Messaging in Py?

[David LeBlanc]

[This followup was posted to comp.lang.python and a copy was sent to the 
cited author.]

In article <mailman.990470431.30830.python-list at python.org>, 
paulp at ActiveState.com says...
> David LeBlanc wrote:
> > 
> > In article <mailman.990385176.4955.python-list at python.org>,
> > dsh8290 at rit.edu says...
> > > On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 06:36:04PM +0000, Dave Kuhlman wrote:
> > > | How about SOAP?  Isn't SOAP emergining as a dominant protocol for
> > > | messaging, for making requests across HTTP, and for Web services?
> > >
> > > According the the xml-rpc site the xml-rpc guys used to work for MS.
> 
> No, Dave Winer used to work *with* MS on a pre-cursor to XML-RPC. He
> wasn't an employee and the people on the project who were MS employees
> still are.

I didn't say that Dave Winer was an employee of MS - that is your 
inference. "A developer" need not be an employee. Nor is any of the above 
text written by me!

> > > They left after sharing the xml-rpc idea.  Now they maintain xml-rpc,
> > > which is a simple way for using RPC (from the client's perspective,
> > > anyways).  SOAP is what the other MS guys ended up with after they
> > > bloated xml-rpc with excess features.
> 
> Excess in Dave's opinion, I guess. XML-RPC is pretty nice for simple
> things but it is VERY basic. You could argue that SOAP is too large and
> complex but the world certainly could not get by on XML-RPC alone.

Dave who? If me, you're misquoting me completely - this quote came from 
D-Man's post. If you mean Dave Winer, i'd be very surprised to hear him 
characterize SOAP as bloated since he's also one of the developers of the 
(current status) SOAP proposal.
> > ...
> > I'm pretty sure xml-rpc was a sun initiative, but i'm not sure - there's
> > a pretty good table at w3.org describing the MANY proposals for remote
> > procedure call reccomendations (w3-ese for standard).
> 
> No, Sun had nothing to do with xml-rpc.

I don't think you're completely correct about that, but it may be that 
i'm remembering a competing proposal by Sun.

Looks like Dave Winer is now claiming sole ownership: "XML-RPC is a 
trademark of UserLand Software, Inc". The spec on xmlrpc.com lists no 
authors. I was unable to find the w3c submission document, nor the fairly 
comprensive discussion of distributed processing submissions (many!) that 
was once on the w3c site.

> > FWIW, I think the trend is towards SOAP and away from xml-rpc.
> 
> That's true. SOAP has a lot more corporate backing and it handles many
> things that XML-RPC does not. e.g. encoding named, structured objects
> 

I sure hope you program better then you quote news postings!

Dave LeBlanc