or-nothing proposition to me. The same applies to any XML vocabulary. Even the example that he cites (use of XML and RDF) proves the statement to be false. An application that extracts RDF triples from an arbitrary XML document certainly doesn't need to know anything about the vocabulary of the containing XML document.

He goes on to say (first quoting Savas, then responding):

If we are going to glue applications/organisations together when building large scale applications, we need to make sure that contracts for the interactions are in place. We need to define message formats. That's what WSDL is all about.

Agreed, but that's also an important part of HTTP. It just defines message formats in a more self-descriptive way (i.e. that doesn't require a separate
description document to understand what the message means).


Not all applications are designed to handle arbitrary message content like a browser or a spider. WSDL is both a contract and a courtesy. By making the WSDL for my service available to potential consumers of my service, I am providing them with (admittedly some, not all of) the information needed to develop an appropriate application interface to my service. Could I do this with an HTML form? Certainly! But the fact of the matter is that these are designed for rendering by a browser and then need someone sitting in front of the browser, applying some intelligence to the questions posed by the form and composing the appropriate responses. This is great for a user interface but not for machine processing by an application.

HTTP is a great application protocol, for the application for which it was designed... the Web.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2004

I've barely scratched the surface!

a map of countries I've visited


And I thought I was some sort of world traveller... guess again. I've even got a ways to go in the good ol' US of A.

You can create your own visited country map.

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WS-FX

WS-Reliable Messaging and WS-Addressing are gaining traction. Neat!

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Monday, February 09, 2004

Some thoughts on the AtomAPI WSDL

I stumbled across the AtomAPI WSDL and tried to validate it against the WS-I Basic Profile.

It fails on two errors, one of which may be a result of the other. Basically, the problem stems
from the fact that the wsdl:types contains a number of xs:schema elements (4 actually), and two
of these use xs:import to import the namespace defined in another of the inline xs:schema elements.

Technically, this violates R2004 of the BP1.0 since the import is importing a namespace defined in a document with a root element of wsdl:definitions.

R2004 A DESCRIPTION MUST NOT use the XML Schema "import" statement to import a Schema
from any document whose root element is not "schema" from the namespace "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema".

I should point out that there are those who believe that it should be permitted to import namespaces defined inline in the same wsdl:types section, but the BP1.0 does disallow this practice at present. I believe we're leaving it to the W3C WSD WG to address the issue of schema imports, etc. so at least for the time being, for WSDL1.1 you can expect that the AtomAPI WSDL as currently defined may pose a potential problem for WSDL processors.

However, that isn't what really concerns me (although I would like to see AtomAPI WSDL be WS-I BP1.0 conformant:-)

I notice that the target namespace of the Atom WSDL is defined as "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/http/". It isn't clear to me that this is such a good idea. That namespace belongs to the WSDL1.1 HTTP binding extension. It's a "well known" namespace too, at least as far as WSDL processors are concerned. But more importantly, the namespace authority is schemas.xmlsoap.org and unless the use of this namespace as defined in the WSDL and also in the AtomAPI spec is sanctioned by Developmentor, it is really an inappropriate usage.

I would have expected that the target namespace of the AtomAPI WSDL would have been a URI more along the lines of the namespace URI that is used for the Atom schema; e.g. "http://purl.org/atom/ns#".

The second concern I have concerns the way in which the WSDL incorporates support for WS-Security.
IMO, the WSDL unnecessarily defines the schema elements for WS-Security. It also is using the now obsolete namespace associated with the input specification to the OASIS TC. The URI for the recently approved WS-Security schema is "http://www.docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd". Note that most vendors' products will be upgrading their support for WS-Security to support the version of the spec that the OASIS WSS TC recently approved. Additionally, the WS-I Basic Security Profile will be based on the OASIS TC approved specs. I would think/hope that Atom would want to follow suit.

But I am curious as to why the WSS schema components are defined inline in the AtomAPI WSDL rather than simply being pulled in by reference (e.g. xs:import). I haven't taken the time to review carefully to see if there are actually differences between the AtomAPI defined WSS schema components and the published schema at the (old) namespace URI for secext and utility. I suppose I could understand if there were errors in the published schema and the intent was to address those errors. Was it the author's intent to constrain which child elements allowed by WS-Security were to be
used?

However, the real concern I have is that by defining the WSDL using the soap:header to specify use of the wss:Security element in the message you have made it a requirement that the wss:Security element be present as a SOAP header in each message for which this has been specified based upon WS-I BP1.0 requirement R2738. It isn't clear to me that it was the intent that every message carry a wss:Security SOAP header...

In truth, there's a reason that the OASIS TC hasn't defined a WSDL mapping for WS-Security. Basically, the details are still being sorted out as to how you associate policy (which is really what this amounts to) with a WSDL description. I would recommend that you use wsdl:documentation to indicate that the wss:Security SOAP header block MAY be sent on the messages for which you have currently specified a soap:header binding. Even if the intent was to mandate that a message carry a wss:Security element with the Username security token, then I believe you would still want a different means of describing/specifying this in the WSDL.

I've taken the liberty of noodling on the AtomAPI WSDL to address some of the concerns expressed above.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<definitions
xmlns:ns="http://purl.org/atom/ns/wsdl#"
xmlns:types="http://purl.org/atom/ns/types#"
xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/"
xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:tm="http://microsoft.com/wsdl/mime/textMatching/"
targetNamespace="http://purl.org/atom/ns/wsdl#"
xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/">
<types>
<s:schema elementFormDefault="qualified"
xmlns:s1="http://purl.org/atom/ns#"
targetNamespace="http://purl.org/atom/ns/types#">
<s:import namespace="http://purl.org/atom/ns#"
schemaLocation="Atom.xsd"/>
<s:element name="PUT" type="s1:entryType" />
<s:element name="POST">
<s:complexType>
<s:sequence>
<s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" ref="s1:entry" />
</s:sequence>
</s:complexType>
</s:element>
<s:element name="POSTResponse">
<s:complexType>
<s:sequence>
<s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" ref="s1:entry" />
</s:sequence>
</s:complexType>
</s:element>
</s:schema>
</types>
<message name="PUTSoapIn">
<part name="PUT1" element="types:PUT" />
</message>
<message name="PUTSoapOut" />
<message name="DELETESoapIn" />
<message name="DELETESoapOut" />
<message name="POSTSoapIn">
<part name="parameters" element="types:POST" />
</message>
<message name="POSTSoapOut">
<part name="parameters" element="types:POSTResponse" />
</message>
<portType name="AtomAPISoap">
<operation name="PUT">
<input message="ns:PUTSoapIn" />
<output message="ns:PUTSoapOut" />
</operation>
<operation name="DELETE">
<input message="ns:DELETESoapIn" />
<output message="ns:DELETESoapOut" />
</operation>
<operation name="POST">
<input message="ns:POSTSoapIn" />
<output message="ns:POSTSoapOut" />
</operation>
</portType>
<binding name="AtomAPISoap" type="ns:AtomAPISoap">
<soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"
style="document" />
<operation name="PUT">
<soap:operation
soapAction="http://purl.org/atom/ns/http/PUT" style="document" />
<input>
<documentation>
Note: the input message MAY carry a wss:Security SOAP header
with the Username token.
</documentation>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</output>
</operation>
<operation name="DELETE">
<soap:operation
soapAction="http://purl.org/atom/ns/http/DELETE" style="document" />
<input>
<documentation>
Note: the input message MAY carry a wss:Security SOAP header with the
Username token.
</documentation>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</output>
</operation>
<operation name="POST">
<soap:operation
soapAction="http://purl.org/atom/ns/http/POST" style="document" />
<input>
<documentation>
Note: the input message MAY carry a wss:Security SOAP header with the
Username token.
</documentation>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</input>
<output>
<soap:body use="literal" />
</output>
</operation>
</binding>
<service name="AtomAPI">
<port name="AtomAPISoap" binding="ns:AtomAPISoap">
<soap:address location="http://localhost/AtomApi.asmx" />
</port>
</service>
</definitions>

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Sunday, February 08, 2004

Re: BEEP vs Web hacks

I've finally found some time to respond to Mark Baker regarding his response to my missive on BEEPLite.

First, to his point regarding our discussion on the WSAWG list regarding the MONITOR method. My point remains that HTTP is not suited to extension of its methods because it requires centralized administration of the method names. You can't simply make up a new method like MONITOR and deploy it unless you go through the IETF to revise the HTTP specification. Unless you do, then there's no way that anyone could tell the difference between Mark's MONITOR method and mine (should I devise one) and yet they might be very different animals.

Second, to his question as to whether mod_pubsub is a hack, I would have to answer; yes it certainly feels like one to me.

I agree that working within the constraints of an existing architecture is much harder, but that's the point isn't it. HTTP wasn't designed to support pubsub. Just because some sharp
people can take the protocol and tweak it here and there to enable pubsub doesn't change that fact.

However, all that aside, I am curious about something else related to mod_pubsub. Sure, it makes use of HTTP GET as well as POST, but are GET and POST really the methods? I mean really... how is this any different than the way in which SOAP uses HTTP POST? do_method?

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Thursday, February 05, 2004

Cool URIs dont' change?

Don Box writes about the W3C's recent decision to change the resource behind the http://www.w3.org/tr/soap URI. For the longest time, dereferencing that URI returned a representation of the SOAP1.1 W3C Note. Now that the SOAP1.2 specification has become a W3C REC, it was thought by the W3C that it would be appropriate to have the URI return the SOAP1.2 spec instead. As Don points out in his missive, this seems natural because the SOAP1.2 spec is the normative recommendation of the W3C.

However, he goes on to explain his difficulty in finding the SOAP1.1 specification, even citing the fact that the SOAP1.2 spec, in its informative references section references the SOAP1.1 specification, but using the aforementioned URI! Doh!

Many of us are familiar with timbls (or should that be Sir timbl now?) WWW axiom "Cool URIs don't change". Certainly, the SOAP specification resource warrants the distinction of a "cool URI". A Google "I'm feeling lucky" search of the term "SOAP" returns the representation returned from the URI http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/ which is strongly suggestive that the URI is widely referenced throughout the Web. In fact, a search of the term "tr/SOAP" returns 7,770 hits. How many of those references do you think were meant to reference the SOAP1.2 specification? Given the fact that the W3C only recently effected the change, probably not very many, IMHO. Indeed, many of the references are from some other Web services specification and one would reasonably expect that such a reference might be considered normative. (oops!)

In this case, the URI didn't in fact change. One could reasonably make the argument that the URI still points to "the SOAP specification". However, the distinction that those of us in the XML Protocols WG, who labored on the development of the SOAP1.2 specification, made between SOAP1.1 and SOAP1.2 was significant. The two protocols are actually quite different, despite the fact that they share the same element local names and many of the same attribute names.

SOAP1.2 is based upon the XML Infoset whereas SOAP1.1 was intended as an XML1.0 vocabulary. It may seem a fine distinction, but it is an imprtant distinction none the less.

But, I digress. My point is that it is the resource that is important, not the URI. IMO, given the widespread implementation of SOAP1.1, the SOAP1.1 resource is what is important (or cool). Its URI should not have been changed.

SOAP1.2's URI had been (and continues to be) "http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/". You can even use the URI "http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12" and the W3C web server will redirect your browser to http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/. Those of us who write specifications for a living come to depend upon the "Cool URIs don't change" axiom.

I believe that if the W3C wanted to give added visibility to the SOAP1.2 REC, that they should have put a resource behind the http://www.w3.org/TR/soap URI that gave the user a choice between the SOAP1.1 W3C Note and the SOAP1.2 REC specifications.

e.g.
Please select from the resources below:
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/">SOAP1.2 W3C Recommendation<a>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508/">SOAP1.1 W3C Note<a>

Certainly, they should have also taken the time to address the "bugs" introduced by the change such as republishing the SOAP1.2 specification with an updated URI reference to the SOAP1.1 specification URI.

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