David Chappell declares the REST vs WS-* war over
To anybody who’s paying attention and who’s not a hopeless partisan, the war between REST and WS-* is over. The war ended in a truce rather than crushing victory for one side–it’s Korea, not World War II. The now-obvious truth is that both technologies have value, and both will be used going forward.
In this conflict I am, undeniably, a REST partisan. I know this colors my perceptions, but it is not obvious to me that the war is over. It has become obvious that WS-* will not prevail, but that does not mean it is over. Those who have invested a great deal of time and thought into WS-* may hope that it remains a viable technology, at least for certain problems, but that does not mean it will. I think the situations for which WS-* is the best available technology are vanishingly rare, perhaps even nonexistent. As Mark Baker puts it in his response to Mr Chappell
Perhaps David – or anybody else – could point me towards a data oriented application which can’t fit (well) into such a model (not REST, just the uniform interface part).
I expect that when all is said and done WS-* will still be around. But rather than as a vibrate technology platform, the way Mr Chappell seems to anticipate, I think it survive in a way far more like the way Cobol is still around today: as a zombie, unkillable and ready to eat the brain of anyone who wanders too close the legacy systems.