Web Services At A Crossroads
I've just read an interesting article by Daryl Plummer: Web Services At A Crossroads. It's an interesting discussion about web services (SOAP, WSDL) vs. new emerging solutions like Plain Old XML (XML) or REST. No word yet about JSON, AJAX or other solutions.
In my opinion, any of these technologies work just fine, as long as they solve real problems. There are quick and easy needs for communication channels, when new solutions are just fine. From the security point of view, I think all of there are the same: they all could enforce rules or have leaks and breaches. And many times security is not even an issue.
The most important issue, in my opinion, would be a standardized solution available on multiple platforms and an assurance that these technologies will be available in next releases of the hosted applications or working interconnected. But these problems are not easy solved for any of these acronyms, either SOAP, WSDL or REST, or others. New solutions rely on specific implementations that can change over time.
Instead of 'web services' I think a more correct term would be 'web API', which include more than just client-server communication. This is reflected by new Web APIs Working Group of W3C and new developing projects from various companies when many times new access solutions are called simply 'API', instead of 'service' (see Google, Yahoo, etc.).